The Towerlight, May 8, 1981

tl19810508-000 "VOL. 74 No. 27 owerlight PUBLISHED BY THE STUDENTS OF TOWSON STATE UNIVERSITY TOWSON, MARYLAND 21204 All's love, yet all's law. �Robert Browning May 8, 1981 No more freebies!! Remember when you could leave your car in front of the Union to dash to the bookstore for a quick purchase? Or maybe you were daring and left your car in the 20-minute-parking- zone while you went to class. Well, no more! At least not unless you're willing to pump in the coins since these parking meters were installed recently. Maybe you and your friends should think about trading in your bad luck for a carpool permit. TL photo by Cindy Shecsley Campus artwork vandalized by Argiro Sarantinos Student art objects placed outside various buildings on campus are being vandalized. Gene Dawson, direc-tor of campus police, said vandalism is any ""malicious destruction of property."" Art pieces have been kicked, scratched and dented. Students also lock their bikes to the artwork and throw frisbees at the artwork. One object in the Fine Arts building was thrown over a wall. The creator, whose object is vandalized, usually pays for the repairs of the object. David Barlow, a senior art major said, ""It really bothers me that students are vandalizing what other students make. And, it's being done right here on cam-pus."" Barlow has been the victim of many vandalism incidents. He said, ""It's human nature to touch something, but not to carry it out the door and throw it over a wall or scratch it with a key."" Recently, Barlow placed one of his pieces in the Fine Arts building and by the next morning someone had jumped on it and scratched it with a key causing ten dollars worth of damage. A day later, someone tried to steal the object and turned it upside down. An outside sculpture takes about a month to com-plete. Barlow's piece, in front of Smith Hall, was completed in one and a half months and cost $700. Most outside exhibits are vandalized because they are too large to steal, or because students find them amusing, while smaller art pieces are stolen. Barlow and other art students finance their work with contributions. Barlow said, ""I'm afraid to put my work out. I want it under a lock and key."" James Paulsen, associate professor of art, said that he feels vandalism occurs from ""an attitude gap that results from people not being aware of how to handle art pieces placed on campus."" ""When we put objects on display, we don't expect everyone to like them, but art students deserve the opportunity to display their work,"" Paulsen said. John Mitchell, professor of art, said that he feels it is not as important why people are vandalizing art objects, but ""it's more important that the people who can do something about it, haven't."" Mitchell taught photography a few years ago and placed a photographic display in the Fine Arts build-ing on a Friday and one-third of the photographs were stolen by Saturday. Eventually, the art faculty put a moratorium on exhibits in the halls of the Fine Arts building. ""The student loss in terms of money isn't great, but in terms of education it is,"" Mitchell said. Mitchell said there are two types of vandalism. ""One type is destructive in which the work is disliked, so it is made fun of, while the second type is apprecia-tive vandalism in which the work is stolen because it is desirable."" ""Every student regards one thing on this campus as serious. Art students want the same degree of respect and seriousness as students in other fields,"" Paulsen said. Lida Lee closing ruled within Board's rights by Gayle Griisser Stephen Sachs, the Attorney General of Maryland ruled that the Board of Trustees of State Uni-versities and Colleges acted within its rights by closing the Lida Lee Tall Learning Resources Center and did not violate its own retrenchment guidelines. Retrenchment is the process by which the University decides how programs and tenured faculty will be dealt with if the University is faced with budget cuts or declining enrollments. The University faculty argued that the Board of Trustees decision to close the school is in violation of the retrenchment guidelines. Eight teachers at Lida Lee Tall have tenure. But Sachs said the State Board of Higher Education can review the Board of Trustees' decision. Delegate Arthur Alperstein, chair-man of the Baltimore County Dele-gation, requested the ruling. James J. Hill Jr., AAUP/Facul-ty Association president of the Tow-son State chapter, said he was dis-couraged by the decision. Hill said Sachs' ruling states that the Board does not have to follow its own re-trenchment guidelines, but if the University decides to retrench, it must follow the Board's guidelines. Hill said the decision ""might sound the death knell for shared governance."" It also raises the ques-tion of whether the Board has to follow any of its rules and regula-tions except those in the faculty's contract, Hill explained. He said, despite the Attorney General's decision, the AAUP/ Faculty Association will continue to press for the continuation of Lida Lee 'Fall. Since Sachs ruled the Board was procedurally correct in its decision, the next step is to prove ""sub-stantially the Board's decision was inappropriate,"" said Hill. The substantial issues are the three criteria on which the Board based its decision. The three recommendations made in 1975 were to integrate the student body, to conduct and disseminate research on elementary education and to spend less than $100,000 in state subsidies annually. The Board said the last two issues had not been met. President Hoke Smith spoke to the Lida Lee Tall PTA Sunday night and told them what the Uni-versity has done, what it plans to do, and the reason for its position, said Yvonne Clark, PTA president. Smith also said he hopes to be allowed to speak at the Board of Trustees May 28 meeting, Clark said. Bruce Manger, a Lida Lee Tall parent and chairman of the protest committee, said the meeting with Smith was ""productive,"" and that the parents appreciated Smith tak-ing the time to attend the meeting. Manger said Smith has sent two letters to the Board of Trustees asking them to reconsider their decision. Marshall Moore, chairman of the Board, rejected the first let-ter on grounds that there was no new evidence, Manger explained. He said the PTA and Smith's goals are the same, but the PTA has the ability to be more aggressive in the fight to keep Lida Lee Tall open. Clarence Miller, a Lida Lee Tall parent, said the parents have not ruled out legislation. The legislation sought by the Baltimore County Delegation will not be revived until the January session. The undergraduates should play a bigger role in keeping Lida Lee Tall open since they will be the ones that are ""penalized,"" Miller said. The undergraduates don't realize that it (the closing of Lida Lee Tall) is going to hurt the teachers' education at the University, said Miller. It is ""virtually impossible to have 4,932 observations conducted by 563 stu-dents in public schools."" Miller said the students will not receive the same education that other students had in the past, and the undergraduates do not realize it. Loan defaulters sued (CPS)�For at least the fourth time in three months, the U.S. De-partment of Justice has gone to court to try to get hundreds of stu-dent loan defaulters at a time to pay up. Peter Vaira, U.S. Attorney in Philadelphia, sued 102 defaulters two weeks ago, trying to recover nearly $150,000 in loans, plus more than $40,000 in interest payments. ""We do it in batches like this to make a point,"" Vaira said. Vaira sued 20 other defaulters earlier in 1981. In February, James Cissell, U.S. Attorney in Cincin-nati, sued more than 500 defaulters, while U.S. Attorney Jay Brant an-nounced he would more vigorously pursue defaulters in Detroit, Cleve-land and Milwaukee. Department of Justice spokes-man Bob Stephenson recalled that such group lawsuits, albeit on a smaller scale, began last summer in Los Angeles. In Philadelphia, moreover, Vaira said there are more suits ""in the pipeline."" ""There is still no central direc-tive"" to U.S. attorneys to launch mass suits against defaulters,"" said John Russell, Justice Department spokesman. But the effort to corner loan de-faulters ""really began in 1976,"" said Jack Reynolds of the U.S. De-partment of Education. ""So we're about in the middle of it right now. You'll be hearing a lot more about it in the future, no doubt about it."" Reynolds said under the direction of then-Secretary of Health, Edu-cation & Welfare Joseph Califano in 1976, the government began to pressure colleges themselves to col-lect federally-insured student aid loans and Guaranteed Student Loans (GSLs) from their alumni. An effort aimed at National Direct Student Loan defaulters in 1978 brought response from the colleges in sum-mer, 1979, Reynolds said. When colleges can not collect, the ""responsibility [for collecting the loans] is transferred to the Depart-ment of Education,"" he said. The Education Department investigates, writes dunning letters, and, if it still can not collect, turns the cases over to the Justice Department for prosecution. Indeed, Vaira said he would have started suing defaulters earlier, but that the Department of Education has just ""finally gotten around to referring these cases to us."" Since Cissell sued 501 defaulters, more than 160 have repaid their loans. Cook Library: 'Weare not in the recreational business' by Nancy Zeleski This is the first of a two-part aeries analyzing the Albert S. Cook Library. This section deals with the historical background and how the library is run. The second half will deal with the reactions of the de-partmental library representatives and the students to how well the current library system works. A red leather-bound book held the list of library books back in 1870, then there were only 127 books. The list was sandwiched between the students' grades in geography, arithmetic and spelling, and the names of those who were chronic talkers or had forgotten their dust-ing cloths. Circulation was handled by writ-ing the borrower's name across from the name of the book. When it was returned, a line was drawn through the borrower's name. When the Women's Normal Coll-ege, predecessor of Towson State, moved to the Towson area, the lib-rary was located in the wing of Ste-phens Hall which is now used as the faculty lounge and the computer terminal center. In 1957, the library moved from Stephens into the first Albert S. Cook building. When the library moved, again the name Cook moved with it and the two became snyon-ymous. The old library facility be-came the Media Center. The collection now has approxi-mately 759,000 items, circulating as well as non-circulating material, such as microfilms, periodicals and films. It occupies four of the five floors in the Cook building. Book circulation is handled by the CLSI, a computer-ized control system. The library and media services staff, which was combined late last year, numbers 50 full-time pro-fessional and paraprofessional lib-rarians, clerical personnel and tech-nicians, with an additional 52 part-time student aides. From a 19th-century library containing 127 books, the Albert S. Cook Library has grown to include approximately 759,000 items. By June the library will have added 50,000 new materials to its collection over the past year. TL photo by Cindy Sheesley Thomas E. Strader, director of Cook Library for ten years, also oversees the Media Services divi-sion. Strader's a professional lib-rarian with a master's degree in library science from Case-Western Reserve. But a modern facility, thousands of items in the collection, a compu-terized circulation system such as the CLSI, or even the staff and its director is only a portion of what a library is all about. ""It's very hard, very hard to set quality standards,"" said Strader. ""It's easy enough to set quantity standards."" However, the American Library Association (ALA) attemps to ad-dress the issue of standards in li-braries across the nation. The ALA has devised a formula which fac-tors in the number of programs of-fered at a college or university along with full-time student equivalency figures to arrive at guidelines and standards of comparing libraries. Accreditatiion is awarded on the basis of these figures in either an ""A"" or ""B"" classification. ""These ALA standards are set according to guesses, and facts and figures that have come from lib-rarians over the years,"" said Strader. ""And they are behind the times."" As for the library at the Univer-sity, Strader said, ""We are consider-ing ourselves in the ""A"" class, and we are approximately at the minimum standards right now."" The ALA also has set guidelines for building the library's collection and rates of withdrawal. ""The standards say that once you reach the minimum, then at least five percent of your cullection should be new stuff each year,"" said Stra-der. An estimated 50,000 items will have been added between June of last year and the end of this seme-ster� an increase of more than six-and- a-half percent. Strader said, ""They [ALA] also Thomas Strader say that you should withdraw two percent. We don't come close to that."" Although figures were not avail-able, Strader said the only time books are withdrawn is when they have been damaged or worn out through normal usage. Book sales that are occasionally held in the lobby of Cook dispose of books that have been received as gifts. ""These are books that were given to us that we either already have or we don't feel are appropriate."" ""The function of this library is totally different than the function of the public library. We are not in the recreational business,"" said Strader. The amount of funds given to the individual departments is deter-mined by looking at a number of fac-tors. ""We check the past records, and the number of credit hours produced, the average cost of a book, what the past demand has been, what the circulation demands are in the de-partment, and then we allocate money based on all these things,"" Strader representative in each ibrsaariy A d. department funnels orders from other faculty members in his depart-ment to the library staff. The library representative is in-formed in a quarterly report of the status of outstanding orders, can-cellations, and the balance remain-ing in the department's fund. ""For a foreign order, it may take a year to get it [the book] in; for other things, six weeks may do it,"" said Strader. Because of this time lag and other factors, such as unexpected pub-lisher's discounts, cancellations, and price increases, Strader said his staff ""manually keeps the ledger books."" Requests for serials, like maga-zines and journals, are a different matter. ""The [ALA] standards do not touch on periodicals,"" said Strader. ""We have a committee which goes over the periodicals requests that come in,"" said Strader. ""We don't allocate money to the department because periodicals are something that you really don't need."" Strader, the two associate lib-rarians, and the serial librarian sit on the periodiaals review committee. ""We sit down and really go over them [the requests], and we decide whether *e can add any new ones or not,"" Strader said. Although Strader said, ""we never judge on content,"" the committee does consider the structure of the periodical, how long it has been pub-lished, whether it is indexed, and the cost of the subscription. Cost is a major factor in accept-ing or rejecting a periodical request. ""The periodicals have been going up 15 to 20 percent every year. There was a time when the serial budget was the small part of your total materials budget and now it's well over half,"" said Strader. ""And once you buy one, you have to keep getting it; and then you have to bind them, and that costs money, and that's going up."" Some periodicals lend themselves to clipping and microfilming. In the case of microfilming, Strader said, ""It'slibout the same price [as bound volumes], so that we could store an awful lot of microfilm in the space that you put a bound volume in."" ""But from our standpoint, it doesn't make any difference whether it's bound or microfilmed because you can get to it. And that's the whole thing�is that the informa-tion available to the student?"" ""So many times you hear that actually only ten percent of your collection is used,"" said Strader. ""Well, we find now with the corn-puterized system that this is a real crock."" The CLSI was installed in Feb-ruary of 1978. Since then, a book is input into the system as it is continued on page 8 In this issue. LACROSSE: In their first game against Maryland since the early '70s, the Tiger lacrosse team fell a few goals short and lost, 17-14. Tuesday afternoon the team takes on the top-ranked Blue Jays from Johns Hopkins In the Towson Stadium. Story on page 4. LOVE: Ever wonder about that little flutter in your heart every time that special someone walks by? You could be in love; then again, you could be going into coronary arrest. To find out how to tell the difference, see page 2. "