Friday, April 29, 2005
fE Wo - YEAR IN EE VIE W
Dorm damages on the rise, students paying
By Dan Snedden
from the Dec. 10 issue
Damages in the residence halls are a
problem every semester at every college
and Behrend certainly has its share.
However, this semester damages are on
the rise, resulting in extra hassle for
Housing and extra charges for students.
“This year is certainly not one of the
best years,” said James Bowen, assis
tant manager of Housing and Food
Services. “One of our biggest charges is
students who leave their trash on the
lloors, leave their trash in the bathrooms
and leave their trash outside the back
doors of the buildings.”
“We hire housekeepers. And our
housekeepers' jobs are to go in and
clean those buildings, take the trash out
of the bathrooms, the hallways, the lob
PSU reorganization
In an effort to improve administrative efficiencies within Penn State’s network
of campuses. University Park released a comprehensive plan of structural reorgan
ization of the university. Although it has not yet been confirmed, the entire plan
aroused anxiety in Behrend faculty.
The emphasis of the plan is the new alignment of campuses, title changes for the
campus executives and deans and policy and structural changes to enhance the co
operation between campuses and campuses to reduce administrative redundancy.
The biggest change for all 19 campuses, except University Park, is that they will
be part of a new Commonwealth Campuses organization, reporting to John
Romano and Janis Jacobs, the new vice presidents for Commonwealth Campuses,
according to Dr. Jack Burke, CEO and Dean at Penh State Erie. Romano serves as
the vice provost and dean for enrollment management and administration while
Jacobs serves as the vice provost for Undergraduate Education and International
Programs.
Its aim is to eliminate much administrative overlap, reduce cost and improve
operational efficiency in the areas of outreach, university libraries, student affairs,
Development and University Relations since the resources can be moved from one
campus to another to help balance the budget model of Penn State.
“How this model will work in practice is not yet clear, but it does represent a
threat, at least on the surface,” said Burke. “So does our new status as just one of
19 non-Univcrsity Park locations. But many of which are of much lesser stature.”
Burke also claimed there will be millions of details to work out for the centrali
sation. One of the challenges includes the independence of Behrend. Since the
bies and so forth. But they don’t take
personal trash out,” said Bowen.
The deterrent fees for a bag of
garbage are $25 throughout the univer
sity system and they vary for other dam
ages. Extra cleaning includes both the
deterrent charge and compensation for
the housekeepers.
According to Bowen, there have been
recurring problems in the lobbies of the
various residence halls, students putting
trash in the recycling bins being a sig
nificant one. He explained that if
garbage, even cardboard pizza boxes, is
thrown in a recycling bin, waste man
agement cannot use the bag for recy
cling.
Cameras in the residence halls, while
they add an extra measure of vigilance,
are not meant primarily to be a deterrent
to damages.
By Tiffany Mak
from the April 14 issue
“The intent of the cameras is not to
catch students doing bad things. The
intent of the cameras is for safety pur
poses,” said Bowen. “If we do find
something on camera where someone’s
done something wrong, certainly that’s
a benefit to us, but first and foremost the
cameras are installed for safety. If
someone is assaulted then we can refer
to the cameras and see who entered the
building at what time and use that.”
“If a student sees a student damaging,
they should not feel like they’re ratting
on someone by reporting it. Students
need to take care of their home away
from home,” said Bowen. “If we get a
report, we can investigate it and charge
the individual responsible for the dam
age.”
“Res Life and Housing are always
brainstorming to find ways to help stu-
creates controversy
library faculty and staff and their budgets will be transferred to the University
Libraries, Behrend will have a dotted line relationship to the college.
“It appears that all of our curricular proposals will need to go through another
level of approval. There will be a big push to increase online offerings, and the
World Campus will become known eventually as Penn State Online,” said Burke.
Although there seems to be more questions than answers, Burke thought there
might be some positives for Behrend.
Burke believed that we can still maintain our qualitative academic status under
the “central bureaucracy” system because we have a voice at President’s Council
as well
“Among the potential opportunities I see is a chance to modify the service-area
concept in admissions as well as an opportunity to create win-win partnerships
with the other campuses,” said Burke.
Other additional opportunities, like delivering our graduate programs to other
sister campuses rather than to University Park, will help retain “loss of status asso
ciated with being aligned with units of lesser academic maturity.”
Rodney Erickson, executive vice president and provost at Penn State, summa
rized the plan as “cost savings” which will result in redirection of budget and
“greater support for the commonwealth campuses.”
Graham Spanier, Penn State president felt that the streamlining will ensure
“greater attention and visibility” to undergraduate education and to the campuses.
‘The restructuring also will permit the executive vice president and provost to
assume a greater sense of operational responsibilities and, in turn, will release time
for me to engage in additional activities including fundraising and external rela
tions,” said Spanier.
More informational meetings are scheduled and the board of trustees will pres
ent a formal reorganization plan.
dents reduce damages,” said Amanda
Knerr, associate director of student
affairs, “but students taking responsibil
ity for their own actions and the actions
of their fellow residents is the key to
keeping charges down.”
“Our floor meetings have been suc
cessful in explaining how the process of
charging damages works,” said Knerr.
“The damage free program has also
drastically reduced damages.”
The damage free program encourages
students to keep their floors clean by
rewarding students with a party after a
month without damages.
“We try to maintain a nice, safe, clean
area,” said Bowen. “All in all I think
that we have a bunch of good kids on
campus, there’s just a few that think
they’re here for something other than
education.”
The Behrend Beacon I
Henderson, Soni
take SGA election
By Sarah Weber
from the April 1 issue
Mike Taylor, SGA elections chair,
announced yesterday that Alex
Henderson and Deepti Soni won the
SGA presidential and vice presiden
tial election after polls closed at 5
p.m.
A record 813 students voted in the
election. Henderson and Soni
received 483 votes. The other candi
dates, Justin Curry and Cayla Javor
received 330 votes. The third ticket
of Zack Mentz and Seth Laird with
drew from the election late last week
and were removed from the ballot.
About 500 more students voted in
this year’s election then in the 2004
election.
Henderson and Soni agreed that
this year’s impressive turnout can be
attributed to the amount of cam
paigning by the original three par
ties.
“Both other candidates did an
extraordinary job of advertising and
getting people to vote,” said
Henderson.
Soni added the fact that there were
three candidates who had very dif
ferent platforms improved student
interest and campaign support.
Henderson said that there were
several items that would receive his
immediate attention when he takes
office at the end of the semester.
“We will continue the push to keep
tuition down. We are also going to
work hard to get book titles and
ISBN numbers to keep book prices
reasonable,” said Henderson. He
also said that, within, SGA he and
Soni will work on restructuring the
committees and reinstating the
diversity committee.
“I really want to thank all of the
students for getting active, my
friends, the clubs and the administra
tion,” said Soni. “I’d also like to
thank the other candidates.”