thursday, april 23, 2026
celebrating 122 years
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ilana zahavy presentation director | eli schwartz asst. photo editor
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED Joey Spallina wanted to restore SU’s No. 22. As all-time points leader, he did. By Zak Wolf
senior staff writer
I
t took John Desko two sentences to make Joey Spallina’s dream a reality on Sept. 1, 2020. Just after midnight on the first day college coaches can contact high school juniors, Spallina was in the backseat of his mother Mary Beth’s Cadillac SUV, returning from a travel event with his club program, Team 91. Spallina’s father, Joe — the head coach of Stony Brook’s women’s program — was making his own recruiting calls.
Instead of calling Spallina, Desko phoned Mary Beth. Within moments, Desko offered Spallina a scholarship. Additionally, the former head coach wanted him to wear No. 22 — the most iconic number in college lacrosse. Both were Spallina’s dreams. He grew up idolizing SU icon and former No. 22, Casey Powell. Former Orange attackman Tommy Palasek was his neighbor in Rocky Point, New York. Spallina often wore Syracuse gloves and donned a baggy No. 22 jersey on the sidelines of Major League Lacrosse games. So, when Desko laid out his plan for Spallina, there was no second-guessing.
“I think my face just lit up,” Spallina said, recalling his phone call with Desko. When Spallina became Syracuse’s No. 22, the jersey’s legacy was muddied. Chase Scanlan, the most recent player to wear the number, was dismissed from the program following his arrest for a domestic violence-related charge. The weight fell on Spallina’s shoulders. Not only to rekindle the iconic jersey, but also to restore SU’s pedigree as one of college lacrosse’s elite programs after nearly a decade without a Final Four appearance. see spallina page 14
on campus
Non-tenured professors, postdocs work to form faculty union By Arabella Klonowski asst. news editor
Between teaching four classes a semester and expectations beyond the classroom, Ariel Gratch, an assistant teaching professor at Syracuse University, said he struggles to give his 200 students the attention they deserve. When he applied for a position at SU’s Communications and Rhetorical Studies Department last year, the teaching load appeared to have “extra expectations,” but seemed “reasonable.” But
after taking the job, Gratch, like other SU faculty, faced a “heavier” teaching load than he initially expected. “It was clear that the only thing that (SU) would actually count as teaching would be my in-class time, which was already higher than what is reasonable, and I was still expecting to do all the other things,” Gratch said. “So at that point, I said, ‘Well, if I’m gonna stay here, these working conditions are not good for my mental health, my physical health. I can’t be the best teacher that I want to be under these conditions.’”
Now, after almost two years at SU, Gratch is working alongside other SU professors to organize the campus’s first union for full-time nontenure-track faculty and postdoctoral researchers. The prospective union, named Syracuse Academic Workers United, aims to protect its members’ job security and initiate changes for teaching loads across colleges, Gratch said. Non-tenure faculty and postdoctoral students eligible for membership began voting to unionize Wednesday and continued until
Thursday at 4 p.m. The prospective union now awaits the final vote from its around 350 participating faculty and researchers. After finding commonality between non-tenured faculty and postdoctoral scholars, Gratch said “momentum picked up” for the movement and that it received an “overwhelming positive response” from eligible faculty and postdoctoral researchers. Organizers began working in the fall to gain traction for the prospective union through Service Employ-
ees International Union Local 200United. The local chapter of SEIU currently represents thousands of facilities workers, graduate workers, academic and technical staff and student employees in SU’s food service and libraries. Since a nationwide shift from a majority tenured-faculty campus, SU is one of hundreds of colleges and universities across the country where faculty are attempting to unionize. According to National Education Association see union page 6