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Volume XCIV, Number 9	University of Southern California	Friday, September 16, 1983
LARRY GUND/DAILY TROJAN
Tom Hackett, a sophomore in cinema production, hands his validine card to a checker.
English proficiency guidelines set up for international TA's
David Jefferson
Staff Writer
The university's administration has provided all university departments with English proficiency guidelines to be used in determining the kinds of teaching jobs international students should perform.
This decision follows a number of student complaints concerning foreign teaching assistants.
The guidelines set down by the teaching assistant review committee, outlined in the Graduate Assistant Policy Statement for 1983-84, call for department chairs to classify graduate assistant nominees on the basis of three English competency levels: excellent, satisfactory, and limited English proficiency.
Those students with excellent command of English would be allowed to give lectures and unsupervised instruction. Those with satisfactory proficiency would only be allowed to give laboratory assistance and closely supervised classroom help.
while TAs with limited English ability would have no teaching duties and little student contact.
The plan was devised by the Committee on Rights, Responsibilities, and Welfare of Graduate Assistants, which is made up of TAs and faculty, members from those departments which have large numbers of foreign TAs.
Although the administration urges departments to follow the new guidelines when selecting TAs, it is not mandatory that the departments do so, said Marilyn Baker, assistant provost and acting associate dean of the graduate school.
"We would like to leave some discretion to the deans and not mandate that this student may be a TA, but that student may not," Baker said.
Baker said that the guidelines may not solve the problem because there is still no accurate method for determining the English proficiency levels of foreign TA candidates.
"The criteria used now, such as the TOEFL (Test Of English
Peer advocates assist international students
By Joann Galardy
Assistant Gtv Editor
Each year hundreds of international students travel thousands of miles to attend this university. When they arrive, they .ire faced with a multitude of problems — some of these are shared by all students and some are unique to the international students.
Many of these students arrive in this country unfamiliar with its customs and traditions, unable to speak fluent English, and knowing that they will not return home until their education is completed.
The International Peer Advocates is a group of students who know and understand these problems. In most cases they are international students who try to ease the transition for the new students.
"We are here to help the international students adjust," said Elizabeth Akopian, a peer advocate from Iran.
There are six peer advocates this semester representing the United States, Iran, Lebanon, Hong Kong, Cuba and Taiwan.
The peer advocates, who speak several languages and represent a variety of areas of study, provide a source of friendship and
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as a Foreign Language) and the American Language Institute test administered by the university, establish certain levels of ability, but they are not tests that necessarily tell us the ability of a student to stand up in front of a class and give lectures.
"What we have to do in the next year is develop a test specifically designed for international students who want to become TAs, one which tests spoken ability," Baker said.
The test will be designed by faculty members in the American Language Institute and other departments with expertise in English as a second 'nnguage, and should be ready : ■’ the fall of 1984, she added.
"Ideally, the test would be administered in the student's country before the promise of a TA (position) is made. Then there would be some additional testing once the student got here to determine what kind of work he could do," Baker said.
At present, the university has approximately 1500 graduate assistants (including teaching assistants, resident advisers, and graduate lecturers), about 350 of whom are international students, said Jemela Macer, teaching assistant consultant in the graduate school.
Macer teaches a course for international TAs through the American Language Institute called Advanced Spoken Communication. The elective course, which carries two units and meets once a week for two hours, is designed to help foreign graduate assistants improve their ability to speak English.
So far, only one student has enrolled in the class.
"He's one of those rare students who is very conscientious," Macer said. "I understand the problem acutely. Until the university is willing to tell the TAs they have to take the class, not many will take it. I wish there were more students enrolled, that's all I can say," she said.
Student petitioning against food service
By Steve De Salvo
City Editor
The university's food service, which students have long criticized as too expensive and lacking quality, is again under attack — this time by a student who is angered by a seemingly unfair pricing system.
Jeff Shapiro, so angered by the food service system that he is circulating a petition against it, says he can't understand why students have to pay $1,075 for only about $376 worth of food. Shapiro says neither he nor his friends believe the university when it claims the remaining $699 is needed to pay for overhead costs, such as insurance, utility and administrative costs.
"Every resident I've talked to about this realizes they aren't getting their full value. I'm very unhappy with the situation."
Guy Hubbard, executive director of auxiliary services, said over the last year an inordinate amount of dormitory residents ate in Commons, instead of the residence cafeterias. "As a result of this loss of income, we were not able to adequately cover our overhead at the residence hall dining facilities," he said. "We have to charge overhead; that's the only way we can ran the facilities.
Shapiro said he also is bothered by a system which he says discourages students from buying food at Commons, which he said offers a higher quality food than that served in the residence dining facilities, such as ones in EVK and Trojan Hall.
The university's food service requires dormitory residents students to buy one of two $1075 mandatory meal plans, and although many students aren't aware of it, one of these plans actually offers a substantially better deal than the other for students who intend to eat most of their meals in Commons.
Dormitory residents, when they sign their housing contract, are required to buy either the Alpha Plan, which is based on an allowance system, or the Beta Plan, which is based on a point system. The Beta Plan, because of its convenience, proved to be more popular with students, attracting 1553 students compared to only 103 for the other plan.	'
However, in comparing the cost effectiveness of the two plans, the Beta plan would provide less than half the amount of meals as the Alpha Plan for students who intend to eat in Commons. Under the Beta system, students who bought meals priced at $3.15 (the average amount a student spends per meal at Commons) would be able to receive only about 120 meals in Commons, compared to the 321 meals a student would receive under the Alpha Plan's meal allowance system.
The Beta Plan, because of its poor cost-effectiveness at Commons, discourages dormitory students from eating there.
Eugene Lawless, director of food service at the university, acknowledged this, saying, "The bottom line is that the person in the Alpha Plan is going to get a better deal. But you must remember that Beta was not intended for use in Commons."
Hubbard said the meal plans were designed to get students to reverse their trend of favoring Commons and instead begin eating in the residence halls again.
Lawless agreed that the Beta Plan was less cost-effective, but said this was the premium students have to pay if they insist on eating food at Commons.
"Students have to remember that neither the Alpha Plan nor the Beta Plan are designed for use in Commons," Lawless added.
But Lawless said it wasn't too late for students to switch from the Beta Plan to the Alpha Plan. "We've arranged it so that if they still want to switch, they can," he said.
'SC at Night' promotes more evening studies
By Joann Gekko
Staff Writer
A newly adopted Student Senate campaign to continue the promotion of academic excellence launched by last year's "Make USC 1 — Study Harder" campaign, "SC at Night" is the senate's attempt to make students more aware of the campus resources available to them at night.
Last year, the senate, along with Irwin Lieb, vice president and dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, came up with the "study harder" campaign. This year, the senate's objective is to get students to stay on, or come to the campus at night to utilize the evening-study spaces available.
"The main thing that we want to encourage among the students is academic excellence," said Mike Singer, undergraduate vice president. The cam-
paign was Singer's brainstorm. "The idea came up when I was in a meeting with Dr. Lieb trying to think of ways to promote academic excellence.
"On a purely academic level, we will be promoting and advertising the study space, such as the library, available on campus at night," said Bill Lilia, senate president. "It could be that students are not aware of what's available to them. This is a way of making students more aware."
A secondary goal of the new ramnaim is to promote student of evening events ukjug iiciu at the university.
"From the plan to make students aware of the available study spaces came the thought of promoting other nighttime activities and cultural events," Singer said. "By attending activities such as plays, concerts, (Continued on page 5)