SIGNING UP

FBI to Minorities: We Want You

New billboards aim to recruit minority agents

The Pittsburgh office of the FBI posted six billboards last month to recruit new agents, especially minorities, in what is believed to be the first effort of its kind for the agency.

The billboards are part of a nationwide recruitment push to hire 1,000 new agents by Sept. 30, the end of the federal fiscal year. So far, 628 new agents have been hired, said Assistant Agent-in-Charge Roland Covington, one of just two black agents in the 130-agent Pittsburgh office.

The billboards show pictures of agents from various ethnic backgrounds, the slogan “A Career With America’s Finest” and a Web address and phone number where interested applicants can get more information.

“This is the first time that the FBI has used this approach, as far as we’re aware,” Covington said.

“Nationally, the FBI has made great strides in recruitment of minorities. We could certainly do better, but it’s not for a lack of trying,” he continued. “The goal is to reflect the society we serve, which makes us a more effective agency.”

The FBI, which had just nine black agents out of nearly 6,000 in 1960, has 600 black agents out of more than 11,000 today.

The bureau also employs about 337 Asian Pacific American agents who make up about 3 percent of its workforce, FBI spokesman Bill Carter told AsianWeek in June. Another 342 APAs serve in the FBI as lab technicians and analysts, comprising just over 2 percent of the bureau’s support staff, Carter said.

By contrast, APAs make up about 4.5 percent of the American population, according to the 2000 census.

Covington said ethnicity isn’t the only diversity the agency is seeking, however.

The FBI wants people with not just law enforcement backgrounds, but those with backgrounds in computer and physical science, engineering and military fields — particularly those trained in counter-terrorism.

Foreign-language speaking agents, especially those who know Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Vietnamese, are wanted.

FBI recruits must be 23 to 36 years old and have a college degree. Applicants with four-year degrees must have at least three years’ experience in their profession; those with advanced degrees must have at least two years’ work experience. But applicants with experience in information and computer science may have the work requirements waived.

Rookie agents earn $54,000 a year, but the screening process is vigorous, Covington said. About 120,000 people have applied to be agents since 1995, and only 5,000 were hired. For more information, go to www.fbijobs.com.

— The Associated Press, with Andrew Chow

EDUCATION

Critics: New Essay Could Hurt Some APAs, Hispanics

The decision to add a written essay to the widely-taken SAT college entrance exam has raised new questions. Can someone from a home where another language is spoken whip out polished English prose in 25 minutes? If not, does that mean he or she doesn’t deserve to go to a competitive college?

The SAT changes were prompted when University of California President Richard C. Atkinson proposed dropping the SAT. With 150,000 undergrads, UC is the test’s biggest user.

Atkinson heralded the SAT makeover — which included dropping the often-criticized analogy section and making math questions tougher — as “a transforming event in the nature of education.”

But at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Executive Director Margaret Fung said she had heard from several concerned parents and students.

“It’s clear that Asian families want to be sure their children speak English. It just seems as if [the essay requirement] may put people at a disadvantage,” she said.

At the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, officials say it’s too soon to know if the new requirement will be a problem, “but at a minimum we know the essay will not improve the situation,” said attorney Victor Viramontes.

A 2001 College Board report found that students whose first language was not English had a mean score of 455 on the SAT verbal test, compared to a mean score of 517 for those who spoke English first.

The report also found that students from Hispanic or Asian backgrounds in general had lower verbal scores than white students.

Patrick Hayashi, associate president of UC, said making the essay a national requirement, along with the other SAT changes, has “the potential of actually helping non-native speakers because I think it will encourage the development of better writing classes.”

Berkeley ethnic studies professor Ling-Chi Wang said he had heard from some who worried that the emphasis on writing is a way to boost diversity by curbing admission of APAs, who comprise about 40 percent of UC students but just 11 percent of California residents. UC and testing officials deny that.

Wang, meanwhile, said he was not troubled by the issue because “I personally strongly support the notion of diversity,” and because he expects APAs will meet the new challenge.

— Michelle Locke, AP

TONGUE-TIED

Web Translations Just Don’t Click

Officials with the rapid-transit authority in Portland, Ore., have learned the hard way that it’s no easy task to translate its website and pamphlet into seven languages.

“We were very naive,” said Kim Duncan, executive director of marketing for the transit agency Tri-Met. “This past winter, we found an automatic online translation service that we thought we could just run our website through. It was inexpensive. Life would be golden.”

That is, until Tri-Met officials got some test translations back and ran them by native speakers of Vietnamese, Chinese and Russian.

They discovered that, in Russian, the “transit tracker” feature on the website became “hunter chasing down wild animals” and the “detours and rider alerts” became “a roundabout way for a vigilant horseback rider.” Even the name “Tri-Met” was transformed to “three meetings” in Chinese.

Apparently, Duncan said, the computerized service translated literally, word for word, and often not very well. Luckily, those creative translations never saw the light of day.

Census data from 1990 showed that at least 7 percent of Oregonians speak a language other than English, and that more than 15 percent of those report speaking English not well or not at all. Similar data from 2000, scheduled for release this summer, is expected to show a significant increase.

Nearly three-quarters of the requests for interpreters on Tri-Met’s customer service line are for Spanish. Russian, Korean and Vietnamese are the next most common.

The website translation was ultimately done through a contracted translation service instead of the automatic online program. The completed translations were checked by native speakers of those languages.

For example, Tri-Met graphic artist Phiet Luong helped check the Vietnamese translation. It was Luong who noticed that in the Vietnamese version, “light rail” had been incorrectly translated to “small train,” and “lost and found” became “lost and stolen.”

“‘Lost and stolen’ would have definitely sent the wrong message,” Duncan said. “That’s a good argument for why we need a diverse work force.”

— AP