Western Front - 1987 February 10

              Tuesday
Mostly cloudy with a 20-
percent chance of rain
and highs in the mid-40s.
Periods of rain Wednes­day
and Thursday.
Sports
The best of the bad:
Intramural basketball
teams compete for
coveted T-shirt honors.
/10
The Western Front Please recycle
I VOL. 79, NO. 8 WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, BELLINGHAM, WA TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1987
Parking fines
may go to $10
By Richard Parsons
staff reporter
Formal recommendations to
increase parking fines from $3 to
$10 were made Friday by the
Parking Advisory Committee
(PAC). ,
The recommendations also
include a parking permit increase
and now will be passed on to the
Budget Committee.
The PAC recommended the
fine increase in an effort to
reduce illegal parking on cam­pus.
Last year more than 26,000
citations were issued.
Fines for the two most com­mon
violations, parking out of
assigned area and no valid per­mit
displayed, would increase
from $3 to $10 if the recommen­dation
is put into effect.
The largest fine increase will
be from $25 to $ 100,.for display-,
ing a forged permit.
Some fines will stay the same.
such as parking within 10 feet of
a fire hydrant, a $25 citation.
PAC members said they real­ize
this is not an answer to the
parking problem on campus, but
it will help. Parking Manager
Dorothy Telles said the parking
system is "very close to being out
of control."
A 5-percent increase in park­ing
fees also was recommended.
According to a PAC information
sheet, no increase in revenue is
predicted, so the fee increase
would cover salary and mainte­nance
increases.
If the recommendations are
approved they would go into
effect in September.
PAC members made a final
decision on the increases because
they believed the campus com­munity
had enough time to
respond to the recommendations.
According to the PACs
.-inf ftCfnat i.o n-s, hee t,. .par,kj ng Sx n es, ,
have not been increased in seven
years.
Just pooling around Mike (iusnii
-Opponents shuffle along the floor of Carver Gympool iwaareirent underwater hockey match.
The game is a Western club sport. See stories, p. 9.
Western students descend
upon Olympia and Gardner
Governor says Western's funding
is equitable to other universities
By Clay Martin
staff reporter
Equitable funding is becoming
a major concern of Western stu­dents,
and many have decided to
do something about it.
Forty-four Western students
spent last Friday in Olympia
lobbying legislators and meeting
with Gov. Booth Gardner as part
of the Descend Olympia project.
The students met with
Gardner outside his office for
about 15 minutes. Associated
Students Vice President for
External Affairs Dan Wood
presented Gardner with West­ern's
legislative agenda, pointing
out specifically why additional
funding is needed.
When Wood finished,
Gardner contradicted Western's
claim of receiving $513 less per
student per year than other
regional universities. He said
Western actually is funded at a
level nearly eqlial to that of East­ern
Washington University and
receives more than Central
Washington University. .
"1 have no idea where he got
his figures, but they sound way
off to me," Wood said later.
Gardner said "we have a high
stake in increasing the educa­tional
budget." But the problem,
he said, is most of his mail from
the public calls for lower taxes.
What is needed, he said, is more
input for education funding.
Terri Echelbarger, AS presi­dent,
said "anytime students get
organized, it's going to have a
positive impact. The way to get
change is to talk to representa­tives
and that's what we're
doing."
Students spent most of the day
hustling around the capital dis­tributing
Western's legislative
agenda to all 147 legislators or
their aides.
Eric Richey, political science
major, said he participated in
Descend Olympia because he
wants "to get something done."
He said everyone gripes a lot, but
no one does anything, 'it's incred­ible
how apathetic people are."
Rep. Pete Kremen (D-Bellingham)
said he was "very
impressed" with the Descend
Olympia project..
t
"The governor was encour­aged
to see students actively
involved," he said.
Jim Sullivan, Washington
Student Lobby executive direc­tor,
said he was delighted with
Descend Olympia. He said the
issue of equitable funding will
have a ripple effect because legis­lators
will begin talking to each
other about the issue.
Sarah Haws, political science
major, said she was not
impressed by the meeting with
Gardner.
"1 thought he kind of brushed
us off," she said. "I don't feel he
addressed the issues directly."
Some legislators, such as Rep.
Max Vekich (D-Cosmopolis),
said Western receives less fund­ing
because "Western does a bet­ter
job of money management.
The question is do we raise the
efficiency or raise the budget?"
Kremen disagreed. "We need
to encourage efficiency," he said,
"not be penalized by it."
Besides presenting the legislative
agenda, Echelbarger presented
Gardner a Western sweatshirt and
Burger King gift certificate for use
in Belli.ngham.
Faculty minorities
are tough to find
Ed. note: This the third of six articles examining the issue of
minorities at Western.
By Andy Perdue
editor
MINORITIES AT
WESTERN:
The few and
forgotten
Western has the
lowest percen­tage
of minority
faculty among the six pub­lic
universities in the state,
a fact not easy to change.
Western has 490 faculty
members, but only 25, or
5.1 percent, are minorities,
according to statistics
compiled last quarter.
Compared to the other
five state-funded universities. Central Washington University has
the next lowest percentage, with 5.6, and The Evergreen State
College has the highest percentage, with 14.5.
Faculty numbers are figured by full-and part-time members.
For budget purposes, faculty are counted on a system called
Full-time Equivalent (FTE), meaning a part-time faculty member
doesn't count as a full-time member.
According to 1985-86 numbers, Western's total FTE was
423.75, with minorities amounting to 23.16 of that.
Western's numbers haven't significantly changed since 1973,
when the campus Affirmitive Action office began operating. At
that time, Western had 23 minority faculty members.
Affirmitive Action Officer Mary Robinson said the problem is
not easy to solve.
One reason may be that few minorities attend graduate school.
"In most cases, faculty positions are Ph.D. positions, so if you
don't get minorities going on for their masters and Ph.D.s, then
you don't have this pool later on to draw from," Robinson said.
Whatcom County has a significant Native American commun­ity,
but Western's faculty has only three Native Americans.
That, Robinson said, exemplifies the problem.
"Many (Lummi Indians) don't even graduate from high school.
It's really a problem that starts down below," she said.
And because of the small work force available, individual
departments must work harder to recruit minority candidates for
• see MINORITIES, p. 12