Brown and White Vol. 115 No. 21

              the brown and white lehigh university's student newspaper founded in 1894 vol 115 no 21 tuesday november 20 2007 all the lehigh news first profs accents cause confusion for some by nicole nigro ■ two years ago the provost moved control of language evaluation from the esl depart ment to the dept chairs with the increase of global ization interacting with people from across the world has be come an everyday reality this type of interaction can be found as easily as walking into a statistics course in the morning although many can argue the countless benefits of experi encing new cultures language and knowledge from across the globe some students feel that when this impacts their ability to learn in the classroom the prob lem must be addressed some students voice concerns that their professors accents are so thick it impacts their ability to understand material in class tim cauller associate director of english as a second language said this issue is two-sided we must acknowledge the reality that sometimes students are very impatient and inconsid erate in the sense that they are not willing to be flexible enough in what their expectations are cauller said a lot of times people just automatically say that person has an accent — let's close off the communication yes someone who is not a na tive should be fluent enough that they can be fairly easily compre hended but at the same time the students or the listeners have to be understanding the fluency factor tim bonner director of english as a second language said he thinks it is essential for the school to hire international professors there's this gap between what is language and what is culture and do they overlap and the answer is yes bonner said if you bring in different perspec tives and they have a different way of teaching or they've been acculturated in a different way i think that creates a challenge and what academia is about is about challenging your precon ceived ideas about how things work in the world if you're not challenged you're not learning bonner said pennsylvania law act 76 addresses fluency it states instructors must have a certain measured level of fluency he said about 36 other states have a similar law according to bonner esl used to ensure that new non-na tive speaking professors were fluent in english during the hir ing process he would receive a message from the department chair hiring the new faculty mem ber providing the candidate's information he would then call the applicant and ask him some standard questions to gauge his language skills bonner said this was done over the phone to minimize bias from the interview and force the dancing to the beat of hope b&wphoto by katlayman a group of 12 children orphaned by genocide in rwanda spread a message of hope through song and dance thursday see story page 4 new director brings worldly experience by kaitlyn landers ■ former foreign service officer chosen to head study abroad office after the departure of erica smith caloiero for the universi ty of virginia neil mcgurty has joined the lehigh community as the new director of study abroad mcgurty was selected out of three finalists brought on campus by the search committee from an original 34 applicants for the job the committee said they were searching for a person with study abroad administrative back ground who spoke other languag es and who has lived overseas although mcgurty did not have administrative background the committee said they chose him instead of the other appli cants because they felt his back ground and experiences abroad would give an interesting and new insight to lehigh mcgurty spent the past 15 years traveling internationally following his completion from college he joined the peace corps in 1993 and taught eng lish in latvia for two years he returned to the u.s to attend graduate school and was award ed the fulbright scholarship he went abroad again as a fulbright scholar mcgurty went to gradu ate school a second time which lead him to join the foreign service some club leaders find red tape restrictive by matt stayman in the face of a powerful regimented system what control do you have over your fate none according to the writings of german author franz kafka stories like the trial in which a man is arrested for an undisclosed crime demonstrate kafka's criticism of large complex bureaucracies today's private and public educational establishments such as schools and universities are inevitably large and complex like kafka's bureaucracies they also have a necessary degree of control over their students with four colleges and just under 5,000 undergraduate students lehigh is one such establishment and faces many of the same obstacles as any other large organization one challenge is effective communication between students and the administration in order to ensure that students do not feel there are kafkaesque barri ers between them and their goals brittany grier president of lehigh's panhellenic council said she feels that students often face unnec essary obstacles when organizing events on campus she pointed to her recent role in planning the third annual bagel brunch for sorority recruitment as an illustration of the inadequacies in lehigh's approach to approving and funding events for example the requirement to use lehigh's din ing services to cater events in certain buildings was a costly and avoidable problem for the organizers of the bagel brunch grier said because of dining services contract with sodexho lehigh's outsourced food and facilities management company bagels for the brunch cost 1.60 each when they could have been purchased elsewhere for much less she said grier said because the event was in rathbone dining hall the university required dining services provide the food the council of student presidents was e-mailed a list of places where all these rules don't apply but they're really not conducive to these kinds of events she said grier said she was also frustrated in her efforts to get adequate funding for the bagel brunch she said there is no single place to go to request money making the search for funding an unnecessarily com plicated process she said this is especially true of trying to set up new events nobody knows where to go to for approval or funding so we end up doing the same things every year she said associate dean of students thomas dubreuil said in an e-mail that the manner in which students should go about planning an event depends on the situation see esl page 3 see abroad page 4 see tape page 6 ■■■■■■■ l ▼• t — o 1 vtttwttt^i has greek life p^l^fpv \ football team falls check online for passed its prime rl^i^\rw to lafayette 21-17 breaking news page 7 page 16 thebrownandwhite.com