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
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