INSIDE
INDEX
Vol. CIV, No. 19 © 2022, The Heights, Inc. www.bcheights.com Established 1919
THIS ISSUE
NEWS.............A2 ARTS...............A8 METRO...........A4 OPINIONS.....A10 MAGAZINE.....A6 SPORTS.......A12
www.bcheights.com
Monday, November 7, 2022
Chestnut Hill, Mass.
MAGAZINE
OPINIONS
Columnist Alli Hargrove discusses how to reset your circadian rhythm and finally get a good night’s sleep.
It’s sweater season! Find out what BC students are wearing now that the weather is cooling down.
A7
A10
Grad Student Union Rallies for Wages
AMY PALMER / HEIGHTS EDITOR PHOTO COURTESY OF TIM SMYTH
Tim Smyth Swabbed to Save a Life By Kate Nuechterlein Heights Staff
On an average November day last year, Tim Smyth saw a couple of his friends at the Project Life Movement bone marrow drive on Gasson Quad and decided to get his cheek swabbed. Less than six months later, Smyth,
BC ’22, would donate stem cells to an anonymous leukemia patient with about a 25 percent chance of survival. Project Life partnered with Gift of Life Marrow Registry to host an on-campus drive last November where students could volunteer to have their cheeks swabbed and join the donor registry. Luke Kuechly, former Boston
College football player and former linebacker for the Carolina Panthers, returned to campus to help organize and lead the drive along with Meghan Heckelman, the director of student initiatives of UGBC and the campus ambassador for Gift of Life.
See Smyth, A6
Arts
By Karyl Clifford For The Heights
Members of the Boston College Graduate Employees Union (BCGEU) gathered on the lawn outside of St. Ignatius, hoisting signs plastered with phrases including “remind BC workers rights are Catholic values” and “BC works hard because graduate students do.” “Graduate students have as much teaching responsibility as full research professors, and yet, we’re not paid a living wage,” one organizer of the rally said. Graduate employee unions from neighboring schools joined BCGEU for the rally right before the Friday BC football game against Duke. Crowds of drunken students and gamewatchers passed as protestors demanded BC recognize their union and negotiate a contract to guarantee better working conditions.
“Five years ago, we exercised our constitutional rights to form this union,” Hannah Clay, a graduate student in the English department, said. “Since then we have consistently reached out to Father Leahy [and administration] … to initiate a bargaining process, but they have refused to speak with us. They deny that we are workers even though we are what makes BC run.” Protestors shared why they joined their respective unions. For many of them, their paychecks were simply not enough to avoid “living in poverty.” “When I started my master’s program in the history department at this university, I was only making a little over $20,000 back then teaching, and it’s just not enough to pay rent and the bills,” Mikayla Vu, an organizer of BCGEU and UAW Region 9a Servicing representative, said.
See Rally, A2
Sports
Basketball Season Previews See A14 and A15
VIKRUM SINGH / HEIGHTS EDITOR
Six A Cappella Groups Take the Stage to Benefit Morgan Center
The show benefited a nonprofit preschool for children battling cancer. See A8
CHRIS TICAS / HEIGHTS STAFF