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The Rice Thresher
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by Mariel Tam Thresher editorial staff
To go into effect, the motion must pass on its second reading March 13. The faculty was originally going to vote on a motion made by the University Standing Committee on Undergraduate Curriculum to modify the requirement. "The committee does not recommend the language requirement remain in its current status," CUC Chair John Zammito said when he presented the motion. However, members of the committee were divided on whether to modify the requirement or to abandon it completely, Zammito, also the History Department chair, said. The committee's motion proposed that the faculty "lower the bar" of the requirement, meaning students would have needed the equivalent of two semesters of language instruction rather than four. "This would result in a reduction in the requirement from 'proficiency' to something closer to 'familiarity,'" the motion reads. The motion to modify the requirement also proposed ratifying Rice's language exams. The language requirement, passed in April 1999, said students could prove competency in a language by passing "a nationally accredited standardized placement test." However, the motion says, the faculty did not understand that such a test for foreign languages did not exist. Thus, Rice had to create its own exams. Other proposed modifications included evaluating the language program after three years. However, soon after discussion on the modifications began, Physics and Astronomy Professor Paul Stevenson made a substitute motion to abolish the requirement. This way, the faculty could discuss an alternative to modifying the requirement, and possibly abandon the current version entirely. Some faculty members spoke against reducing the requirement, calling it "watering down." Reducing it to language familiarity destroys the reason for having the requirement in the first place, English Professor Alan Grob said. "The grounds for justifying it are the grounds for proficiency - really mastering another language," Grob said. "It seems to me that familiarity is even less of a grounds for justifying the only requirement we would have, and therefore I see little reason, in order to maintain this sort of vaporous spirit of a requirement, to pass the motion that the committee has put forward." Foreign language instruction should not be required for all students, said English Associate Professor Scott Derrick, who also opposed reducing the requirement. "I don't think unwilling learners make very good foreign language students," Derrick said. Several faculty members voiced their support for the requirement. "There's just no substitute for being able to talk to someone in their own language," Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Professor Joan Strassmann said. Strassmann said there needs to be change in the way the requirement is implemented so that Rice can have "a real language requirement," rather than reducing the standards because not enough students coming into Rice are able to prove competency in a foreign language. "What I'm now hearing is in fact our high schools have let us down," she said. "So now we say, 'Oh, this is too hard to do, so let's lower the standards.' You don't hear that about calculus, about the harder engineering courses." Political Science Professor John Ambler said he was worried about abolishing the requirement after implementing it for a year, although he originally opposed the requirement in the first place. "I am really nervous about flip-flopping by eliminating the language requirement," Ambler, a member of the CUC, said. After about 45 minutes of discussion, the faculty voted to end discussion and vote on Stevenson's motion to abolish the requirement. The motion passed 92-26. Following the vote, discussion ensued about whether students who matriculated this year would have to fulfill the requirement. Zammito said the CUC would propose a resolution to this question at the March 13 meeting. President Malcolm Gillis said deciding on what to do about this years' students would only require one vote and therefore could be addressed at the next meeting. Many faculty members at the meeting said they were not surprised with the outcome. "It was predictable," German and Slavic Studies Chair Klaus Weissenberger said. "But, I think that one semester as a basis of judging the requirement ... was not enough." Stevenson said he proposed the substitute motion because it seemed that most people wanted to eliminate the requirement. "I suspected, as was the case, that there was a majority in favor of abolishing," Stevenson said. "It's not that I don't think languages are important. ... I think students should be free to make their choices themselves," Stevenson said. "I don't believe in a coercive curriculum." The substitute motion helped prevent the faculty from modifying something that could have been eliminated entirely, Physics and Astronomy Professor Stanley Dodds said. Dodds, a Wiess College resident associate, presented comments to the faculty in October that said the implementation of the requirement went beyond what was passed by the faculty. "We did avoid an extended debate on something that we might well have voted down, so I was pleased to see Stevenson putting in the substitution, and we seemed to be moving relatively expeditiously," Dodds said. Zammito said the committee presented its motion to modify the requirement to try to salvage it, even though it seemed that most people wanted to abolish it. "People either wanted to stay with the old requirement - I don't think there were very many of those - or to junk the whole thing, and frankly that was what I felt as an individual," he said. "But as a committee we thought it was necessary at least to try to present something that might survive, and then once the faculty saw fit to demolish that, then to go forward all the way," Zammito said. No one spoke in support of the committee's proposed modifications, Zammito said. "What was truly remarkable, if you think about it, was that no one stood up and supported the motion that the undergraduate committee put forward," he said. Gillis said he didn't think eliminating the language requirement, after implementing it for only one year, would hurt Rice. "Look, let's be frank about this, and let's don't be immodest," Gillis said. "We've got a lot of pretty good intellectual capital and a very good reputation, and if we felt like we've done something that needs reversing and we turn around and do it, I think you get respect." "I think it behooves the university, when it thinks it made an error, [to] quickly correct that error rather than trying to hang on and justify it," Gillis said. The motion to abolish the requirement is likely to pass on its second reading, Speaker of the Faculty Robert Patten said. Zammito and interim Dean of Humanities Gale Stokes agreed. Hispanic and Classical Studies Department Chair Lane Kauffmann said he supported the requirement but that it has had "a number of problems." "I think the burden of implementing it fell heavily on the Spanish program, probably because near 60 percent of the language-studying population is [studying] Spanish," he said. The change will be largely positive for the department, he said. "It will be much easier to staff the language sections, and it will be a lot less expensive," Kauffmann said. The reversal should not affect the other language departments too greatly, Stokes said. However, Weissenberger said eliminating the requirement gives the impression that Rice doesn't value foreign languages. "I think the foreign language departments will suffer from that because it means, from the outward sign, that foreign languages are not important," Weissenberger said. The reversal demonstrates problems in trying to set university-wide requirements, Stokes said. "It confirms something that has been true for the past 10 years - that the faculty cannot agree on anything as university-wide requirement because each school has very different goals, very different things they're trying to do," he said after the meeting. "If you compare music, architecture, engineers, humanities, you have very different schools, and it's hard to find a requirement you all can come to terms with," Stokes said. At the close of the meeting, Stokes thanked the language departments, the Language Steering Committee and the Language Resource Center for working to implement the requirement. Language instruction at Rice has improved as a result of the focus the requirement has brought it, he said. "The best way to encourage anyone to study anything is to make the subject so fascinating that they're attracted to it. ... I think our language instruction has become a lot more interesting in the past five years," Stokes said after the meeting. Gillis said knowing other languages has been "an immense advantage" to him. However, he said, "I don't think that's necessarily so for all students." "My philosophy has always been ... that what you want to do with languages is make the instruction and the facilities so good that people will want to take them," Gillis said.
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