thursday, apr. 18, 2024
celebrating 120 years
N • Special meeting
free
C • Hallowed halls
Twenty-four Syracuse University Senators petitioned to discuss the “serious challenges for shared governance and transparencies” following changes to Falk College. Page 3
S • Revolutionary
As some of the last residents prepare to move out of Kimmel and Marion Halls, students and alumni reflect on the history of the buildings. Page 5
Syracuse will retire Paul Gait’s storied No. 19 on April 20, signifying another milestone for one of lacrosse’s most influential players of all time. Page 12
Voiceless Falk College’s restructure has left faculty and students with uncertainty for its human dynamics departments
By Kendall Luther
O news editor
n Monday, faculty and staff of the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics were invited to listen to a presentation from Dean Jeremy Jordan and Provost Gretchen Ritter titled “The Future of Falk College.” The faculty and staff left not only with a new name of the college — David B. Falk College of Sport — but also with an uncertainty of what is to come in the future for their respective departments. “At the end of the coming year, we will likely evolve in kind of two separate directions,” Ritter said in the meeting. “We have a sense of one of those directions quite clearly here, and we are going to be asking all of you to help us to develop the other direction.” The new name will take effect at the end of the semester, said Jordan, who has “extensive experience in sport and recreation management,” according to SU’s website. He said the college will be composed of four departments: Sport Management, Nutrition and Exercise Science, Sport Analytics and Esports. The future of the human dynamics departments — Marriage and Family Therapy, Social Work, Human Development and Family Science and Public Health — will be determined by a task force convened by Ritter. The task force will have until the end of October to understand “the opportunities” and the “best way” to accomplish its goals moving forward, Jordan said. The university plans to release the name of the task force in the coming days, Ritter said. The faculty and staff received no prior official
university communications pertaining to the changes to Falk College before Monday’s meeting, said Kenneth Corvo, associate professor in the School of Social Work. “There’s no determination that we have a home, any of us,” Corvo said. “The committee that established the elevation of sport was done surreptitiously — none of us knew this was going on.” A professor in the department of Public Health, who requested to remain anonymous, said rumors regarding the change originated from a community-based agency the College worked with to coordinate internship placements. A staff member from the agency said they heard the department was “being closed.” “An external organization heard about this before we did, and that caused everybody to be terrified,” they said. “It is truly not fair to hear about potential closure of our department from community colleagues.”
When asked for comment regarding effects on Human Dynamics, the university referred back to Monday’s release. Jordan did not immediately respond to The Daily Orange’s request for comment. The task force will be co-chaired by Associate Provost for Academic Programs Lois Agnew and newly-appointed Associate Dean for Human Dynamics Programs Rachel Razza. Razza said at the meeting that she was “brought into the conversation last week.” Razza did not immediately respond to The D.O.’s request for comment. “We mapped out a positive path forward that came out of a task force on sports management, and now the next phase is to do it with human dynamics,” Ritter said. With developments such as Micron’s new facility and the I-81 Community Grid project bolstering the
see falk page 4
flynn ledoux contributing illustrator
on campus
School of Education’s InclusiveU celebrates tenth anniversary By Julia Boehning asst. news editor
Before Andrew Benbenek stepped foot on Syracuse University’s campus — or any college campus — he knew he wanted to be part of the Orange. “I had wanted to go to SU since I was probably 3, 4 years old — before I even knew why I was going to college,” Benbenek said.
Benbenek, who was diagnosed with brain cancer as a child, had been told throughout his life that his disability would make achieving his dream of going to college unlikely. In 2017, however, he found a home in SU’s then relatively new InclusiveU initiative — a program that provides accessible higher education for students with developmental and intellectual disabilities.
Now, his alma mater is celebrating 10 years on SU’s campus. It was founded as a program in SU’s Lawrence B. Taishoff Center for Inclusive Higher Education — a center within SU’s School of Education dedicated to finding ways to support college-aged individuals with disabilities. Since InclusiveU’s creation, the program’s student population has increased by over 600% — from 14 stu-
dents in its first year to over 100 today. Today, it is one of the largest programs for intellectually and developmentally disabled college students in the United States, said Beth Myers, the executive director of the Taishoff Center. “They really ‘bleed orange’ like everybody else,” Myers said. “Our students get the opportunity to be a college student and to be a part of college student growth … it’s an opportunity
for students to explore what it means to find themselves.” When InclusiveU was founded, there were only about 25 higher education programs for disabled students in the U.S., Myers said. Currently, there are around 300, according to the PACER Center — an organization dedicated to providing resources to parents of children with disabilities. see inclusiveu page 4