Oregon daily _ _
emerald
Tuesday, January 18, 1983
Eugene. Oregon
Volume 84. Number 81
Students grade professors
By Frank Shaw
Of the Emerald
Halfway through the term the instructor steps
down from the podium, announces it's time for the
class evaluation and leaves the room.
Another faculty volunteer breaks the class
down into small groups of between six and eight
students who respond to three questions: What
do you like about the course? What changes
would you suggest7 What specific suggestions do
you have to allow tor the proposed changes?
The new process, called Small Group In
structional Diagnosis, uses small group discus
sion among students to provide an instructor with
evaluative comments
After the questions are answered, the volun
teer asks each group to give their response to the
questions and writes a summary on the board
When each group finishes responding, the
class votes on whether the blackboard items are
accurate If they are, the volunteer prepares a
report for the instructor
Chemistry prof Ralph Barnhard, a member of
the art of teaching committee, says the new
process gives students a better opportunity to let
the instructor know how they feel, and because
the evaluation takes place in the middle of the
term, the students can get an immediate response
to their suggestions
The first question is designed to find out what
the students like about the class and usually sets
a positive atmosphere, Barnhard says
When the students are asked what needs
improvement in the class, answers range from
messy handwriting to poor textbooks, and many
suggestions are useful, Barnhard says
"The professors sometimes don't perceive
what's going on in the class,'' he says But the
new process lets them know what the students
think, he adds
Barnhard says the most valuable part of the
new process is it allows the instructor to make
needed changes in time to benefit the students
Not all the suggestions are necessarily good
Barnhard recalls a history class where almost all
the students hated one of the texts, and while the
professor agreed with the students' evaluation,
he decided to keep text
"If we gave students everything they want,
we'd end up with peacock television, " he says
Under the new process, students also find
out more about what their classmate think than
they would with a computerized teacher evalua
tion on the last day of class
When Barnhard was facilitator for a small
honors college class, he discovered the students
were intimidated by each other, and that dis
covery created a different atmosphere
The instructor did not get better, but the
overall class instruction improved because the
class became aware of the problem
The process has some problems, Barnhard
says For example, a freshman class may evaluate
their first term courses in comparison to their high
school teachers
Some 22 classes were evaluated using the
new process fall term, and Barnhard says he
would like to see about 100 done each term
Not every class should be evaluated this way,
and no one teacher should be evaluated more
than once a year, he says. Only the professors
participating in the process, which is voluntary for
students, see the written results, and results are
not put in the instructors' permanent files unless
they request it
Suit names fraternity
in ‘hazing’ incident
EUGENE (AP) - A former
University fraternity pledge
who says he suffered brain
damage and permanent phy
sical injury in an accident
during an initiation rite has
sued the Kappa Sigma fra
ternity and others for $19
million
Mark Rosier of Eugene, in
a complaint filed last week in
Lane County Circuit Court,
accuses Kappa Sigma and
several Eugene chapter of
ficers of negligence in spon
soring a late-night rite two
years ago in which a band of
pledges were abandoned on
a roadside 15 miles from
town
Rosier said he suffered
brain damage, a fractured
skull and injuries to his leg,
knee and face when he was
hit by a car while standing in
the road Rosier seeks nearly
$1.8 million in general
damages and $98,725 in
medical expenses.
Rosier's attorney, Art
Johnson, said his client, an
18-year-old freshman at the
time, has been a convales
cent for much of the past two
years and only recently en
rolled at Lane Community
College to resume his
academic career
In Feb 22, 1981, incident
described in the suit. Rosier
and eight other uninitiated
pledges were taken by fra
ternity members to a park,
then left to find their way
back to campus
The suit says Bruce Lar
sen, an employee of the
Marcola Rural Fire Protec
tion District, stopped his fire
truck to talk with the pledges
Police at the time said Larsen
claimed the pledges flagged
him down to ask for a ride to
a telephone, but he told them
he was not allowed to pick up
passengers
As they were talking, Her
man Cook, driving north
bound in a car, hit Rosier and
Ron Pierce, of Boise, Idaho,
sheriff's reports said
Larsen and Cook are
named as co-defendants.
Rosier accuses the frater
nity and fraternity officers
Robert Hansen, Mark Wax,
Ronald Wolfe and Gary Wells
of negligence.
Statutes lack bite to deal effectively with dogfighting
Humane society only barks at offenders
By Sean Meyers
CM th« Emerald
Dogfighting is to Oregon what the
smell of wood pulp is to Lane County —
almost everyone agrees it exists, it is
unpleasant, and it is likely to continue
We get pit bulls (terriers) that you can
tell by looking at them they have been
♦ought," says Kathy Flood of the Lane
County Animal Regulation Authority
It's really very sad that people will take
these animals and fight them for money "
Even though state humane society and
county animal regulation officials cannot
recall a dogfighting-related arrest in
Oregon since the 1979 state Legislature
passed a key animal-cruelty statute,
there is strong evidence that it exists on a
relatively widespread basis
At one point in recent months, injured
pit bull terriers, by far the favorite breed
used in dogfighting, were coming into
the LCARA at a peak rate of three or four
a month, says Jack Jenkins, an LCAR/f
animal control officer
Because pit bulls are rarely claimed by
their owners, we have to put them to
sleep, unless they're an unusually
friendly dog,” Jenkins says
Flood suspects many of the pit bulls
coming into the LCARA are professional
fighters because of older scars around
the face, ears, throat and genitals, unu
sually well-developed jaw and shoulder
muscles and closely bobbed ears and
tails to prevent tears during fights.
Flood says the LCARA’s hands are tied
when it comes to pursuing dogfighters.
She cites a number of reasons — a lack of
specific information, insufficient man
power to pursue leads and legal
restrictions in acting against suspected
dogfighters
Barbara Boga-rosh, a Humane Society
investigator in Portland, describes the
problem more succinctly.
"We have really weeny statutes when
you compare them with other states,"
she says.
The Humane Society and the LCARA
cannot make arrests — they must act in
concert with a recognized law enfor
cement agency Coordinating such an
effort, especially in light of the secrecy
and security surrounding dog fights, is
difficult
Boga-rosh's investigations are gener
ally limited to the Portland area, where
she has been involved for more than a
month on an undercover operation that
has infiltrated organized dogfighting in
the metropolitan area.
Boga-rosh is working in cooperation
with the Portland police department,
which she says is interested mainly in
making arrests for the "gambling and
prostitution that seems to go with dog
fighting" rather than the animal-cruelty
violation.
"There's a lot of dogfighting going on
in Portland, especially among the black
community,” says Boga-rosh. "That's
not to say that blacks are the only ones
fighting dogs or that they're more likely
to fight them, it's just that that is where
our investigation has led to."
Boga-rosh is "working undercover,
hopefully still undercover,” on the case.
Operating in disguise, she eventually
gained the trust of some dogfighting
insiders and was invited to a match that
consisted of two bouts between pit bulls
fighting to the death.
"It was frightening and it was vicious,”
says Boga-rosh. “I thought most of the
people there were idiots. I could not
Photo by Bob Baker
Thor is 65-pourids of face-licking congeniality when it comes to meeting people, says
owner David Carlton. The University student says dangerous pit bulls are bred, not
born.
understand their mentality.”
Working undercover, she hears a lot of
'really bubbly descriptions about how a
dog totalled opponents,” like sports
writers describing the action in the
stadium the night before, she says. "This
is just heresy, but one story was that
there was a guy who apparently didn’t
like his dog’s performance in a fight so
he pulled out a gun and shot it in the
head.”
The opportunity for violence may ex
tend beyond the animals.
"I was told by the same person that I
should be very careful around the guy
who had shot the dog," says Boga-rosh,
"because if this individual was to find out
what I was up to, he wouldn't think twice
about shooting me too.”
“It gets pretty scary,” agrees Flood,
who recalls hearing about a pair of
northern California investigators who
were investigating a dogfighting report
one night and "were never to be seen or
heard from again."
Marc Paulhus, a former field inves
tigator for the Humane Society in Wa
shington, D C., now working as a
regional director in Florida, confirms the
grim picture.
"We have run into evidence that cer
tain people will have other people killed,
primarily for welshing on debts," says
Paulhus. "At one point, I found myself in
the company of people that were elimin
ated.’’
Paulhus says the Humane Society’s
national office is working on an
investigation involving dogfighting in
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