Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 3, 1982)
Republican faithful turn out for Pres. Ford Page 3 Oregon daily emerald ' uesaay, August 3, 1982 Eugene, Oregon Volume 84, Number 13 University Tovarich! Russian studies program; successful and flourishing By Tony Hazarian Of 0m> Emerald Friendly Hall houses a nationally-recognized Rus sian language program unknown to many University students and faculty. Those involved in the program are aware of its success and expect it to flourish even in the face of declining enrollment and the constant specter of budget cuts. "We are very proud of it,” says Joseph Hynes, the program's director and associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences In a recent nationwide competition, seven of the 34 students chosen to study in the Soviet Union were from the University, he says. Although enrollment is down from past years, "it’s not down compared to certain other Russian programs across the country," Hynes says. The third and fourth-year sequences are "strong," Hynes says. By developing and improving the first two years of language instruction, future enrollment will be encouraged, he adds In the 1960s and 1970s, Russian was a "fashiona ble” language, says John Beebe, an associate profes sor of Russian Beebe says enrollment seems to follow f trends in United States-Soviet relations. In the late 1950s, when the Soviets launched Sputnik, American scientists rushed to the labs to play catch-up technology. There was a demand at that time tor students to speak Russian, Beebe says. Today, Russian is a supplementary discipline for most students, who study it to enrich their field of study, Beebe says Besides Russian language majors, political science students head the list of students who learn the language, followed by science and history students, he says. "We also get a lot of journalism students interested in correspondence work,” Beebe says. Twenty years ago, Russian was considered "strange and exotic and people wanted to take it" for enjoyment, Beebe says. “Now we re getting students who want to use it in their work," he says. The Russian program offers literature courses as well as the four-year language sequence Russian literature courses are quite popular, Beebe says. The program also offers students a chance to spend a term, a summer or a year studying language at the Pushkin Institute in Moscow or at Leningrad State University. To qualify for the program, a student must demon strate proficiency in the language, be recommended by a third or fourth-year Russian language professor and pass a national examination. Hynes says. Students who study in Russia ‘‘get acquainted with Soviet life. They learn the language in ways they can’t here," Beebe says. The language program is a part of the Russian and East European Studies Center (REESC), a federally funded University program composed of professors from the Russian, political science, religious studies, history, geography, art history, and library science. The REESC professors study the problems of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The language pro gram receives a grant from REESC each year, Hynes says. "We are very grateful to them (REESC) for the grant," Hynes says. "They have supported (Russian instructor Fruim) Yurevich in grant money until state funds can take over.” The grant also helped to fund a visit by Jakov Bacic, a Russian language assistant professor, which "is very fortunate for the program," Hynes says. The program will avoid budget cuts because it is the only remaining four-year Russian language pro gram in the state, Beebe says. Oregon State University and Portland State University recently dropped seg ments of their Russian language programs, he says. “The fact that we have a national reputation and being the only one in the state" will keep the program afloat, Beebe says. Law school marriage: a binding contract? By William Kogut Of ItM Emerald They say married law students don’t stay that way for long, that a high percentage of them suffer through a real-life course in divorce before their three years of schooling are finished. This is a look at four married women law students whose marriages survived the rigors of the first year. Three of these women will continue their law studies next year. One won't. All of their experiences, however, may shed some light on what is demanded of the mar ried woman trying to become a lawyer. “Law school broke down my sense of self-worth and confidence and that way I couldn’t respond to Barry (her husband) the way I wanted to,” says Rose, the one who dropped out. "The first year they're trying to break you, they want to get rid of the softies." Married in her home state of New York a month before the start of the first semester in August, Rose, 23, drove cross-country to Oregon with Barry, 30. She was excited about law school. She had dreamed of becoming a lawyer, and was not at all disheartened about staying in school, even though she had just finished her under graduate studies at the University of Michigan. But she found the law school envir onment oppressive “It forced you into a certain mold, even if you were not naturally out-going. Law school doesn’t allow for individuality. It made people act in ways that weren’t them selves. So unreal. Fake. Everyone was wearing a mask, but you had to, in Photo by Mark Pynes Law school can sometimes break up a family. But Louise Kiaila, her husband Peter Rolnick and Cody, Dallas and Addie have together survived the first year of that pressure cooker called Law school. order to survive. " She studied all the time, was "always on edge." She says she felt bad all year because she was "a bitch. I was at my worst." She had tantrums. Became neurotic. One course — research and writing — brought on bouts of tears. “I did not know what to do," she says, “I did not know how to research." She felt in adequate That lack of feeling of self-worth affected her marriage, she says. “I wasn't there mentally when he needed me. I wasn't the person I wanted to be physically I was there, but not emotionally.” Law school didn’t threaten her mar riage because of the type of person her husband is, she says. Barry is very even-tempered and supportive, and wouldn't have kept her from going back this fall, she says. It was her husband's personality, however, that had a lot to do with how she finally saw law school. In the mid dle of law school Rose asked herself, "Why am I doing something that makes me so miserable when I'm living with somebody who is so happy?” Law school had set her character in conflict. It demanded aggressiveness, competitiveness and a certain self-as surance, she says. "If you consider Continued on Page 8
