Search

ARCHIVES
CONTACT US
WORLD NEWS

Letters to the Editor

TAs have unreasonable workload

To the editor,

I concur with President Likins and students leaders on the brain drain issue (March 30, 2000). I would like to add that UA cannot compete with other peer institutions even at the graduate student level. While undergraduates may complain about the teaching of their TAs, they are not aware that their TAs are working in extremely bad conditions as compared to other major universities. My personal experience tells me that the TAs in language teaching, Freshman English, French, Italian and Spanish have heavy workload: four courses per year. For foreign languages program, classes meet four times a week. With 30 students, languages classes at UA are big. While taking six or nine units graduate courses or seminars, or writing dissertation, it is very hard for a TA to be good in both their studies and their teaching. Personally, my study is my top priority, when it is in conflict with teaching, teaching has got to go.

This semester, I have visited other public (Big 10, Pac-10) and private universities as a prospective student, and all the people (faculty, graduate students) I met were astonished by the TA workload at UA. They wondered how a graduate student could function at all. At those universities, TAs teach two or three courses per year, classes are much smaller, and TAs make more money. Professors are leaving, TAs are overworked and underpaid. If UA does not get more money, there is no way undergraduate education can stop deteriorating.

Ho Alan Chan

French & Italian graduate student

Sexual assault not priority

To the editor,

It has been made clear to me lately that we have a long, long way to go in the field of sexual assault education. The ASUA Senate meeting that occurred Wednesday, March 29 was a clear indication of the perception most people have of sexual assault. That perception is, of course, that sexual assault affects and concerns only those who are assaulted.

Senator Tiffany Podbielski wants to move CARE, Campus Acquaintance Rape Education, under the Women's Resource Center. Now, perhaps I am taking things too literally, but it seems to me that the only reason for moving a program under something called "Women's Resource Center" would be if that program was a women's only issue. Many senators did point out that men would still be able to participate and that the Women's Resource Center is not only for women, but that is missing the point. The problem is that it is already hard enough to get men and women to participate in sexual assault education and moving it to the WRC would make men feel less comfortable participating.

Senator Shane Brogan pointed out that CARE would not have to advertise itself in a way that made it seem a part of the WRC. So, basically from the idea Sen. Podbielski proposes, a director in the WRC would work independently on CARE and from what Sen. Brogan stated, CARE and WRC would pretty much remain independent as far as campus perception. Then, what is the point? Why do something that takes away the autonomy of a very important organization? Why make rape education seem like a sub-category of women's issues when it touches so many people?

We have a long, long way to go when it comes to sexual assault education when the WRC seems the logical place to shuffle CARE by members of our senate. The idea itself shows a failure to understand the complexities of sexual assault. I encourage students who understand what I am saying to talk to your senators and make it clear that this is not only completely unnecessary but an insult to the importance of sexual assault education.

James Houseworth

RHA liaison to ASUA

Flag argument problematic

To the editor,

This is in response to Josh Rieger's letter concerning an amendment to the Constitution banning flag burning. Mr. Rieger equates an amendment to the Constitution banning someone from burning the flag with the 13th amendment which ended the legal status of slavery. This could lead Mr. Rieger to an argument I don't think - and I certainly hope - he doesn't want.

Also, if Congress were to pass this amendment, and it was ratified by the states, then we, as citizens and as a people, have a big question before us. The Supreme Court has ruled that flag burning is protected under the First Amendment as symbolic speech. If this became an amendment, how much further could it go? Would Congress soon be passing amendments eliminating our rights to other areas of speech, symbolic or not?

Maybe next we could start taking away other rights protected by the Constitution. How about the right to peaceably assemble? Or reasonable search and seizure?

Or we could go even further, like the rights not specifically protected by the Constitution. The right to privacy, for example. When we speak of taking away one right, we begin to open the door between the Democrat Mr. Rieger feels so strongly about and a state of dictatorship or anarchy.

Sarah Montgomery

Political science sophomore