Western Front - 1984 November 30

              Rockiri Razorbacks
bop with ducktails
and rockabilly
/8
Tavern caters
to gay crowd,
dispels myths
/4
Women rally
from 15 down
to beat SFU
/6
WESTERN FRONT PLEASE RECYCLE
VOL. 76, NO. 56 WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, BELLINGHAM, WA FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1984
Hearing date set for testimony on porn
AS Board denies request
to lift Penthouse suspension
By Christine Valdez
A public hearing on "Pornography,
Human Rights and Censorship" will take
place next week, Vice President for Internal
Affairs Eric Clem announced at Wednes­day's
meeting of the Associated Students
Board of Directors.
Clem, bookstore subcommittee chair­man,
said the subcommittee decided the
hearing would be conducted at 4 p.m. Tues­day
in the Viking Union Lounge.
The AS Board requested, at its Nov. 14
meeting, that the bookstore subcommittee
examine the question of selling sexually-oriented
adult magazines in the AS co-op
bookstore. At the same meeting, the board
suspended the sale of Penthouse magazine in
the bookstore.
In suspending the sale of Penthouse, the
board ^was responding'to a'requesf by Peace
Resource Center Coordinator Tim Baker,
representing other students, to reconsider
the sale of sexually-oriented adult
magazines.
Baker showed the board the December
issue of Penthouse, which contained photos
of women bound and hanging from trees.
After Tuesday's public hearing, the book­store
subcommittee will meet again, then
send its decision about the magazines to the
Facilities and Services Council.
Facilities and Services then will consider
the issue and send its decision to the AS
Board.
Dana Grant, director at large for com­munications,
said the issue should come
back to the board in late January.
The board also refused a request from Jeff
Andrews, president of Western's chapter of
the Society of Professional Journalists,
Sigma Delta Chi. Andrews asked the board
to remand their suspension of Penthouse'.
Andrews said sales of January and Febru­ary
issues should not be suspended based
solely on the content of the December issue.
The board decided to stand by its original
decision to suspend the magazine at least
until after the public hearing.
Clem said/the public hearing will be con-d
ucted as a testimonial hearing. Anyone will
be able to give testimony.. Persons testifying
will stand at a podium, announce their
names and give their testimony.
In other business, the board decided to
put IBM computers in the AS Board of
Directors office, the personnel office and the
businessjaffice,. _ ,, .^_,._. .'.
"Clemrwiio researched different computer
systems for the board, said the IBM system
would cost $8,634.78.
When discussion on the computers began,
Secretary-Treasurer Yvonne Ward, Vice
President for External Affairs Jeff Doyle
and Director at Large for University Servi­ces
Soren Ryherd voiced opposition to pur­chasing
the IBM computers.
Ward said IBM is a major investor in
South Africa, so the board should boycott
the company.
The board recently passeda resolution to
divest any investments Western may have in
companies investing in South Africa. The
board did this because of South Africa's
apartheid policies.
. Soren Ryherd requested Clem provide
KRIS FRANICH
Eric Clem, AS vice president for internal affairs, announced Tuesday the hear­ing
date for 'Pornography, Human Rights and Censorship.' Clem also presented
the board with a proposal for putting IBM computers in the AS office.
more cost information on Tandy computers,
another company Clem was considering.
Ward said Tandy did not have connections
to South Africa.
Clem said he chose the IBM PC computer
system because it was more compatible with
other computer systems on campus.
Afterdiscussion, the board voted to make
the purchase, with Ward casting the only
dissenting vote.
The board will purchase the computers
from the bookstore. Servicing will be pro­vided
by the computer center, which also
will provide much of the software.
Liberal arts hurts from lack of interest
By Stanley Holmes
Although the liberal ideals of the
Renaissance elevated man out of
the Dark Ages, the decline of liberal
education in the past two decades
doesn't seem to worry many col­lege
students today.
Students have come to believe
the best insurance in a technologi­cal
society is a highly specialized
education leading to-a specific job,
according to a report on higher
education sponsored by the
National Institute of Education.
The report, entitled, "Realizing
the Potential of American Higher
Education," defined a liberal edu­cation
as one "that will enable stu­dents
to adapt to a changing
world." The curriculum should
encourage analysis, communica­tion
and integration of various dis­ciplines,
it said.
Traditionally, this type of broad
education has been taught by
departments classified as "Liberal
Arts." At Western, the philosophy,
English, foreign languages, his­tory,
liberal studies, performing
arts and the art department gener­ally
are called the liberal arts.
Combine those departments
with the sciences, and the social
sciences, and what emerges is the
College of Arts and Sciences. It is
the traditional core of education
dating back to the Renaissance,
when to be "educated" meant to
know the classics, said Darrel
Amundsen of the foreign lan­guages
department.
. The classics were remnants of
the Greek and Roman periods,
which supported philosophy,
science, history, poetry and drama.
Since the Renaissance, the classi­cal
influence has been the core of
the Western worjd's education.
Two thousand years later, the Col­lege
of Arts and Sciences here and
at other universities still reflect this
classical tradition.
Although much of Arts and
Sciences has changed dramati­cally,
its main responsibility, said
Arts and Sciences Dean Peter
Elich, "is to first ensure the effec­tive
transmission of our cultural
heritage. Part of our purpose is to
transmit the best of our ideas in
sciences and humanities."
Now, however, the late-twentieth
century has accelerated
into a technical age. The demand
for trained technologists, engi­neers,
computer specialists and
business specialists is high. Stu­dents
are flocking to those majors
because they are perceived as offer­ing
the most opportunity in the
outside world, the report said.
This creates a conflict.
"It is difficult for any course ot
study to include a liberal arts edu­cation,
professional preparation,
and an internship in the span of
four years," the report said.
It suggests students studying a
professional degree should spend
five years in college to ensure at
least two full years of liberal
education.
The University of Washington's
Engineering School and Western
already have set up a similar pro­gram,
said Paul Rainey, director of
the technology department.
It is called the "three plus two"
program. A prospective engineer­ing
student attends Western for
liberal arts for three years, and
then transfers to U W for engineer­ing.
When the student graduates,
he receives a Bachelor of Arts and
a Bachelor of Science, Rainey said.
Roland Delorme, chairman of
the history department, has a dif­ferent
view.
"I would rather find a way to
extract the more technical courses
from a major program and leave
specialized work to graduate
school rather than have a five-year
BA degree," he said.
"I regret the intrusion of highly
technical majors into the BA
degrees," he added.
Hugh Fleetwood, chairman of
the philosophy department, said
"at some point in the not-so-distant-
past there was an effort to
crowd in vocational/professional
degrees and liberal arts into a four-year
period.
"When I was an undergraduate
student, the four-year period was
devoted primarly to a liberal arts
education (with a major)."
Fleetwood said if he could, he
would limit the amount of credit in
a major to allow more time for lib­eral
arts and general education. Or
he would require students to take
more than four years to graduate.
"Chemistry requires 120 hours
to graduate," he said. "That
doesn't leave much time for other
courses."
Dennis Murphy, dean of the
College of Business and Econom­ics,
said he thinks a great deal of
misunderstanding exists between
liberal arts departments and his
college,
"First, we require students to
take half of their coursework out­side
the department," he said. "It
can hardly be construed that we
monopolize a students' time. For
all intents and purposes, we
require students are juniors before
entering the college.
Rainey said the national min­imum
standard of credits a tech­nologist
engineer can take in the
liberal arts is 32. At Western it is 59
credits. He said Western's-present
General University Requirements
are sufficient for a technologist to
be well-rounded.
But he cautions those who think
a well-rounded education does not
include math and science.
"I believe there should be just as
much concern towards math and
science as there is concern towards
a lack of liberal arts," he said.
Another concern of the report
was that students must' improve
capacities of analysis, problem
solving, communication and must
integrate knowledge from various
disciplines. These are areas the lib-
• see LIBERAL, page 2