Starr and Fiske
Regarding The Sun's editorial, the Jack Germond-Jules Witcover column and Susan Baer's article (all Aug. 9), let's see if I got it right: There was no reason to replace Robert Fiske because of his close association with Bernard Nussbaum, his having had a hand in the sale of property to Whitewater Development Corp., and his close association with the firm that received a $1.5 million loan from the Arkansas Development Financing Authority, but Kenneth Starr should not be named independent prosecutor because he did not believe that President Clinton should be immune from a law suit, which allegedly has nothing whatsoever to do with Whitewater, Madison Savings & Loan, etc.?
Germond and Witcover maintain that there's no reason to redo the work that Mr. Fiske has already done, there being no evidence that Vince Foster did not commit suicide.
Well, that may be true, but one generally finds evidence by looking for it.
But aside from Mr. Foster's suicide, Mr. Fiske found no evidence of wrongdoing either in the Resolution Trust Corp. matter or the handling of the Foster suicide investigation.
Well, what about 40 contacts instead of one? What about Jean Hanson contradicting Robert Altman on the matter of briefing the criminal referrals? What about Mr. Nussbaum (Mr. Fiske's friend) pressuring Roger Altman not to recuse?
What about Mr. Foster's allegedly sealed office being visited and papers (which, contrary to first assertions, wind up in the Clintons' sole possession for five days) being removed by Hillary Clinton's chief of staff?
When one considers: the handling of the "Health Care Reform Task Force," which the government's own attorneys have now admitted was full of special interest representation; the stone-walling on the matter of the court-ordered release of documents from this task force; the Clinton's financial ineptitude in losing money (how much is still in doubt) on Whitewater, but being amazingly successful in the futures markets; and the quite extraordinary number of suicides among people peripherally connected with the Clintons, which even The Economist (hardly a right-wing extremist publication) has remarked upon, I believe there is ample reason to be skeptical about the results of an obvious superficial "investigation a la Fiske."
dmund A. Klebe
Severn
Dr. Mary Loch
I am very upset by the disservice that your paper has done to the late Dr. Mary Loch in the Aug. 16 article about the elderly couple in Guilford who were beaten death.
The two Lochs were both physicians, and while you consistently referred to the male Loch as "Dr.", you titled his wife with "Mrs."
Dr. Mary Loch may have not practiced medicine for quite some time, but I do not believe that your paper would cease to use the title "doctor" for a man who had not practiced in a long time.
Many women physicians of Dr. Mary Loch's generation made the choice to privilege family life over medical practice, but that choice did not require them to forfeit their M.D.s.
No matter what a woman's (or a man's) choice to do with a medical career, the M.D. entitles an individual to the distinction of the title.
It may well be stylistically correct to designate the wife of a physician as "Mrs.", but it is not appropriate to strip a woman of her title just because she is married to a physician.
The Lochs should have been referred to as Dr. Mary Loch and Dr. Walter Loch.
'Laura Davidow Hirshbein
Baltimore
Baseball Caps
How's this for negotiating an end to the baseball strike?
Yes, cap the players' salaries.
Then, let's cap the owners' profits.
What would we do with all the extra money?
We could always reduce the price of tickets.
But better than that, how about raises for all those forgotten minimum wage attendants who clean the rest rooms and sweep up the place? They are the ones who really need the money.
George Paul Mocko
Towson
dTC
Rude and Crude
The Airline Pilots Association should respond to the letter in Dear Abby's column of Aug. 19 about plane passengers carrying aboard excess size and numbers of carry-on luggage.
Ms. Van Buren stated that a passenger infringing on the rules of carry-on luggage could not be ejected except by order of the plane's captain.
Fully realizing that the pilot has many other more important duties to perform, I wonder why enforcement of such regulations couldn't be delegated to the co-pilot or even a cabin attendant, but even better to someone who is monitoring tickets at the entrance to the gangway.
It seems to me that such behavior has become much more common in recent years.
It is rude, crude and definitely violates safety standards.
Otto C. Beyer
Ellicott City
Part-time Instructors Deserve Better
Stefan Martin's Perspective article "For Professors, How Much Teaching Is Enough?" (Aug. 14) was insightful and interesting. His major emphasis is that full-time faculty should be teaching more.
He makes a number of very good points about graduate students and part-time instructors being paid little, being poorly motivated and perhaps teaching poorly.
He also observes that part-timers often have to teach at several institutions, implying that this is needed to earn enough to get by.
Much of this is no doubt true. However, he fails to comment on a well-known and important contingent of the "part-time professor" pool. That is the successful executive or other professional, or the recently retired individual, who wants to teach to put something back into our society and who offers the student not only academic lessons but also the benefits of real-life examples to add meat to the theories.
I am one of these, and have been told on numerous occasions by both students and university superiors that these valuable insights simply are not available from a professor without the experience on the firing line.
One of the goals of education is to understand the importance of a balanced point of view. So while the subject of how much a full-time professor should teach is being debated, let's not blindly assume that all other university teaching is inferior or is being exploited.
Joseph M. Coogle Jr.
Annapolis
Stefan Martin made a number of incorrect statements about Maryland public higher education in his article on part-time faculty.
At the University of Maryland Baltimore County campus and other campuses, the great majority of students in introductory courses are taught by full-time faculty members, usually full and associate professors.
Graduate students sometimes assist the faculty members, partly because those who are going to be teachers need teaching experience.
While introductory courses are often large, students who complete them can choose from among many small advanced-level courses.
Colleges evaluate the teaching of their faculty members carefully because most departments want to attract students.
At UMBC every student in every course fills out a course evaluationquestionnaire at the end of the course, which is used by departments and promotion and tenure committees (which have student members) to evaluate the faculty member.
At UMBC and other Maryland campuses, the great majority of graduate students have full-time jobs and are attending evening graduate programs to upgrade their skills.
Graduate education is just as important to them and their employers as is undergraduate education. The lack of affordable evening graduate programs in many fields is Baltimore's greatest educational inadequacy.
Teaching and research are not in conflict. Most good teachers are active researchers, because researchers have the most interest in their subjects.
A vital feature of a good college education is that the faculty members teach up-to-date knowledge. Unless faculty members do research, they are out-of-date five years after they get their Ph.Ds.
William G. Rothstein
Baltimore
The writer is a professor of sociology at University of Maryland Baltimore County.