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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 10, 1988)
An anonymous source recalls when a professor once told a student worker that if her speed did not increase, he was going to put her in the cotton fields. A Hispanic student had problems in one of her lecture classes. She says that every day her professor would direct most of the discussion questions toward her. She did not understand why he did this, but felt he was trying to pick on her because she was the only minority in the class. She says he rarely called on other students and she felt embarrased by this. The oddest thing about her situation she says, was when it came time for final exams. The student knew that she would have to make a 100 to recieve a B in the class. She studied more than 12 hours for the exam and was one of the few not to make a 100. Realizing that she had blown her chance at a B, the student was shocked to find that the professor had given her the undeserved final grade. At Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, a black professor said he was harassed by four white editors of an off-campus student newspaper, the Dartmouth Review. According to the Dallas Morning News, the paper is considered conservative and disapproving of Dartmouth’s black music professor, William Cole. The Dartmouth Review, which is not associated with the college, said that Cole was a “discredit to the entire face of the earth. ” In addition to their attack on Cole, the editors called the Dartmouth president “Dweeby the Dwarf. ” Dartmouth suspended the students, who then claimed that their freedom of expression had been denied, and that they had been the victims of racial discrimination. A lawsuit was filed against Dartmouth, and the college is now worried that a precedent could be set limiting professors’ academic freedom. In the September issue of the Quill, James Toronto, a journalism student at California State University, defended a cartoon that was printed with an article at the University of California at Los Angeles. The cartoon depicted a rooster telling another rooster that he was admitted into the university by affirmative action. Minority groups at the school found the cartoon racially insensitive. These students believed it represented a form of stereotyping. One incident of stereotyping happened to a Hispanic student here at A&M. She says that at the beginning of the semester when she and some friends were purchasing their books a clerk wrote down their names. But in the confusion of the fall rush the clerk had mixed them up. She says the clerk’s excuse was that they, as Hispanics, all looked the same. Kevin Carreathers, counselor and coordinator of the A&M Multicultural Services Center, says his office is trying to arrange a program to sensitize white students about things that can offend minority students. Minority students not only have to deal with the pressures of school, but also with the confrontation of other students, Carreathers says. “When this kind of thing happens, it’s one too many times, ” he says. “People think that there is a resurgence at A&M concerning racism, but there’s not It is just gaining more attention. ” Two weeks ago a Hispanic student withdrew from the University because a group of students were racially slurring him, Carreathers says. Although this was not the only reason for the withdrawal, the student told Carreathers it was the last straw. “My office is taking a positive approach in dealing with this,” Carreathers says. “With the assistance of special affairs and student services, we want minority students to know there is something that can be done. ” Carreathers says members from his office, along with students, are planning to attend a conference at Stanford University dealing with cultural conflicts on college campuses. “We want to learn more about preventing this, ” he says. “We’d like to see these kinds of situations gone. ” Texas A&M is by no means alone in their battle for sensitivity. The problems minority students are having with other students, employers and professors are not only on this campus, they are everywhere. This is a situation that must be dealt with carefully. With the help of awareness seminars, sensitivity programs and the earnest desire to rid college campuses of this problem, universities can continue to promote the search for knowledge, because discrimination of any kind is only setting this quest back. Graphics by Lynn £. Lytton Thursday, Nov. 10,1988/At Ease/Page 9