Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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VCM will damage academic diversity, integrity ELIZABETH CATANESE GA M ECOCKVIEWPOI NTS@HOTM AI L.COM Board’s decision won’t solve budget problems Battered by budget cuts, the USC administration has imple mented several programs to slash spending and maximize profit. Along with tuition increases, the Board of Trustees has okayed a new budget and administration program, value-centered manage ment, usually slung around by its snappy acronym, VCM. Though VCM seems-a responsible answer to fiscal problems, it sucker punches the university's most val ued assets: its students and its ac ademic integrity. Administrators, including the new interim dean of liberal arts, John Skvoretz, extol VCM aaa panacea for USC's budget woes, and at first glance they sound right. Each college will receive funding based on the funds they generate. Departments with high er enrollments will receive more money. This funnels cash into pro grams with higher student de mand. Less popular programs will bear the brunt of budget cuts, the oretically shunting the impact to a smaller group of students. Most schools that have imple mented VCM base their systems on credit hours. Schools that at tract the most students, and there fore the most credit hours, win. Though the fiscal reasoning is sound, the practice is not, and larger departments win at the ex pense of smaller, growing depart ments. An established department with plenty of student capital, such as the math department, reaps the benefit of VCM. On the other hand, the Russian program, whose hard work has finally paid off with the establishment of a Russian major, suffers. Because few students take Russian, and even fewer major in it, VCM spells disaster for the smaller depart ment. By decimating smaller de partments, VCM leaves students with less variety and more vanilla. VCM also encourages depart ments to compete for students. Indiana University at Blooming 4-^*, -*A A7r>TV/f 4-/-» a budget crisis and promote en rollment by forcing deans to cre ate more innovative programs within their departments. Within two years, enrollment in their College of Arts and Sciences plummeted 20 percent. Desperate to keep their share of the pie, other departments slashed require ments in the College of Arts and Sciences. In some cases, they of fered the same classes through their departments. The business school, for example, began to teach writing classes — though the English faculty was far more qual ified to do so. Departmental competition has farther-reaching results. With schools vying for students, advi sors will no longer encourage stu dents to take classes outside their major. Why push a student to take a philosophy class, when the en gineering department needs more money? Coupled with the new tu ition system, which will discour age overloads and double majors, VCM spits out narrow-focused graduates, a concept antithetical to that of a liberal arts education. While students suffer, faculty gets hit as well. Why permit a pro fessor to teach "British Colonialism in African Liter ature", which will attract 15 to 20 interested students, when a de partment can offer "British Literature" instead, which will rake in 30 students and 90 credit hours? If it won't reach the mean, it won't sell, and selling is the prime focus of VCM. VCM has a muted tinge of clev erness to it, but what values does it promote? Not academic integri ty and intellectual diversity. Though the Darla Moore drones may disagree, the university is riot a corporation, and it shouldn't be run like one. It's an academic en vironment based on students and researcn, wiin diversity as its greatest strength. Serving up a ho mogenized slop of classes hurts the students, the faculty and the university's reputation. Boardroom values don't belong in academia. The administration can keep its profit margins; we'd rather have the Russian depart ment. Elizabeth Catanese is a graduate student'in fine arts. Not enough housing for upperclassmen University Housing has really done it now. Just the other day, I was sent a letter stating that I was number 200-plus on the waiting list and that I may not even get a housing assignment. They also told me that I will need to begin looking for off-campus alterna tives. Housing tried to be helpful by sending me a packet that con tains information about apart ment complexes and furniture rentals. The bad thing about it is that I do not have $400 a month to pay for an apartment, including utilities. My question to housing is: What are you trying to do? Are you trying to re-establish a good reputation with the city of Columbia and the state of South Carolina by not putting upper classmen in hotels (like you have been doing freshmen). It may be working with the city and state, but it does not work for the stu dents, who are the people that you serve. IN YOUR OPINION What Housing has failed to realize is that many students such as myself do not have jobs and based on the list of apartments that I was sent I would need more than one just to pay the rent. What I am try ing to say is that many stu dents depend on on-campus housing. Had all the spaces that are traditionally reserved iui uppci uicus&meu, suui da Capstone, not been given to freshmen, there would not have been a problem. University Housing and Admissions need to work with each other to determine how many spaces they have for freshmen, and then provide these spaces for the freshmen instead of taking spaces re served for upperclassmen. As it stands, an incoming freshman is better off than I am. University housing needs to get on the ball. To help them, I will provide a simple plan: First, count all available hous ing spaces that you have to ac commodate freshmen. Then, r only admit as many as you have available spaces for and the problem is solved. MARCUS HAMMETT A SENIOR IN THE COLLEGE OF HOSPITALITY. RETAIL. AND STORTS MANAGEMENT Submission Policy Letters to the editor should be less than 300 words and include name, phone number, professional title or year and major, if a student. E-mail letters to gamecockviewpoints@hotmail.com. Letters will be edited. Anonymous letters will not be published. Call the newsroom at 777-7726 for more information. ONLINE This week’s question Do you support Housing’s j new smoking rules? Vote at j www.dailygamecock.com. Last week’s question Is the new 12 to 16 hour bracket system for tuition fair? See other poll results at www.dailygamecock.com. OF COURSE 34% OF COURSE NOT 66% Gamecock Quotables “Whenever my rights are violated, it makes me want to smoke.” TRAVIS WILLIAMS FIRST YEAR MATH STUDENT. ON UNIVERSITY HOUSING'S NEW ANTISMOKING POLICY “It happened 17 years ago, but the contamination has been like a great creeping crud that is still crawling out” DR. BRUCE COULL DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF THE ENVIRON MENT. ON THE CHERNOBYL DISASTER Winners ana Sinners 4*. USC Fuel cell research will fuel new growth. BASEBALL Clemson didn’t make it off the farm. At leastwe got to the College World Series. CONSTRUCTION At this rate, the GMP will still be shut down in August. CAMPUS HOUSING No Smoking? No reason to live here. CONSTRUCTION At this rate, the GMP will still be shut down in August. GAMECOCK CORRECTIONS In the June 4,2003 issue of The Gamecock, the caption on page 10 misidentified Brian Triplett, number 8, as Steven Tolleson. In the same issue, David Reed was misidentified as Gordon Lunan on page 7, where it was stated that he played Mr. Blonde. If you see an error in today’s paper, we want to know. E-mail us at gamecockviewpoints@hotmail.com.