WU health plan great for some, useless for others
Dear Editor:
It was great to see Caroline Wekselbaum’s article about the mandatory student health care fee in the March 8 Student Life. Dialogue about troubling issues such as this is what makes this country great. But don’t just let it end with an explanation from Dr. Glass.
Since I brought up the topic earlier this year, Wash.U. has been very conversant with me about it, both from a legal and medical standpoint. In fact, Dr. Glass and I had a very intellectually stimulating discussion about the topic. I did not realize that Wash. U. was only one of three colleges in America that had such a mandated fee, the others being Howard University (with a financially-encumbered student body) and CalTech (with its predominance of foreign graduate students). We stand alone among regular universities.
Dr. Glass was quick to point out that what makes the Wash. U. program strong is the fact that mental health coverage is especially good under the Chickering program. I checked, however, and found that Chickering has less mental health coverage than my family’s health plan, as well as those of many others. That advantage which was relevant in 2001 no longer exists.
I agree that having “25-30 percent of students either under-insured or uninsured” is not good – but neither is forcing parents of undergraduates to pay for something they cannot use. It’s an unfunded mandate, similar to what the federal government is notorious for doing.
Wash. U. is a special community of young adults. While the mandatory fees program that Dr. Glass inherited was created with the greatest of intentions, as all other regular universities have found, it’s irrelevant. Tell your parents they are being “ripped off” to the tune of $2,000 per student (over four years) and $2,500,000 per year as a university community.
One loud parent in Cincinnati can’t fix it alone, but 5,400 parental units and their young adults can. GET INVOLVED, and get your parents involved.
-Rick Friedman
Parent, Class of 2009
Helping TAs and students better work together
Dear Editor:
It was refreshing to read Indu Chandrasekhar’s article “Bridging the Gap: International TAs in the Classroom.” Ms. Chandrasekhar reported about students having difficulty understanding their TAs, which is a common complaint, but she also described the tremendous challenges faced by the international TA. Both sides of the issue are important and need to be considered by students – on the one hand, being able to understand the TA , and on the other hand, the tremendous cultural and linguistic hurdles faced by the TAs.
Luckily, I have had an opportunity to see much progress with the international TA issues relating to culture and language training for TAs on this campus. When I began working here in 1990, the University had little educational support for international students who were TAs, as was typical in most universities at that time. Then testing for non-native English speaking TAs was implemented and special English language courses were instituted. Presently, all non-native English speakers who will act as teaching assistants are required to be tested for language and teaching skills before they are given teaching responsibilities and they are required to take classes if they have language issues which need addressing. In at least eight of the speaking courses offered by the English Language Programs, prospective TAs can hone their speaking and listening skills; however, perfecting language skills takes time and speaking skills are only part of the issue.
As for the cultural hurdles, understanding American culture and American students is a tremendous stumbling block for international TAs, as Ms. Chandrasekhar’s article articulated. How can the gap be bridged? Students and TAs can be proactive. This past semester, a new course trying to bridge the culture gap for international TAs was introduced. In the course “Language, Culture, and Teaching /Interaction Strategies for Non-Native English Speaking Teaching Assistants,” undergraduate students interview the TAs and later participate in the classroom roleplays TAs perform as part of their professional development in the course. The undergraduate students are encouraged to give TAs frank feedback and to discuss any issues which might arise with the TAs. This collaborative effort is a beginning step towards helping students and TAs understand each other. Other collaborative efforts are joining the volunteer conversation partner groups offered by the Office for International Students and Scholars.
If undergraduates see themselves as part of the solution of the comprehension problem and TAs see undergraduates as resources for beginning to understand the culture, I believe true communication and understanding can flourish. I am encouraged tremendously by the article in Student Life that this attitudinal change is taking place.
-Rosa Brefeld
Director, English Language Programs
Students also deserve blame for higher education inadequacies
Dear Editor:
This is what I think is wrong not with higher education but with another of Dan Lilienthal’s articles: its thesis basically lays all the blame on the education system and none on the student. A number of students go to institutions of higher learning and learn multiple skills that help them in the real world. Just ask anyone who goes to our architecture or engineering schools. Those of us getting a liberal arts education can (and many do) learn and refine communicative skills that are infinitely valuable. I am proud of my four years here and the diploma I earned, not received. When an employer bemoans the fact that “college kids with fancy degrees don’t know nothing about nothing,” I tend to think that’s the student’s fault, because in my time here, I noted that the people who fit that profile were the ones who treated their undergrad years like high school: a four-year holiday that they can spend goofing off and have the world be their oyster when they finish. In addition, Lilienthal is an admitted plagiarist and even tries to profit from that fact by discussing it at length in his ridiculously self-important book. With Student Life’s recent problems in that respect, why are you guys even running his editorials? That’s like sticking a fork in your hand and playing a game of “I’m not touching you” with an electrical socket after it has already zapped you.
-Sean Phillips
Class of 2004
Emory quips have no place in Relay for Life staff ed
Dear Editor:
I was both puzzled and ashamed to read the staff editorial before break, which, in a poor attempt to amuse, accused Emory University students of “raising hell at the local penny pitcher bar” and engaging in “drunken antics” while Washington University students participated in Relay for Life. While the Emory-Wash. U. rivalry has lent itself to some humorous, lighthearted banter in the past year, it has absolutely no place in an editorial concerning Relay for Life. Emory students are just people – people with the same vulnerabilities, both emotional and physical, that cancer exploits – and a great number have been affected by the disease. The editorial does a disservice not only to Emory University, but also to Relay for Life’s message.
-Jessica “Jazzy” Danziger
Class of 2007