Q10 - Annie: Our University Libraries

[matthew.mainen]

I'd appreciate some words on this question. Is A out because while we know Annie believes that the university administrators have some blame in the library conditions (due to erroneous policies), we don't know if she also considers library administrators responsible as well?

[ohthatpatrick]

To answer your question about (A) specifically, I think the two women AGREE about (A). I think the terms 'university's administrators' and 'library administrators' and 'library officials' are being used interchangeably here.

If you're an administrator who works for the university and are responsible for library policies, I think it's fair to call you a library administrator or library official.

I admit, it's not 100% clear we should equate those, in which case, yes, your explanation would suffice for why we STILL couldn't pick (A).

===== complete explanation =====

My strategy with ID the Disagree (or Agree) questions is to literally bracket off the wording in person 1's paragraph and the wording in person 2's paragraph that directly go against each other.

This helps me stay true to the core of the disagreement.

Here, I would bracket off
Annie: "charge students a library fee"
Matilda" "students should not have to pay"

So the core of the issue is whether or not students should pay a fee.

I'm going to scan answer choices looking for keywords that deal with whether or not students should pay.

(A) no, this is about "who's to blame"
(B) no, this is about "the quickest way to effect improvements"
(C) no, this is about "who will benefit"
(D) This looks good! This is about "who should bear the cost".
(E) no, this is about "how funds could be raised"

Naturally, I'll want to confirm (D) by reading it carefully and asking myself, "Do I have textual support for ONE person AGREEING with this statement and the OTHER person DISAGREEING?"

Well, I can support than Annie would AGREE with (D), since she blames the university administrators' erroneous policies (so THEY are the ones responsible for the current condition) but she wants to charge students a fee.

Matilda would DISAGREE with (D), because she also believes that students are not responsible but feels that students should NOT bear the cost.

Ultimately, these answers have to be justified almost like an Inference question. We have to be able to find textual support that allows us to infer one person would agree and the other would disagree.

So since I'm going to need textual support that goes in opposite directions, I find that by first bracketing off the contrasting statements, I'm completely dialed in to the one and only issue I can pick an answer about.

Hope this helps.

[jm.kahn]

Annie (speaker-1) never says that students are not responsible for the current conditions. She only says that administrators are. Then how can Annie provably agree with D?


Since this is a must-be-true disagree question (not a most supports the claim that X and Y disagree about), the answer must be fully supported instead of softly supported.

[keonheecho]

Hi, I'm a little unsure about (D)

How do we know that Annie thinks students are not responsible? While I can kind of see why this is the best answer, this one threw me off because the question isn't asking for what 'must be supported' but what they definitely disagree on. But Annie doesn't seem to say anything that shows it is not the fault of students. Thank you!

[ohthatpatrick]

Well, I agree with the last two posters in principle, but whatchya-gonna-do?

You gotta pick the best answer. Nothing we say will fully convince you that Annie believes that students bear no responsibility, because Annie doesn't mention students and doesn't use extreme, restrictive terms like "sole responsibility".

But -- if we just use our common sense ear, Annie says that libraries are in bad shape, describes two examples of how, and says that "the university's administrators should admit that their library policies have been in error".

So it sounds like Annie thinks that "library policies" are responsible for the current situation.

(We can safely assume that Annie doesn't think students are responsible for "how many new books have been purchased during the last decade")