Western Front - 1993 January 12

              »
. The Western Front January 12,1993/Volume 85, Numbei*20
College transfer
policy to change
Western officials may raise the minimum community
college admissions grade-point average to 2.75
Western Washington University please reGycIie
By Joshua Barnhill
staff reporter
An increasing number of
transfer-student applications to
Western is forcing the school's
Academic Vice President and
Provost Roland L. De Lorme to
reexamine an admissions policy
which allows more community
college transfers than four-year
college transfers.
De Lorme said Western and
the University of Washington
probably feel thegreatestpressure
from swelling applications be­cause
of their location near
population centers on the west
side of the Cascades. "Washing­ton
State University, a first-rate
school, continues to have open­ings
for transfers," he said.
De Lorme said the admissions
office feels the most pressure to
allow more four-year college
transfers. "I only see these cases
when the parent or the person is so
irate that it has gone beyond the
admissions staff," he said. West­ern
has turned down more stu­dents
than usual from four-year
schools to allow more community
college transfers, De Lorme said.
"That doesn't seem fair," he
said. "We have given notice to
community colleges that we are
having to reconsider our policy."
The current guidelines require
community college graduates to
have a 2.0 grade point average for
admission.
A new policy will be written
this spring by the Admissions
Committee and given to the Aca­demic
Coordinating Commission
for approval. De Lorme said the
new policy may be similar to that
of the University of Washington,
which requires a 2.75 grade-point
average from community college
graduates.
In addition to revising the
policy at Western, De Lorme said
branch campuses and a proposed
four-year university near Seattle
could lessen the pressure by tak­ing
someofthestudentsoutof the
transferring system.
One prospective transfer stu­dent
from a four-year school said
she was stunned when she read a
rejection letter from Western af­ter
applying for admission this
quarter.
"I was shocked they didn't
accept me. I was in disbelief for a
week," said Jenny Baker, a Uni­versity
of Puget Sound senior.
Admissions continued on
page 6
Center is expecting the next nine
iiiiiilli^
president and chancellor at the
"•'•-'•'' "'""'••'•'-'' ^ . , . Photo by John Lindblom
The Supersuckers (pictured) rocked the Viking Union Main Lounge Jan. 8.
Company calls clearcutting
'environmental forestry'
This is part one of a three-part
series concluding in
the Jan. 22 edition.
By Colin Wilcox
copy editor
"What's left behind on a log­ging
site is more important than
what's taken out," according to
PlumCreek Timber's 1991 annual
report. The company calls it
"Environmental Forestry."
But not everyone agrees.
Since 1982, Plum Creek, a sub­sidiary
of the B urlington Northern
Railroad, has engaged in what it
calls an "accelerated" clearcut of
huge numbers of old-growth trees,
some of them a century older than
the United States, oh lands given
to the railroad by Abraham Lin­coln.
David Leland, Plum Creek's
director and chief executive offi­cer,
said widespread clearcutting
is a necessary step in managing
the company's forest lands. "We
startedacceleratingourcutin '82-
'83 to get on to a sustained-yield
cut," he said. "Our view, and the
view of most people who have
studied this, is that to move from
a natural stand to a managed stand
we have to get rid of the older,
slower-growing trees," he said.
Environmentalists have fits
when they hear statements like
Leland's, According to one of its
press releases, Earth First! is
outraged. It provides the usual
litany of complaints: Plum Creek's
accelerated cutting program,
which is slowing down, cuts the
forests faster than they grow back,
damages wildlife habitat and
causes erosion and flooding that
ruins fish streams.
The Big Ideas
Earth First! recently block­aded
and shut down one of Plum
Creek's log-export docks in
Tacoma. Such actions not only
typify the conflict between indus­trial
and environmental forces,
they typify the conflict between
two apparently irreconcilable
ideas.
On the one side, industry
views forests as money on the
stump—a resource to be utilized.
On the other side, environmen­talists
view forests as irreplaceable
ecological resources which should
be preserved.
Plum Creek's story also ex­emplifies
the way corporate
money-making efforts affect the
public and alter the land.
The Company's View
Plum Creek's best spokes­man
is a forester. Charlie
Cortelyou is a ranger for the Na­tional
Forest Service. He's in
charge of implementing regula­tions
created by Washington's
Forest Practices Board.
Cortelyou admits Plum
Creek's motivation for managing
its forests is purely economic.
Plum Creek continued
on page 3
What's Inside? Features, pg. 9: The campus speaks out about Dodd.
Sports, pg. 10: Men's basketball beats Lewis-Clark, 83-61.