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Western Carolinian Volume 40 Number 20

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Item 1 - Western Carolinian Volume 40 Number 20
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Western Carolinian Volume 40 Number 20

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Item 2 - Western Carolinian Volume 40 Number 20
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Western Carolinian Volume 40 Number 20

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Item 3 - Western Carolinian Volume 40 Number 20
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Western Carolinian Volume 40 Number 20

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Western Carolinian Volume 40 Number 20

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Item 5 - Western Carolinian Volume 40 Number 20
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Western Carolinian Volume 40 Number 20

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Item 6 - Western Carolinian Volume 40 Number 20
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Western Carolinian Volume 40 Number 20

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Item 7 - Western Carolinian Volume 40 Number 20
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Western Carolinian Volume 40 Number 20

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Item 8 - Western Carolinian Volume 40 Number 20
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Western Carolinian Volume 40 Number 20

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  • THE WESTERN CAROLINIAN THURSDAY NOVEMBER 7, 1974 Tenure blues Tuesday's academic affairs committee meeting came closest to being a three-ring circus as anything we've seen here since the visiting circus left last spring. Unfortunately, the performance Tuesday wasn't very funny. We saw several deans and department heads ram a procedure for granting tenure through the committee without an attempt to improve the slipshod proposal. While Western has finally obtained a chancellor that seems concerned about handling matters such as tenure correctly, he is being seriously handicapped by a host of incompetent underlings who make no attempt to gauge the feelings of the faculty or the students they supposedly represent. Without any capable advisors to tell him accurately what is happening, we are afraid that Robinson will make judgmental errors. He has to rely on his staff to forward information to him, but presently he doesn't have many people he can depend on. The problem centers around the lack of trust still existing between the administrative heads and the professors which started with former chancellor Jack Carlton. The acting deans in two schools are still men Carlton appointed who have never been able to reflect faculty and student opinions. The committee's response to student attorney general Joe Digges' proposal to put two students on the departmental tenure consideration committee was most appalling. The committee showed utter contempt for the proposal and demonstrated that they didn't want students making judgments on their teaching ability or lack of it. We repeat our demand that students have voting privileges on the department-level consideration committee. If professors are unwilling to take the judgment of the people who know them best as professors, they certainly don't deserve tenure. In order to prevent a repetition of the tenure problems last year, we again assert that professors should be told why they were denied tenure. At the moment, it appears that Robinson might have to write his own procedure for granting tenure, because he isn't getting much help from many of those he has asked to help draw up a policy. Had the controlling administrative faction of the academic affairs committee been willing to do a little work, it could have arrived at an agreeable policy that could have gone through the faculty-administration senate on November 20 with less difficulty. Instead the committee opted to let the main senate do all the work, thus delaying the policy that needs to be finished as soon as possible. ITrtEr WesTE^ry C-ardLiMam Published twice weekly through the academic year and weekly during the summer by the students of Western Carolina University. Member: Collegiate Press Service. EDITOR-IN-CHIEF BUSINESS MANAGER c • • a DWIGHT A. SPARKS .... MIKE KILLAM Offices, first floor Joyner, phone 293-7267. Mailing address, Box 66, Cullowhee, N.C. 28723. Subscription rates, $4.00 per year. It's been a lousy week. Things are so bad I don't even try to hold my beer gut in anymore. The harder you try, the worse things get. So read on and be inspired. Today's sermon is really a history lesson, a compendium of facts screened through years of Cullowhee-watching. * * * Back in the spring of 1970, WCU students and a few faculty were outraged when a very capable music professor was dismissed from the WCU faculty by our wonderful deans and administrators. Students picketed Bird Building and demanded to know why Dr. James Dooley, then music department head, had back-tracked on his recommendation of tenure for Clyde Appleton. At the apparent urging of some unknown campus boogey man, Dooley went back on his written word and urged that Appleton not be given tenure. Rumors that Appleton was a communist or a child-beater abounded, but no official word ever came from Dooley or Bird Building on why Clyde was dismissed. (Appleton, of course, was a registered Democrat and loved children, having been one once. As for Dooley and the other characters in the scenario, we just don't know.) Dooley is now acting dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, which may be a lesson in itself. "Tiat year also saw English Department head Phil Wade move to rid his staff of young people vith M. A.'s. Last year Wade did it again, dismissing three young teachers with Ph.D's this time. (Now the department is full of aging doctorates, mostly male and mostly over six feet tall. Like Wade. Hmmm.) * * * Throughout all this controversy, no claim of bad teaching was ever made. Having studied under most of the people Dooley and Wade have fired, I knew their teaching methods were excellent. I actually learned something from Allan Grant, Newt Smith and Jim Kazprzak. I got more out of their classes than just a grade and credit hours. (And having had Wade for a class, I know how he teaches, too. With his eyeglasses in his mouth.) Rut this is not the place to be bitter. No. Here" we will try to work toward the future, a better future in which educated human beings actually teach things to students. Tuesday, efforts to require deans and administrators to reveal the mysteries of their tenure decisions to the axefl former teachers bombed out in the Faculty-Administration Senate's academic affairs committee. P_rofessors on the committee proposed that a simple explanation be given when tenure is denied. Dr. ^al Nerboso and the AAUP supported the idea, as did almost half of the committee members and most students and faculty. It would seem a reasonable request. Stockholders can question management at quarterly stockholders meetings. Why can't we? Proposals that students be allowed to sit in on tenure decisions have also been disregarded by the deans' council and the administration in general. Deans, department heads and well- paid administrators are fat cats in Cullowhee, and they usually make decisions here. They usually vote to keep so-called "unqualified" people from involvement in big decisions here. (Students and faculty can work fingers to the bone on the Homecoming Committee or the Founders Day Committee. That's 0. K. - and harmless.) "But, Lord Gawd, don't let stoonts make any decisions. Don't let teachers teach. Make 'em dance for the deans and fill out reports instead." And above, all, keep things quiet. Uh huh. * * * Who is better qualified to judge a teacher than the critical student who endures him? Who is better qualified to make residence hall policy than the poor residents who live there? Has any dean or administrator attended class or slept in a dormitory in the last 25 years? (Have any of them opened their eyes in the last 25 years, for that matter?) Why are things so messed up? Why can't they get better? well, they can. If students and faculty are brought into effective involvement in the decision-making process here. If deans and administrators would stop playing games and get on with educating America's youth. If the old fogeys would learn to trust again. (If the old fogeys would retire.) * * * We are faced with the same question that was raised at WCU five years ago. It has (continued to page 5)
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Western Carolina University Publications

The Western Carolinian is Western Carolina University’s student-run newspaper. The paper was published as the Cullowhee Yodel from 1924 to 1931 before changing its name to The Western Carolin...

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