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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 8, 1977)
V Vol. 78, No. 120 Eugene, Oregon 97403 Friday, April 8, 1977 House OKs expose' of faculty evaluation By MARY BETH BOWEN Of the Emerald SALEM — By a large margin that sur prised even the student lobbyists backing the bill, the House approved 44 to 12 Thursday a measure to require state sys tem institutions to make student evalua tions of faculty members available to the public. The bill was strongly supported by the Oregon Student Lobby and the ASUO, who said the evaluations would help students select courses more wisely. Shepherding HB 2702 through an hour long floor debate was Rep. Mary Burrows, R-Eugene, one of the two House Represen tatives from the University area. The surprise of the day came from Rep. Dave Frohnmayer, R-Eugene, the Univer sity district’s other House legislator. Frohnmayer spoke against the bill during the floor debate, but added that he would vote for it in spite of his objections. Frohnmayer, a University law professor and legal counsel to the University President’s Office, said after the debate that he voted for the bill to avoid the ap pearance of a conflict of interest. “A negative vote could have been con strued as being professionally self serving,” he said. “I had little choice but to vote for it.” During floor debate Frohnmayer ques tioned why teachers should be the only pub lic employes whose performance records are made public. He added that the release of evaluations could cause teachers to re duce their teaching standards in hopes of winning favorable evaluations. Frohnmayer’s floor remarks came after a motion to refer the bill back to the House Education Committee failed, 22-to-34, a motion committee chairer Jim Chrest, D-Portland, said would kill the bill. Also speaking against the bill was Rep. Tony Van Vliet, an Oregon State University history professor. Van Vliet said that re lease of the evaluations would do more harm than merely expose poor professors. “You'd also catch in this new new instruc tors, creative instructors trying new teach ing techniques, and the tough instructors that nobody likes during their four years in college,” he said. Van Vliet said the bill would in effect “get rid of poor teachers," a process he said should be the responsibility of school ad ministrators. Supporting the bill was Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Portland, who said that after spending last year as a full-time stu dent at Portland State, he realised that evaluations are an important tool for stu dents. “Students have a right to know who the turkeys are,” he said. PSU is the only state system school that releases faculty evaluations to students. The State Board of Higher Education ruled in November of 1975 to allow state system presidents to decide whether to make the evaluations public. Blumenauer added that at PSU, the teachers who receive consistently high evaluations are the ones known for grading tough and making their students work hard. Voting against the bill were Reps. Ted Kulongoski, D-Junction City, Jack Duff, R-Adams, Bill Grannell, D-North Bend, Paul Hanneman, R-Cloverdale, Cecil Johnson, R-Grants Pass, Sam Johnson, R-Redmond, Denny Jones, R-Ontario, Bill Rogers, R-Vida, Max Simpson, D-Baker, Gary Wilhelms, R-Klamath Falls, Mae Yih, D-Albany and Van Vliet. The bill is expected to be referred to the Senate Education Committee. Prostitution blame laid with capitalist system By BRENDA TABOR Of the Emerald Prostitution is a symptom of society’s in ability to effectively communicate on a sex ual level, ex-prostitute Randi Newby told a Women’s Symposium audience Thursday. Prostitution is not the profession of women haters, but work women have assumed in an economic system in which they can barely support themselves. She told the audience that prostitution wouldn’t exist if there was communication between men and women, that the profes sion would dwindle if women weren’t economically handicapped by the present system. There's no law against prostitution, she said. The illegal acts are soliciting and per forming sex for money. In spite of that the majority of women arrested for prostitution haven’t had the chance to engage in the act. Newby described the illegal “street sweeps" in the San Francisco area where the police arrested all the women in a (Continued on Page 9) Z?y- ■ Contest draws demo Some 100 men and women protested the sexist nature of the Back Door’s Wet T-Shirt Night promotional gimmick outside the downtown bar Wednesday night. The T-shirt contest involved drunken men pouring plastic containers filled with water on dancing contestants’ breasts. Chanting “Boycott the Back Door” and “Jobs and Living Wages - Stop Sexploita tion,” the demonstrators marched for nearly three hours despite lewd comments from onlookers and repeated peltings by water balloons. The downtown bar was filled to capacity for the T-shirt contest. Inside, the overwhelmingly male audience cheered and clapped their judgment as to which of five women would go home with the $50 prize money put up by the bar. The manager of the bar refused to talk to demonstrators although he was present inside, an employe said. Ecotopia Revisited After an extended sabbatical in a distant century, future repor ter Brad lemley has written an informed response to Ernest Calfenbach’s Northwest chauvinist novel. Pull-out sec tion begins on Page 7. GAYouth Denied The decision disallowing ad vertising by GAYouth in South Eugene High School’s news paper was upheld Thursday night. A panel ruled such ad vertising should not be ac cepted by any School District 4-J publication. See Page 9. Sick Medicine? Barbara Ehrenreich, noted feminist author and public health advocate, blasted the male-oriented version of prac ticing medicine as opposed to the traditional lay healing ministered by women. See Page 15 Easter Eggstacy Resident staff artist Steve Sandstrom made like a rabbit and dropped off a basket of Easter goodies for Emerald readers. Your holiday treat is waiting on Page 16. Hop to it!
