0 4 - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, September 30, 1993 aIeT AibiJuni~UilQ Shr as Toat by 420 Maynard Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan JOSH Dusow Editor in Chief ANDREW LEVY Editorial Page Editor ILL - , Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the majority opinion of the Daily editorial board. All other cartoons, articles and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Daily. 'TIHUMAN Rte6Nars R o20 VILA-rjoNs OLYMP C ~uROE ri ?90P. OF CHINWA. ( 0 i gi - I ! i 1' ! 81P = .. - I Gr~ - NG? }{ J 34{4y Insight Just a syllable away from fluency What do actors James Earl Jones and Bruce Willis, British Prime Minis- ter Winston Churchill and Delaware Senator Joe Biden, golfer Ken Venturi and the Bulls' Bob Love all have in common? Few know it, but they CAMPUS all stuttered. INQUIRY Naturally, they're not alone; some- where between 2 and 3 million Americans stutter. But despite their large numbers, disfluent Americans get little attention in mass media, and this neglect unfortunately leaves many to struggle with the prob- lem alone, isolated, and unaware of the many hundreds of thousands of fellow stutterers who lead normal, healthy lives. Having this opportunity to reach thousands of people, it would there- fore be an unforgivable and regrettable oversight if I failed to address the is- sue. B ut even as a stutterer, I would not presume to speak for all who are disfluent. I would hope instead that everyone, fluent or not, can find some interest in this stutterer's own thoughts on disfluency. While many consider stuttering to be a disability, I cannot accept that characterization. Not wanting to dis- miss the seriousness of the chronic condition, I would still suggest that stuttering has proven to be more of a nuisance than a handicap. Allow me to explain. Take, for the sake of argument, another condition that is regarded as a physical disability: blindness. Blind- ness-barring those specific instances where blindness is a passing symptom Mazumdar is an LSA senior. His column, Campus Inquiry, appears every other Thursday in the Daily. - is a permanent and perpetual condi- tion. Sight will not come and go as a blindperson moves fromroom toroom, from friendly company to strange com- pany, or from home to work; the blind are always blind and can thus arrange their daily habits to accommodate. Stuttering is different. Disfluency comes and goes. Those who stutter may be more disfluent in the class- room than at the dinner table, among acquaintances than among friends, or with men than with women. Stutterers when alone can often speak confi- dently or recite poetry eloquently. Many, like myself, become entirely fluent when in the presence of aspeech therapist. This characteristic makes stutter- ing particularly frustrating. Other physical conditions are usually the re- sult of some explainable physiological process. According to therapist Louise Peelle of the University's Communi- cative Disorders Clinic, stuttering is suspected to result from a breakdown in the complex communicative pro- cess, involving the brain, the lips, and everything in between. But we know little beyond that; the causes of stuttering remain unknown. Coupling that inability to rationalize my own sporadic disfluency with the constant feeling (or hope) that fluency is only a breath (syllable/word/sen- tence) away inevitably leaves this stut- terer a little demoralized. In all honesty, though, I cannot say that disfluency has had any measur- able effects on the quality, character, or habits of my daily life. The problem has become little more than a nuisance - something I wish would just go away. As one might expect, my many speech therapists have all dutifully in- formed me that, of all the things that could happen to my stuttering, "just going away" will never be one of them. The initial baby steps in speech therapy involve accepting the fact that I will probably always stutter to some. degree, and, more importantly, realiz- ing that stuttering has no bearing on my self worth. There is, however, aflip side to the coin. Accepting one's own potential regardless of disfluency is an important confidence-building step. But I long ago accepted that I would always stutter, and I long ago learned that I can be relatively successful even with a stutter. The result ofthatrealiza- tion was the postponement of any seri- ous efforts to improve my fluency: success despite disfluency is a consid- erable disincentive to improving speech. So why seek (or, in my case, return to) speech therapy? For those who suffer greater disfluency, the answer may be more obvious. But for milder stutterers like me, the issue becomes one of character building: finding the will to fix something that need not be broken, removing a perpetually poten- tial obstacle, and transforming thecon- stant fear of disfluency into a new and fluent confidence. For those who have given up on therapy, I encourage you to try again. For those who have yet to try it, call the University's Communicative Disor- ders Clinic at 764-8440 for informa- tion. The Disorders Clinic also runs a support group for adult stutterers ev- ery Monday evening from 5:30 to 6:30 pm in the Victor Vaughan Building and welcomes all who wish to attend. Those stutterers who have never met a fellow stutterershould consider attend- ing: understanding thatwe aren'talone is key to seeing our stuttering in proper perspective. To those who do not stutter; I en-. courage patience, compassion, and re- spect for those who do. Patronizing advice like "slow down"or commiser- ating remarks like "I had a cousin who stuttered" usually aren't helpful. Fi- nally, please understand if we'd rather not see "A Fish Called Wanda" a sec- ond time. Report examines role of lecturers Recycle means to use things more than once To the Daily: I believe that some of us do not recall the meaning of "recycle." Perhaps all of your work and those weekend parties have drained your mental capacities and left no room for this definition. It was not very long ago when the "re-" in recycle meant "again" - recycle again. Unfortunately but luckily, landfills do not grow on trees, so you had better revive your memory. In addition, I would like to give a few notices to those individuals who have suffered recycling amnesia. Attention to those people who throw any soda cans in the garbage. If you walk an additional 5 feet and look ahead, you may deposit them in the recycle drum marked "cans," which is spelled c-a-n-s. I would also like to call attention to those persons responsible for depositing the masses of clean paper, foam coffee cups and glass bottles in the trash container a7nd vice-' versa to those who try fto walk into Angel Hall, the recycling bins are glaring at you. Has society become so lazy that it can not hold a few itmes for a few more seconds before they are properly put in their place? I guess that is fine, becuase after we pollute ourselves to death, we will no longer have to do this "cumbersome" chore. Just remember that the next time you throw something away in the wrong place, everyone else who cares will be watching you. Think about it. ERNEST CHEN LSA senior Lester draws false conclusions in piece To the Daily: Ian Lester draws several erroneous conclusions in his article - "Drugs, Religion Offer an Escape" - which must be clarified. Lester writes that science and time have out-moded the Bible; belief in the existence of a God offers an "escape from reality" because it is easy to place the "blame" on God rather than "focuin inardsn": and like' sources like Josephus only serve to illustrate the accuracy of Scripture. Even in studying the purely physical sciences, the rational individual is led by the complexity and ordered lpgic of his field to acknowledge the existence of a Creator. Moreover, subjective disagreement over biblical interpretation is not a basis for discounting Scripture as a reliable source - the scientist's misinterpretations of (or arguments over) the physical laws of nature are not a basis for choosing to deny the existence of these laws!! Lester seems to have the mistaken impression that Christians believe in god merely to have a scapegoat for their own actions. In fact, this is directly contrary to the truth, since it is the Christian alone who faces up to the ultimate consequences of his actions! Drug use and religion are strongly related? This argument doesn't even deserve rebuttal! Although he sings the praises of reality, the real irony of Mr. Lester's article is the stupendous leap from By JAYNE THORSON, Ph.D. and PHYLLIS STILLMAN "There are more and more lectur- ers in my department, and they're get- ting way too much power." "Lecturers are underpaid and ex- ploited; they do all of the teaching that professors don't want to do anymore, for afraction of the pay." These quotes represent two very disparate views on a topic of growing concern to faculty across the country. Are non-tenure-track faculty a threat to tenured faculty? Or are they an ,a.....lnoanAarrlae h .ca eA tr% becoming increasingy dependent on instructional staff who are not eligible for tenure. (This report addresses is- sues related to the instructional staff. Although "faculty" is often defined to include a variety of non-instructional appointments, for the purposes of this report "faculty" will refer to instruc- tional staff. Non-tenure-track faculty currently account for nearly one in three members of the total faculty. During the 1982-1992decade, the num- ber of tenure-track faculty at U-M (all campuses combined) increased by 11 czhiF tho. k~ n inthar rfn nn-tann., Assembly (June 16, 1986) reads, in part: "The Tenure Committee opposes efforts to create categories if faculty appointments without tenure such as career or senior lecturers. If the Uni- versity needs such people to teach and wishes to have a longer term or career commitmentfrom them, the Univer- sity should expect to proide the possi- bility of tenure. The teacher with ten- ure is a teacjer whose service can be terminated only for adequate cause. We think that ever full-time teacher chrudd A ~thrave that i tn nr hPa w