thursday, feb. 22, 2024
celebrating 120 years
N • Thriving strategies
free
S • Spallina’s summer
C • Higher health
Black students met at 119 Euclid to discuss intersectionality, intergenerational trauma and mental health.
With innovative treatments, a Syracuse resident is highlighting developments in the psychedelic health industry.
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Joey Spallina spent the previous summer in Canada, where he strongly developed as a passer by playing in the country’s premier box lacrosse league. Page 12
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PLUMMETING USen discusses on campus
Since its peak in 2011, the percentage of undergraduate Pell recipients at SU has decreased by 10 percentage points By Julia Boehning
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n June 2012, a Syracuse University news release emphasized the success of its “aggressive” strategy to increase affordability and economic diversity, highlighting the unprecedented 27% of federal Pell grant-eligible undergraduates that year. Over a decade later, SU has fallen from being ranked No. 4 among private universities with large endowments in the proportion of undergraduate Pell grant recipients to now sitting below average in the New York Times’s College-Access Index report published in November 2023. In the College-Access Index — which compiled Pell grant information from the National Center for Education Statistics’ Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System — NYT reported that SU had tied for 166th in economic diversity across “the 286 most-selective colleges in the country.” From its 27% peak in 2011, the percentage of undergraduate Pell recipients at SU has decreased by 10 points, according to IPEDS data compiled and
% of Pell Grant eligable SU undergraduates
PELL GRANTS 36 34 32 30 28 26 24 22 20 18 16 14 12 10 8
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Out of the five schools analyzed in central New York, SU was the only institution whose percentage of Pell Grant recipients has repeatedly decreased over the past 10 years
examined by The Daily Orange. National Pell grant data has also reflected a decline, from 40% in 2011 to 32% in 2021, according to NCES. SU was an “outlier” compared to other private institutions with similar endowments during its early 2010s peak, said Dr. Sandy Baum, a higher education economist and nonresident senior fellow at the Urban Institute’s Center on Education Data and Policy. “One of (SU’s) previous presidents made a huge project of increasing the share of low-
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income students, so the share of Pell grant recipients shot way up very quickly,” Baum said. “Syracuse is really unusual in having made an extreme effort to have socio-economic diversity in the past.” Throughout her nine-year tenure as SU’s chancellor, Nancy Cantor was a proponent of increasing the affordability of the university and connecting it with the broader city. In 2012, see pell grants page 4
Drop-off
Starting in 2011, the percentage of Pell Grant eligible students at SU saw a significant drop-off -36.63 15.80 0.19 -31.16 -42.07 -25.64 3.68 -11.23 6.27 -8.36 % change in undergrad Pell Grants since 2011
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Provost Gretchen Ritter provided an update on the university’s response to recent swatting incidents targeting the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs during Wednesday’s University Senate meeting. Ritter said that the Department of Public Safety is working with local and federal law enforcement to find who is responsible for Friday’s false bomb threat. DPS has also connected with local colleges, universities and hospitals to discuss protocols for swatting — which she called a “hoax report of a serious criminal incident” — and to guide the university’s response moving forward, she said. “Thanks to some productive conversations with DPS and other campus stakeholders, this week the university is reviewing a nd appropriately rev ising our protocols to align with best practices in law enforcement and communications,” Ritter said. This semester, there have been three false reports of incidents targeting Maxwell and Eggers Halls: false active shooter threats on Feb. 11 and 12 and a false bomb threat Friday. At the meeting, the Senate also passed a resolution to merge or rename multiple committees as part of its ongoing “committee reimagining” process. The Agenda Committee discussed expanding its own committee with hopes of adding three more senators and filling all of its remaining student and staff positions. Following the Agenda Committee’s proposal to expand the committee, meeting attendees raised concerns about the representation of students and university staff within the Senate. They suggested changes to eliminate Senate bylaws that make it “harder” for the Senate to fill its seats. Samuel Gorovitz, a senator on the Academic Affairs Committee, proposed removing the requirement that senators cannot run for a seat unopposed. “The staff don’t have quite as much discretion over their time (as faculty),” Gorovitz said. “It might be easier to interest staff (in the Senate) if it were a matter of university policy that the supervisors of staff were required to let staff participate and count that during their work time.” Agenda Committee Chair Kira Reed confirmed that the Student Life and Athletic Policy Committees will not merge — an idea discussed in the Senate’s open forum earlier this month — following conversations between the two committees which determined there is no “clear overlap” between the committee’s responsibilities. see usen page 4