Western Front - 1987 April 28

              Please recycle The Western Front VOL. 79, NO. 23 WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, BELLINGHAM, WA TUESDAY, APRIL 28,1987
Activities during Parents Weekend included a break by Fisher Fountain Sat­urday
for sophomore Laura Amberg and her parents, Bob and Kathy Am-
IMikejGfwyiinf;:
Gardner calls special
session for ed budget
By J. Thomas Bauer
staff legislative reporter
WashPIRG's fate put to
vote on upcoming ballot
By Carole Wiedmeyer
staff reporter
Two questions on the ballot
May 5 and 6 may determine the
future of the Washington Public
Interest Research Group at West­ern.
At issue is the negative check­off
method, which allows for auto­matic
collection of a $2 fee at
registration unless individually
waived by students.
An Associated Students' elec­tion
referendum will measure sup­port
for the policy instituted in
June by the Board of Trustees.
The policy allows non-profit, off-campus
public service groups like
WashPIRG to collect funds using
the negative check-off method.
The referendum question
asks:
"Shall we: (a) maintain this
'negative check-off system,' or (b)
change to a 'positive check-off
system' in which individuals check
a box to contribute at registra­tion?"
In a separate action, Wash­PIRG
will include its own initia­tive
on the ballot. Organizers
hope the initiative will prevent
suspension of the group's contract
with the university for failing to
meet provisions of the fee-collection
policy.
According to the policy, if 25
percent of students fail to pay the
fee for three consecutive quarters,
access to the collection mechan­ism
will be discontinued. Only 21
percent to 22 percent paid the fee
during fall, said WashPIRG Stu­dent
Coordinator Lori Farrow.
The initiative asks: "In order
to continue a chapter at Western
Washington University: Shall
WashPIRG continue to assess a
fee of $2 per quarter, which may
be waived by individual students
through a negative check-off at
registration?"
Support for the initiative
could convince the Board of
Trustees to allow WashPIRG con­tinued
use of the fee-collection
system despite its history of inade­quate
support.
Some university officials and
students have maintained negative
check-off is a deceptive practice,
relying on the confusion of the
registration process, ignorance or
apathy to garner support.
WashPIRG supporters
maintain negative check-off is
fair.
"It was originally looked at as
a form of empowerment," Farrow
said. "A vote for positive check­off
gives up (students') right of
self-taxation."
She said it's understandable
students think negative check-off
see TIRG, p. 2
Olympia is beautiful this time
of year. The cherry trees are blos­soming
and the tulips are open.
And the 147 state legislators
in Olympia will have even more
time to enjoy the scenery; that is,
when they can briefly step outside
their chambers.
Stuggles between the House,
the Senate and the governor have
delayed the passing of a budget
for 1987-89, forcing Gov. Booth
Gardner to call a special session
that started yesterday.
The troubles began when the
House sent a budget to the Senate
that required a $320 million tax
increase. Senate Republicans and
at least three Senate Democrats
balked at raising taxes and last
week proposed and passed their
own version of the budget, requir­ing
no tax increase.
In an April 23 press confer­ence,
Gardner criticized the
Senate Republicans (and Demo­crats
who joined them) for not, ne­gotiating
"in good faith."
According to Gardner, "We
had a House budget that was
about $300 million, a Senate
budget that was $260 (million). In
negotiations we get down to
somewhere between $100 and
$200 (million), and they've not
moved one inch from zero. So if
there's any good faith bargaining
in that, I haven't seen it yet."
Gardner also accused the
Senate majority of "balancing the
budget on the backs" of social
services. While education has
fared well in the budget battles,
services such as daycare, chore
services, elderly care, Child Pro­tective
Services and other social
services have not.
The focus of this legislative
session has been K-12 and higher
education. Both House and
Senate budgets included substan­tial
increases for education.
Al Froderberg, lobbyist for
Western, admitted education
might be cut somewhat to lessen
the burden on the social service
programs.
"There is that chance, that
they'll make a run on higher ed,"
he said. "They (the legislators) ei­ther
have to take a chance on the
no-tax budget or pass a tax in­crease."
Froderberg said, however, the
governor still is committed to his
higher education goals.
"The governor has seen what
has happened in other states,
North Carolina, Michigan, Massa­chusetts,
where they have com­mitted
themselves to higher edu­cation.
Gardner realizes the fu­ture
of the state is at stake,"
Froderberg said.
Another cut made in the
Senate budget included a delay in
the pay raises to state employees,
teachers and college faculty.
Froderberg said the Senate
version rolled back the date of
faculty pay increase from the
House's Sept. 15, 1987 and 1988
to Feb. 1,1988 and 1989.
"There's some talk of rolling
(the dates) back. So it might hap­pen,
but we'll live with what we
get,"Froderberg said.
Under special session, bills
return to their house of origin
where they go for one more third
and final reading.
For the budget, that means a
trip back to the House.
"The House budget might be
modified slightly, but it should
look a lot like the last one,"
Froderberg said.
Error delays prof evaluations
By P. Floyd
staff reporter _
A mistake in the testing center's computer pro­gram
caused a two-week delay in teacher evaluation
results this quarter.
"As with any piece of machinery, something
broke down," said Helen Moran, director of the test­ing
center.
"Our typewriters could go down and we'd lose a
couple days worth of typing," she said. "I think when­ever
you're working with mechanics that possibility
exists. I would never want to go back and have to do
this manually. It's a sophisticated program and to do
all that manually would be a long, slow process."
"Nothing really has been pinpointed as the rea­son.
I think it might have been apower surge," said
Melvin Davidson, director of systems and computing.
"A power surge is a disturbance that causes data
being read at the time to become garbled. Things be­come
unpredictable."
"We lost part of a file that we had to recover,"
Moran said. "It was only a small amount of informa­tion.
We had to go back and manually recheck things
and re-enter the information.
"The office is now doing a lot more hand check­ing
and I don't see it ever happening again."
Teresa Vanderpool, a student intern at the test­ing
center, is trying to find out what went wrong.
'There was a place in the program that could've
made things disappear that I took out," she said.
"There are so many little things that led up to it that
it's hard to trace back."
"It may be that the program wasn't well written,
but that doesn't happen very often," Davidson said.
Patricia Kruger, the staff operator, was on the
computer terminal when it happened. She was un­available
for comment.
Moran said, "We don't have a mandated dead­line,
so to speak, from anyone. Internally, we have
decided that the evaluations need to be done by the
end of the second week of the following quarter. We
have, in the past, tried to get them done by the first
day ihe professors come back to campus.
"I feel as if we met our internal deadline, in that
they were available. A notice went in FAST (a faculty
publication) on April 16, but the work was done ear­lier
that week.