Brown and White Vol. 85 no. 34

              lehigh university brown and white bethlehem pa tuesday february 12 1974 866-0331 vol 85 — no 34 confidential forum report opposes ottervik for post by jeff bloom our recommendation is that dr eric ottervik not be promoted to the position of vice-president for planning at this time but that a selection committee search for and interview several suitable candidates for the position of vice-president for planning so that the best candidate may be selected this was the conclusion of the report by the special forum committee considering the nomination of eric ottervik vice provost for the position of vice-president for planning the report and committee deliberations were supposed to remain confidential but through a reliable source the brown and white was able to obtain the document the special forum committee established at the dec 3 forum meeting consisted of the six permanent members of the forum administration committee chaired by wesley r smith professor of physics the report dated feb 5 was in the form of a letter to university president w deming lewis and the board of trustees the seven members of the executive committee of the board of trustees will vote on the nomination by mail ballots were sent to the committee saturday by elmer glick vice-president-treasurer who serves the trustees in the capacity of secretary the brown and white has obtained a copy of a letter written by lewis that was sent to the executive committee with their ballots the letter answers many of the objections raised in the forum com mittee's report and explains why lewis wants ottervik promoted to the vice president of planning position the lewis letter says eric ottervik who now serves as vice-provost and coordinator of university planning has in fact had the central staff responsibility for planning for several years and has per formed excellently the special forum committee said in its report that it solicited and obtained letters of recommendation from outside of lehigh and considered the opinions of faculty and students at lehigh these recommendations the committee report continues indicated that dr ottervik has demonstrated many qualities which would be useful to him in the role of vice-president for planning he coor dinates the efforts of others and is ef fective in getting others to agree on common purpose ind organization he does his staff work well the report says that the job description for the new vice-presidential position essentially requires the above qualities for the successful fulfillment of the duties and that dr ottervik s qualifications clearly fit him to carry out these stated func tions but the report adds they should since the job description was designed to fit dr ottervik in his letter to the trustee executive committee lewis acknowledged that there may be doubts about the qualifications of the committee to pass judgment in this matter he said with the advent of the new century fund and particularly the need to work intensively with a large number of individuals and b&w photo by ton ell eric ottervik spring retreat planned for forum members by dave slagle the operations and procedures sub committee of the forum has tentatively planned a retreat for forum members on april 20 the purpose of the retreat is to introduce new forum members to the working of the forum and its various committees forum student elections are scheduled for april 3 and 4 twenty faculty members as well as the student representatives from the class of 74 will be leaving the forum nick noel 74 chairman of the sub committee expressed his hope that the retreat will help get everybody together and develop a working cohesiveness for forum v at times the forum seems to resemble a room full of strangers he said besides learning about forum committees and procedures new and old forum members will have an opportunity to learn about each other he said a definite site for the retreat has not yet been chosen the retreat is planned as a one-day affair although originally an overnight retreat was discussed the possibility of inviting a trustee representative to the retreat was also discussed poll shows most b a students dislike language requirement by mike actis-grande more than 77 percent of the b.a students in the arts college do not favor the present language requirement ac cording to a brown and white poll approximately one-fourth of the 1,200 b.a students were selected at random from a roster provided by the arts college the b&w enlisted the aid of robert j thornton assistant professor in economics who teaches courses in statistics to verify that the sample taken would be representative of the true population all b.a students the poll consisted of six questions asking the student's class how many semesters of foreign language the student are-was forced to take and if the student had fulfilled his requirement students were also asked if they were satisfied with the present overall distribution requirements and more specifically whether their opinion of the language requirement was favorable or unfavorable finally students were asked whether they favored a less restrictive distribution requirement more than 84 percent of the students favored a less restrictive distribution requirement only 55 percent however said that they were not satisfied with the present requirement the breakdown by class shows that seniors had the strongest sentiment against the language requirement overall only 18 percent of those sampled favored the requirement 77 76 75 74 total favorable 19.3 16.7 24.4 9.3 17.9 unfavorable 74.2 79.2 73.3 88.4 77.73 no opinion 6.5 4.1 2.3 2.3 4.37 ( figures are in percentages ) . more than 93 percent of those students who were forced to take five or six semesters of a language had an un favorable opinion of the requirement however even the majority of students who were never required to take a language these students may have placed out of the requirement said that their opinion of the requirement was un favorable of those students who completed their bethlehem gas rationing is suggested by mayor by e.m pongracz a scheduled gas distribution program proposed by bethlehem mayor gordon mowrer will be discussed at a public meeting wednesday evening at town hall like the plan being instituted in new jersey the bethlehem proposal would permit motorists with license plates en ding in odd numbers to purchase gas on odd-numbered days of the month while those with even-numbered plates would get their gas on even-numbered days joseph antiga of the executive board of the pennsylvania service station dealer's association said the current three dollar maximum was unsatisfactory to both service stations and their customers it's just too low i'd prefer a more realistic standard set at say ten gallons we've all got the same problems too little gas mowrer initiated the proposal in response to an urgent situation i feel that action must be taken immediately i'm not willing to sit here and wait for an already grave problem to get worse said mowrer he spent the weekend canvassing the city for reactions to the plan so far the reactions i've been getting are really good neither customers nor gas station personnel are happy with the way things are now most of the people i've talked to seemed willing to cooperate i'm in favor of continuing some sort of rationing as long as service stations are suffering from limited supplies of gas allentown mayor joseph daddona said he prefers a mandatory program but added only the state has the right to do that as mayor of allentown i don't have the right to take such action people are jumping to conclusions and making the worst of a bad situation he continued you can't hoard tanks of gas the way you can save up closets full of toilet paper a gas tank can only hold so much carrying more in cans or extra tanks is dangerous both antiga and mowrer encourage publishing a schedule of the hours kept by see gas page 4 see lewis page 4 see most page4 vice presidential report wesley r smith chairman of the administration committee of the forum requested that this be published in the brown and white the special subcommittee of the should not be published forum made their report on the vice-presidential nominee for the position of the vice-president for planning to dr lewis this report was confidential only seven copies of this report exist four copies were delivered to the president's office one copy was delivered to the chairman of the forum and two copies remain in my files the report was intended to be con fidential and represented the carrying out of the wishes of the forum we are sorry that it cannot remain confidential since we feel that personnel recommendations should not be published special issue this is the last regular issue of the \ | brown and white until feb 22 | | there will be a special two page i | issue coming out this friday feb i 15 which will be devoted to the penn \ 1 state wrestling match the issue | i may not be distributed to all \ § residence halls and frats but will be % 1 available in the u.c and in grace . hau