Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 27, 2000)
Monday Editor in chief: Jack Clifford Managing Editor: Jessica Blanchard Newsroom: (541) 346-5511 Room 300, Erb Memorial Union P.O. box 3159, Eugene, OR 97403 E-maii: ode@oregon.uoregon.edu EDITORIAL EDITOR: MICHAEL J. KLECKNER opededitor@journalist.com I In the following accounts, all names and classes have been changed to protect the overstressed. Marjorie is 20 years old. She used to be cheer ful and bright, a joy to her friends and par ents. Today, we find Marjorie a very distraught woman. “I don’t really have time to talk to you,” she says, wringing her hands. Her fingernails and knuck les are black with grime. “I have another geology lab ‘midterm’ this week. We’ve had a ‘midterm’ four times this term. And then I have a 10-page paper to write for English, due next Wednesday — during Dead Week! By January, I’ll have forgotten everything I’m learning.” Marjorie bursts into tears, un able to continue. When she finally calms down, her face now swollen and red, she explains that she has n’t done laundry this term and she doesn’t remember what her friends look like. A minor error message from her printer caused her to throw her computer out the window earlier this week. Josh sits before us, and his musty, three-day-old odor is as distracting, as are his knees, bouncing from the effects of the third triple espresso of the morn ing. He’s 18, and his face is griz zled from a lack of sleep, shaving and sobriety. “I barely sleep when I’m sleep ing — caffeine still pumps through me. I don’t even care how papers or tests turn out anymore. I just keep cranking ’em out. But hey, ‘C’s get degrees.” Josh slits his eyes like a feral cat and smirks at us impatiently. “I had this group project due yesterday, and I strug gled to the last minute. Our group couldn't meet regularly — people were slackers or too busy — so we faked it and each of us learned al most nothing. What’s the point?” OK, enough fun. Actually, everything about the preceding stories was fictionalized. The edi torial board didn’t meet with stu dents to hear their horror stories. We didn’t have to. We can all feel the pain. Conversations between co-workers and friends have changed; instead of asking, “How are you?,” we just compare notes to see whose workload is the worst. And for the good of the stu dents, we do have a serious point. It’s threefold, and it goes some thing like this: Midterms aren’t midterms. Group projects aren’t group projects. And Dead Week is n’t Dead Week. These truisms need to change. Midterms, by their name, are an evaluation of curriculum learned during the first half of the term. They must be partnered with a fi nal exam in holy matrimony. One midterm and one final — group marriages should not be allowed. If a professor is going to have three midterms, just call them “Really Big Tests” and acknowledge that the information will be lost by the time there’s another “Really Big Test.” Having too many “Really Big Tests” won’t help the learning process. Group projects, in order to be ef fective, take time. Class time must be set aside for meetings. The tasks involved must be effectively broken into parts by the professor, to teach students how equal work can be accomplished. After all, these are college students learning to live on their own for the first time, not project managers at a blue-chip company. If there isn’t class time for these efforts, then scrap the group project and have individual assignments. Finally, Dead Week needs to be sacrosanct. This is the time for everyone to breathe deeply, catch up on the 18 chapters of reading they didn’t get done and prepare their brains for the big download coming during finals week. We know professors hate grading fi nals past finals week, but it does n’t help students to have a “really big test” during Dead Week and then no final; some classes do have finals and students’ won’t have time to study. Leave Dead Week alone. These three points are bad for students’ personal lives, bad for their education, and bad for their sanity. Students need time to study; spending the term going from one crisis to another — some students call it “putting out fires” — doesn’t lead to learning. In stead, information is barely stuffed in and then allowed to ex plode onto paper. Things like re membering to buy toilet paper get shoved out of the brain. The joy of education is in seeing information come together and make sense, as a whole. Finding connections between knowledge gained last year about the form of governance in 18th-century China and something learned this year about the literature of the Greeks is amazing. A university education should be about consuming and absorb ing information. It is not con ducive to this learning process for students to be so overworked that a slight mishap makes them freak out. Please, professors and admin istrators, let us learn. Don’t make us prove it every three days. This editorial represents the opinion of the Emerald editorial board. Responses can be sent to ode@oregon.uoregon.edu. Letters to the editor Bad Beaver behavior My wife and I were in atten dance at the Civil War football game Nov. 18. We have attend ed many “away” games and have never been treated more rudely than we were that day. The student section's behav ior was deplorable. They cussed at us, held up signs that said “F#$% the Ducks,” gave us the finger, threw things at us ... and to cap it off, as we were on our way back to our car, several of the most de generate individuals I have ever encountered taunted us with dead ducks. I'm not talk ing about stuffed animals, I'm talking about mallards — the real thing. It is my hope that Oregon fans, and specifically students, would learn from this experi ence. When teams visit here, let's enjoy our victories; but let's not be rude. Brian Nobles Class of 1990 In Pursuit of Healthiness I feel that your editorial (’’Council counsels morality,” ODE, Nov. 15) criticizing the City Council’s decision on the smoking ban was seriously off base. The primary purpose of the ordinance is to protect workers rather than cus tomers. The latter obviously have the right to decide whether to frequent smoky taverns or not, but the former must otherwise tolerate expo sure to carcinogens as a condi tion of employment. This has been determined to be unac ceptable in all other work places. You speak of “only the health risks of smoking” as a “justification.” Only? Tobacco smoke is the leading preventa ble cause of morbidity and premature mortality in the United States, accounting for some 300,000 deaths annually — by far our most serious drug problem. And the intent of the ordinance is protection of non smokers from secondhand smoke, not the protection of smokers from themselves. Let the employees decide where to work, you say. Unfor tunately, there are very few non-smoking bars in most communities (there were only three in Corvallis before their ordinance), and relevant to the University, alcohol service is a very popular job among col lege and graduate students be cause of the flexible hours and good income it provides. I would think you would sup port an ordinance which prominently protects your own student population, who should not have to compro mise their health in pursuit of a livelihood. Jack Dresser Springfield, Ore.
