Females: faculty rarities Editor's Note: This is the first of a two part series on the roles of women on college faculties. Today's article will examine these roles on a national level. Tomorrow's article will focus on the situation of the University's' women edu cators. By ANDY LINKER Daily Collegian Staff Writer The late musician and human rights spokesman John Lennon wrote about the plight of the female in today's society in the song "Woman is the Nigger of the World." But for years before Lennon's words and in the years since, women have been treated as second class work ers in their roles as faculty members of colleges and universities across the coun try. Though statistics show an increase of women on college faculties today, many women still gravitate toward education, health services and the social sciences all traditionally considered women's fields. Last'year, women represented 53 per cent of the country's population, yet they accounted for only 24.3 percent of the total collegiate faculty. And at Penn State, women last year made up 14.2 percent of the 2,790 full time faculty members, Robert Kidder, manager of the University's employment division, said. According to statistics gathered by Kathryn M. Moore, associate professor of education and research associate at the University's Center for the Study of Higher Education, the percentage of women joining the ranks of professor, associate professor, assistant professor and instructor increases as the rank decreases. "It's the principle of the-higher-the fewer," Moore. said. At public universities in 1980, women accounted for only 6.7 percent of all full professors, 15.4 percent of associate pro- inside • SANATANA CONCERT CANCELED Page 20 Y The Easter Seals Society of Centre and Clinton counties helps the handicapped Page 6 • The Sixers trounce Milwau kee, 116.99, in the NBA and in baseball, the Phillies edge the Pi rates, 4-3, on an 11th-inning Gary Matthews' homer Page 7 • The HUB renovations contin ue and the results will offer new food facilities to the students Fall Term Page 15 weather Mostly sunny and becoming no ticeably milder this afternoon with a high of 67. Increasing cloudiness and not as cold tonight with a low 46. Considerable cloudiness and continued mild on Friday with some showers possible and a high of 66. Partial clearing and mild on Saturday, with a high of 65. BINDERY W*2o2 PATTEE Nature's urnbrellas The soil, moist from April Showers, provides mushrooms with an ideal habitat. This cluster grew in front of Electrical Engineering West Journalist Cooke returns Pulitzer Prize By JAY PERKINS Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) The Washington Post announced yesterday that reporter Janet Cooke had surrendered the Pulitzer Prize and resigned from the newspaper because the feature story that won her journalism's highest honor was a fabrication. The $l,OOO prize for feature writing then was awarded to Teresa Carpenter of The Village Voice. Richard T. Baker, secretary to the Pulitzer Prize board, said the award was made after a telephone poll of board members. Donald E. Graham, publisher of the Post, said Cooke acknowledged early yesterday "that major parts of the story were fabricated and that she did not interview an 8-year-old heroin addict. "In the morning, all of us collectively will apologize in the paper to readers of the Post," Graham said. Executive Editor Benjamin Bradlee advised the Pulitzer Prize board that Cooke would not accept the award bestowed Monday. "She told Post editors early this morning that her story about an 8-year old heroin addict was in fact, a composite, that the quotes attributed to the child were, in fact, fabricated, and that certain events described as eyewitnesses did not, in fact, happen," Bradlee told the board. He said he made the statement "with great sadness and regret." In the Post story, Cooke told of watching' the lover of the child's mother inject heroin into the the daily fessors and 30.4 percent of assistant professors. The highest number of wom en faculty Members are clustered into the lowest faculty rank instructor. Moore said women account for more than 55 percent of the nation's college level instructors. At Penn State, women made up 6.1 percent of the full professors in 1979, an increase over the 5.1 percent level in 1967, Moore said. 'The change of one professor one way or another would change the percentage. The percentage could change either plus or minus.' —Kathryn M. Moore, research associate at the Center for the Study of Higher Education But the current 6.1 percent is still below the national average for public universities, said Moore, who compiled her statistics from sources including The Chronicle of Higher Education, the American Council on Education, The American Association of University Pro fessors and the National Center for Edu cational Statistics. "The change of one professor one way or another would change the percentage a lot," Moore said. "The percentage could change either plus or minus." The University also trails the national average with only 11.1 percent of asso ciate professorships held by women. In addition, women account for only 20.3 percent of assistant professors and 36.5 percent of instructors at the University. The percentage of women employed as faculty members across the country has increased from 19.1 percent in 1960 to 21.3 percent in 1975 to the current 24.3 per- 4 COP' one • ian While these increases do not reflect a tremendous gain, the increase of women on some university faculties is almost non-existent Alarmed by the lack of women teach ers at their school, women at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., have banded together to fight what they see as sexual bias in that university's hiring practices. . According to the group, which calls itself Cornell 11, women represent a paltry 8.3 percent of Cornell's faculty, well beloW the national average. In a report filed'in the Association of Ameri can Colleges, Cornell II said only one of the university's 76 academic depart ments is chaired by a woman and only one of Cornell's 14 deans is a woman. Offices representing the federal gov ernment's Affirmative Action program have been at Cornell since 1972. Howev er, in eight years they have increased the number of female faculty members by less than 1 percent, according to the Association of American Colleges. Cornell is also the only university in the Northeast undergoing a review by the federal Department of Labor on charges of sexual discrimination. Other organiza tions examining Cornell's hiring prac tices toward women include the Department of Education, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, boy's arm. The story was published at a time when an influx of cheap, high quality heroin on the streets of Washington had led to a surge in use of the drug. The story also described the course of the boy's addiction to drugs. At a staff meeting around the city desk, Bradlee told his Post colleagues: "It breaks my heart to tell you what you already know." He told The Assd ciated Press that Cooke conceded to him at 1:45 a.m. yesterday after a lengthy conversation, that portions of the story were fabricated. "Previous to that, she had denied it," he said. Asked if she offered to resign, Bradley said "I remember telling her she wasn't going to get fired, that she was going to resign. If that's a suggestion . . ." Bradlee also told District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry what had happened, and apologized. City officials had challenged the story after it was published on Sept. 28, and had tried unsuccessfully to identify the child of whom Miss Cooke had written. "Janet Cooke was a particularly promising and talented young reporter," Bradlee's statement said. "She regrets these events as much as the Washing ton Post regrets them. She has offered her resigna tion and it has been accepted." Cooke, 26, joined the Post in December 1979 after working for the Toledo (Ohio) Blade. She could not be reached for comment. "We must accept The Washington Post's wishes in this matter," said a statement issued at Colum bia University in New. York, which awards the the American Association of University Professors and the New York State Divi sion of Human Rights. The Project on Equal Education Rights targeted Cornell in 1979 for its annual Silver Snail Award for the school's sub-par performance in practic ing affirmative action. According to PEER, Cornell will reach a faculty corn posed of 50 percent females by the year 2395. However, faculty equality is not likely because women tend to earn degrees in only a few areas such as education, health services and the social sciences, Moore said. For collegiate faculty, holders of de grees in areas such as education and social sciences are paid considerably less than degree holders in fields such as engineering and agriculture, she said. Engineering and agriculture tend to be dominated by males, she said. Engineering professors this year earn an average of $26,601, according to the Chronicle. The average salaries for pro fessors in English ($22,847) and nursing ($20,596) are noticeably lower. Women received 42.1 percent of the doctorates awarded in 1978-79 in educa tion, but composed only 25.7 percent of the 1979 doctorates in professional fields, which also includes health services like nursing, the Chronicle reported. .But Moore said the figures could be misleading. "It's hard to know what they mean," she said. "They (the doctorates) could be for denistry or law . . . education could be considered a social science. It's hard to tell what they. mean." Women also trail men 67 percent to 33 percent in doctorates awarded in social sciences, the Chronicle said. In engineering, the Chronicle said, 97.5 percent of all doctoral degrees awarded in engineering in 1979 went to men. Continued on Page 18 He said the jury had recommended the award go to Carpenter of The Village Voice for a story about a man who killed his wife while on leave from a mental institution. ryi aynard said that recommenda tion was overruled by the board, which has final authority in awarding the prizes. The Cooke story originally was entered in the local reporting category, but was shifted to the feature competition. "As a juror, I find it frustrating and dismaying that five very busy editors spent three days careful ly reviewing 164 submissions only to have the feature writing prize given to a submission the jury never reviewed," Maynard said. He said the episode was a tragedy for the Post and should be a lesson for the Pulitzer board. Edward K. Shanahan, editor of the Daily Hamp shire Gazette in Northampton, Mass., said he never saw the Cooke story, either. "When I read that the board had overruled the, jury and awarded this to Janet Cooke, I was flabbergasted, because I don't have any personal knowledge that it was considered by the jury," Shanahan said. ". .It makes us, the jury, look like jerks when we never even considered that story." Pulitzer prizes. "The Post states it cannot accept the prize and it is therefore withdrawn." Robert C. Maynard, editor of the Oakland, Calif., Tribune, said the Cooke story was not among the 164 entries he read as a member of the jury that made award recommendations in the feature writing category. TMI re-enacted at Idaho test reactor IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (AP) Nu clear energy officials said yesterday they hope to learn more about acci dents like the one at Three Mile Island by deliberately uncovering the core of a test reactor. Charles Solbrig, manager of the Loss of Fluid Test Facility's program division, termed the experiment, scheduled for last night, "the most complex test we've performed to date" at the Idaho National Engi neering Laboratory west of here. It is the sixth in a series that began after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 to see what happens when there is a small breakdown in the cooling system of a pressurized, wa ter-cooled power reactor. In last night's experiment, the core of the 55-megawatt test reactor was uncovered on purpose to test safety systems that are supposed to retool a reactor after an accident. Though the test reactor is only about one-sixtieth the size of the TMI power plant, the test has been adjust ed to reflect conditions in a commer cial reactor, Solbrig said. He said the test posed no danger to the reactor, whose core has been uncovered briefly in previous experi ments. Hundreds of visitors came to watch the test, including representatives from companies that make commer cial, water-cooled reactors and utili ties that use them. Solbrig noted the experiment was designed to test the safety procedures now used by the nuclear power industry. Terry Smith, a spokesman for EG&G Idaho Inc., which is conduct 15° Thursday April 16, 1981 Vol. 81, No. 152 20 pages University Park, Pa. 16802 Published by Students of The Pennsylvania State University ing the test, said it was the first procedure "running through the whole sequence" of the TMI accident. He described the test as follows: A pump in the secondary cooling system is turned off, preventing heat from the main cooling system from being drawn off as it normally would. Unable to dissipate the heat, the reactor's main cooling system heats up and the pressure increases. An automatic safety system takes over, dropping control rods into the reactor in a "scram" to halt the nuclear reaction. A relief valve is opened, as at TMI, to relieve the pressure and it stays open, causing steam and some water, to escape. The main coolant pumps are left off during this phase of the test, just as at TMI. As the pressure in the main cooling system drops, the core is gradually uncovered. Soon the primary pumps are reactivated to see how well they return the reactor to normal temper atures. A few minutes later the emergency core cooling systems are triggered. They are kept off during the early stages, even though they should be activated automatically in a real-life crisis. Solbrig said one of the things engi neers want to know is how long a reactor operator can wait after the main cooling system's water and pressure begin to drop before more water must be put into the reactor core. "It's a matter of hours, not minutes," he said. Fred Knubel, a spokesman for the Pulitzer board, said the Cooke story originally was entered in the local reporting competition. "It was nomi nated by that jury," he said. "It was moved by the board to the feature category at the board's April 3 meeting," Knubel said. Janet Cooke UPI Wlnphoto
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers