National Campus News Unionizing by David Warsh Chicago Tribune April 24, 2000 The drive to unionize higher education is coming to a boil. The United Auto Workers last week called a day-long strike at eight campuses in California despite on going contract negotiations. And on Tuesday, April 25, an election at New York University was to de termine whether the UAW will rep resent graduate assistants there. It will be the first-ever union election at a private university and perhaps the starting gun for many more organizing attempts. Union representation of gradu ate students has become common enough at public universities in the U.S. It exists in at least ten state systems, including California, New York, and Massachusetts but state statutes considerably limit the scope of collective bargaining. The NYU election is the first to proceed under federal law, which could insert the UAW as a third party into every potential issue of academic judgement that exists be tween students and their professors from grades to assignments to recommendations. Whatever happens next, the NYU episode will be a big testing point for the U.S. system of higher education. The basic facts are simple. NYU is a big, prosperous second- or third-tier research university, orga nized into 13 different schools. Of NYU's 35,000 students, some 16,000 are undergraduates, another 16,000 are seeking masters and professional degrees, and roughly 3,000 are Ph.D candidates. Around 1,600 graduate students serve as graduate assistants, help- Rapist's conviction raises questions about campus safety laws by Cornelia Grumman Chicago Tribune April 19, 2000 LINCOLN. Neb. Like leaving a sin ister calling card, the man would rape his victims the same distinctive way. He hit tiny colleges, mostly in the Mid west. He wore a dark ski mask. He looked for young women sitting alone in music rooms or computer labs. He attacked from behind. When finished, he told his victims to pray for him. Sometimes he took their panties. If not for the struggling screams of one victim, luck, and maybe even a fluke, the man a Nebraska jury con victed last week of one of those as saults, 38-year-old traveling comedian Vinson Champ, might still be free. Now, while authorities investigating similar attacks decide how to proceed with cases in their own jurisdictions, Champ’s conviction raises questions about whether recent campus safety laws go far enough in preventing these sorts of serial rampages. While citing the difficulty of track ing any serial criminal across a broad geographical area, some authorities speculate that schools’ traditional re luctance to publicly disclose or share details about campus crimes might have inadvertently prolonged the spree of assaults in 1996 and 1997. “I wonder whether each of these in dividual departments sort of looked at those problems as just being germane to their specific campus and didn’t make the next connection that perhaps there might be a person who might be committing these crimes in a broader geographical area,” said John King, president of the International Associa tion of Campus Law Enforcement Ad ministrators. Already colleges and universities have come under fire for lax compli ance with laws requiring greater report ing about campus crimes. The Cam pus Security Act of 1990 and its 1998 amendments require all colleges and universities to report three years worth of serious crimes and to keep a daily log book for public inspection. But conformity with that law, known as the Jeanne Clery Act in honor of a 19-year old student who was raped and mur dered in her Lehigh University dorm room in 1986, has been so negligible, particularly among smaller schools, higher education brings on battle ing faculty members teach, grade papers, and perform research. They receive cash (up to $20,000 a year), free tuition (worth $20,000), and a discount at the uni versity book store. If they are headed for a Ph.D (about half of them), they typically spend two “They need to un derstand the word ‘ rat.' They're not a \private univer sity in the public service. ’ They 're a rat corporation in the service of scabs." -Lisa Jessup, UAW organizer for student elections years taking courses, then must pass a qualifying exam and spend three or more years to write a dis- sertation The nub of the matter is this: are they students or employees? The university says assistanceships are a vital part of students’ training, for teaching and doing research are what the doc torate is about (though of course increasing numbers of Ph. D’s go into industry or government work.) Thus a research assistant becomes a better researcher by doing re search for her or his professor; a teaching assistant learns to teach that Congress this summer plans to start enforcing it for the first time by with holding significant amounts of student aid to violators. “College is big business today, and they are afraid of losing funding in alumni giving or enrollments,” said Connie Clery, who, with her husband, Howard, was instrumental in persuad ing Congress to pass the bill in the wake of their daughter’s death. “So this is why there has been such a tremendous cover-up situation; they’re afraid to have the public know there is so much crime." Beginning July 1, schools that do not report serious crimes to the federal De partment of Education, and who do not open their daily incident books to the public within 48 hours of an incident, will face penalties of $25,000 per vio lation. While students on campuses where the masked rapist preyed generally said they were quietly informed about the attack shortly after the fact, news of the incident rarely traveled far beyond campus. “If you’ve got that free flow of in formation, the agencies can collabo rate,” said Daniel Carter, vice president of Security on Campus Inc., the non profit campus security watchdog group founded by the Clerys. “That’s the type of thing that when they keep it quiet, the public often isn’t the only people left in the dark. Other agencies also are left in the dark.” That was true in other campus at tacks that since have been linked ei ther by DNA evidence or by character istics of the attack. At Knox College in Galesburg, 111., for example, news of an attempted assault Feb. 9, 1997, merited a brief mention in one Galesburg weekly, though long after the event. “They [Knox officials] consider themselves sort of an island and pri vate,” said Norm Winick, editor of the Zephyr independent weekly in Galesburg. “When anything negative happens they like to leave it as unre ported as possible.” Sgt. David Clague of the Galesburg Police Dept, said no notice was put out about the attack because “that’s just usually our policy.” Another nearly identical attack oc curred the next day in a college music room in Kenosha, Wis. A week later, by teaching. The students, at least those who organized the affiliation campaign, see it differently. They view them selves as cogs in a system, a cap tive pool of cheap labor, easily ex ploited and neglected. They want smaller workloads, bigger sti- pends, paid health care, and subsi dized housing. The UAW agrees and has quickly sought to link the gradu ate student election to attempts to force NYU to use union labor in the construction of a new dorm, as well as to negotiate a new contract for the university’s clerical work ers. Lisa Jessup, the UAW orga nizer for student elections, told a rally the other day, “They need to understand the word ’rat.’ They’re not a ‘private university in the pub lic service.’ They’re a rat corpo ration in the service of scabs.” The regional director of the Na tional Labor Relations Board sided with the students who petitioned for an election. Reversing 25 years of precedent, Daniel Silverman ruled earlier this month that NYU students in fact were employees and therefore entitled to vote on whether to join the Autoworkers. He cited an NLRB decision last year that permitted interns and residents at the Boston Medical Center to organize. NYU quickly appealed the case. For one thing, the university ar gued, the precedent was ill-ap plied. Boston Medical house staff spend 80 percent of their time car ing for patients and just 20 percent in lectures, conferences, and classes, whereas NYU assistants spend just 15 percent of their time on their assistanceships and 85 percent on their own work. There is little doubt that gradu- Finding love, friendship on the World Wide Web, , ’ ; : y-J ' V by.AstaYtre CampSs CoftWbweT - UNC-Chapel Hill April 23,2000- CHAPE*. HILL, N.C. (TMS) Michelle Scuba, a junior business Major at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and her boyfriend Huang, who lives outside San Francisco, have been together for almost a year. They live far away from each other, but talk cm the phone every day and meet once a month. They are plan ning to get married soon and talk about having kids one day. All of this having flowed from a chance meeting not at school, in a bar, or at a religious service but in a havediseov- - Irdd, aftdt now prefer, meeting new friendsand significant others Without ■ leaving the safety of their homes, where they can simply log on to the to&rn**,- ' ‘ ' v Scuba said she preferred meeting people online first because the pool to those from was more diverse and &>m a larger area. people, goals. Users can talk about their fa you exdude because of looks, and you vorite pets, discuss current global situ she ationSi or meet a virtual tennis part- ‘'l have metpedple from all over ner or soul mate. Services such as jhil’iywldi V * r matchmakeKcommdgotdates.com Scubhalso rpaintainsthal couples are becoming more popular and more start among students as well as other teenagers and adults. ship h&gsed Ign SCrong-comilrimtk»i*4{«:' Jodie Dominguez of Fort Lauder- B* 4 :i;v * “ " Ha., runs the matchmaker.com jihd'olii’right from the start: site,'which encourages users to com- two more women reported separate campus assaults, one in Rock Island, 111., and the other in nearby Davenport, lowa. But it wasn’t until April that au thorities in Galesburg started connect ing the Knox attack with those on other Midwestern campuses. And Davenport authorities learned that a similar rape had occurred in Omaha only because two professors from the respective colleges who were friends happened to discuss the issue one day. Only a few of the investigat ing agencies reported details of the crimes to a national database main tained by the Federal Bureau of Inves tigation. “It’s much easier for police depart ments in the same state to communi cate than those across the nation,” said Ross Rice, an FBI spokesman based in Chicago. The schools where Champ allegedly found his victims were in small towns ate students have been ill-treated in recent years. The Yale “grade strike” in 1995 when under graduates’ grades were withheld established that. The group at Yale never sought an election, and since then a cornucopia of benefits has been made available to all gradu ate students, not just paid assis tants. Meanwhile, unionization has proceeded steadily in the public universities, where state laws or dinarily stop short of granting aca demic unions the same sweeping powers to bargain they would en joy under federal law. When UAW representation was won last year in California after 16 years of try ing, some 10,000 graduate assis tants on eight campuses were added to the union rolls. That brought union membership to 30,000 of the estimated 100,000 graduate assistants nationwide. It is possible to imagine all sorts of unforeseen consequences if the unionization of private universities proceeds —or if it doesn’t. For instance, students suddenly classi fied as employees could find their tuition benefits subject to taxation, which is not the case so long as it is described as financial aid. Then again, universities could dispense with graduate assistants altogether, preferring to hire out-of-work graduate students and post-docs as “adjunct faculty” instead, thereby dramatically restructuring the Ph.d. There are larger ramifications. Eight years of labor-friendly ap pointments by the Clinton admin istration have made a difference in the way labor laws are adminis tered. There is the prospect of more change if A 1 Gore is elected president. that a4l they have is communication, and if they can hold on to'fhtrtf tills good,” she said. > , ! There are chat rooms and dating services for all kinds of interests and within driving distance of his college and club performances. From January 1996 until his eventual arrest in May 1997, the former Star Search contes tant known for his Michael Jackson im pression gave 80 performances in 17 states, according to his former Chicago based agent. Union College in Lincoln, which was the focus of trial testimony over the last week in a Lancaster County courtroom, still does not open its daily log books to the public, according to Dean of Students Joe Parmele. “I wasn’t aware we had to keep daily incident reports,” he said. At the University of Nebraska at Omaha, it was the victim, Heidi Hess, who first contacted the student news paper to tell her story after she was as saulted in a third-floor computer room March 5,1997, her mother said. Champ since has entered a plea of no contest to first-degree sexual assault April 28, 2000, The Behrend Beacon, page 7 Missouri vandals campus by Alexandrea Ravenelle Campus Correspondent University of Missouri April 19. 2000 COLUMBIA, Mo. (TMS) More than a week after the historic Univer sity of Missouri in Columbia columns were vandalized with brown paint, the University is still trying to repair the damage. Each of the six columns were van dalized with an exclamation point or a letter to spell out the word ''Bono!" preceded by an upside-down excla mation point. The school is currently working with a conservator who specializes in sculpture and masonry restoration. When the graffiti w-as first discovered, the university’s campus facilities de partment used graffiti remover with limited success; the paint is fainter, but still visible. The plan is for the conservator to University of Missouri officials are looking for the person or people who spray-painted the letters “BONO!” on a series of historic and prominent columns on campus. plete detailed surveys abouttheirlikes and dislikes and to “Go meet sorhe body!” Dominguez followed that command and met her husband of six years there. The site ensures the pri- Vacy of members by keeping them anonymous. Keeping user names a secret is de signed to promote safety, which is a concern for many using the Internet to find promising partners. Dominguez insists that with the addi tional security, Internet dating isn’t ahy more dangerous than trolling for Mr. or Mrs. Right in a bar. “At least with the matchmaker, you charges stemming from that attack. Champ was first suspected after an incident three years ago in California. After a student at Pasadena City Col lege struggled and ran screaming from an attempted sexual assault as she was practicing piano, a witness followed the masked suspect and took down his li cense plate number. Campus investi gators traced the plate to Champ’s home in nearby Hollywood, where they found clothes described by the victim and a date book containing detailed records of the comedian’s performance schedule, according to Pasadena City College Police Chief Phil Mullendore. Mullendore then vaguely recalled re cent postings to an Internet discussion group for campus police having to do with a string of rapes in the Midwest. “Not being in the Midwest, I just kind of ignored it,” he said. But some of the elements of the crime sounded similar, so Mullendore sent out a note looking for of prominent sculpture either repair the columns or experi ment and give a solution according to Phil Shocklee, associate director of campus facilities. "I’m sure we’ll be able to get it all out, but I’m sure it’ll be a tedious process,” Shocklee said. The biggest challenge is to repair the porous limestone columns with out leaving any evidence of the dam age through a bleached or lightened face of the stone. "We don't want the image of a [bleached] white ‘Bono!’” Shocklee said. The columns are remnants of the old Academic Building the first building of the University which burned in 1892. They now stand alone in the center of the quad and are believed to be the most photo graphed item in the state of Missouri with the exception of the Arch in St. Louis. Campus Police have yet to catch the vandal and are not expected to be suc- cessful can prescreen the people," she ■ A Urhwntirrt, not exactly, who has learned never to let- guard when chatting online people she doesn’t know very v “After talking to someone mately, you feel you know them, but you have to be careful," shejuud,: “They could be telling the truth or they could be lying.” * Scuba said she learned that the hard way when she moved with her fam ily to Las Vegas last year. She meld man from the area online and invitid him to go out for dinner or coffee. When he arrived at her apartment, Scuba said he sexually assaulted her. Nowadays, Scuba said she online friends with minimal personal information while checking out their Stories for consistency. She alto thinks people should consider safely when meeting someone through fee Internet or in person. “When meeting someone, no mat ter how nice they sound or how long you’ve been talking, you should be careful,” she said. ‘Don't giveyotir name, phone number, or address, and never meet them alone.” TMSARTWORK That doesn’t mean the relationship can’t get more personal with time. Meredith Perry, a first-year student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said she met one of her best friends through an AOL news letter designed for people wi th shared movie interests. "It seems like a weird way of meet ing people, but I am glad we did,” she said. to group members. He also sent a de scription of the crime to a national da tabase maintained by the Federal Bu reau of Investigation. Within 24 hours, he received a flood of responses. Champ appeared in court this week smartly dressed in double-breasted suits and pressed white shirts. De scribed as professional and articulate, Champ would hardly stick out as an obvious suspect by appearance alone. Hunting for music rooms or computer labs on college campuses, he could pass easily as a graduate student or an in structor. “He was very neat and clean, and had absolutely no accent,” Mullendore said. “He bought skin whitener that he could use to change the color of his hands, so with no discernible accent and the abil ity to change his skin color, a lot of his victims thought he was white or His- panic.”
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers