The Rice Thresher, Vol. 88, No. 23, Ed. 1 Friday, March 2, 2001 Page: 8 of 24
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THE RICE THRESHER NEWS FRIDAY, MARCH 2,2001
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Faculty will vote again March 13 on
LANGUAGE, from Page 1
1999, said students couldprove com-
petency in a language by passing "a
nationally accredited standardized
placement test." However, the mo-
tion says, the faculty did not under-
stand that such a test for foreign
languages did not exist. Thus, Rice
had to create its own exams.
Other proposed modifications
included evaluating the language
program after three years.
However, soon after discussion
on the modifications began, Physics
and Astronomy Professor Paul
Stevenson made a substitute motion
to abolish the requirement.
This way, the faculty cqjild dis-
cuss an alternative to modifying the
requirement, and possibly abandon
the current version entirely.
Some faculty members spoke
against reducing the requirement,
calling it "watering down."
Reducing it to language familiar-
ity destroys the reason for having
the requirement in the first place,
English Professor Alan Grob said.
"The grounds for justifying it are
the grounds for proficiency—really
mastering another language," Grob
said. "It seems to me that familiarity
is even less of a grounds for justify-
ing the only requirement we would
have, and therefore I see little rea-
son, in order to maintain this sort of
vaporous spirit of a requirement, to
pass the motion that the committee
has put forward."
Foreign language instruction
should not be required for all stu-
dents, said English Associate Pro-
fessor Scott Derrick, who also op-
posed reducing the requirement.
"I don't think unwilling learners
make very good foreign language
students," Derrick said.
Several faculty members voiced
their support for the requirement.
"There's just no substitute for
being able to talk to someone in
their own language," Ecology and
Evolutionary Biology Professor Joan
Strassmann said.
Strassmann said there needs to
be change in the way the require-
ment is implemented so that Rice
can have "a real language require-
ment," rather than reducing the stan-
dards because not enough students
coming into Rice are able to prove
competency in a foreign language.
"What I'm now hearing is in fact
our high schools have let us down,"
she said. "So now we say, 'Oh, this is
too hard to do, so let's lower the
standards.'Youdon't hear that about
calculus, about the harder engineer-
ing courses."
Political Science Professor John
Ambler said he was worried about
abolishing the requirement after
7/ we felt like we' ve
done something that
needs reversing and we
turn around and do it, I
think you get respect.'
— Malcolm Gillis
President
implementing it for a year, although
he originally opposed the require-
ment in the first place.
"I am really nervous about flip-
flopping by eliminating the language
requirement," Ambler, a member of
the CUC, said.
After about 45 minutes of discus-
sion, the faculty voted to end discus-
sion and vote on Stevenson's motion
to abolish the requirement. The
motion passed 92-26.
Following the vote, discussion en-
sued about whether students who
matriculated this year would have to
fulfill the requirement. Zammito said
the CUC would propose a resolution
to this question at the March 13
meeting.
President Malcolm Gillis said
deciding on what to do about this
years' students would only require
one vote and therefore could be ad-
dressed at the next meeting.
Many faculty members at the
meeting said they were not surprised
with the outcome. "It was predict-
able," German and Slavic Studies
Chair Klaus Weissenberger said.
"But. I think that one semester as a
basis of judging the requirement...
was not enough."
Stevenson said he proposed the
substitute motion because it seemed
that most people wanted to elimi-
nate the requirement.
"I suspected, as was the case,
that there was a majority in favor of
abolishing," Stevenson said.
"It's not that I don't think languages
are important. ... I think students
requirement
should be free to make their choices
themselves," Stevenson said. "I don't
believe in a coercive curriculum."
The substitute motion helped
prevent the faculty from modifying
something that could have been
eliminated entirely, Physics and As-
tronomy Professor Stanley Dodds
said. Dodds, a Wiess College resi-
dent associate, presented comments
to the faculty in October that said
the implementation of the require-
ment went beyond what was passed
by the faculty.
"We did avoid an extended debate
on something that we might well have
voted down, so I was pleased to see
Stevenson putting in the substitution,
and we seemed to be moving rela-
tively expeditiously," Dodds said.
Zammito said the committee pre-
sented its motion to modify the re-
quirement to try to salvage it. even
though it seemed that most people
wanted to abolish it.
"People either wanted to stay with
the old requirement — I don't think
there were very many of those — or
to junk the whole thing, and frankly
that was what I felt as an individual,"
he said.
"But as a committee we thought
it was necessary at least to try to
present something that might sur-
vive, and then once the faculty saw
fit to demolish that, then to go for-
ward all the way," Zammito said.
No one spoke in support of the
committee's proposed modifications,
Zammito said.
"What was truly remarkable, if
you think about it, was that no one
stood up and supported the motion
that the undergraduate committee
put forward," he said.
Gillis said he didn't think elimi-
nating the language requirement,
after implementing it for only one
year, would hurt Rice.
"Look, let's be frank about this,
and let's don't be immodest," Gillis
said. "We've got a lot of pretty good
intellectual capital and a very good
reputation, and if we felt like we've
done something that needs revers-
ing and we turn around and do it, 1
think you get respect."
"I think it behooves the univer-
sity, when it thinks it made an error,
[to] quickly correct that error rather
than trying to hang on and justify it,"
Gillis said.
The motion to abolish the require-
ment is likely to pass on its second
reading. Speaker of the Faculty Rob-
ert Patten said. Zammito and interim
Dean of Humanities Gale Stokes
agreed.
Hispanic and Classical Studies
Department Chair Lane Kauffmann
said he supported the requirement
but that it has had "a number of
problems."
"1 think the burden of implement-
ing it fell heavily on the Spanish
program, probably because near 60
percent of the language-studying
population is [studying] Spanish."
he said.
The change will be largely posi-
m
ROB GADDI/THRESHER
Physics and Astronomy Professor Paul Stevenson proposed abolishing the
language requirement at the faculty meeting Wednesday. Stevenson said he
thought students should choose on their own whether to take a language.
tive for the department, he said. "It
will be much easier to staff the lan-
guage sections, and it will be a lot
less expensive," Kauffmann said.
The reversal should not affect
the other language departments too
greatly, Stokes said.
However, Weissenberger said
eliminating the requirement gives
the impression that Rice doesn't
value foreign languages.
"I think the foreign language
departments will suffer from that
because it means, from the out-
ward sign, that foreign languages
are not important," Weissenberger
said.
The reversal demonstrates prob-
lems in trying to set university-wide
requirements, Stokes said.
"It confirms something that has
been true for the past 10 years —
that the faculty cannot agree on any-
thing as university-wide requirement
because each school has very differ-
ent goals, very different things
they're trying to do," he said after
the meeting.
"If you compare music, architec-
ture, engineers, humanities, you
have very different schools, and it's
hard to find a requirement you all
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can come to terms with," Stokes said.
At the close of the meeting,
Stokes thanked the language depart:
ments, the Language Steering Com-
mittee and the language Resource
Center for working to implement
the requirement.
Language instruction at Rice has
improved as a result of the focus
the requirement has brought it, he
said.
"The best way to encourage any-
one to study anything is to make the
subject so fascinating that they're at-
tracted to it. ... I think our language
instruction has become a lot more
interesting in the past five years,"
Stokes said after the meeting.
(lillis said knowing other lan-
guages has been "an immense ad'
vantage" to him. However, he said.
"I don't think that's necessarily so
for all students."
"My philosophy has always been
... that-what you want to do with
languages is make the instruction
and the facilities so good that
people will want to take them,"
Gillis said.
Brian Staler and Elizabeth Jardina
contributed to this report.
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language requirement at Wednesday's faculty meeting, saying that she
other languages in her scientific research.
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Stoler, Brian. The Rice Thresher, Vol. 88, No. 23, Ed. 1 Friday, March 2, 2001, newspaper, March 2, 2001; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth443134/m1/8/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.