dMBy trojan
Volume XCIII, Number 59	University of Southern California	Friday, April 15, 1983
A day for reflection called for by senate
Slavic languages department attempting to recruit students
By Mark Lowe
Staff Writer
Since the late 1960s, the number of experts on the Soviet Union and the money provided for their studies has declined drastically, to a point where politicians and scholars are calling it appalling and even dangerous.
But within the last seven months, colleges and private foundations — including this university — have been pumping funds into Soviet studies and conducting campaigns to recruit potential Sovietologists.
The department of Slavic languages and literature on Wednesday circulated a brochure promoting its certificate program on the Soviet Union and the Russian language, its first broad attempt to lure students into Sovietology .
"The reason we put it out was to help recruit students," said Gerri Hithe, an undergraduate student in the department and co-author of the brochure. "Students don't study Russian because it's just out of the ordinary. Usually they go straight to Spanish."
This year, the department stepped up its efforts to match both a surge of grants that American universities received last fall for Sovietology, and the interest in the Soviet Union generated by the death of Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev in November.
"This year we decided to put out a brochure, especially with all the articles that came out last year around Brezhnev's death," Hithe said.
She added that students have avoided studying the Soviet Union and its language because they do not see it as benefiting them economically in the long run.
"But many students don't realize the ties international corporations have with the Soviet Union," she said. "And while it's not as open as, say,
Japan is now, it will be later."
Hithe cited the Coca-Cola Co.'s recent deal with the Soviet government, which allows the soft drink manufacturer to sell its Fanta products in the Soviet Union.
She said, however, that the worsening of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union has dampened the market and discouraged students from studying Russian, the prerequisite to understanding the Soviet Union.
Joseph Nyomarkay, an associate professor of political science, also blamed a depressed job market for Sovietologists for the decline of Soviet studies in the United States.
"The most important reason has been that those people who went into Soviet studies went into teaching, but the teaching market has dried up," he said.
The depressed job market also kept university students from going on to graduate school, where Sovietology is concentrated, and consequently few students emerged who were experts on Soviet culture, said Sarah Pratt, an assistant professor in the Slavic languages department.
"When the job market was simply full of people in the late '70s, many people who had come through graduate school could not find a job," Pratt said. "A lot of these people got discouraged and went into other fields.
"It finally got to the point that the number of people trained (in Sovietology) was smaller than the number of people who were retiring, so there was a shortage,” she said.
Beyond economic reasons, Nyomarkay said the United States traditionally neglects Soviet studies and Americans resist learning foreign languages, which prevents them from understanding other cultures.
"In Russia, basically every-
one who graduates from secondary school speaks English," he said. "It's only a minority of urban youth who are not able to speak English, which is not the same here with respect to Russia."
Nyomarkay added that the decline in Soviet studies is aggravated by a lack of information, a situation that was caused partially by the inability of diplomats and reporters to speak or read Russian. This means they must depend on often unreliable secondary sources.
The drop-off also was caused by the U.S. government, Pratt said, which ironically cut the amount of money allocated for Sovietology when relations (Continued on page 5)
By Jeffrey Tylicki
Staff Writer
A request for the university to proclaim April 24 as a day of reflection on man's inhumanity to man passed at the student senate meeting Wednesday evening, despite at least nine objections to the resolution from the floor.
The senate proclamation was prompted by the Armenian Students Association's concern to bring attention to the mass genocide of Armenians by the Turks in 1915. Many senators were apprehensive about even discussing such an issue because they felt it was out of the senate's realm of duty.
Martha Abdulian, speaking on behalf of the Armenian student group, told the senate that over 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey were massacred between 1915 and 1981. April 24, 1915, is the historically accepted date of the tragic mass murder which Abdulian said the Turkish government still denies.
The resolution asks that the date of April 24 of this year and each year thereafter be set aside as "a day of rememberance of people's inhumanity to others." Senate president Dan Dunmoyer said a copy of the resolution will be sent to university President James Zumberge, who is the only person who can officially enact such a request.
Commuter senator Sonia Savoulian, who sponsored the bill, said she was glad to see the usually apolitical senate take such a stand as its last official action for the 1982-83 session. Dunmoyer has encouraged the senate to shy away from taking stands on controversial issues in order to avoid situations in which the senate may come into conflict with the views of more than half of the student body.
Tony Manos, undergraduate vice president, objected to the resolution in an attempt to keep it from being voted upon at all. He said the action requested by the resolution was clearly not within the scope of the senate's traditional function.
As a precedent for the senate's ultimate dedsion, senators dted a December 1981 resolution in which the senate took a stand on the university's investments in the Republic of South Africa. In that resolution, the senate condemned the "abhorrent, radst system" of the nation, and requested that the university withdraw its investments in South African companies. To date, there has been no action on the resolution by the administration.
Another resolution passed last spring requested that the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. become an offidal university holiday. Although this date was offidailv observed campus-wide in January, no action has been taken by Zumberge on the matter. The resolution concerning Martin Luther King Jr. was the last issue the senate acted on that people have considered political in nature.
In support of the Armenian resolution, cabinet member Mark Slavkin told the senators it would be unfortunate if they chose to avoid the issue.
"If we're going to shy away from inhumanity, then where do we draw the line at politics?" he said.
Abdulian said, "Students must be the opposition to revisionists. By passing the resolution, the senate will be telling Armenians and all peoples who have been persecuted, 'We do remember.' "
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Business school enters study judging accrediting methods
By Sheldon Ito
Staff Writer
The university's school of business administration is partidpating in a pilot studv that will determine if business schools can be judged and accredited not only by what they teach, but also by how much their students leam.
"The study is valuable because the focus is on measuring learning, rather than teaching," said Robert Turrill, assodate dean for curriculum and instruction at the school of business administration.
The current accreditation process for business schools is based on the evaluation of what are known as "input" characteristics of the schools, such as admission standards, curriculum, facilities and the quality of the faculty. These characteristics are rated every five years by the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business.
What is not considered during the accreditation process is how much students leam while in school.
The AACSB saw the need for the study, now referred to as the "outcome assessment projed," and selected four business schools across the nation to partidpate in it, Turrill said.
In addition to the university's school of business, the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton
School, Ohio State University's College of Administrative Science and the University of North Carolina's School of Business Administration are also partidpating in the study.
Turrill said the schools were selected because they represent a cross section of large private and public schools in different regions that have large undergraduate enrollments.
The schools will administer a series of skills and personal characteristics tests to randomly selected graduating seniors this spring. Next fall, randomly selected incoming juniors will take the same tests, and the results will then be compared to those of the seniors.
The tests will measure skills and personal characteristics such as information gathering and problem analysis, dedsion making, planning and organization, leadership, delegation and control, written communication, oral communication and presentation and disposition to lead.
"The assumption is that these skills will lead to success in managerial positions," Turrill said.
The university's business school has already started testing about 80 graduating seniors and it expects to continue testing into mid-Mav.
"In exchange for contributing a day of their time for testing," Turrill said, "the students will receive a 15-page discussion of their test results, similar to what they would obtain from a
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