Western Front - 1978 November 7

              the Western FRONT WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
Vol. 71, No. 11
NOV. 7,1978
Committee drops 12 courses
from GUR, six from geology
AND THAT'S INDIA! — Western students shared a taste of college life with dad
and mom on Parent's Day last weekend. Activities included a football game, a
play, Saga food and sight-seeing.
Might prove difficult
by GALE FDZGE
and THERESA MIGHELL
Twelve courses from four depart­ments,
tentatively scheduled to be
dropped from the list of General
University Requirements (GUR's) were
given the final ax Thursday at a GUR
Committee meeting.
The geology department suffered the
most losses, with six courses removed
from the GUR list. Physics and astron­omy
had three class cuts, followed by
English with two and anthropology with
one.
Geology courses dropped are 214,
Environmental Geology; 310, Geo-morphology;
311, Common Rocks and
Minerals; 314, Geomorphology of
Western U.S.; 340, Geological Ocean­ography
and 414, Geology of Wash­ington.
Physics and Astronomy courses
dropped are 306, Physical Foundations
of Music; 301, Physics and Environ­mental
Problems and 317, Cosmology.
English courses dropped are 325a,
Introduction to Rhetoric and 425a,
Rhetorical Analysis.
The one anthropology course dropped
was 202, Introduction to Human Origins.
The GUR committee has tentatively
determined which courses will be
included in the GUR program for the
1979 General Catalog. Department rep­resentatives
are now meeting with the
committee to appeal tentative decisions.
GUR Committee Chairman Hugh
Fleetwood said the committee follows
GUR guidelines adopted last spring and
follows four main objectives when
reviewing courses for acceptance.
Objectives are breadth, to avoid
premature course or subject speciali­zation
and centrality, or the importance
of the course to an intellectual, well-rounded
academic background.
Methods used in teaching a course
and the extent to which students are
actively involved in courses, in the form
of term papers or labs, are other
(continued on page 2)
Olscamp reports on enrollment limitation policy
by ERIC HOOKHAM
In an informational report to
the Board of Trustees Thurs­day,
University President Paul
Olscamp said a limited enroll­ment
policy would be a
"difficult course to pursue."
He said the Long-Range
Planning Committee has begun
the stuCving process and should
present five descriptions of
Western in the future by
spring. The projections will
depict Western at student pop­ulations
ranging from 9,000 to
12,000.
Olscamp said a number of
difficulties will arise before the
Betel huts, grub worms: Learning to
appreciate cultures other than ours
by PAT KING
Herbert Taylor likes to talk
about eating crunchy grub
worms and chewing addictive
Malaysian betel nuts.
The Western anthropology
instructor uses ideas like these
to help his students better
understand the values of other
cultures.
"Taste, morality and your
attitudes toward God and body
odor are all conditioned by
culture," Taylor said.
Cultural conditioning is a
pervasive, yet sometimes
necessary form of brain­washing
that can poison the
thought processes, Taylor said.
"All of us carry built-in
prejudices," Taylor said. "This
conditioning begins shortly
after birth, long before we're
conscious of it," he said.
Taylor, puffing his pipe
Inside
One kind
Part two ofEricHookham's
series on communication
between Western's faculty
and administration explores
the merit pay issue. See
page 3.
Another kind
Local FM station KISM
doesn't communicate with
disc jockeys sitting in
cramped control rooms. The
whole show is on tape. See
page 7.
during the interview, said, "If
we were in Malaysia, we'd be
sitting on mats, chewing
addictive betel nuts, staining
our lips and teeth."
Taylor is one of nine
instructors teaching Behavioral
Science 105. The class studies
the human condition by
combining knowledge from
psychology, anthropology and
sociology.
One student in the class this
fall is David Kaufman, a junior
computer science major from
Blaine, Wash.
"It's the only class I know of
where the instructors have got
standing ovations," Kaufman
said.
Kaufman said Taylor
communicates by using
examples that hit students at a
gut level.
For instance, Americans
aren't conditioned to eat rattle­snake,
grasshoppers or the
highly nutritious witchetty grub
worm enjoyed by Australian
Aborigines, Taylor said.
Although Taylor tries to
broaden a student's under­standing
of others, he feels
some ethnocentrism, or "people
centeredness," is needed.
"Americans, however, tend
to judge all other creatures on
earth as to how democratic we
feel they are, '•' Taylor said.
Another difference in
cultural conditioning is a
person's reaction to being
slugged.
Most American males feel it's
natural to hit back when some­one
slugs them, Taylor said.
But not the Hopi Indian. They
back away when hit.
"The Hopi feels the person
who hit them is insane and
should be secured or gotten rid
of," Taylor said.
policy becomes official.
He said a limited enrollment
policy's "effect would be to
exclude some people," making
it a "change in social policy."
Before a college's social
policy changes, the state legis­lature
must approve it.
The method of state funding
must be "enriched," he said,
because faculty size would not
be "hinged to growth of enroll­ment,"
meaning improvement
of existing programs would be
difficult.
He said a decision must be
made to avoid "possible dis­crimination."
Either Western
can emphasize a "mix" of
students of different intelli­gence
levels, or it can simply
raise the GPA standards for
entrance, he said.
He said a possible solution
would be to "impose GPA
requirements in popular
programs" such as the College
of Business and Economics.
In addition to problems in
writing a comprehensive
proposal, committees involved
might have difficulty finishing it
by the end of this winter's
legislative session.
"There is Little possibility
that the current biennial legis­lature
will change policies,"
Olscamp said.
Dog leash laws
prevail on campus
•v
by NANCY WALBECK
All dogs brought on campus must be
leashed, according to local leash laws.
Dogs are not permitted in university
buildings and must be under the control of
their owners on any campus property.
Four or five years ago, Western had a "bad
dog situation," Sgt. Walt Springer, of
security, said.
"They ran in a pack and caused all kinds of
problems," he said.
Dogs are picked up and taken to the .u
Bellingham-Whatcom County Humane Society -2
if their owners cannot be found, he said. ' ^
In the spring, when everyone has left °
campus, wild, starving cats at Birnam Wood !."£
pose a problem and are also turned over to the > £
Humane Society, Springer said.
Dogs leave "deposits" on campus grounds
and when the custodial crew comes by with
their Weedeaters they "get a face full of it,"
Clyde Snodgrass, plant service manager of
Western's custodial department, said.
In the hot weather dogs at Western are
inclined to cool off and Snodgrass doesn't
appreciate them "doing a number in Fisher
Fountain."
The Washington Administrative Code states
it is illegal to have pets in dormitories or
campus apartments, Terry Meredith, housing
maintenance manager, said.
"In our own (Western's) housing contract,
WHO ME? — This lawbreaker will have to
make its "deposits" somewhere off campus.
only aquarium life is acceptable," he said.
If any pet is found, it must be removed and
the occupant must pay a fumigation fee of $25
for an apartment or $12.50 for a dormitory
room.
Experimental animals at Western are under
the control and supervision of the depart­ments
involved.