Oberlin Observer. 1983-04-28

              Pictured here are panels from a com¬
poser quilt containing -autograph fac¬
similes and musical quotations repre¬
senting twenty-seven master composers
ofthe last six hundred years. The quilt is
one of those on view at the Firelands
Association for the Visual Arts (FAVA^
80 South Main, in its "Quilts and
Carousels" sesquicentennial exhibition,
which is co-sponsored by the women's
studies program. The exhibition opens
Sunday with a reception from 2 to 5 pm
and continues through 4 July. A sympo¬
sium on "Quilts as Visual Language," to
be held in conjunction with the exhibi¬
tion, includes six talks, the first
Wednesday at 4 pm and the last Sunday
15 May.
The composer quilt was designed by
conservatory alumnus Jeffrey N. Wood
76 and executed by his mother, quilt-maker
Jean H. Wood of Beulah, Michi¬
gan, according to exhibition curator
Ricky Clark. It was completed in 1978
and presented as a wedding gift to
Jeffrey and Candace Wood, both musi¬
cians. It includes acknowledged musical
masters from Machaut in the fourteenth
century to contemporary American
composer Roger Sessions.
—photos by Edsel Little
Faculty votes against merit evaluations this year
At one of three meetings held this
month, the general faculty 20 April
voted fifty-four to fifty-one to request
its council "to adopt a system for distri¬
bution of faculty salary increases which
does not require merit review of the
entire faculty this year." The day before,
at its regularly scheduled meeting, it
made a change in the calendar for the
fall of 1983: classes will begin Friday 9
September instead of Thursday 8 Sep¬
tember, which is the first day of Rosh
Hashanah. On the agenda for the meet¬
ing of 26 April were three items: a
motion from the religious interests
committee that formally endorses the
practice of automatically excusing from
classes students who wish to observe
Jewish holidays; a proposed schedule
for the academic year 1984-85 from the
calendar dates committee; and a prog¬
ress report from the committee to review
tenure policy.
Timing of evaluation
Sixteen college faculty members co-sponsored
the motion concerning merit
evaluations. In presenting it, Richard
A. Zipser, associate professor of Ger¬
man, emphasized that they recognized
the necessity for regular merit review.
The motion did not oppose merit eval¬
uations, he said; it opposed having to
make them late in the academic year,
when faculty members are busiest, after
they had been told that there would be
none this year.
Larry D. Shinn, professor of religion,
speaking as a member of the general
faculty council and in opposition to the
motion, said that the council had de¬
cided in December against merit review
for all faculty members because of the
small salary increase approved by the
trustees in November—5 percent over¬
all. There was, however, to be a merit
review of junior faculty members, he
explained, because the trustees had
voted an additional increase for them.
The council had told the trustees that it
thought this arrangement unfair to fac¬
ulty members in the middle salary range
and had asked them to consider a larger
overall increase. In March the trustees
had responded favorably by changing
the overall salary increase from 5 to 7
percent. In reciprocation, Shinn said,
the council had voted to have an overall
merit review this year. The trustees, he
said, expected such a review when it
allocated more money for the salary
increase.
Shinn noted that some faculty mem¬
bers would prefer to have merit evalua¬
tions every other year rather than annu¬
ally, but he thought the faculty should
not try to modify the system at this time.
Other speakers, both those supporting
and those opposing the motion, disas¬
sociated it from the question of the fre¬
quency of review.
Several faculty who supported the
motion said that the trustees did not
understand how time-consuming and
difficult merit evaluation is, especially
in the college, where peer evaluations
within departments and student course
evaluations are consolidated by depart¬
ment chairs and sent on to the college
faculty council for further evaluation.
(In the conservatory, individual evalua¬
tions go directly to the conservatory
faculty council.) Albert J. McQueen,
professor of sociology-anthropology,
said that trustees do not have enough
opportunity to interact with the faculty
to understand how painstaking the pro¬
cess of merit review is. Jere Bruner,
associate professor of government, said,
"merit evaluation is like a major opera¬
tion: it's costly, painful, and has to be
done carefully. It preoccupies the atten¬
tion of those involved in it, and it leaves
a certain amount of blood on the floor."
As originally proposed, tbe motion
asked the general faculty council to
"adopt an across-the-board system of
distributing . . . salary increases" to all
faculty, with no merit review. An amend¬
ment allowing some merit review and
some weighting of percentage increases
was passed after a discussion of the
effect of uniform percentage increases.
Samuel Goldberg, professor of mathe¬
matics, said that a 7 percent increase for
a person now making $42,000 was equal
to a five-step merit increase, while a 7
percent increase for a person making
half that was equal to only three steps.
He also said that any alteration in the
annual merit review process was likely
to cost the faculty money in the long
run.
Robert Piron, associate professor of
economics, argued, however, that the
difference between the amounts of mon¬
ey awarded either way was not worth
the trouble of a merit review. It was "a
small amount before taxes and an insig¬
nificant amount after taxes," he said.
Robert Geitz, assistant professor of
mathematics, disagreed. The amount
was not insignificant for junior faculty,
he said. Anyone who would be judged
above average in a merit review would
lose a considerable amount of money in
an across-the-board salary increase. The
amendment passed by voice vote. There
was a written ballot for the affirmative
vote on the amended motion.
The meeting on merit review was
attended by 116 general faculty mem¬
bers, according to Arlene Hall, execu¬
tive assistant to the secretary of the col¬
lege. The 54 to 51 vote indicates 11 not
voting; several administrators, whose
salaries are not determined by the gen¬
eral faculty council, were heard to say
that they did not vote. The merit review
that the administrative and professional
(CONTINUED ON PAGES)
Draft and aid link delayed
Students applying for financial aid
are not at this time required to give evi¬
dence of draft registration or exemp¬
tion, but they "may be encouraged" to
do so, according to an advisory letter
from the US Department of Education
to colleges and universities across the
country. The letter was received last
week by the financial aid office.
Response to injunction
This policy was set following a federal
court injunction issued in Minnesota in
March. The injunction temporarily bars
the enforcement of the Solomon Amend¬
ment—the law that would require stu¬
dents applying for federal aid to show
that they have registered for the draft or
are exempt from doing so. Government
lawyers have decided that the court
injunction applies to colleges and uni¬
versities nationwide, according to the
Chronicle of Higher Education
(13 April).
If the injunction is successfully chal¬
lenged, the information about draft reg¬
istration may be needed later to com¬
plete the financial aid application. In
that case, the application process will be
speeded up for those who have already
supplied it, according to James W.
White, director of financial aid. This
would be particularly true at large uni¬
versities, he said, such as Ohio State,
where contacting each aid applicant for
the information would be especially
time-consuming.
Meanwhile, procedures established
in January in Oberlin's financial aid
office are unchanged. White says. Two
files are maintained: information about
draft registration, if available, is separ¬
ated completely from financial aid appli¬
cations. —Rebekah Bloyd
Grace B. Austin
Grace B. Austin, a sophomore, was
found dead in her dormitory room
Sunday 24 April. The cause of death
was determined by the Lorain County
coroner to be strangulation. The Ober-lin
City police have charged Sean M.
Culmer, a junior, with aggravated mur¬
der. He is in Allen Memorial Hospital
following an apparent suicide attempt.
A member of ABUSUA, Austin had
planned a double major in English and
economics.