The Towerlight, February 26, 1982

tl19820226-000 "Vol. 75 No. 18 owerlight PUBLISHED BY THE STUDENTS OF TOWSON STATE UNIVERSITY TOWSON, MARYLAND 21204 What is beauty is a joy for all seasons and a possession for all eter-nity. � Oscar Wilde February 26, 1982 Starting Monday, construction begins on the new residence halls. Eventually, 40 parking spaces in lot 11 Construction begins Monday will be temporarily eliminated. The construction will increase traffic and makes the eliminating the parking spaces necessary. TL photo by Bob Tarleton Council approves dorms by Bruce Reid The construction of a new dormitory facility to house 1,7�Q students at Towson State was formally approved by the Baltimore County Council Feb. 16. Thomas F. Mullan III, project director from the Mullen Enterprises Partnership, the firm that was awarded the contract to build the dorms, said that Preliminary construction will begin about March 1. Gaining approval from the Board of Trustees for State Universities and Colleges, and the County Council ended a process that began May 28, 1980 to seek funding for the dorms through the private sector rather than use state funds. The dorms, and a 600-seat dining hall were funded by the sale of $29.2 million in industrial revenue bonds. ""The construction costs were lower than were pro-jected,"" said Donald McCulloh, vice president for business and finance. The Mullan firm had originally applied for $35 million in the bonds through five separate parnerships. The 14-story complex will be constructed on a two-acre Piece of land almost directly behind the University Union bordering Cross Campus drive. ""Our room and board fees will probably increase to $3,080 in the 1983 school year,"" McCulloh said. Room and board fees are currently $2,050 at the University. A projected increase of $900 to $1,000, or 35 percent in room and board fees for the 1983 fall semester would be a direct result of the construction costs of the new facili-ty, McCulloh said. Mullan said the completion date for the high-rise residence halls is set for Aug. 15, 1983. Last December, the Board of Trustees of State Univer-sities and Colleges lifted the two-year residency limit for the University and eliminated the 20-mile minimum distance rule prohibiting students that live within the boundary from residing on-campus. At least now we will be able to recruit students from the city and entire country,"" McCulloh said. The added dorm space could give the University the ability to recruit minority students from the city, he said. A University report submitted to the Board of Trustees seeking the approval for alternative funding through the private sector cited that ""significantly higher grade point averages are achieved by students living on-campus than those achieved by commuter students."" The increased dorm space will increase the academic standards and ""build a nucleus around a real college at-mosphere,"" McCulloh said. The threat of potentially serious cuts in federal finan-cial aid recommended by President Ronald Reagan in his 1983 budget request should not jeopardize the ability of the University to support the new buildings, McCulloh said., ""They are worrying us to the point as to who is going to be affected,"" by the financial aid cuts, he said. ""We have fewer students on campus who receive financial aid than almost any other school in the state system."" About 42 percent of the full-time students enrolled last fall received some kind of federally sup-ported financial aid. Some other state schools such as Coppin State College and Morgan State University are much more dependent on financial aid than Towson State, McCulloh said. The added housing at the University could also enable the athletic department to recruit ball players that may have been turned away by the lack of housing space, McCulloh said. � I Election rule violated by Gayle Griisser The Student Government Association's 1982 elections will be held as scheduled on March 8 and 9 despite an apparent violation of the SGA election policy. The election commission decided Tuesday to hold the election rather than pushing both the deadline for submitting petitions and the actual election back a week. The rescheduling issue arose because Section 17 of the election commission rules providing that publicity for the petition deadlines must appear in Towerlight two weeks or two issues before the deadline date, was violated. The only ad for the Senate peti-tion deadline ran in the February 19 issue of the paper which gave pro-spective candidates three days of classes to get 200 signatures. Keith Hark, SGA president, said the election commission made its decision because the arguments in favor of moving the dates back weren't strong enough, and an ex-tension was unfair to the people who did get their petitions in on time. Several Senators disagreed say-ing that the decision did not give students a fair chance, especially those students with only Tuesday, Thursday classes. Hark said petitions were available since February 4 and those student interested in running would have picked one up without the addi-tiohal ad being run. Rick Castelli, member of the elec-tion commission and supporter of the commission's decision said the election committee was not aware of the violation until Monday. Castelli said in the beginning of the semester Hark took responsibili-ty for placing the ads and when the question of a possible rescheduling of the deadline, ""Keith put undue influence on the commission's deci-sion,"" he said. ""I believe Keith had an interest in seeing that it (the elec-tion) wasn't extended. It would have made the original error even worse."" Castelli did say that Hark listed some advantages for rescheduling the dates. The commission decided that the arguments for rescheduling the deadline weren't enough and it wasn't fair to those 11 people who got their petitions in on time, Castelli said. ""My opinion is if it was extended (deadline date) every candidate who got the petition in on time would be frightfully upset,"" Castelli said. Castelli also said that the commis-sion should have made their deci-sion after hearing the opinions of senators and the executive commit-tee. ""We're not experienced SGA senators. We were shocked by the Senate's viewpoints. There ought to be a better process for picking members of the election committee,"" Castelli said. Hark denied exerting any in-fluence on the commission saying, ""I tried to present both sides of the coin."" He also said he told the commis-sion members he wasn't trying to persuade them in any way. Hark said it was his responsibility to get the election commission mov-ing and provide a room and any necessary secretarial help for the commission. ""I told them I would get the first ad placed as soon as possible. We got started late and an ad wasn't plac-ed,"" Hark said. ""I don't think it's fair. What's fair about breaking the rules,"" said Nan-cy Warren, SGA director of organizations. Warren said, the petitions were available since February 4, but wondered how people would know this if it wasn't publicized. She said several people came in to her office just asking what the job of a senator involved and she said the number of people running for Senate office (11 for 14 seats) might show that people weren't aware of the petition deadline and upcoming election. ""What a way to elect a Senate,"" Warren said. 1990 job market in question by Anita L. Hisley The U.S. Bureau of Labor lists several growth occupations in com-puters, business and health profes-sions, as well as others, but Patricia Plante, vice president for academic affairs, said she believes the Bureau is dealing in ""futurism."" ""Historically, they've not been very accurate. Ten years ago projec-tions were that we'd need thousands of Ph.D.'s,"" she said. ""Now it's a cliche to say there are Ph.D.'s driv-ing cabs and making sandwiches at Horn and Horn."" We should be very cautious when we see projections of what will hap-pen 10 years from now,"" she said. ""No one would have predicted the turnaround in Reaganomics. You can't predict social and cultural changes."" Harvey Paul, chairperson of economics, however, said he believes the Bureau's projections are ""fairly good for particular oc-cupations."" Various factors deter-mine the figures, he said, including population trends and technical trends which influence jobs. Towson State has no plans to change its curriculum based upon the Bureau's projections, Plante said. ""One way to ruin an institu-tion is to base curriculum on these statistics,"" she said. ""I could list a number of institutions which failed basing curriculum on short-term needs."" While the University offers degrees in health and business a computer science degree can only be obtained through general studies. Mary-Ann L. Myrant, assistant to the vice president, said the State Board of Higher Education is more receptive than in the past to the idea of offering a computer science degree at Towson. Plante is `op-timistic that the University will be able to offer the degree in a year. Plante, Paul and Myrant all advis-ed students to avoid basing a career choice only on job availability. Myrant said she advised students not only to prepare for a job, but also to get a broad-based education. Students should ""examine them-selves and what they want,"" she said. ""Make sure you do what you like to do, then go out and do it,"" said Plante. Paul said he believes a student should ask, ""What do I want to do, or what am I good at."" ""If you don't like what you're do-ing, what good is it?"" he asked. ""If a student has a choice among several areas he or she likes and is good at, then take into account job projec-tions,"" he said. Low-interest student loans going to the sharks GSLs expensive to obtain by Bruce Reid When the Guaranteed Student Loans (GSLs) were intitated in 1965, middle income students were able to secure loans with below-intu. ket interest rates to help finance their education expenses. However, since Aug. 23, 1981, GSLs have been getting more ex- Pensive to obtain, and since Oct. 1, 1981, they have become less available to students from middle-income families. Out of the 15,107 full-time students that enrolled last fall at Towson State, 42 percent, or 6,300 students received some kind of federally supported financial aid. We won't be able to make up for the losses in student loans at the federal level �Tolliver An estimated 38 percent of the financial aid recipients, or 2,377 students received GSLs for the 1981-82 school year. When President Ronald Reagan mg/led the Omnibus Budger Recon-ciliation Act, in August, a number of changes have made the loans harder to get. Students that obtain the loans at any of the 120 Maryland banks that supply them must now pay an originiation fee of 5 percent of the amount of the loan, which is used to Process the lending procedures and keep the program alive. Reagan now wants to increase the origination fee to 10 percent of the loan. The fee is automatically sub-tracted from the amount that a stu-dent borrows. The President also wants to make all students undergo stricter tests of their financial needs. Any depen-dent student whose total family in-come exceeds $30,000 must now take the needs test � and ultimate-ly receives less money. ""They are legislating more work by proposing new regulations par-ticular to the GSL program,"" said Harriet Griffin, director of financial aid. The work-load would be com-pounded for the financial aid office, she said, if administrators would have to keep tabs on students' fami-ly income. The average loan to students at the University this year was $2,000 to $2,200, Griffin said. ""A lot of students, at least in the past year, have been borrowing the full amount,"" she said. Undergraduate students can now borrow as much as $2,500 for one academic year and the entire amount that students borrow while in college does not have to be repaid until five to ten years after they graduate. Reagan has recently proposed several more regulations for GSLs. Graduate students would no longer be able to secure the loans. Under-graduates, who currently receive the loans bearing a 9 percent in-terest rate, may have to repay the entire amount of the loan within two years or pay market interest rates on the remaining sums that are cur-rently double their present interest rate. One other proposal would require state agencies that administer the loan program to return to the federal government 50 percent of the fees they collect from students called ""insurance premiums."" Governor Harry Hughes intro-duced a bill, Feb. 12, in the state legislature that would create a loan authority which would sell bonds, which would in turn create funds for loans at Maryland colleges. Sheila Tolliver, the governor's aide on education, said the loan authority would more likely help private institutions because a school would have to pledge assets such as an endowment fund to, guarantee the loans. ""The governor does not see this proposal as a solution to the federal financial aid cuts,"" she said. The one major difference between the 9 percent loans that students are now able to obtain through the GSL program would be that the state administered loans created by the sale of bonds would bear in-terest rates equal to market interest rates for the bonds, Tolliver said. Although no definite changes have been enacted since the ap-pearance of the fiscal 1983 budget, no one is clear as to how Congress will ract to the proposed reductions in GSLs, the largest source of federally supported aid to college students in Maryland. While the details of the loan authority have not been worked out. Tolliver said, ""We won't be able to make up for the losses in student loans at the federal level."" NDSL default rate 20 percent by Bruce Reid Relatively few students at Towson State received National Direct Student Loans (NDSLs) � only 900 � compared to the total number of financial aid recipients at the University. Less students are eligible for the loans carrying a 5 percent interest rate, because lower income students are more eligible for the federal aid. NDSLs are classified as campus-based aid. The University handed out $575,000 to about 900 students this year. Recently, the NDSL program has fallen under attack from several sides. Default rates for the loans have soared in the past few years at Maryland's state colleges and universities. The University's default rate was 33 percent three years ago. This year it has declined to about 20 per-cent, primarily because the financial aid office has begun to enforce repayment of the loans. FINAtiCiPq_ DEPT. op MD FED-curs INTERFsT RKTE S STUDE NTS The 20 percent default rate is not enough to receive a gold star, the U.S. Department of Education recently announced, when it propos-ed starling regulations which would deny federal money for the loans to schools that cannot maintain a default rate below 10 percent. Specifically, any school that has a default rate between 10 and 25 per-cent could have their federal allot-ment reduced by the amount they are in default exceeding 10 percent. Any school that has a default rate above 15 percent, will not receive any funds for the program under the department's proposals. Using the proposed formula for reduction in federal allotments, the University would receive virtually no federal funds if the proposals are approved, said Harriet Griffin, director of financial aid. The NDSL program at the University would ""exist on collec-tion and carry over the funds from the previous year,"" Griffin said. Last year, the University col-lected $253,000 in NDSL repayments, Griffin said. Because of the limited availability of the loans the number of students obtaining NDSLs at the University has not risen significantly in the past five years. The number of students receiving Guaranteed Student Loans at the University in the past five years has tripled. President Ronald Reagan wants to eliminate the NDSL program. In his fiscal 1983 budget request to Congress, Reagan suggested a cut of $1.5 billion in federal financial aid to college students including the $286 million NDSLs. It is unclear how Congress may act on the President's proposals but which has run amuck in past years because students have failed to return the sum of money that they borrowed, is in need of some tightening. Many of Maryland's state col-leges that receive substantial sums of NDSLs have fallen into serious default and have already been denied any further funds. Towson State's financial aid office has lent over $4 million to 8,000 students since the program was started in the 1959-60 school year. Students have failed to repay $500,000 of the borrowed sum. ""Schools like Towson are dogedly and persistently cracking down on default rates,"" Griffin said. Schools like Towson are doggedly and per-sistently cracking down on default rates � Griffin The Department of Education proposals to limit aid to schools with high default rates would penalize students that are currently in school for the delinquencies of past students, Griffin said. For the 1982-83 school year, Grif-fin said, carry over and collection funds could total $350,000 at the University. If funds are cut entirely for NDSLs, the program would sur-vive only as long as the outstanding funds are returned. "