The machine finds chaos in the dice 15 March 2000
No more need to go to Mexico: Get it here, cheaper! GO TO p. 7
Does your country play in the scientific rat race?
GO TO p. 2
T H E
VOICE GRADUATE STUDENT SENATE
GO TO p. 4
G R A D U A T E
The Graduate
Ictiosapiens: Feminismo y evolución PÁGINA 6
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“…At the time, you know, I didn’t really ponder on it, you know, but, uh, he was deceiving the jury; he wanted to see justice. That’s why I think that the statue with the scales, you know, justice—what is she called, I don’t know what she’s called—she’s got that blindfold on. We don’t see what goes on behind the closed doors.” —David Harris WHO IS HE? WHY DID HE SAY THAT? GO TO p. 5
U NIVE R SIT Y
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MA SSA C H USE T T S,
A M H ERS T
VOLUME 13 No. 2, 15 March 2000
Privatization: the new rage at UMall by Scott Cashman, SEIU, Manager of the Textbook Annex AMHERST—In late January the Chancellor and the Vice Chancellor for Administration and finance announced their intention to turn over the operations of the University Store and Textbook Annex to the Follett Corporation of Chicago. This decision to privatize came as a shock to anyone who actually understands the college-store industry. On 26 January, while we were busy with the start-of-the-semester “book rush,” the Daily Collegian published an editorial about the proposed privatization that sits squarely on the fence. The Daily Hampshire Gazette came out with a similar theme, urging the University to wait and see before proceeding to privatize the food services at the Campus Center. These pieces show exactly the kind of superficial analysis that costs students money in the long run. Consider one simple fact: the University, as part of this deal, sells off the inventory that makes up the store, and has the intention of spending the cash to offset a deficit in some other area. By the time we “wait and see,” the $1.8-million inventory will be gone, the money will be spent, and the University will not be able to get back into the store business if it wants to do so. Everyone from the Chancellor down acknowledges that this is a permanent decision. Nobody really believes that the inventory-buyout money will be put in an escrow account. There will be no trial period, no time for the University to “wait and see.” Consider some evidence. The administration cited the employees’ bid to continue operation of the Store as one having an “excellent customer-service orientation.” The
service provided by the Store will not improve—even the administration is aware of that. In fact, it can very well become much worse: witness the embarrassing impasse that happened at George Washington University, where students and faculty were unable to buy textbooks after the semester had started. This was heavily reported in their student newspaper, the GW Hatchet, whose editorial of 24 January 2000 concluded that “ultimately, the textbook shortage at the GW Bookstore interferes with the University’s primary mission: academics.” Grand Rapids Community College had the same problem. That does not constitute excellent customer service. Then there is the question of prices. There is survey data from around the country that documents the higher prices maintained by privatized stores. Tufts University’s newspaper, The Tufts Daily, published this data last fall; it is available at the GEO office. While the Follett bid promises to retain the current margins used in the store, that is only half of the formula. Margin is always applied to the cost of the item. Follett is vertically integrated, which means that it acts as its own wholesaler. Follett can capture profit at the wholesale level by charging its stores more for a given item than the average vendor rate. Then the store applies its margin to the higher cost. Thus, while the margin is unchanged, students get charged higher prices. Are you willing to wait until next year to decide if
Go to Cashman on p. 2
The Graduate Voice
The University gives up control of its bookstore, and also plans to shed its food services. The UMass community can only lose from the takeover.
Welcome to UMass 2000 Where do you want to go today? You have the choice of a new generation. The sky’s the limit. It’s a different kind of University, winning the hearts of the world. Just do it.
Refuse to lose a penny Students? Teachers? Books? Don’t waste your energy and our money
By Thomas Taaffe, Former Voice Editor, 1997–1999 AMHERST—Budget cuts to academic departments. The dismantling of Affirmative Action. An aggressive privatization policy. Establishing an Honors College while scrapping programs for low-income students. The sorry state of the W.E.B. DuBois Library. Posttenure review. Distance learning. What do all these have in common? They all are part of a coördinated transformation of our University to suit the specifications of corporate élites. Its goal is to stratify the educational experience of students into three categories: community colleges for the poor (if they’re lucky enough to get out of their defunded high schools), McEducation for “ordinary” students, and the dedication of more and more resources to the advancement of a select group of young people—overwhelmingly white, suburban and upper-middle-class. Not satisfied with privatizing the University Store, the administration wants to privatize
Resolution of the Graduate Student Senate passed on 16 February 2000 Whereas: The Academic Affairs budget has become a progressively smaller portion of the University budget over the past decade, a change inconsistent with the fundamental purpose of an institution of higher education and represents a sacrifice of the University’s core mission of providing quality education; While there has been a significant and sustained reduction in full-time tenure track faculty at the University through the Retirement Incentive Program and other means, the proposed reductions to the Academic Affairs budget would exacerbate this trend through a de facto prohibition on the hiring of new faculty to replace those already lost; The proposed cuts to the Academic Affairs budget will result in a significant, and perhaps drastic, reduction in funding for graduate student employees, inevitably causing a significant negative impact on graduate students, graduate programs, and undergraduate instruction; These proposed budget cuts come on the heels of the dismantling of Affirmative Ac-
tion and the elimination or depletion of departments and programs meant to serve ALANA students; The proposed budget cuts will result in larger class sizes, fewer course offerings, less time for student-teacher interaction, and a lower level of service provided by non-academic departments, and hence will be seriously detrimental to the quality of UMass students’ education and quality of life; The proposed budget cuts will impose undue burden on students by making it increasingly difficult for them to fulfill their degree requirements on time; Given the recent history of budget reallocations and faculty attrition, the proposed 1–3% budget reductions represent a crisis for undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and staff at the University; The University received a 4.2% increase in state funding for FY 2000, and has achieved a level of funding significantly higher than that anticipated in the Strategic Action Plan, the proposed budget cuts to all departments are not simply the result of the decisions of the
State Legislature but also of actions and initiatives undertaken by the Chancellor; The Chancellor’s undertaking of major new initiatives prior to securing funding for these initiatives was an irresponsible and negligent act; Funding these new initiatives through cuts to existing departments and programs amounts to a significant and unilateral programmatic change without adequate consultation with the University community. The Graduate Student Senate resolves: 1) That it strongly and unequivocally opposes the proposed 1–3% budget cuts to existing programs and departments; 2) That it calls for the Chancellor’s new initiatives to be curtailed put into abeyance until adequate funds can be found to support them without negatively impacting existing departments, programs, and support programs for underrepresented groups; 3) That it censures the University leadership for being negligent in their obligations to the University and for threatening to undermine its core mission.
and commercialize our faculty and classrooms; and it doesn’t even bother to hide it. Over the last six years, the University has seen its budget grow by a healthy margin ($54 million in State revenue alone, almost twice as much as was expected). Yet the services that make up the core of any college are either stagnant or in decline. The library’s budget has dropped by 18% in the past three years. Even though the State granted it a onetime million-dollar reprieve, the University is planning further shrinkage. The budget for faculty has stayed the same for years, while that for administrative staff continues to grow. financial-aid funding is being increasingly given out as loans or “merit” scholarships rather than as need-based grants—which is how the administrators and faculty got their education in the first place. In the humanities and social sciences, UMass is replacing its aging faculty with one for every three that retire. Having cut 20% of its faculty through budget cuts, attrition, and early retirements between 1990 and 1998 (from 1346 down to 1092), Whitmore is proposing to do it yet again, seeking 10% cuts in academic budgets over the next five years. These cuts will also hit graduate students, as departments—already decimated by previous efforts—have nothing else left to shed but graduate assistantships. This crisis is a phony one, since the University is enjoying a 4.2% budget increase from the State. The Chancellor is operating in conjunction with President Bulger, the UMass Board of Trustees, the Board of Higher Education, and Governor Cellucci. UMass is cutting these departments and deliberately refusing to replace aging faculty so that it can replace teachers with “distance learning”: i.e., videotaped and Internet-based courses. These courses will increasingly be mediated by a so-called “public-private” partnership, in which companies like eCollege.com will both pipe in classes from the outside or pipe them out to community Go to Taaffe on p. 3
P O L I T I C S 2
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¡Ayayayayaaaay! The continuing story of the UMaquiladora
V O I C E
http://estore.aux.umass.edu (413) 545-3570
From: From: Textbook Annex
By Heinrich Huber, GEO Grievance Coordinator the Division would deduct the course fee charged for the course, plus any associated fees, from the tuition reversion to the Commonwealth for Continuing Education students enrolled in state supported courses.” For each student that enrolls, Continuing Education withholds from the state payments equal to the approximate cost of the enrollment fees of a Continuing Education course. The University then pays the discrepancy— the approximate cost of the tuition—to the Board of Higher Education. Thus, Continuing Education is able to fund itself with tax money intended for the education of University students. Shadow sections benefit both the University and Continuing Education. They have allowed degree-seeking students access to courses with which the University is unable to supply them. In return for teaching University students, Continuing Education is able to boost enrollment, access state funding, and generate more revenue. The creation of “shadow sections” has also had the added benefit of securing the number of students it takes to ensure that its classes will run. Courses in Continuing Education can be canceled, with only a moment’s notice, up until the day before classes start. So, if students are able to take the courses they need, and it is less likely for Continuing Education to cancel courses, what is the problem? Well, just as in the maquiladora zones of Mexico, the problem with this situation is that “shadow sections” mean unfair treatment for the graduate-student workers who teach these Continuing Education courses. One of the ways Continuing Education is able to make a profit from courses with “shadow student” sections is by underpaying the people that teach them. Instructors in charge of shadow student sections, approximately 73% of which are graduate students, are compensated at roughly $2,300 a course, less than half of the TA stipend they receive for instructing what are often the same courses during the day at UMass. This situation is unfair because these jobs are so similar. A daytime Teaching Associate enrolled in graduate studies at UMass and who receives a UMass paycheck is eligible to be a GEO member and receives all the wages and benefits that are included with union representation. Continuing Education instructors teaching courses with “shadow sections,” on the other hand, are currently considered not GEO-eligible by the University, even though they have many of the same responsibilities as GEO instructors. GEO/UAW 2322 believes the creation of shadow sections has bypassed the rights of the graduate students who instruct them. In the spirit of companies that recur to maquiladoras, the University has transferred the work of teaching courses from a domain where graduate students have union benefits to an environment where the University is operating union-free. Over the past two years, the University has been continually shifting more and more General Education courses over to Continuing Education. In the Fall 1999 semester Continuing Education ran 52 courses with shadow sections. According to the University’s numbers for this term, these sections had 1191 students registered, of which 755 (64%) were matriculated UMass stu-
Open: 9 to 4 (M - F) Textbook Annex Open: 9 to 4 (M–F)
To: To: students All students Buy your before Spring Break! Buy your textbooks textbooks before Spring Break! The Annex starts returning unsold unsold The Annex starts returning books on March 11, 2000. books on March 11, 2000.
UMass Textbook Annex
AMHERST—Maquiladora zones are “freetrade” industrial-manufacturing zones located at the border between the U.S. and Mexico. Simply put, transnational corporations have been lured to set up shops—maquiladoras— in these regions, and to uproot many well-paying American manufacturing jobs. There are many reasons for this: these “progressive” enclaves are tax-free zones where environmental regulations are lax, labor is cheap, and labor laws are not enforced. This arrangement, which is tremendously beneficial to transnational corporations, has come at the detriment of the surrounding communities, workers, and their families, and also at the expense of many American workers. Since 1998 the University of Massachusetts has been running a similar racket through the Division of Continuing Education, a selfsustaining trust fund under the supervision of Chancellor Scott. “Shadow sections” (the University’s term) are courses offered through Continuing Education that are identical to those offered by the University to its regular full-time matriculated students taking daytime courses. The term “shadow section” is one with many meanings. Courses with shadow sections are made up of two different kinds of students. As the stated mission of the University’s Division of Continuing Education is to provide education for community members, some of the students that enroll in these courses are members of the surrounding community. The “shadow” component of these classes, however, is that the students that make up the vast majority of the enrollment in these courses are matriculated University students. Both groups of students are thus technically registered in the same section, but the courses are administered in two different fashions. Instructors that have shadow sections in their courses are required to keep two different grade rosters, one for Continuing Education students and another for undergraduate students from UMass; the latter are turned over to the University at the end of the term. There is more. Shadow sections are comprised of “shadow students”—University students that have been cast off by the University. Currently, University academic departments are incapable of meeting the high demand for day-session University courses. The result has been that many students are unable to take the courses they want, because courses are over-enrolled. This situation has arisen as academic departments lack the resources to run the number of courses and sections that undergraduate students are demanding. Shadow sections have yet a different meaning for the Division of Continuing Education: they mean money. Seeing opportunity in University over-enrollment, Continuing Education has devised shadow sections that essentially allow it to accept matriculated University students. University students are allowed to enroll in Continuing Education courses at no cost to them, on a space-available basis, in exchange for allowing the enrollment into regular University courses of students that pay the Continuing Education fee. According to a memo of October 1997 by Kevin Aiken, director of Continuing Education, “for every student enrolled at no cost,
15 March 2000
The end of an era? The latest ad published by the University Store, which can very well be the last one it issues as a University-run operation, offers sad, ironic commentary on its fate.
dents. An average shadow section was composed of 14 UMass students registered in the shadows and only eight registered through Continuing Education. Forty-four of the 52 classes had a majority of UMass students. Only eight courses did not. These numbers also illustrate how Continuing Education has benefited from running these courses. If Continuing Education had not had shadow sections in these 52 courses, 22 of them would likely not have run, as they would have contained fewer than eight students, Continuing Education’s cutoff point for running a class. For GEO/UAW 2322, shadow sections mean a deception by the University. Shadow sections are not Continuing Education courses and the University does not offer them exclusively as Continuing Education courses. GEO/UAW 2322 believes that the creation of these sections has bypassed the stated mission of Continuing Education, which is to provide education for community members that are not enrolled at UMass. The creation of shadow sections has enabled the Division to run undergraduate courses and mislabel them as Continuing Education courses. At present, shadow student sections are listed in the University Course Guide. Undergraduate students taking these courses are doing so without even realizing that they are taking a Continuing Education courses. The University, by attempting to make Continuing Education more self-sufficient, has trod on numerous groups of the University community. Undergraduates are forced to take courses at night and the graduate students who instruct these courses are forced to work for below-par wages. GEO believes that the process by which the University administers shadow sections is nothing other than money laundering and has bypassed the rights of graduate employees. Unfortunately for graduate students, the current GEO collective agreement explicitly excludes Continuing Education instructors outside the bargaining unit of GEO eligibility. This boundary is artificial, and the University seems to violate it when it pleases. To counteract this disturbing trend of moving GEO jobs to the free-market zone of Continuing Education, GEO has had two strategies thus far. The first has been to attempt to organize all Continuing Education instructors into a union in order to bargain collectively. The second has been to file a grievance in order to rectify this situation through the avenue provided by the GEO collective agreement with the University. One thing is sure: GEO won’t stop the fight until all graduate-student workers have the right to a collectively bargained contract and to a working environment with fair wages and benefits.
Cashman continued from p. 1 you’ve paid an extra 4.5% for used textbooks and 3% for new textbooks? Are you willing to “wait and see” if you pay an average of 14% more for the notebooks and mechanical pencils that you buy in the University Store? The administration has never made the claim that students will pay less for anything they need. Don’t be fooled. You will pay more next year. The Follett bid also makes no mention of the existing Textbook Rebate Program. Students can now claim a 5% rebate on their textbook purchases. The Textbook Annex encourages all students to claim these rebates. Follett did not even mention them in their bid, and they will disappear. At the same time, they will offer a 10% discount for all faculty and staff. With all due respect to our colleagues, we have always felt that students, not staff and faculty, are entitled to discounts. Exactly what is a corporation going to offer you that you don’t get now. Follett’s online outlet, www.efollett.com, is not unlike the estore that we have been operating for over a year, and appeared on the Web at virtually the same time. Their website advertises during college-football bowl games; ours does not. Still, I fail to see how that enhances the college experience. We do advertise on television, radio and in the Daily Collegian. We target the local market—our customers. Having people in California see our ad won’t really help the University. If you read their bid you will see that everything they are proposing is already here. There is nothing new. The employees, conversely, offered a lot of new things to the University. But the administration’s evaluators weren’t really interested in the service that we provide to the students and faculty. University Accounting seems to believe the myth that they might get more money. The University administration’s rejection of the employee bid is a reflection, not of the quality of the bids, but of the lack of administrative vision of what a college store can be. If the University runs its own store, and the store makes more money, every penny is retained for use at the University. We cannot make this a better place if we give up the ability to reap rewards and reinvest them. The administration wants to allow Follett to pull money off our campus to pad their bank accounts in Chicago. These are just some of the reasons why this decision is not in the best interest of the University. We are optimistic that the upcoming review by the State Auditor will come to the same conclusion. Do a little more research. You may find that the picture painted by the administration is not so rosy.
P O L I T I C S 15 March 2000
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Taaffe continued from p. 1 colleges. Purdue University was recently awarded a grant from the Pew Foundation to test just such a scheme, and UMass is a finalist in the same grant program. Meanwhile, the Honors College continues to gobble up resources and space meant to serve all its students (callers to the Honors College have been promised that it will be spared any cuts). The increasing reluctance of the State Senate to fund this boondoggle means that it will come at the expense of 80% to 90% of the student body. But, then again, the administration is seeking to shrink that student body, and forcing larger numbers of students to decide between attending community colleges or simply dropping out of school. Perhaps they can get their courses on video tape or over the Internet, assuming they can afford a computer or a VCR. While Welfare “Reform” drove 88% of the student-parents on assistance from the school in the fall of 1998, the Chancellor blocked efforts to establish any programs to protect them, even when funds were available. In the spring of 1999, UMass dismantled Affirmative Action, causing a dramatic decline in ALANA populations. ZooMass “promised” a new system for ALANA inclusion that has yet to be produced. No wonder: replacing Affirmative Action with a patchwork project to repair the damage will cost millions of dollars, and sounds quite unlikely in the current atmosphere of budget cuts. Why bother, at any rate, to invite those who cannot afford to play in the new corporate Disneyland? While our library falls apart and its books grow more and more out of date, University hucksters peddle football stadiums and new hotels to potential investors. Our cafeterias and university stores—which turn a tidy profit and provide money for needed student services—are being peddled off at rock-bottom prices to massive corporations. Our Campus Center will soon become a tacky little shopping mall, complete with a McDonalds, a Taco Bell, and a Follet Bookstore. Instead of taking classes and reading books we will have the pleasure of watching the Tyson Chicken and learning from Jerry Springer. Remember the half-million dollars that the University shelled out back in 1997 for new debit-card student IDs? These cards will ultimately serve as “keys” providing access or denial to offices, dorms, etc., and will allow the tracking of those using those portals. Such changes will not be cheap, since these new locks will cost hundreds of dollars each and will require extensive, expensive rewiring. To those who insist on coming despite their lack of money, the University now offers loans instead of grants. Nice deal: Whitmore reaps more profits, while the poor get deeper in debt and will have to spend half their adult lives paying for an increasingly sub-standard education. To satisfy the needs of the powers that be, UMass will build a private honors college so that those elites can save their money at the tax payers expense. For the rest of the rabble, UMass will provide distance learning—the acknowledged descendant of mail-order colleges—despite the fact that every study done so far has found it to show lower completion rates, lower test scores, greater student dissatisfaction regarding quality, and an almost total lack of student-teacher interaction. It will continue to cut its faculty, and continue to cripple its library. One day perhaps, UMass administrators will have their perfect, “virtual” university— one having no students, no teachers, and no books. By definition, a school is a place for students, teachers, and books. Yet these priorities are always last on “White-more’s” list, and are only referenced when the time comes to count consumers and to aid the rise of overpaid administrators and politicians who mistake the public coffer for their own.
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Privatization: 20 questions 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
Where do the University Store’s and the Textbook Annex’s profits go? Where will those profits go when Follett takes over? Will the services and facilities at the Campus Center survive when they stop receiving support from the University Store? Will Follett stock sufficient levels of books to serve the community? Will Follett provoke textbook-availability crises like those that happened at GWU and Grand Rapids Community College? Will faculty and TAs get diminished service from Follett? Will faculty and TAs continue to be able to borrow books from the Annex while they are waiting for desk copies? Will Follett process desk-copy requests for faculty and TAs? Will Follett maintain a staff of textbook professionals, or one of minimum-wage employees? Will Follett turn away international students who are looking for jobs? What will be the impact on the University of Follett’s reduced staffing levels? Will Follett have an aggressive policy of recruiting faculty and TA textbook orders before the buyback period starts? Can Follett really support a store the size of ours, or will customers have to wait in line for even longer periods? Do eFollett commercials played during the Rose Bowl enhance the educational experience that students get at this University? Will the University have any options if Follett fails to provide adquate service? Is it appropriate for corporations to make profits by providing essential services in public education? Did parents send their children here to indoctrinate them into corporate America’s marketing saturation? Is it appropriate for students to see Coke—and now Follett—logos and brand names at every turn? Is the community currently receiving high-quality service at the Store and Annex? If it is, should this change? Score: If you are a student, pay the administration $70,000 for each answer. If you are faculty or staff, enjoy your 10% discount—and remember: you’re next. If you are Whitmore, Just do it!
It’s time to ditch distance learning By James A.W. Shaw, GEO/UAW President AMHERST—UMass should distance itself from “distance learning,” not embrace it. Recently, the university announced it would begin three new online graduate programs—in nursing, business administration, and environmental public health. Students can actually receive a degree from UMass by logging onto courses over the Internet. Hey, just download a diploma; there’s no need to even show up for it. Distance learning is a disgrace. It separates student from teacher, and compromises the quality of education: students log onto a web site, and participate in learning online, rather than conversing with an actual teacher and receiving comprehensive feedback. In another version, students tune into a television broadcast of a lecture in which there is no opportunity to ask questions. In some instances, the broadcast is via closed-circuit, and students can ask questions, but usually there are so many students tuned in that the individual attention each one receives is negligible. Why is this happening? Distance education is cheaper, and more students can be “serviced” (as compared to “educated”) at cutrate costs. Of course, you get what you pay for. Ostensibly, distance education is being developed to expand educational opportunities for all kinds of people. (A UMass website brags about outreach to soldiers, the disabled, and parents of little kids.) However, and despite all the hype to the contrary, distance education is not a democratic boon to higher education. More and more in American higher education, it is the affluent who can afford high-quality, traditional, liberal-arts, and inperson education. The rest of us are consigned to learning a few skills that allow us to play our small rôle in modern society—a sort of intellectual subsistence. If those basic skills are offered online at a reduced rate, all the better. At UMass we have already seen larger class sizes, fewer course offerings, and attempts to specialize education. UMass is explicitly focused on producing workers for a capitalist workforce rather than scholars and citizens. That is a pathetic way to think of people, and a despicable compromise. This is not a science-fiction nightmare by a writer like Kurt Vonnegut, but the reality of education at UMass. Chancellor David K. Scott and President William M. Bulger are engaged in an active program to destroy the quality of education at UMass. These administrators seem to think that education is only about credentials. It does not matter to them how individuals get degrees, as long as the money comes in and the degrees go out. Cash in, credentials out—it’s really that simple.
There are now the three online graduate programs being offered this semester. Several undergraduate courses are being conducted online through the Division of Continuing Education. The graduate programs are in conjunction with eCollege.com, described by a university press release as “a leading online educational provider.” This is only the beginning, I promise you, unless people speak up and demand an end to this sham. Scholars across the United States are highly critical of distance learning. Indeed, the critique is prima facie, and there is no pedagogical defense. You cannot have meaningful distance education; and furthermore, whatever benefits it can bring are far outweighed by the alternative of in-person education. So why does it exist? And why are university administrators embracing the concept? The answer is simply financial. University administrators have decided to compromise quality due to the stresses caused by the declining public support for higher education. It is something like a path of least resistance. However, there is an ideological battle at stake, too. There are many, including the university’s Board of Trustees, who believe that education is an economic privilege and that the state should not play a rôle in educating those without the resources to pay. Their perspective is to let the market bear the burden. Unfortunately, the “market” can only bear the burden of cheap educational alternatives such as distance learning. However, higher education, whether public private, should be about more than just delivering instructional services at market rates: it should be about preparing citizens for citizenship. And this is done by producing critical thinkers who can look about the world and provide meaningful analysis. This is why, traditionally, public education is funded. It is not intended to produce a profit; it is intended to produce a better world by educating citizens. Citizens, frankly, are not necessarily profitable. Well-educated citizens often oppose resistance to market and entrepreneurship schemes that are socially or morally corrupt. However, our university has abandoned the goal of producing critical citizens. In announcing the partnership with eCollege.com, Chancellor Scott said: “Fundamental to all of our strategic planning is the idea that the Commonwealth is our campus. The partnership with eCollege.com is another step to the ultimate goal of bringing education to everyone, everywhere, anytime in the Knowledge Age.” What garbage. Scott is trying to fool us into thinking that these types of programs expand access to education, and are thus more
democratic. However, the university is actually shying away from a broad and expansive democratic education and favors a more technical one, in which citizens are provided with “skills” that allow them to function in a world pre-conceived for them by capitalists. People are no longer given the tools to construct their world, economically, politically and socially. Rather, they are given meager survival skills to make do in a world created by others. At a recent press conference in the Campus Center, I was highly critical of distance learning. I had a brief discussion with a man whose wife was taking distance-learning courses. He and his wife were struggling financially, he said, and his wife was stuck at home raising their children. He said they could not afford child care, but that his wife still wanted a higher education. “Shouldn’t we be able to get that education, too?” he asked insistently. My answer, of course, was yes. “Then, why do you oppose distance education?” he asked. “It allows more people an opportunity to get a degree.” Ah, then it dawned on me. I asked him, “Why does your wife deserve an inferior education than those who can afford child care and large tuition payments and for whom money is no barrier?” He did not have an answer, because there is really no honest answer. He merely replied with a frustrated, “There’s nothing else we can do,” exhibiting the kind of defeatist attitude that will allow these destructive policies to move forward. Indeed, he was angry because his wife was at home raising their children and receiving a substandard education through a distancelearning program while the sons and daughters of corporate leaders are sitting in small classrooms, with top instructors, and receiving a world-class education. But he didn’t know how to fight it. Or perhaps he was content to believe that everything would work out OK in the end and didn’t want to. In his final analysis, his wife would have a degree at the end of it—despite the pathetic quality of the actual lived experience—and that was enough to open even a small occupational door that could potentially raise the family income slightly. Why are so many of us willing to sacrifice the lived experience for the credential? This is frightening. Think of the implications for our society. There will be fewer scholars in the long run, because fewer and fewer people will have access to the quality, one-on-one type of education required to produce top scholars. Then think about who will have access to these educations. Distance education is really about distancing most people from a true education. Fight it.
The Graduate 4
VOICE
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Snapshot: Publish or perish
Volume 13 No. 2, 15 March 2000 919 Lincoln Campus Center University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA 01003 (413) 545-2899 Editor: Juan Pablo Fernández jpf@physics.umass.edu
— Founded in 1987 — Dan Costello, Editor 1988–1990 John Davis, Editor 1990–1991 Pierre Laliberte, Editor 1991–1992 Hussein Ibish, Editor 1992–1995 Ali Mir, Prasad Venugopal, Editors 1996 Thomas Taaffe, Editor 1997–1999
WWW.SWENSONFUNNIES.COM
The Graduate Voice is a publication of the Graduate Student Senate at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Mike Tjivikua, President tjivikua@educ.umass.edu
Jessica Bianca Erickson, Vice-President bianca@javanet.com
Jon E. Zibbell, Executive Officer jonz@anthro.umass.edu
Christine A. Ashley, GWN Coördinator cashley@educ.umass.edu
Diane E. Matta, EAC Coördinator dmatta1@aol.com
Olga Vartsaba, Office Manager olgavartsaba@yahoo.com
The Graduate Voice is committed to progressive political agendas. It is against racism, chauvinism, and savage capitalism; it is pro-choice, pro-Union, and pro-Affirmative Action. It firmly believes that everybody should have access to affordable, high-quality education, decent housing, reasonable child care, and fair wages.
V O I C E
Music San Jose Taiko, the JapaneseCalifornian “drum-dynamics troupe” that will perform on Sunday, 26 March at the Fine Arts Center Concert hall, goes one step beyond mere world music. It joins the traditional rhythms of Japanese drumming with the beat of African, Balinese, Brazilian, Latin, and jazz percussion. They customarily get rave reviews from the San Jose Mercury News, and did very well in Carnegie Hall. After playing at the Nugget Casino in Reno and in Jerry Lewis’s Muscular Dystrophy Telethon, the artists will grace the FAC with their mesmerizing performance. The show starts at 7:00 P.M. Tickets are $9, $7, or $5 for students. Call 5-2511 for info.
15 March 2000
THE WORLD 15 March 2000
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The map on the left displays the scientific “prowess” of 50 of the world’s countries in 1995, as measured by the ratio of their scientific output—expressed by the number of technical papers published that year by their scientists and engineers in journals catalogued by the Science Citation Index of the Institute for Scientific Information—to their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in billions of dollars. Israel tops the list with 54; Luxembourg, Mexico, and China, with two each, are at the bottom. Together, these 50 countries produced 98.2% of the world’s scientific literature that year. 54–29 25–20 18–13 8–2 By continents, the distribution was as follows: North America, 38%; Western Europe, 27%; East and Southeast Asia, 12%; the former Soviet Union, 6%; Northern Europe, 4%; Southern Europe and the Pacific Ocean States, 3% each; the former Soviet bloc, the rest of Asia, and South and Central America, 2% each; the Middle East and Africa, 1% each. SOURCES: CIA World Fact Book,September 1997; Institute for Scientific Information, Science Citation Index; CHI Research Inc., Science Indicators Database; National Science Foundation, unpublished tabulations.
A film: “The Thin Blue Line” The Thin Blue Line, a documentary by Errol Morris, tells the true story of the arrest and conviction of Randall Adams for the murder of a Dallas policeman in 1976. With its use of uncut, verbatim depositions by the principal characters, expressionistic reënactments, and a haunting score by Philip Glass, the fllm ultimately led to Adams’s release from prison. Its style has been copied in countless reality-based television programs and feature films. This is “the first murder mystery that actually solves a murder,” as Morris himself describes it. Dallas Policeman Robert Wood’s routine inspection of a night driver with broken headlights becomes his last when the man behind the wheel shoots him dead. Sixteen-year-old David Harris is arrested for the killing but swears that a hitch-hiker, Randall Adams, has committed the crime. Adams is captured and—as evidence mounts against him—duly sentenced to death; Harris is released. Twelve years later, when Morris runs into him while interviewing people for a documentary on a Texas attorney, Adams is still on death row—and so is Harris. As Morris—and the audience—confront the evidence, and get to meet the characters, blood starts to curdle. Terrence Rafferty in The New Yorker called The Thin Blue Line “a powerful and thrillingly strange movie. Morris seems to want to bring us to the point at which our apprehension of the real world reaches a pitch of paranoia—to induce in us the state of mind of a detective whose scrutiny of the evidence has begun to take on the feverish clarity of hallucination.” It was voted “the best film of 1988” in a poll of 100 critics conducted by The Washington Post and, won the Golden Horse for Best Foreign Film at the Taiwan International Film Festival, received an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America.
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Todos somos el Ictiosapiens Por Roberto Palacio, Departamento de Filosofía, Universidad de los Andes
Hace más de treinta años un ama de casa del sur de Gales, inquieta e indignada con un reciente libro del ya para entonces famoso zoológo y evolucionista Desmond Morris, decidió lanzar una teoría conmovedora sobre la evolución humana. Para el gran público — y en menor medida para la comunidad académica— que seguía los más recientes avances de la teoría de la evolución como quien lee una novela por entregas, el nombre Elaine Morgan no significaba nada. En cuestión de semanas la señora Morgan alcanzó el estrellato científico con una obra que fue vista por algunos como una provocación directa al libro de Morris The Descent of Man. Retando abiertamente lo que ella consideraba una concepción machista de la evolución (empezando por el título mismo) la señora Morgan decidió publicar The Descent of Women, y desde entonces el problema del evolucionismo tomó un matiz ideológico y maniqueo que hasta el momento no había tenido. En su libro, Morris había expuesto una visión de la evolución humana que para nosotros es ya moneda corriente: el ser humano desciende de una familia de primates homínidos que en un transcurso de tiempo relativamente corto (hablando en términos evolutivos, claro está) pasó de ser una pacífica criatura vegetariana y ramoteadora conviviendo en estrecha armonía con el paisaje arbóreo a ser una criatura omnívora y cazadora que ahora debía enfrentar de pie los peligros de la sabana. Para el nuevo primate, la vida social y cierta división elemental de las tareas según el sexo era la norma general. Las mujeres estaban dedicadas primordialmente a las tareas de recolección de frutos y granos comestibles, así como a las labores propias del cuidado de las crías. Los hombres, por otro lado, deberían encargarse exclusivamente de la caza. Hoy por hoy quizá hayamos replanteado en algunos aspectos fundamentales la imagen que nos fue propuesta por Morris —por ejemplo, algunos investigadores de los antepasados humanos piensan que es mucho más factible suponer que el hombre nunca se separó del todo del paisaje boscoso, de los árboles, y que nunca se enfrentó del todo a la sabana abierta. Siempre, nos dicen, procuró vivir en el límite entre la sabana y el bosque: sólo esporádicamente usaba la sabana como un medio para conseguir las provisiones indis-
pensables, y de inmmediato volvía a replegarse en los árboles. Sin embargo, la imagen que nos presenta la señora Morgan en su libro sí parece haber cambiado las cosas, y no sólo de manera superficial: el ama de casa del sur de Gales se imagina al hombre como una criatura que se desarrolló en gran parte en ambientes acuáticos tales como los lagos y las orillas marítimas. El hombre buscaba en este ambiente sobre todo una fuente de alimentación segura y confiable. Quizá por esto, dice la teoría de la señora Morgan, la mayoría de los restos de los primates homínidos que creemos contar entre nuestros antepasados se han hallado en las inmediaciones de grandes cuerpos lacustres del pasado, o en las vecindades de mares antiguos. Muchos factores peculiares de nuestra naturaleza física parecían confirmar la teoría: por un lado, la denudación casi total de nuestra especie, que a diferencia de los gorilas y los chimpancés perdió la pelambre corporal, y la conservación de algunos escasos pelos que parecen estar orientados en la dirección de una corriente de agua imaginaria que va de la cabeza a los pies, parecerían poner en evidencia una estrategia adaptativa a la natación. La escasez de pelos y su orientación habrían servido el propósito primordial de evitar la resistencia al agua y los problemas de humedad que suscitaría una pelambre constantemente mojada. El hecho de que andemos desnudos debajo de nuestra ropa puede parecer una peculiaridad que no es digna de mención; sin embargo, desde un punto de vista zoológico sí llama la atención que de entre los mamíferos terrestres hemos sido los únicos en perder nuestra pelambre, excepción hecha de los elefantes y los rinocerontes, que también se ven en problemas a la hora de mantener una temperatura corporal constante. Otra de las peculiaridades que nos rehusamos a compartir con la mayoría de los otros mamíferos terrestres es la acumulación de una capa de grasa corporal debajo de la piel. La capacidad de acumular dicha capa de grasa evolucionó en algunos mamíferos que no son exclusivamente terrestres (como las focas, por ejemplo) con el fin de regular la temperatura corporal en un medio acuático. Como si esto fuera poco, el llanto, un fenómeno bien conocido por las amas de casa como la señora
Morgan, por fin cumplió un propósito útil y vino en apoyo de la teoría. De entre los mamíferos terrestres parece que somos los únicos que secretan una sustancia acuosa por un canal lagrimal dados ciertos estímulos externos. Sin embargo, compartimos esta peculiaridad con muchos otros animales marinos. Las tortugas marinas secretan una sustancia similar al llanto humano con el fin de protegerse los ojos del resecamiento cuando se encuentran en tierra. Los defensores de la teoría de la señora Morgan incluso han querido ver membranas palmeadas entre nuestros dedos, semejantes a las que tienen los patos en los pies y que les permiten remar. Todas estas pruebas suenan muy fuertes, y para el que las oye por primera vez pordría parecer incluso que la teoría es irrefutable y que la ciencia biológica misma es un marasmo de necedades si se niega a aceptar una teoría que puede dar razón de tantas peculiaridades biológicas de nuestra especie. Sin embargo, cada uno de los puntos que la teoría esgrime a su favor puede ser interrogado por su efectividad para apoyar la teoría misma. Es más: muchos de estos puntos incluso podrían ponerse al servicio de teorías que contradicen la de la señora Morgan. El punto concerniente a la denudación es quizá el más complicado de tratar, ya que no es en absoluto claro por qué perdimos nuestro pelaje, el cual habría sido muy adecuado en un invierno frío y prolongado, o simplemente en una lluviosa tarde, aunque quizá no habría sido tan agradable en una calurosa tarde de verano al lado de la piscina. En efecto, los investigadores, argumentos más, argumentos menos, parecen coincidir en la idea de que andamos desnudos debido a problemas relacionados con la temperatura corporal. Se puede incluso tratar de una estrategia evolutiva para facilitar el control de los parásitos. En todo caso no es necesario suponer argumentos relacionado con el agua. Por otro lado, la denudación es relativa. Más que disminuir la cantidad de nuestros pelos, lo que disminuyó fue su longitud y grosor. Un hombre adulto cuanta con la misma cantidad de pelos que un chimpancé; lo que pasa es que los pelos del chimpancé son más gruesos y más largos. La capacidad de acumular grasa corporal es un argumento en realidad más débil a favor de la teoría de la señora Morgan. El argumento no explicaría, por ejemplo, por qué somos tan
propensos a morir rápidamente de hipotermia cuando caemos en aguas frías, y tampoco explica el hecho de que incluso animales como las aves son capaces de acumular grasa corporal en determinadas situaciones en las que se lo exige su metabolismo. Con respecto a la capacidad de producir lágrimas, habría que explicar el difícil camino que va del líquido protector de los ojos en el caso de las tortugas a una sustancia que se secreta sólo en ciertos estados emocionales extremos. En efecto, parece que las tortugas no lloran por tristeza, ni por verse amenazadas de extinción. Los argumentos basados en la idea de que tenemos una membrana palmeada entre los dedos ni siquiera merecen una consideración seria. Quisiera, hacer un comentario sobre el otro argumento que supuestamente apoya la teoría de la señora Morgan: el hecho de que los restos arqueológicos humanos han sido encontrados en inmediaciones de viejos cuerpos de agua extintos. Esto es tanto como decir que, dado que encontramos objetos de piedra entre los hombres del neolítico, seguramente esos hombres vestían pantalones de piedra y camisas de piedra, y que en sus ratos de descanso consumían sorbete de gravilla. Es comprensible que no estemos libres de errores semejantes en nuestras teorías. Quizá dentro de un millón de años los arqueólogos del futuro encuentren los restos de nuestra civilización y se lleguen a preguntar cómo hacíamos para cocinar nuestros alimentos sin que nuestros recipientes de plástico se derritieran al contacto con el fuego. En todo caso, lo que no hay que suponer es que la vecindad con un objeto o con un elemento sea sinónimo de que vivamos en él o de que sea nuestro único medio. Puedo imaginar un millón de razones por las cuales al hombre primitivo le hubiera gustado vivir al lado de un lago o del mar, la menor de las cuales no es el sencillo gusto de levantarse en la mañana y observar el alba despuntar sobre el agua en reposo. Hay quizá un último elemento que los defensores de la teoría han esgrimido a su favor: el hecho de que vivimos nuestros primeros meses de vida dentro del vientre materno rodeados de agua es una muestra clara de que somos seres acostumbrados al elemento, de que evolucionamos para adaptarnos al medio acuático. En realidad este argumento es tan débil como los demás. Prácticamente todos
www.mermaid.net
René Magritte, L'invention collective (1935), detalle
L E I S U R E 15 March 2000
los mamíferos terrestres exhiben esta peculiariadad —incluso los perros— y no por ello vamos a argüir que entre los antepasados recientes (en la escala evolutiva, naturalmente) de los canes hay un animal acuático. Si ninguno de estos argumentos es fuerte, ¿por qué entonces adoptar esta estrategia explicativa? Algunos argüirán quizá que el solo hecho de que la teoría es revolucionaria y novedosa ya la habilita para ocupar un escaño dentro del museo de extravagancias respetables de la ciencia; y sabemos que muchas de esas extravagancias han tenido la buena fortuna de convertirse en teorías aceptadas y respetadas cuando la evidencia es suficiente, o sencillamente cuando no hay otra teoría mejor. Piénsese por ejemplo cuando Hubble propuso la imagen de un universo en expansión o cuando a Copérnico se le ocurrió que los planetas giraban alrededor del Sol y no de la Tierra. Sin embargo, se debe tener mucho cuidado con este tipo de posiciones. No todo lo que tiene el sabor de la novedad tiene el aire de la verdad, ni siquiera en las ciencias, y que una teoría sea revolucionaria no la habilita como aceptable o siquiera útil: una revolución en culinaria también puede ser comerse la carne cruda; una revolución en arquitectura puede ser dormir al aire libre. Lo verdaderamente increíble es que una teoría como la de la señora Morgan se haya siquiera considerado con alguna seriedad sin que haya la más mínima evidencia (fósil en este caso) que la apoye. En efecto, no se han encontrado fósiles del Ictiosapiens de la señora Morgan. Debo aclarar que el término Ictiosapiens no fue acuñado por la teoría de Morgan ni por mi persona: en realidad pertenece a unos de los capítulos más infames de la historia de Hollywood, una película en la que se narra la historia de un Mundo acuático en el que los personajes desesperadamente intentan encontrar tierra firme durante más de dos horas en medio del gran océano que en algún momento del futuro inmediato ha inundado la tierra por efectos de la contaminación. En ese ambiente, ya algunos humanos han evolucionado hasta desarrollar una especie de agallas detrás de las orejas. En una escena digna de olvidarse, Kevin Costner corre sus orejas hacia atrás para dejar expuestas sus agallas, y los humanos que aún no han evolucionado exclaman al unísono: ¡Ictiosapiens! En la teoría de la señora Morgan, todos somos el Ictiosapiens. Pero dejando de lado las historias de Hollywood, ¿por qué se consideró seriamente una teoría que ni siquiera presentaba una evidencia fósil respetable? ¿Por qué imaginar la evolución humana teniendo lugar en un ambiente acuático? Debo confesar que no encuentro otra razón para tanto rebusque que la influencia de ideologías extrañas al quehacer científico. Como bien lo mencionábamos al comienzo de este escrito, a la señora Morgan le interesaba mostrar una imagen feminista de la evolución humana, y claro, el punto central que debía atacar era la idea de que hubiera incluso la más mínima división de tareas de acuerdo con el sexo. Recordemos que los años sesenta concibieron el feminismo ante todo como una lucha contra la división de tareas entre los géneros y una reivindicación de la igualdad. ¿Cómo se logra este efecto? La respuesta fue muy clara: imaginándose un medio en el cual una división de las tareas de
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acuerdo con el sexo no tuviera mucho sentido. Ese medio era el acuático. No tendría mucho sentido allí decir que los machos salían en grupo a cazar y que las hembras permanecían en casa cuidando de la prole y llevando a cabo tareas de recolección. Sencillamente cada cual procuraba su alimento, un poco a la manera en que lo hacen los delfines, las ballenas asesinas y los grandes cetáceos. El punto central de toda la argumentación debía estar centrado en el ambiente porque el estudio de las diferencias anatómicas entre los géneros habría arrojado una diferenciación —así fuera mínima— en cuanto a las diversas tareas . En esta imagen lo que es increíble no es tanto que las ideologías de moda en la época hayan influido en la ciencia: de hecho, la ciencia de todas las épocas, siendo como lo es una actividad humana, es un reflejo de los intereses de la época. Lo que sí llama la atención es que se suponga que la verdad en la ciencia está dictada por los cánones de lo que nos parece justo o injusto, bueno o malo, mejor o peor. Me explico. A la señora Morgan le parecía injusta y discriminatoria la imagen dada por Morris en su libro; le parecía injusta ante todo la división de tareas entre géneros. Como esta visión es injusta, la verdad
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de la teoría que la expone puede y debe ser puesta en duda. Por lo tanto, hay que reformular las teorías que presenten un cuadro que nos parece injusto, que tocan lo que tenemos por bueno o por malo. Se trata de juzgar la veracidad de los hechos con base en lo que nos agrada o desagrada. Como es injusto que el pez grande se come al pequeño, digamos que esto no sucede, nunca sucedió y jamás sucederá. Caemos en la falacia que los filósofos modernos conocían tan bien y contra la cual advirtieron al decirnos que no vale la pena utilizar nuestros preceptos éticos para decidir acerca de cuáles fueron los hechos: la falacia de mezclar el es y el debe ser. El feminismo de la señora Morgan reproduce con creces la falacia del es y el debe ser. En realidad la posición mencionada es muy antigua: la patraña se conoce desde los comienzos de la especulación científica, en el siglo VI a.C., cuando los filósofos pitagóricos decidieron que debería haber diez planetas en lugar de los seis que se podían observar a simple vista,y lo hicieron por la sencilla razón de que el diez era un número que les agradaba más que el seis. Como es mejor que haya diez planetas, entonces de hecho hay diez planetas. Es innegable que el feminismo de la señora
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Morgan —y el de gran parte de nuestros tiempos— es pitagórico: como es mejor que no haya diferenciación de las tareas por géneros, entonces se debe reescribir toda la historia del género humano para que dicha diferenciación no aparezca. No sorprende que el feminismo está empeñado en reescribir toda esa historia, y no sólo la de los comienzos evolutivos de la especie. Esto es lo que se quiere decir en realidad cuando se dice que toda la historia ha sido escrita por la pluma discriminatoria de los hombres. Pero la verdad es que a los hechos en general y a la naturaleza en particular le importa poco lo que tengamos por bueno o por malo, por justo o injusto. El pez grande seguirá comiéndose al pequeño, y las hermosas gacelas de Thomson seguirán siendo destrozadas por los crueles leones. Otra forma de enfocar el problema: si en español —y en inglés evidentemente— tuviéramos una sola palabra génerica para ser humano que no coincidiera con la que tenemos para ser humano varón adulto, es decir, si tuviéramos una palabra como la griega anthropos, quizá no se habría escrito tanto sobre nada, como pasó en el episodio de la historia de la ciencia que acabamos de examinar. Todo por una palabrita.
Backgammon From Mesopotamia to medieval England; NYC, X-22, and robots By Konstantinos Katsikopoulos, Ph.D. “…Diana Ross ponders her moves studiously, propping her chin on tight-clenched knuckles… One week last spring Lance Rentzel drove the San Fernando Valley departmentstore circuit trying to buy a backgammon set for Dean Martin’s birthday, and the stores were temporarily out… Hugh Hefner and Stan Herrman’s club in Beverly Hills, called Pips – A Private Club, hosted the first West Coast for-women-only tournament…” The above are excerpts from Donald Carter’s Backgammon: How to Play and Win, one of the scores of books that tried to capitalize on the backgammon craze of the 1970s. After disappearing from the scene in the 1980s, backgammon came back with a vengeance in the 1990s, and in this new decade is being the subject of serious study in the laboratories of ambitious artificial-intelligence researchers. However, the history of the game is much longer than that. Oswald Jacoby, scion of “backgammon’s foremost family” (according to The New York Times), points out that Sir Leonard Woolley, the British archæologist that excavated the Biblical home of Abraham, Ur of the Chaldees, found five game layouts among the ruins that resemble our backgammon boards; these layouts are no less than five thousand years old. According to the Oxford Universal Dictionary, the earliest recorded use of the word backgammon is from 1645. The most plausible source for the word is Middle English: baec means back and gamen means game—
the composite thus refers to a game in which (i) you want to go back home and off the board but (ii) you may be forced to go back to the bar and may have to start again from scratch. Even though it is less popular here than in Great Britain, backgammon has been played in the U.S.A. since the 1700s. Thomas Jefferson played often, and kept records of his wins and losses. Interest on the game was mediocre until the 1920s, when some unknown genius—most surely a regular at a New York City club—came up, in true American spirit, with a novel idea: the doubling cube was proposed, a device that both precipitates the inevitable and rapidly increases the stakes. For the purists, the prototype backgammoner sits on a patio overlooking the blue Mediterranean sea, smokes a cigarette, drinks coffee slowly, and plays rapidly and quietly; he—yes, he—smiles and talks a little and never complains of his luck. All over Western Europe and North America, enthusiastic backgammon players routinely reread the books of the 1970s, including Bruce Becker’s notoriously inaccurate and cheesy Backgammon for Blood, and can kill to grab hold of used copies of Paul Magriel’s longout-of-print Backgammon. Dr. Magriel, professor of applied mathematics at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and National Science Foundation fellow at Princeton University. popularized analytical thinking about the game. Insisting on a holistic approach, Magriel proclaims
backgammon as a game where one recognizes and anticipates visual patterns. Magriel’s nickname, X–22, was inspired by his ultimate attempt to conquer chaos in the dice: in April of 1980, Magriel organized a tournament in which he was all 64 participants and played it from start to end. The 22nd contestant got the trophy, and Esquire magazine covered the story. In June of that same year, an electronic backgammon board appeared on the cover of Scientific American: professor Hans Berliner of Carnegie-Mellon University had built the first robot ever to defeat a human world champion on a board or card game: BKG 9.8 beat Luigi Villa of Italy; the score was 7–1. In March of 1992, Bill Robertie, editor of Inside Backgammon, annotated his matches against a robot that learned to play from experience. Gerry Tesauro’s TD-Gammon mastered the game by playing endlessly against itself and using the reinforcement-learning methods developed—where else?—at the University of Massachusetts Amherst by computer-science professors Rich Sutton and Andy Barto. The technical details were reported in the Communications of the ACM on March 1995. The consensus is that robots can now compete with human masters, and it is not even 2001. Clarke, Kubrick, and HAL have had the last word. As everything else nowadays, backgammon has also gone digital, and might even go public soon. A good place to start is www.bkgm.com.
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The Graduate Student Senate
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will hold its next three meetings between 5:00 and 7:00 P.M. on Wednesday, 22 March, 902 Campus Center Wednesday, 12 April, 903 Campus Center Wednesday, 3 May, 904 Campus Center
Come and participate ! 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 Human factors is the study of the relationship between 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 humans and machines and/or 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 humans and their environment. 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 Every time that a human being performs a task, there are 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 certain cognitive processes that occur, along with 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 certain physical limitations. 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 Human factors is concerned with 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 understanding these 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 cognitive processes, 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 physical limitations, and 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 human tendencies and then 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 applying these attributes to engineering design. 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 The final results are designs that 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 increase production, 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 decrease injuries, and 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 improve the quality of life for humans. 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 Some of the issues that human-factors engineers deal with are 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 workplace design, 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 cumulative trauma disorders, 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 hand-tool design, 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 human-computer interaction, 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 human-machine interfaces, and 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 safety. 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 Some people describe human factors as bridging the gap between 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 cognitive and 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 experimental 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 psychology and 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 engineering design. 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 At the 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 University of Massachusetts Student Chapter of the 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 Human Factors and 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 Ergonomics Society we 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 learn about the current issues relating to 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 human factors and 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 ergonomics by 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 taking field trips to 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 various places that deal extensively with human 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 [ factors and by 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 inviting guest lecturers to our meetings. 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 We would like to extend an invitation to all 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 undergraduate and 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 graduate students who are interested in this 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 new and 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 exciting field 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 to join us as members of the 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 Human Factors and 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 Ergonomics Society. 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 To obtain more information about human factors 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 visit the HFES website at www.hfes.org or 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123 contact Rick Carpenter at 545-3393. 1234567890123456789012345678901212345678901234567890123456789012123
Dance Listen to the critics: “Ecstatic freshness,” “frenzied liberation,” “a passionate impetuous streak,” “amazing twistings and topplings,” “unduly placid quiet moments,” “energetic fits of movement,” “radiant togetherness,” “shrewd gamesmanship and challenge.” Sara Pearson and Patrick Widrig, who will perform at Kendall Studio Theatre in Mount Holyoke College on Thursday, 23 March promise to “people the landscape” and “give free rein to their passion for space.” The show starts at 8:00 P.M. Tickets are $5 for students. Call 5-2804 for more info.
A Call for Queer-Friendly Performers The Pride Alliance, the registered gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and straight ally organization at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is pleased and proud to announce Queer Fest 2000, its annual celebration of queer life and culture.
WE ARE LOOKING FOR LOCAL AND NATIONAL TALENT, INCLUDING MUSICAL PERFORMERS, POETS, SPEAKERS, COMEDIANS, STAGE PERFORMERS, AND OTHER QUEERFRIENDLY ARTISTS TO PERFORM AT THE EVENT. This year’s Queer Fest will be held on 27 April 2000 and will be divided into two venues: one in the afternoon and one in the evening The day portionof the festival is free and will be held on our campus lawn. The night event will be held in our Student Union Ballroom and will be a more formal event with a small admission cost.
Jazz Watch the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra on Saturday, 25 March at the UMass Fine Arts Center Concert Hall. The winning ensemble from the Second New England Annual High-School Jazz Festival opens. The concert starts at 7:15 P.M. Tickets are $9, $7, and $5 for students. Call 5-2511 for more info.
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN PERFORMING QUEER FEST FEEL FREE TO CONTACT US AT (413) 545-0154 OR AT queerfest2000@hotmail.com