Matters of Student Interest

Recently a couple of matters of interest to students have arisen at Professorial Board level. A number of students have raised questions about them, and, as I was unable to attend the last SRC meeting, I would like to take the opportunity of reporting now what has been going on.

The first matter deals with surveys. As was pointed out in Salient (23.7.75, p.3) "within the next month students are going to face a barrage of research surveys". While that is something of an exaggeration, it is nevertheless true that there will be at least six surveys going on in the university over that time. Those surveys will be entirely un-co–rdinated, except for a couple because of informal agreement reached by two of the researchers involved. I took this matter up with a number of people including Professor Clift, of the Teaching and Research Centre, who is organising a survey of the Commerce Faculty on student workloads, and Professor Cullwick of the Business Administration Department, who is surveying student eating habits and catering. Both agreed that there is a definite need for regulation and co-ordination of the amount of surveying done, and a pool for collecting results and research material. Finally I went to see Professor Jackson, convenor of the Survey Research Committee. He pointed out that this question of lack of co-ordination and over-surveying had been a matter of concern for some time now and that his committee will be putting forward proposals to deal with it. Hopefully they will regulate the amount: of surveying done, and co-ordinate the results obtained. These proposals at the moment are only general and tentative and it is hoped that practical details relating to them will come up at the September meeting of the Board. If any students interested about this matter have any suggestions of their own, would they please see their Professorial Board representatives about it.

The second matter relates to the use of calculators, and is only slightly more boring than the first. This was discussed in Salient (23.7.75, p.6)—and various criticisms, most of which were valid, were made of the science faculty proposals dealing with calculators. Since then, these proposals have been considered by other faculties, and the responses, which read like Trent ham Racing results, were as follows: from Architecture, support; from Arts, endorsement; from Languages and Literature, another endorsement; from Law, a 'no comment'; and from Commerce, a 'let's set up a committee." On this basis the Board then decided to approve the recommendations of the Science Faculty to allow the use of calculators in examinations in the remainder of 1975 and any subsequent years under the four conditions suggested by that Faculty..."

Those conditions have already been outlined in the article mentioned, and they are not without problems. Without entering into that debate however, I would point out to any students who feel they might be disadvantaged by not having calculators, to make their views known loudly and clearly to the lecturers involved.