ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 10, 1995 TAG: 9512110025
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
TYPE: LETTERS
As doctoral students in the College of Education, we share values with Virginia Tech President Paul Torgersen on quality education. Our desire for quality education was the reason we selected Virginia Tech for graduate study. Surely the administration can understand our alarm upon hearing our college was being altered, and perhaps even dissolved.
Even though Torgersen stated that our programs will remain intact, we cannot help but be fearful of the long-term implications of this seemingly arbitrary decision. Why dismantle an exemplary college that has achieved regional, state and national prominence?
This unilateral decision violates university efforts regarding affirmative action for women, minorities, and nontraditional students. Can any other graduate program in the university match the diversity of our student population? More than 75 percent of recent doctoral graduates were female and/or minority. This statistic also reflects our current enrollment. Faculty and staff are committed to an environment conducive to professional development for its diverse student community.
A university that purportedly models the tenets of total quality management surely recognizes the importance of involving all customers in such a far-reaching decision. Our desire is to maintain the pride and prestige of the College of Education as it now exists. To negate this reputation diminishes our identity personally and professionally as future alumni of the university. We are now making legal and legislative inquiries in an attempt to preserve our college and its programs.
Virginia Tech counselor doctoral students
Jeff L. Cochran, Terri E. Street, Leslie P. Graham, Mary Anne Knobloch, Debbie W. Wallace, Susie R. Mullins, Mary L. Moore, Matt Shollenberger
Blacksburg
Seeing through 'smart' road haze
Bravo to Julia Stewart Milton for her Sunday, Dec. 13 letter to the editor concerning the "smart" road. She displayed her moxie by adding some thorough research to her innate feeling and opinions about the road.
Whatever happened to Frost's "Road Less Traveled?" What happened to moral and fiscal responsibility in a county and a country where powerful corporations and institutions are willing to rape the land so that a few minutes of time may be saved for commuters - while small children ride school buses on narrow, treacherous roads? My daughter rides to school on such a road, and the county and the state say there is no money to widen or repair many such roads.
Would the state usurp the county's decision and proceed with creating the road, even if the county stood firm and voted "No" to this invasion?
That is a question I'd like the elected supervisors to ask, even if the answer is no.
Mary Campagna-Hamlin
Elliston
LENGTH: Medium: 58 linesby CNB