I'd like to address the Marquette Student Government recommendation to further evaluate proficiency of the English language among the teaching faculty. As a senior, I have attended several classes in which I ran into difficulty understanding my instructor. As a result, I appreciate the senator's motivation for introducing this topic for discussion and review.

In the March 8 edition of the Tribune, the staff editorial issued some suggestions for the administration. While well intended, I believe there are problems with several of these suggestions.

For instance, the article mentioned that if a student has troubles understanding the material being presented in class, he or she should make use of e-mail, instant messaging, or other forms of communication to fill the gaps. As an engineer, I can tell you right now that many courses I am required to take are not conducive to getting help in the form of electronic communication; face-to-face contact may seem to be from the dark ages, but it quite often is the only thing that can do the trick.

In case electronic communication attempts aren't successful, the editorial suggests dropping out of the course. Again, my chosen major may result in a difference in how I respond to this, but engineers in general have a very inflexible schedule, and dropping out of a course is just unacceptable if one has any hope of graduating in a span of four years. Sure, if enough students are dropping a class, the respective department may start to take notice, but I believe the prevention of this occurance would be much more beneficial than a retroactive response to it.

The staff's editorial also brought up a very serious issue related to this topic, one which is always being brought up in today's society: diversity. I believe that diversity is very important, but that it should be a wonderful side effect of accumulating the best minds — not the goal. What good is having a diverse group of teaching staff if their students have a hard time learning from them? One of the four main points of our university's mission statement is excellence, but what excellence is achieved when students can't understand what they have come here to learn?

A Viewpoint written by Steven Keiser in the March 10 edition of the Tribune addressed the fact that there are, indeed, many wonderful minds out there, ready and waiting for us students to encounter. He suggests that evaluation of accented English is subjective, and I think that's a very valid point — just ask my friends from high school who have moved out of state; while they, like me, lived here in Wisconsin their whole lives, upon their return on breaks, they insist that I have a Wisconsin accent!

I would hope that evaluations of accent wouldn't be "laden with ethnic and racial stereotypes," as Mr. Keiser asserts. I can only imagine that any accent has the potential to be misunderstood, whether Korean, French, Russian, or something else.

I don't have any answers to offer up in order to improve this situation. Whether anything is ever done about this, I can only repeat Mr. Keiser's suggestion: take your education into your own hands and make the effort to see a person, even if you can't understand him or her at first.

Katie Holterman is a senior in the College of Engineering.

This viewpoint appeared in The Marquette Tribune on April 7 2005.