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(04/27/11 6:45pm)
There are 300 million people in the United States, and 1.5 million of them are active duty members of the United States Armed Forces. These are members of the Marine Corps, Navy, Army and Air Force.
They are the defenders of our country, our values, our way of life and our democracy. They preserve freedom for not only our country, but also freedom for many other countries around the world.
Here at Mercer, we are privileged with the opportunity to share our academic pursuits with men and women who will go on to serve in these branches of the Armed Forces; the men and women of ROTC. They work harder and longer in a day than some students do in a week.
They are models for what every student and citizen of our country should be: patriots. Because of their rigorous schedules and trying obligations, I believe that the students of ROTC should be allowed to register early.
These students wake up at five in the morning nearly every day. After waking up they are required to do rigorous physical activity for an hour. Then they go to their regular classes, meaning the classes required for their majors or the general education track.
These classes have to be fitted around their required ROTC classes. Every ROTC student is required to take at least one Military Science class a semester, plus a required lab that lasts two and half hours. The class plus the lab comes to a grand total of three credit hours per semester, even though ROTC students are usually in these classes for close to six hours a week.
In addition to taking these ROTC classes, these students also have to make sure that they are on track to graduate or face the risk of losing their scholarships. A two-year, three-year and four-year scholarship is offered to these ROTC students. Most of the ROTC students are on a four-year scholarship, which means the American government pays for their tuition and Mercer pays for their room and board. In order to keep the scholarship the student must have a 2.0 GPA, take at least 12 hours every semester and must serve in the Armed Forces.
The requirements set upon these students are burdensome, time consuming and time constraining. These students are the future and current defenders of our country; it is time that we as a university recognized the honor of the daily and lifelong struggles they will face in service of our country. There are approximately 5,300 students in ROTC nationwide who have different and sometimes less rigorous requirements than our program has.
We have approximately 45 of those students. Shouldn’t we be asking as a university what we can do to help them in their academic pursuits? The very least we can do in aiding their progress is to give them the privilege to register early. If we hold athletes and honor students to a higher standard and aid them in their academic pursuits, why not the students who will and who have served our country?
Comments on this opinion can be sent to cjakins007@hotmail.com
(03/16/11 2:49pm)
English professor Deneen Senasi is a good example of a person ending somewhere she did not begin. She was born in Birmingham, Ala., in the same family home that she currently lives in with her husband of 22 years
She still currently lives there because her husband resides in the home while working as a professor at Birmingham Southern College
Senasi said, “He’s been very patient. He didn’t quit when I first got the job, because the position was supposed to be only for a year as a visiting professor.
Her husband is the son of her ballet teacher, both of whom are from Yugoslavia
She was also trained as a classical ballerina. During college, she taught ballerina to younger girls
Senasi interviewed for a visiting professor position at Mercer four years ago after hearing about the open position while working at the University of Tennessee as a lecturer. She came to the campus for the interview and took a tour of the grounds but did not teach a class (which is usually required of interviewing professors) because it would have interfered with finals week
After the interview she got a call from Gary Richardson, professor of English, offering her a position as she was driving home.
Senasi did not always intend to be an English professor. She actually attended college after getting married in order to get her degree in ballet performance.
She said that she became interested in English after taking a class for a general education requirement. It eventually became her major after taking several classes that she enjoyed.
Senasi currently specializes in Shakespearean and Renaissance literature, but she did not start out that way. She was actually interested in Victorian literature. However, she wrote a paper in which she called a Renaissance writer “stupid,” which her professor loved. She then won a fellowship for the paper which in turn shifted her interest to the topic.
Senasi said, “I used to work a lot of odd jobs like waitressing and retail, and sometimes I will be standing at the board or giving a lecture and think about how fortunate I am to get to talk about all this monumental and historic literature.”
When The Cluster asked Senasi what she thought her teaching style was, the only word that could come to her mind was “bananas,” which is a word Senasi uses when she wants to use an expletive or if she can’t think of a phrase while lecturing
Senasi said that she can sometimes be quite silly.
When asked about her teaching style, Senasi said, “Defamiliarization; it’s making the familiar strange. Teaching Shakespeare and Milton, I sometimes have to persuade students that it does have something to do with their lives. It introduces that the material is something I know and love, and something that my students may one day love.
Senasi is the faculty advisor for Mercer’s Shakespeare Society and Willingham Garden Society
Senasi is currently finishing a book on material culture, gender performance and the name in early and modern England.
(02/16/11 1:46am)
Student body president Trent White said Monday that Mercer's Student Government Association plans to fight the recently renewed push from state legislators to do away with the Georgia Tuition Equalization Grant, a scholarship that helps subsidize tuition costs at in-state private universities like Mercer.
White called on students to contact their local legislators to express support of keeping GTEG funding in place for the coming fiscal year. He also tasked senators with the job of making sure their fellow students are aware they may lose some of their scholarship money if the grant gets axed.
Senior senator Brittany Francis will head up SGA's initiative to save the grant. Francis said she'll use SGA's resources to raise student awareness on the issue.
Record state budget shortfalls have put GTEG funding under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks from Georgia legislators, many of whom view cutting the grant as a potential austerity measure that could save the state millions. Backers of the grant say trimming higher education scholarships should be avoided at all costs.
Also during Monday's senate meeting,
SGA fiscal affairs chair Khoi Le said 16 student organizations have yet to claim their Bear Grant checks allocated last fall. Le said that if organizations do not pick up their money before the April deadline, it will reflect poorly on them as well as SGA.
SGA is working with Mercer's information technology department to create a voting app for mobile phone and iPad use. A representative will demonstrate the app at next week's senate meeting.
For more on this story, read next week's edition of The Cluster, and check back in at mercercluster.com for updates.