Western Front - 2009 June 6

              P H B f l H H f OVERDOSED ON PBR?
I S U I ^ ^ ^ H TIPS TO CURB
M j J B I l B ^ ^ H THAT HANGOVER
Wt^K^^^M
WESTERN, PROFESSOR
MILLS BACK IN COURT
RAGE 4
WESTERN SENIOR
LOOKS TO 1
RETAIN TITLE |
AS MMA CHAMP §
PAGE 17
Friday, June 5, 2009
AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SINCE 1$70 I W E S T E R N F R 0 N T 0 N L I N E . N ET
Too often, failure is not an option
11 of the top-25 most-failed classes come from quantitative and symbolic reasoning GUR
Coral Garnick
THE WESTERN FRONT
The dreaded F. Every student fears it.
Not only does it drag down a grade point
average (GPA), it can mean having to retake
a class. Students hear urban legends about
the most difficult general university require­ment
(GUR) courses, but an analysis by The
Western Front of four year's worth of grades
shows the most-failed GUR is Philosophy
102, mtrodiiction to Logic, with an 112 per­cent
failure rate.
According to data provided by the
Registrar's Office, six out of the top 25
most-failed GURs are math classes, and 11
are courses designed to satisfy the "quan­titative
and symbolic reasoning" GUR.
Because most GURs are lower-level
courses, professors and administrators
believe the failures may reflect students'
difficulties in adjusting to college life
more than difficulty with the subject mat­ter.
Steven VanderStaay, vice provost for
undergraduate education, said incoming
freshmen and transfer students are often
shocked by the pace of classes and the
amount of work required of them.
Western requires students to take cours­es
in six broad areas to fill general education
requirements". Those areas are: communica­tion,
quantitative and symbolic reasoning,
humanities, natural sciences, social sciences,
comparative gender and multicultural stud-iess.
Students may choose from more than
319 GURs to meet those requirements.
Western does not have an "accept­able"
rate of failure for a class. Vander­Staay
said the university is structured in
a way that puts departments in control
of their own curriculum and assessment,
which are then overseen by the dean.
Brent Carbajal, dean of Western's Col­lege
of Humanities and Social Science, said
each college makes sure the assessment prac­tices
and the evaluation practices of courses
are rigorous and fair, but colleges do not look
at the failure rates of specific classes.
Struggling with logic
Philosophy 102 is a class in symbolic
logic that looks at reasoning and patterns of
argument, said philosophy professor Ned
Markosian. He said the class resembles a
math class and satisfies a quantitative and
symbolic reasoning GUR. Western senior
Mitchell Lee, a philosophy major, de­scribes
logic as more practical than math
in that people learn how to think in an ana­lytical
way as they would in calculus or
algebra, but analytical thinking in logic is
directly related to how people talk.
"There is a misconception when
coming into the philosophy department,"
Lee said. "You are not expecting a math-centered
course, but logic is absolutely
math-oriented; it is basically algebra with
propositions and sentences."
Western freshman Amanda Kerzman,
TOP 25 MOSTFAILED GURS
COURSE NUMBER ENROLLMENT F GRADE
see FAIL page 6
*offered one quarter out of four years ** removed 2007-2008
Indicates quantitative and symbolic reasoning GUR
Huxley explores landslide issues
Anne Maertens
- THE WESTERN FRONT
Facing extreme sprawl and few
economic resources, thousands of
Guatemalans choose to live in ille­gal
squatter slums in Guatemala City.
The precarious settlements are built
overnight on steep slopes, which are
subject to life-threatening landslides.
For the past three months, Huxley
College of the Envidrnment profes­sors
and students have been working
to develop a participatory risk-reduc­tion
assessment intended to reduce
the deaths caused by landslides and
improve the quality of life for people
living in the settlements.
The initial risk assessment deter­mines
the level and areas of risk, as
well as some measure that can be tak­en
to reduce it. After the assessment
photo courtesy Scott Miles is complete, Huxley professor Re-
Many illegal settlements built on steep ravines eventually bekah Green, who is leading the proj-become
legalized by the Guatemalan government. ectj s a ^ she would like to see West­ern
professors and students work on
implementing the assessment plan.
Huxley professor Scott Miles, an
engineer who specializes in landslide
risk assessment, spent nine days in
Guatemala over spring break analyz­ing
the structure of the settlements.
To build the settlements, Miles
shacks up on Chuckanut [Drive],"
Miles said. "If it were slow, it would
never work, and [police] could stop
it. So the whole game plan is to get all
the people together and do so much
that it's too much to stop."
Miles said the areas chosen are
typically steep ravines that slope down
Thinking about how you would evacuate an area or how
you would get medical services to somebody at the bottom
of these ravines was a little mind blowing.
- Rebekah Green, Huxley research associate
said a community leader collects
money from everybody who wants a
home and organizes a massive gov­ernment
land invasion. Hundreds of
people then gather in secret to build
an entire neighborhood overnight.
"It'd be like if you started putting
from the edges of legitimate neighbor­hoods.
The grade of the ravines is be­tween
40 degrees and 70 degrees, which
makes building difficult, he said.
see LANDSLIDE page 3