Western Front - 1988 May 20

              News
Warmth, kindness
make Soviet sailors
feel at home
p.3
Sports
Dunk-hoops lets
frustrated hoopsters
fulfill fantasies
p.9
Accent
High energy, volume
assaults Red Square
tonight
p.7
The Western Front Please recycle
VOL. 80, NO. 31 WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, BELLINGHAM, WA FRIDAY, MAY 20,1988
Japanese dignitary visits campus
Jim Thomsen
Shiginobu Nagai, Consul General of Seattle's Japanese Consulate, met Thursday with Western
Administrators and lectured on Japan's defense and trade in anenvironmental studies class.
Marriott workers vote to decide
unionization at June 10 meeting
Marriott food-service workers
on campus will vote June 10 to
decide if they will be represented
by a union.
The National Labor Relations
Board, working as mediator be­tween
the United Food and Com­mercial
Workers Union and Mar­riott
Co., helped reach the signed
agreement Thursday of an elec­tion
date and determined who
may vote.
The outcome will decide the
working conditions and benefits
of present and future workers.
If a majority of votes support
the union, a contract would be ne­gotiated
and applied to workers
represented by the union.
Three representatives of the
UFCW met Thursday with about
half the workers who will be al­lowed
to vote, as designated by an
established list.
The 62 person list includes
full-time cooks, bakers, cashiers,
food servers, food preparers and
janitors. Student workers, and
other part-time workers, will not
not included.
Mike Hatfield, a union repre­sentative,
said if the union were to
be established, any worker who is
not a member of the union will
not be required to pay the union's
fee.
Western in transition: VP Taylor
helps fill void left by plane crash
By Rich Ellis
staff reporter-
Six months have passed since a plane crash took
the lives of Western President G. Robert Ross, Vice
President for University Advancement Jeanene
DeLille and Vice President for Business and Finan­cial
Affairs Donald Cole.
News of the tragedy emo­tionally
affected many people:
close friends, faculty, staff and
students.
As time elapsed and hype
diminished, reality surfaced that
the vacant positions created by
the deaths would have to be
filled and the duties began to
double for many administrative
employees as they were thrown
into interim roles.
Vice President for Student
Affairs Saundra Taylor was one, as she took, on the
responsibility of DeLille's job on top of her own.
Taylor said she is handling it well, but "it's one of
those decisions where I recognize I can't do it all.
I've had to rely on a lot of my staff people in student
affairs as well as university advancement.
"I think we've all been stretched by me having to
take on both of the responsibilities."
Taylor said she likes the challenge and the people
that come with her new responsibility, but contends it
is only temporary.
"I'm doing it because the university was in a crisis
at the time," she said.
Taylor said she is not absolutely clear on how she
came to be chosen for the interim job, but thinks
being close to DeLille and the smooth operation of
Taylor's division might have been contributing fac­tors.
"I think the other decision, too, was that we
wanted to give the new president, the new adminis­tration,
an opportunity to review, at least the past
structure, rather than disassemble advancement," she
said.
"I think I have the confidence of the Board of
Trustees and the other people who are administra­tors
who felt I could probably do this on a temporary
basis."
When a new president is picked, he will have the
responsibility of filling the vacant positions and pos­sibly
re-assigning others.
"My preference would be to resume those re­sponsibilities
(as vice president of student affairs)
and help the new administration in terms of finding
new people to fill the other openings," she said.
Indians endure
opposing worlds
By Rob McDonald
staff reporter
When many American Indians
go to school, they must deal with
learning obstacles because Indians
impart knowledge in a different
way than the educational system,
said Pauline Hillaire, who teaches
at Lummi Community College
and Swinomish Tribal Center.
Upon receiving an education,
an American Indian must face the
realities of being estranged by
friends and family who do not un­derstand,
she said. Some perceive
obtaining a "white man's" educa­tion
as a form of selling out In­dian
culture.
Hillaire said when she went to
school, she had a choice of two
worlds. Having the choice of the
white man's world and the Indian
world, she chose to harvest the
best of^both and is a living
progeny of that fact, she said to a
Library Presentation Room
crowd, Tuesday.
During her presentation on
the effects of education on Amer­ican
Indians, she showed a video,
Primal Mind, which depicted
these effects by emphasizing the
attitude differences between tra­ditional
Indians and the "domi­nant
society."
The European/American atti­tude
of the "dominant society"
has proven to be one that wishes
to dominate and defy nature. This
is evident from a wide spectrum
ranging from the dividing and
selling of land, which Indians in
early contact with European ex­plorers
never understood, to tech­nical
styles of dance, such as bal­let.
The primal attitude is one that
respects, worships and strives to
live in harmony with nature. The
idea of dividing and selling land
makes no sense to this attitude.
Powerful is the individual who
owns land from the dominant so­ciety's
point of view, but to the
primal mind the land itself is
power and no one can own it.
In school, this conflict of atti­tude
can unbalance a student as
he or she is torn between early
and new teachings.
Hillaire graduated from
Ferndale High School in the
1950s in spite of her torn feelings,
she said. The school only taught
her its way of doing things.
"White education was making
an effort to overcome the Indian
culture -- conquering and over­coming
what I was. When they
buried my Indian teachings and
gave me a new way to live, they
buried my culture. They gave me
no way of expressing my Indian
teachings... until now."
Hillaire went on to receive a
bachelor's degree in Indian edu­cation
from The Evergreen State
College.
After she received her degree,
she returned to her reservation to
find that in the eyes of some fam­ily
members and friends, she was
see HILLAIRE, p.12
Front file photo
Vice President for Student Affairs Saundra Taylor took over
Jeanene DeLille's job after DeLille was killed in a plane crash.