Daily Herald the Brown
vol. cxliv, no. 32 | Monday, March 9, 2009 | Serving the community daily since 1891
Full-time RISD faculty forgo salary increases By Chaz Kelsh News Editor
Full-time faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design have agreed to forgo a salary increase next year in the face of the worsening economic climate. Henr y Ferreira, associate professor of printmaking and president of the full-time faculty’s union, said the faculty “arrived at a decision that it would probably be best” to give up raises for a year to see where the economy was headed. The union’s current contract expires July 1, at the end of this fiscal year. The faculty members have decided to wait for a year rather than negotiate a new contract amid economic turmoil, Ferreira said. The union would have been “essentially tr ying to negotiate a contract with sand under our feet,” Ferreira said, adding that the faculty would have faced a “very long, protracted kind of negotiation.” Though RISD spokeswoman Jaime Marland declined to comment specifically on the school’s finances, she confirmed that the union accepted a wage freeze. “We are targeting a 0 percent (salar y) increase for all RISD employees,” she said. RISD’s part-time faculty union is still considering whether to accept a wage freeze, its leader said. Though the part-time union negotiated a new contact last year that included scheduled raises, RISD has now asked the union to consider accepting no increases for next year, said Randy Willier,
sprin g f l in g
illustration critic and the union’s president. Though the school is “contractually obliged” to give part-time faculty a raise, “we don’t want to look like the bad people here,” he said. “The school is saying, ‘If everybody pitches in, we can all do this together’ — which we’re all for,” Willier said, adding that part-time faculty — who are hired on contracts as short as one year — are also concerned that some of their jobs may be cut if they do not accept a wage freeze. “As of today, it’s fairly split,” Willier said of the faculty’s willingness to forego raises. “There are some that are resisting.” Some part-time faculty had been waiting for the full-time faculty’s decision, he said. The part-time union has until June 30 to make a decision, Willier said. “We’re not in a big hurr y,” he said. Ferreira said he hoped the fulltime faculty’s decision would be beneficial to RISD students in the long run. “Hopefully, tuition will be raised less because we won’t be getting a raise this year,” he said, adding that the school will also save “quite a sum” by not having to hire lawyers to negotiate with the union. At Brown, President Ruth Simmons has announced a moratorium on salar y increases for nearly all faculty and staff. Proposed hires must be vetted by a special administrative Vacancy Review Committee.
Kim Perley / Herald
Students took advantage of mild weather this weekend as deep snow all but melted away.
A cub becomes a bear — mazel tov! By Matthew Klebanoff Staf f Writer
Last weekend, Brown/RISD Hillel had a “bear y” unusual guest of honor — Bruno, the University mascot. On Friday night and Saturday morning, the Jewish sabbath, Bruno celebrated his growth from a cub into an adult bear with classic Bar Mitzvah festivities at Hillel. Bar Mitzvahs are “a rite of passage now, especially in American Judaism,” said Rabbi Mordechai Rackover, the associate University chaplain for the Jewish community. “Originally it signaled that a person had gone through puberty
Instead of hiring, Campus Life office re-tools By Emmy Liss Features Editor
inside
The Office of Campus Life and Student Services has expanded the roles of several top administrators to cover the responsibilities once filled by currently vacant positions, including that of the associate vice president. The associate vice president position, previously held by Margaret Klawunn, now the vice president for campus life and student services, has been open since July. Though a national search was underway, the University-wide hiring freeze led the division to “take another look” and redistribute responsibilities, a change that took effect March 1, Klawunn said. Employees will be compensated for taking on new responsibilities. “If
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you’re asking people to do additional work, then there’s additional pay for taking on the additional work,” Klawunn said. Ricky Gresh, who formerly directed the Student Activities Office, is now the senior director of student engagement. He will have oversight over the SAO and will also be responsible for the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center, the LGBTQ Resource Center, the Chaplain’s Office and the Third World Center. In his previous role, Gresh collaborated extensively with the other centers to “share strategies and advance priorities together,” he said. His job now entails more “management responsibility.” A number of those centers are dealing with vacancies of their own, creating “short-term critical needs,” Gresh said, which he hopes to ad-
dress. Gresh has been “calling meetings” between the centers for over a year and is, given the current vacancies, in a position to facilitate “how we share what we’re doing,” Klawunn said. Putting the centers under one individual’s oversight encourages cooperation within campus life and “creates more of an opportunity for strong collaboration with the Dean of the College’s office,” Gresh said. With plans for the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center in Faunce House moving forward, Gresh said it was time to “rethink staffing structure and support anyway.” Gresh’s colleague Phil O’Hara was promoted from assistant direccontinued on page 2
and was ready to be part of the adult community.” Gene Goldstein-Plesser ’11, chair of the Shabbat Committee, and Jennifer Grayson ’11, chair of the Student Welcoming Committee, planned the Bruno-themed weekend in hopes of attracting
FEATURE new faces to Hillel. “It’s always the same people that read things at services,” said Grayson, a former Herald copy editor. “A lot of times we don’t have new people come in.” On Saturday night, Bruno celebrated his coming of age with a party that included numerous Bar
Mitzvah traditions. The party kicked off with Bruno and students dancing the traditional Hora to the klezmer band Yarmulkaze. Four or five students, arm-in-arm with Bruno, danced in a circle to “Hava Nagila” and lifted him in a chair several times. Students played traditional Bar Mitzvah games like Coke and Pepsi — a modified game of tag — and limbo. Later that night was a candlelighting ceremony, when, traditionally, the celebrated teenager lights candles on a cake to honor important friends and family members. Candles were lit in honor of continued on page 3
Researcher teams receive $200k for medical studies By Emma Berry Staff Writer
Two research teams with collaborators from the Warren Alpert Medical School and the Women and Infants Hospital of Rhode Island have received grants to study fertility and pregnancy risks. Funded by the Rhode Island Science and Technology Advisory Council, the grants are designed to encourage collaborative research and development within the state, according to the hospital’s Feb. 23 press release. This year, the council awarded grants to seven Rhode Island teams working in a variety of fields. Each team received approximately $200,000
in research funding. One team — a collaboration between Associate Professor of Medical Science and Engineering Jeffrey Morgan, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology Sandra Carson and Assistant Professor of Engineering Anubhav Tripathi — will use a 3-D Petri dish technology previously developed by Morgan and colleagues to create an “artificial ovary” that could be used to preserve the fertility of women undergoing certain medical treatments. Carson, who directs the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility and the Center for Reproduction and Infertility at Women continued on page 2
Arts, 4
Sports, 5
Opinions, 11
‘Good for the jews’ Musical group that wants to “radicalize Jewish music” will perform at Hillel tonight
Victorious Men’s hoops finished up the season with wins over Harvard and Dartmouth
Calling all geeks! Susannah Kroeber ’11 lauds geeks, superheroes and the release of “Watchmen”
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