WGBH Journal; Art In Public Places

Or a case by case determination of those to be benefited suffered from racial discrimination. These decisions compel the conclusion that states also may adopt raise conscious programs designed to overcome substantial chronic minority under-representation where there is reason to believe that the evil addressed is a product of past racial discrimination. Now let me read to the logic of this. Therefore our prior cases unequivocally shows as Justice Brennan that a state government may adopt race conscious programs if the purpose of such programs is to remove the disparate racial impact its actions might otherwise have have and if there is reason to believe that the disparate impact is itself the product of past discrimination whether it's own or that of society of large there's no question as Justice Brennan is on page 45 of the opinion of the University of California Davis his program is valid under this test. Interestingly enough the chairperson of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination sees the Supreme Court's decision as an extremely narrow one. Jane Edmonds spoke with Lisa fruit today and said that the boggy decision does not affect affirmative

action programs nationwide. We see the decision as not taking. Affirmative action pro se it speaking to Mr Allen backy who is a particular individual who tried to be admitted to a particular school in a particular state. And what we clearly can see if anyone else can see that the Supreme Court has ordered Mr. Makki to be admitted with respect to affirmative action affirmative action is alive and well. I'm happy that we finally do have a decision on Baquet because that will allay the fears of many many people who thought that back you stood for an affirmative action program and stopped it with a ruling in favor of Mr. back either that affirmative action programs would be in severe jeopardy. Mr. Adwan says however that the decision does does make it clear that race may still be considered as one factor in the admissions process and affirmative action advocates view this as a victory. This decision says that race in most definitely may be a

factor and as long as race and color can be a factor then I think we need to realize that the Supreme Court in its wisdom has endorsed this whole idea that there's a need to have race and power as a factor for selection process is quite a Very well said that race and power may no longer be a factor. The Bacchae decision will undoubtedly be the object of much interpretation for weeks to come. And journal will continue to provide coverage of the issue for GBH Journal this is Marcia Hertz. A group called Project to lay out Spanish for the Reading Project is committed to expanding the availability of Spanish language books and

audiovisual materials in schools and libraries in this country. The 10 year old project a response to bilingual education IQ evaluates material from Spain Latin America and translated material from this country. Through publication of a bulletin and holding educational institutes in various parts of the United States. They help to make recommendations regarding the selection of quality work written in Spanish dealing with numerous topics at different levels of readings of education. What makes this project a particularly timely topic to investigate the recent complaints to the message of this commission on discrimination in regards to the Civil Service police examination given in Spanish. It was criticised for its poor translation and grammatical errors. Although working at a different level Mandalay Avenue is raising the issue of quality reading material it should be available to the Hispanic population which country. A member of member station WAMC you in Washington read this report. Actually our staff evaluates between two and three thousand books a year from

literature history and professional journals to novels and textbooks even books for the blind. Associate Director Susan Benson says the project was an outgrowth of the passage by Congress of the Bilingual Education Act. Too often she says the bilingual student found that there were no materials in the library to support what the student was learning in class. There was a large Spanish speaking population is growing very fast. It was beginning to be interested in reading in Spanish that there was a recognition of bilingualism and that there would be a market for materials in Spanish. The project was designed to select require materials from all over Spain and Latin America and in the United States in Spanish and evaluate them for their usability and usefulness in this country. All of those are made available by distributors that are listed in the bulletin so that they can be bought. With English language orders with US dollars and gotten in a short period of time as libraries and schools

get any books why was there a need for something like this. Because number one the librarians that are serving a large public libraries don't have money to hire someone who just will select and find out about materials in Spanish. Number one they have maybe 10000 people to serve in maybe 500 or thousand other Spanish speaking or are more. Number two it would be very hard to find librarians who knew Spanish number one well enough who could write letters to publishers in Spanish and who could deal with them. But the producers of the materials project coordinator Ruth Thomas and consultants from libraries and universities around the country do the actual reviewing and evaluating of the books. And I asked Ruth Thomas if 10 years after the Bilingual Education Act our libraries have enough Spanish language material. I would say very few of them do. Obviously I haven't been able to visit all of them but I think the. Very definitely that their collections are inadequate in most cases.

As far as Spanish language materials are concerned we were quite sure that except in very few libraries they wouldn't have that many materials to take home one per week for each child you know throughout their school career. Quinn you evaluate a book in Spanish. What are you looking for. First of all we're looking for high interest materials and that can be either you know in literature fiction nonfiction and so forth but what we think will be of interest to a large number of people. We do check. Not by a real serious formula but we do check frequency vocabulary and words and sentences and so forth to make sure that we're not recommending too many things that would be highly advanced. However there's a lot of the contemporary Latin American literature which would be on the advanced level but nevertheless would be a very high interest so we would do those probably the largest category of things that have been rejected so to speak are. Mostly poor translations

of things from particularly from English into Spanish. And if the Spanish makes no sense which occasionally is what happened why and how does that happen. Who's doing the transplant. We're never sure. We can always tell sometimes that things aren't even proof that most of them are that are things that are published here in the United States that are the most serious offenders of poor translation project coordinator Ruth Thomas and associate director Susan Benson say American publishers have begun to diversify and a few now put out some titles in Spanish. Usually a translation of an English bestseller. But there is still a shortage of textbooks. Thomas and Benson say they keep an eye out for books that are too traditionalist or sexist or too religious all characteristics they say of many books from Spanish and Latin American writers. And while the evaluators want books to improve the image of the Latino they have no guidelines to follow on what many would consider racist portrayals of the lazy Mexican for example. Instead Thomas and Benson say

they just try to avoid cliches. There are certain other organizations that. Evaluate books more along those lines we've kind of sound from our experience using various consultants from different parts of the country in different ethnic groups and so forth that there's no single overriding opinion. In many cases there's no single overriding opinion of what appears to be racist or negative what we're looking for is good good books that are maybe universal you know appeal. But for instance at one of our sessions there were several books about little Mexican boys who were barefoot in a little poncho who had some big problem that was solved by the Virgin of Guadalupe or by a priest or something and the evaluators objected to so many books about passive little boys who looked in the conventional image of the sort of sleeping character under the cactus with some great

outside force coming in and solving the problem. They wanted some nice active little boy with a problem and he solved himself. And there are too many books like this and it's the same thing you'd be sensitive to in an English language book but you might have a book that is very oriented toward the upper class we've seen a few books from Spain not many where you have something about the family how the family should be and they have a picture of the good family a picture of the band family and the good family is obviously a request that it has obviously. Corporate claps and they have you know the good mother is slim and lovely and is wearing high heels in arranging flowers in the bad mother's sort of fat slob in a way and visiting her hooded tacky chair. You know that's a very unusual as an extreme case and I have a particular book in mind that is laughable it's so bad that way for actually air holds teacher librarian institutes around the country mostly in the south and southwest where the Spanish population is growing fast. The seminars make educators aware of the

books that are out and how to get them at a good price. The project has just received two federal grants totaling one hundred eighty one thousand dollars one from the Office of Education and the other from the National Endowment for the Humanities to continue its work in this field. The ultimate goal of the project says Susan Benson is to make bilingualism in American society more than just a patronize ing gesture or National Public Radio I'm Karen she grew in Washington. Professors James and Marjorie would share a number of things with one another in

the same. Together they are an assistant professor of English at the University of Rochester New York and they find this highly satisfactory and fulfilling both their professional needs and allowing time for their personal interests. This type of arrangement may be an idea whose time is at member station WXXI for Borg sharing the same professors Carly and woods. They lived under the same circumstances for two years before ever coming to the University of Rochester. It all began while they were finishing their doctoral dissertations at Oberlin College in Ohio. Neither really had the time for a full time job but when a position opened up in the Oberlin English department the opportunity was too good to ignore. So they applied together Oberlin already had experience with this type of situation. Several other couples share appointments there and Carly and

Woods were hired. Originally However they only took the job for practical reasons. Professor James Curley. We didn't like the idea of one of us working in the other not going to positions available and others wanted to commute. So at that time it just seemed like a kind of negative ritual. And I think what we found is when we started split a job that it was so much more exciting than we initially thought that when it came to applying for another job we were very clear about having that as our highest priority. Whereas initially I think we would have seen is if there are going to jobs we would have like. At this point I think we both feel very strongly that splitting a job is what we want to do is not simply a negative which was really our very strong feeling about the best way of working for us. The major advantage says currently is more free time with only half the responsibilities of a full time or both Carly and woods are able to pursue other interests. And both say they feel as fulfilled sharing the job as they would if they individually had full time positions.

Professor Marjorie woods a lot of the way you feel about the job does depend on the way your colleagues feel about you whether they feel that your real scholars are really part of the department or whether you're part of the part time people who are hired to fill certain vacancies that occur in different you know specific courses need to be taught and there's no one who can do it. And we've never felt at all here any. Against a spread out and people seem to be very enthusiastic about it so enthusiastic in fact that other faculty members singled out Carly and woods. I remember here when we first came they introduced them. They introduced a whole series of new people and we arrived and some of them were just stupendously exciting and huge and I thought oh God we are nothing of them. When they said introduced us as a couple everybody applauded. So I thought I would say it really worked well to it rather than do this. It's one of the professors Carly and woods most ardent supporters as Roland Collins chairman of the University's English department Callan said to approve the appointment before it could become official.

And before granting approval you heard the opinions of some of his colleagues there were questions I think various members of the department about the unusual nature of this appointment. How does one deal with a couple. How does one work out the aspects of appointing two people to one position and to these seemed to be questions that were easily handled and ones that the technical aspects were worked out it was very. Smooth so smooth that it seems simple celery and teaching load a shared tenure is no problem because Carly and woods have separate contracts so that each is evaluated separately just as any other assistant professor would be. And both Carly and Woods receive full health and other types of benefits. Professors Carly and Woods are the first and only couple sharing the same position at the University of Rochester. But since they were hired a year and a half ago the university has had many other applications from couples seeking the same arrangement. They know which department

alone has received more than a half dozen of these applications department chairman Rowland Collins says there is good reason these applications are becoming more frequent. There are fewer jobs available in colleges and universities now than there used to be and there are more and more. Applicants for these jobs so that the the relationship between the supply of good instructors and the availability of good jobs is becoming very troublesome. Consequently many couples have a hearing about this possibility. I have made application as couples thinking that they would be far more likely to find a single job that would suit them then they would be to find two jobs in the same town or in the same university. Ten years ago no one had ever heard of a couple sharing an assistant professor ship. And it's still uncommon although more and more universities are now considering the idea. When

asked whether the shared appointment is advantageous to a university English department chairman Rowland Collins answers that there are no obvious disadvantages. That answer may be instrumental in the willingness of other universities to accept the idea for National Public Radio. This is Marty Buck's in Rochester New York. With the long awaited Supreme Court commentary followed on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

How come Friday. But two other decisive court rulings this week has the huge demonstration against a nuclear power plant in New Hampshire subsides for the moment. A Supreme Court decision makes us more aware of what it is taking to develop nuclear power in the United States. The court rejects a claim that a limit of five hundred sixty million dollars for a single nuclear accident is too small. The limit was set by Congress in one thousand fifty seven. A North Carolina group held it was insufficient protection from the Duke Power companies to nuclear plants near Charlotte. They sued the power company and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission claiming the liability limit denied them equal protection under the law. You know as much as no limit is set for any other accident. They persuaded the federal district court to limit was unconstitutional but the governor appealed with a warning that unless reversed the court's ruling would be a major impediment to further

private development of nuclear energy in this nation. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed a lower court. Chief Justice Berger found ample justification for the limit for the court Berger said the act bears a rational relationship to the Congress concern for stimulating the involvement of private enterprise in the production of electric energy through the use of atomic power. Although the plaintiffs claim the half million liability limit was too small to cover the potential damage of a nuclear accident the amount was far beyond the limits of any available liability insurance which was one hundred forty millions. The Congress required the insurance industry to extend that with the financial pool. Three hundred ten millions more. Another 110 million was provided in federal funds. Three Justices Stephen Stewart and Rehnquist held that the case never should have got in the federal court because the suing group lacked standing. It was the South

Carolina environmental study group joined by some 40 residents near the you know clear plans. But the court majority held the group did have standing for their class action suit. A ruling a broad effect on SAS accessibility of the courts to class actions which has been a major issue of Ralph Nader's and of consumer advocate groups. Another decision Monday the court took another step of denying the press any rights beyond those of the public generally. The press is still protesting the court's ruling of three weeks ago that the press has no First Amendment protection against a search warrant. Yesterday the court held the press has no special rights of access to prisons in this case to the High Court had reversed a lower federal court which had ordered a California sheriff to let television reporters and their cameras into the Alameda County Jail. It was a close thing for three two justices did not participate Blackman was Ellen Marshall disqualified himself as former

NAACP counsel whose clients would often have been in jail. The chief justice wrote for the majority and for the press has no constitutional right of access to jails or other government facilities beyond that committed the public. This court has never intimated a First Amendment right of access to all sources of information within government control. A protest by Stevens was joined by Brennan and Powell though the public and press have an equal right to receive information Stevens thought the government may be constitutionally a blind to provide access to the press. Has the public segregated without some protection for the acquisition of information about the operation of public institutions such as prisons. The process of self government would be stripped of its substance but they lost just as Stewart provided the decisive force vote with his own reservations. The lower court injunction against the sheriff was over brawn you know allowing reporters to go to areas where the public was barred.

So he voted to reverse it. But the pressure to have effective access to facilities open to the public. Stewart said. This would include television cameras that might be prohibited to the public. Terms of access that are reasonably imposed on the public may be unreasonably imposed on journalist if they impede effective reporting he said. A very special court event brought law school deans and Bar Association heads in the United States attorney general to the Court of Appeals a federal judge in Kaufman New York yesterday. They can decide to break the record of that busy court. It has had no backlog of cases for the past five years. Theat Carroll is unique in the annals of the federal court system. Such is the state of justice in America the New York Times reported it when a federal appellate court operates on schedule. Some of the country's leading lawyers feel is a cause for celebration. One naturally thinks by contrast of the Massachusetts court delays extending for years the governor the carcass seeks to correct through

court reorganization. That plan is still stalemate in the legislature. I would demand that county court car specie have to the state while retaining patronage and raising salaries in the court bureaucracy. The legislative record on this recalls Dechen Circumlocution Office whatever was required to be done the Circumlocution Office was beforehand and they are perceiving how not to do it. Second location and administration can of course mean much worse. Has the institutional in effectiveness that horrified Governor Dukakis in today's report of the welfare Department's incompetence to protect against child abuse. And let me try to catch up with the slip in my Monday report on the bride of God by jumping in New Jersey. It was not seven tons a day from New York and Pennsylvania but 7000 tons a day. One only learns the traps in this business by falling into them. And the abbreviation opens a danger you must spell it all out as Evie

N. T H O U S A N D. But some people never learn. Or Wednesday the funny is from June 1978. That's TB external regional news magazine heard Monday through Friday at 4:30. The user editor for The Journal is martial arts that is engineers. He called me and I'm going to. Have a wild and wonderful windfall for Wednesday.