WHATEVER

[Gary H. Toops]

As so often happens on SEELangs, the discussion has gone rather far
afield in a relatively short time.

In the past twelve years, not one student has ever approached me
about securing a job involving Russian or other Slavic language
skills, nor has any administrator suggested that I duplicate the
function of the university's job placement services.  On occasion
I may have directed one student or another to specific locations
on the Internet where employment notices are regularly posted, but
SEELangs has never been one of those locations.

It is ironic that the same people who claim to print out and post
every forwarded job announcement that appears on SEELangs also
claim not to have the time to monitor one or two other subscriber
lists or to direct their students to those lists.  Students who
are serious about finding a job are going to do their own job
hunting (and not rely on "hot tips" from their Russian prof!),
and it is no more incumbent upon me to provide students with reams
of downloaded job announcements than it is upon me to clip want
ads for my students from the classified section of the New York
Times or Nezavisimaja gazeta.

The word "comfort" has cropped up several times in this discussion.
Yes, it is comforting to know that we in the profession have not
been lying to our students when we say that we are providing them
not just with knowledge, but with a marketable job skill, and that
we have the periodic Slavic-related job announcement to back us up.

But that was never the issue.  The issue was and remains (and where
are the techno-nerds screaming about "wasted bandwidth" when you
need them?) whether SEELangs should replicate other, equally
accessible subscriber lists and whether it should continue to be
used as a dumping ground for every even remotely Slavic-related
job posting by someone who himself is not even a subscriber to
SEELangs.


Gary H. Toops                               TOOPS at TWSUVM.UC.TWSU.EDU
Associate Professor                         Ph (316) WSU-3180 (978-3180)
Wichita State University                    Fx (316) WSU-3293 (978-3293)
Wichita, Kansas 67260-0011 USA              http://www.twsu.edu/~mcllwww