Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Advocate, September/October 1997, Vol. 9, No. 1, Gc Advocate

The Advocate

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Higher Education Services Corporation Hires Private Company to Track Student Loan Defaulters. Andrea Zimmerman (p. 1)

Italian-American Group Charges CUNY Discriminates. Mark Petras (p. 1)

Administrators Seek Staff Increase for Computing Service and Library. Mark Petras (p. 1)

Anti-Sweatshop Coalition Fights Corporate Greed. Mark Petras (p. 1)

Pataki to Approve CUNY “Workfare” Legislation for Students on Public Assistance. Andrea Zimmerman (p. 3)

Annals of Administration: CUNY’s Controversial Writing Assessment Test to be Administered at All Community Colleges (p. 4)

Masthead (p. 2)

Editorial Page (p. 2)

ABC Has Insulted Our Intelligence. Mark Petras.

CUNY BOT’s “Committee of …

A Note From The Development Director, Stephanie Grant

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

During the past two years, CLAGS has been educating itself about organizational development and fundraising. Grants from the New York City Lesbian and Gay Funding Collaborative and the Rockefeller Foundation have enabled board members and staff to attend workshops and conferences designed to expand our knowledge about non-profit management and to increase our fundraising and organizational skills.

A Note From The Board Chair, Framji Minwalla

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This has been a difficult, yet especially productive year for CLAGS. As most of you know, Jill Dolan stepped into Marty Duberman's shoes, becoming our first new Executive Director since the founding of the organization seven years ago. And while we all miss Marty, Jill has accomplished a daunting task brilliantly.

Graduate Students Explore Forms Of Desire, Jay Plum

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Last April, QUNY (the association for queer students at the CUNY Graduate Center) and CLAGS co-sponsored Forms of Desire: The Seventh Annual Queer Graduate Studies Conference, showcasing the research of more than 100 graduate students from across the country and around the world. With panels on such topics as "Sexuality and the State," "Pre-Modern Sexualities," "Lesbian Erotics," "Reading Bisexualities," "Queer Ethnographies," "AIDS and Its Narratives," "Queer(ing) Masculinities," and "Homo Hollywood," the conference approached the growing field of lesbian/gay/queer studies from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives.

Ackerman Lecture, Suzanne Iasenza

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The First Annual Dr. John Patten Memorial Lecture was held November 14 at the Hunter College of Social Work. CLAGS agreed to cosponsor the lecture, developed to honor the life and work of Dr. John Patten, faculty member of the Ackerman Institute for Family Therapy, Medical Director of the Institute's AIDS Project, and co-founder and co-director f the Institute's Gay and Lesbian Family Study Project. Dr. Patten was also co-founder and senior editor of In The Family Magazine, a family therapy-oriented magazine for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and their relations. He died of AIDS on October 4, 1995.

Colloquium Addresses Queer Pedagogy, Harriet Malinowitz

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

On Saturday, March 8, CLACS held a one-day event called Queer Pedagogy: A Colloquium on Sexuality and Curriculum. The colloquium addressed questions about the purposes, methods, language, applications, contexts, affiliations, and performance of queer studies in academic classrooms.

A Letter From The Executive Director, Jill Dolan

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Working with CLAGS this last year at our quarterly Board meetings, at our monthly committee meetings, and with the daily operations of our office, I'm continually impressed by the sophistication of our programs, the depth of our discussions, and the passion of our arguments about gay and lesbian and queer studies and its relationship to our diverse communities. After a productive year of four conferences and our monthly colloquia, amplified by co-sponsored events that sometimes didn't even make it onto our annual calendar, I'm proud of the richness of the work we've sponsored and presented.

Michael C.P. Ryan Bequest, James Wilson

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

CLAGS has received a generous bequest from the from the estate of Michael C.P. Ryan. The executor of Mr. Ryan's estate, Ana-Mita Betancourt, announced that the $60,000 bequest will fund the Michael C.P. Ryan Latino/Latina Colloquium Series, a five-year program exploring political, cultural, and artistic questions facing lesbian and gay Latino/as in the United States and Latin America. The bequest follows an earlier gift from the Ryan estate that helped fund the historic conference. Crossing National and Sexual Borders: Queer Sexualities in Latin/o America, in October 1996.

The Use Of Plot Surveys For The Study Of Ethnobotanical Knowledge: A Brunei Dusun Example, Jay H. Bernstein, Roy Ellen, Bantong Bin Antaran

Publications and Research

This paper describes a technique for using plot surveys to measure individual informants' ethnobotanical knowledge of forests, as applied to the Dusun community of Merimbun in Brunei. Two knowledgeable but non-literate Dusun informants enumerated marked plots of both recent and old secondary growth mixed dipterocarp forest near the village. They were able to provide names (other than life-forms or the most general basic and intermediate categories) for 86-97% of species growing in the plots. Between 152 and 170 plant names were elicited by the surveys. In all cases, about 88% of the names were at the basic naming level and …

Review Of The Book Statistical Handbook 1996: States Of The Former Ussr, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the book Statistical Handbook 1996: States of the Former USSR.

Librarians Seek Answers For Literature Of Denial, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Libraries and librarians have a long history of fighting censorship and attempts to remove materials from their collections, but what about materials that are not only offensive but also historically inaccurate? There are three aspects to the topic of Holocaust-denial materials in libraries: Should libraries acquire it? If they do, how should it be classified? Where should it be shelved?

The Advocate, April/May 1997, Vol. 8, No. 5, Gc Advocate

The Advocate

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Two Public Officials Support CUNY/SUNY Systems; Oppose Governor Pataki’s proposed 1997-1998 Executive Budget. Staff (p. 1)

Conference Speakers Denounce Budget Cuts. Staff (p. 1)

Higher Education Cuts Threaten State’s Economic Vitality. Charles J. Hynes (p. 1)

Socialist Scholars Discuss Adjuncts, Importance of Student Activism. Mark Petras (p. 3)

Local / Global: A Symposium on the New Times Square. Alan Moore (p. 4)

Annals of Administration: CUNY Board of Trustees Appropriations and Salaries: At What Cost? Andrea Zimmerman (p. 5)

Special Report. The Pawn Broker: Citibank Never Sleeps When Gouging Students with CUNYCard; CUNY Administrators Defend Racist, Anti-Student …

The Myths And Justifications Of Sex Segregation In Higher Education: Vmi And The Citadel, Cynthia Fuchs Epstein

Publications and Research

Access to higher education, particularly to the specialized and elite education that is part of the tracking system leading to prestigious and highly remunerative positions, is a measure of equality. This article argues that segregated schooling for women limits their access to the same educational and associational opportunities men have, and that arguments supporting segregation are based on unsound criteria. It further argues that whatever the intent or ideological underpinning of such arguments, they ultimately have a negative outcome for women’s equality in society.

The Russo-Polish War, 1919-1920: A Bibliography Of Materials In English, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

As World War I came to an end, the borders in Central and Eastern Europe were tenuous, and in some cases non-existent, and several countries came into territorial conflict. The battle between Poland and the Soviet Union was a pivotal event in twentieth century history, as Poland not only dealt the Red Army its first defeat, but also greatly expanded the territory of the fledgling Polish Republic to its historic, pre-partition borders.

Rationalism In Normative Budget Theory, Dan Williams

Publications and Research

This paper concerns epistemological rationalism and the norms used by governments to instruct their officers to perform their duties. The particular duty I discuss here is preparation of and action on the budget. In this paper I use "rationalism" as the opposite of "empiricism." This rationalism does not refer to "'economic rationality," it refers to the method of attaining knowledge associated with introspection, logic, and a priori knowledge. It is opposed to the method of attaining knowledge associated with observation, experiment, and evidence. By "norms, “normative," and other related terms, I mean action guiding language. Four senses of normative are …

White Supremacist Movement(S) In A White Supremacist Context, Jessie Daniels

Publications and Research

This chapter excerpt describes the relationship between so-called "extremist" groups of violent white supremacists and mainstream understandings of whiteness.

Patterns Of Reconciliation Among Captive Gelada Baboons (Theropithecus Gelada), Larissa Swedell

Publications and Research

Animals that live in groups are frequently exposed to conflict situations and must in some way maintain group cohesion. One mechanism that appears to restore social relationships after they have been disrupted by conflict is reconciliation. This study investigated reconciliatory behavior in the gelada baboon, Theropithecus gelada. The subjects were 11 adult geladas, housed in a large outdoor enclosure at the Bronx Zoo/Wildlife Conservation Park, New York. Five-minute focal animal samples following spontaneous aggression were compared with 5-min matched-control samples. The results of this study were: (1) geladas reunited in a friendly way after aggression; (2) former opponents were attracted …

Medicaid Forecasting Practices, Dan Williams

Publications and Research

This paper examines forecasting activities among Medicaid agencies in the fifty United States, Washington, D.C., and five U.S. territories (American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, and Virgin Islands). Most frequently, studies of state or local forecasting practice focus on revenue forecasting. There are several reasons why comparison of state Medicaid forecast practice may be better than comparison of state revenue forecasting practices. First, there is no consistent reporting of state revenue estimates. States make forecasts when it suits them and report them in a manner that is satisfactory to their governors or legislatures. Collection of data through national …

The Deculturation Of The Brunei Dusun, Jay H. Bernstein

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

On Epistemology, Whiteness, And Sexual Politics: Personal Reflections On Standpoint And White Supremacist Discourse, Jessie Daniels

Publications and Research

The preface to White Lies in which the author explains her personal relationship to the work of scholarship in the book.

Interview: Cindi Katz. Creating Safe Space And The Materiality Of The Margins, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

Cindi Katz, associate professor and chair of the environmental psychology program at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, visited the University of Kentucky in February of 1996 to deliver the keynote address at the 5 1/2 Annual Geography Graduate Student Conference. In her address, entitled "Power, Space and Terror: Social Reproduction and the Public Environment," Professor Katz discussed how changes jn urban built environments, particularly the privatization of urban public space, negatively affected New York City children. Privatization, she argued, not only serves a 'child hating' mentality prevalent in our society, but fosters, among other things, …

A Response To Mark Weber, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Mark Weber, who at the time was both the editor of the Journal of Historical Review and the Director of the Institute for Historical Review, wrote a letter to the editor of Public & Access Services Quarterly objecting to a 1995 article written by John Drobnicki, Carol Goldman, Trina Knight, and Johanna Thomas ("Holocaust-Denial Literature in Public Libraries: An Investigation of Public Librarians’ Attitudes Regarding Acquisition and Access"). Drobnicki wrote a detailed response, which not only refutes the claims of Mr. Weber, but which also demonstrates how Holocaust "revisionists" often make claims which do not hold up.

Three Film Reviews, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Reviews of Advertising Missionaries, directed by Chris Hilton and Gauthier Flauder; Chastie (Paradise), a film by Sergey Dvortsevoy; and Wilbert: Street Kid in Nicaragua, a video by Bent Erik Kroyer.

"The Teacher Would Call Me 'Piggy', 'Smelley', 'Dirty', Names Like That": Prying Open A Discussion Of Domestic Violence For Educators, Lois M. Weis, Michelle Fine

Publications and Research

(The Teacher) would call me "piggy", "smelly", "dirty", names like that, and the kids started following along with it. And I'd say, by the fourth grade, I started cleaning myself out. I didn't care anymore, but my father had this thing that you were allowed to take a bath once a week. He would measure the shampoo, he would measure the soap, and if he thought somebody was using the shampoo when he said you shouldn't, you'd get a beating. But I got sick of it, and the beatings almost became to be painless when hit with a belt or …

Demythifying Multicultural Education: Social Semiotics As A Tool Of Critical Pedagogy, Stephanie Urso Spina

Publications and Research

This article discusses the assumptions and curricular implications of a social semiotic approach to education. Semiotics refers to the meaning we make with language as well as other objects. events, and actions. Social semiotics emphasizes the social, cultural, historic, and political contexts that shape that meaning. A social semiotic approach to education can help teachers and teacher educators to deconstruct the reproduction of class, politicize the ideology of colonialism, and overcome the inequities they engender. By providing a way to challenge selectively reproduced cultural politics, social semiotics provides a way to reconstruct and democratize schools and society.

The Administrative Efficiency Of Hospitals And The Effect Of Electronic Data Interchange: A Critical Evaluation Of The Stochastic Frontier And The Data Envelopment Analysis Models To Efficiency Measurement, Dimitrios N. Tsaprounis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The investigation and measurement of administrative efficiency is an issue of great concern for health care policy decision makers and has important implications for the efficiency of the overall health care sector itself as well as for the cost containment efforts and the restructuring of the health care system.

The administrative cost efficiency of the United States health care system has received much attention during the last years, and has been under continuous criticism since it became widely known that the country's administrative costs are higher than those of any other country in the world.

As criticism on administrative inefficiency …