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Pyi-IWUtwitOnlit.JMMqrll, 1977
From The
President’s Desk
BrBOMiratt
Unfortunately, the Senate of
the Student Government As
sociation has become very
sloppy in the performance of ita
duties. Senators have allowed
other activities to come before
their responsibilities to the
student body and have been
gufky of failing to exercise
their committee reaponaihili-
tiea. For example, committee
meetings ahve . turned into
meaningless gatherings, while
all of the worthwhile work was
being done by a_few diligent
and conscientious Senators.
Reports were not being filed
properly and many legitimate
student complaints were allow
ed to lie unacted upon because
of pom committee organisation.
Another example of this sloppy
Jan. 17 when war-had as our
guest Dr. Goorjp Bernard.
Derm of the Medical School.
Ever since I' have been
associated with the 9GA. the
Medical School has been of
paramount concern, end 1 would
rank the visit of Daan Barnard
as one of the three most
significant meetings in my four
years hen at Mercer. Yet,
despite the potential of teeming
help elgrify some of the
body bee about the
School, moat Senators fak they
social obligation over and above
the elected responsibility of
representing the student body
is cure bunk!
Consequently, on Jen. 24 I
issued the following orders to
the Senate:
1) Attendance will be closely
checked to insure that each
Senator is fulfilling his respon
sibility to the Student Body. If.
because of a lack of participa
tion. all necessary business is
not conducted at a regularly
scheduled Senate meeting, I
mil call a special session to
complete that business. If a
Senator fails to attend the
required number of meetings,
then he will be suspended from
the Senate and a specials
election will be called to elect a
2) All committee chairmen
will prepare and keep extensive
rosters for their committees.
Senators who attend leas than
the required number of meet
ings will be removed from the
committee. Membership on
committees is required of all
Sena tori. Non-Senators will
have to adhere to the eame
standards ae Senators to be
3) All committee reports must
be in %ritiag. I have instructed
Vice President Chuck Williams
to gather ell the reports an
Monday morning and. if a
report is missing, to seek oik
from him.
4) 1 have instructed Sec. Linda
Winter to have copies of the
Committee reports attached to
the minutes, and to have the
in the boxes of the
Advisors,
and organisations by the doMng
of the Post Office on Tuesday
rill be no
9GA fails apart. Well, tbs SGA
is no* a one man job, wd it la
not ajob that anyone is going to
take lightly anymore To be any
of the
body i
Senators who give
UBseifbhly of their time and
energy. Aad yet, they will not
insure that the Senate will be
either more responsive tc
class work. The
I that the SGA President
■ of
determining other people'*
it a
ERA: How And Why It Lost?
The Equal Rights Amend
ment came up for ratification in
the Georgia Senate again this
year. Again, the forces against
ERA, however misguided they
may be, were out in force.
Again, the proponents of .ER^L
sat on the sideline# and did little
to be heard and leas to be seen.
The proponents of ERA have
allowed the opposition to take
the iniative since the beginning.
Those against ERA have had
the edge both verbal and
written over the la*, three
years. Those in favor of ERA
have not been in the halfoof the
Legislature to see and be beard.
• Very few of the members of
the General Assembly have
gotten more than ten letters or
phone from people in favor
of ERA.
While at the other end of the
spectrum, a deluge of letters,
calls, and telegrams have come
into the General Assembly
against ERA. More important
ly. this flood of opinion has been
generated not from high es
teemed places, but more
generally from the housewife
down the street.
The of the Senate were
literally jammed with ladies
against ERA the last four days
of the past week. The ladies
asked and were given permis
sion to bold a public hearing in
the Senate Chamber. At this
public hearing, the foes of ERA
spent approximately two hours
stating why they were against
ERA. This was well covered by
tiie television, radio, and press.
It is this type of organized
action by any concerned group
that allows the Legislature to
know that particular group feels
on any certain issue.
The ladies who would now sit
in their social or business clubs
and express their favoring
opinions of ERA are too little
and too late. ERA has now been
relegated to a sub-committee
from which it may never be seen
again.
Let this be a lesson in the
results of positive organized
action on any issue. Be seen,
heard, and be factual or your
cause may well be lost.
Rebuttal To Dr. Bernard
i with tha atndaot
body. Tha probiaiu of the
Sonata an caused and aggrava
ted by the continued apathy of
tha rtactant .body. W* in
Student Government can only
do so much ', the reel job
On Monday, February 17.
1977, Dr. George Bernard
presented before the Undent
government association a report
on the establishment of a
medical collage at Mercer
University. A report on Dr.
Bernard't presentation is in this.
issue of the- Cluster However,
there am some interesting
statistics which should be
reposted to tha Master commu
nity in contrast to tha informa
tion supplied by Dr. Bernard.
I have had the opportunity to
speak with aavarid prominent
officials from the medical
schools at Harvard University,
the University of Florida, and
Tulane University a* regard* to
of medical col~
The ideas
related by these doctor* do not
correspond with the plana for
the medical college at Mener as
pot forth by Dr. Barnard.
To begin. Dr. Barnard has
reposted that once the medical-
reboot proposed ha* been fully
established, a process which is
protected to take eight yean, a
total of 28,000.000 dollars will
have been .expended. Once tha
facuaty is ^Uy established It la
anticipated to mppost some 380
to 400 stpdenta. No long ago an
addition was added to tha
existing medical school at the'
University of Florida to allow
that innitntim to accept an
additional fifty students That
addition soaked up some
90,000,000 plus dollars I will
admit that the facility at Florida
is far and away mom technically
advanced than tha school
planned for Mercer,
there remains, my
indicated, a certain minimum
requirement for establishment
of. even a primary .medical
college. Their notion of this
"critical mass” expenditure is
50,000,000 phis dollars for even
the moat elemental medical
Iftfhing facility.
But once the physical plant
for a med-echool has been
established there remains the
problem of obtaining an ade
quate teaching staff. Clinical
instructors by the nature of
their profession are highly paid
educators. On one point Dr.
Bernard and my sources agree;
the average salary for a clinical
instructor is 40,000 dollars per
year. On a second point related
to this matter Dr. Bernard
disagrees with my sources. The
professionals I spoke with
maintain that another “critical
mass'’ value must be reached.
They believe that one hundred
clinical instructors are essential
- in even the smallest medical
education facility. Dr. Bernard
insists that sixty is a more
reasonable figure. Depending
upon whose figures one uses
the annual expenditure for the
salaried of dinicai instructors
alone will be between 2.400,000
and 4,000,000 dollars. Hus
the salary
for only those
instructors of the dinicai yean
and does not indude educators
in the more general areas of a
medical college curriculum (i.e.
- biology, pharmacology, etc.) it
is interesting to note that the
total expenditure for salaries
and wages in all of the liberal
arts college at Mercer amount
ed to something under 2.2
million dollars for the period
between July I, 1976 and June
30,1977.
As a spinoff of this clinical
instructors salary matter it
should be noted that with the
decline since 1966 of medical
research funds from the federal
government -medical colleges
have been forced to require
their dinicai instructors to treat
more individuals from the
community for which the school
charges and collects “doctors**
fees. An official at the Univer
sity of Florida relates that they
have been able to squeeze
thirty-five percent of the total
salary out of a dinican by this
practice. This official further
states that this thirty-five
percent figure is a maximum,
for in order to increase this
percentage the dinican would
be forced to devote tpo much
time to seeing patients and oat
enough time instructing med-
students. Dr. Bernard on the
other hand insists that the
clinical instructors at the
proposed medical college at
Mercer will be able to earn back
100% of their salaries. Even if
Dr. Bernard can lengthen a day
to fourty-eight hours the line of
reasoning seems to put forth the
idea that dtnvriana will he
willing to earn their salaries
through practice and imrtruet
for nothing. Now that's dedica
tion!.
A farther matter to be related
is the notion of need for a
medical college in Georgia. As I
have noted above the University
oif Florida at Gainaville recently
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