Monday, August 21, 2023 I Vol. 120 Iss. 2
INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER • SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904
WWW.GWHATCHET.COM
What’s inside
ORIENTATION GUIDE Pages 5 - 6
Staff turnover has dropped but workers say they lack promotion opportunities JACKSON RICKERT REPORTER
ANNA ZELL
KELLEN HOARD
REPORTER
REPORTER
Staff raised inquiries on benefits and staff retention to University Vice President and Chief People Officer Sabrina Minor at the first public meeting of GW’s Staff Council on Friday. The 34-member council, which established its roster in July after two stymied attempts to form a staff governing body in 2014 and 2020, aims to give staff members — employees who are not faculty, unionized employees or administrators — more opportunity to raise and resolve University-wide issues. During their Friday meeting, councilmembers raised concerns on staff benefits and retention, discussed rules and procedures for the newly formed body, coordinated logistics of subcommittees and laid out a plan for testing Zoom webinar and YouTube livestream as platforms for their meetings. Minor, a guest at the meeting, said staff turnover dropped from 28 percent last year to 16.8 percent this year, despite staff concerns over GW’s issue of staff retention due to the lack of promotion opportunities within a school or department. She said staff may need to change schools within the University to enter a higher ranking position if that position is not available in their current school. Minor added that she is concerned over the current “use or lose” paid-leave system, where staff lose their paid leave if they do not use it by June 30. She said the use-or-lose system incentivizes staff members to use their remaining paid time off hours by the cutoff date, which she said makes campus feel like a “ghost town” during the summer. “I can tell you what I’m proposing is that we do not have a cutoff date, June 30, to use your leave by,” Minor said. “I am proposing that we have an accrued bank, and then once you reach a certain number of accrued hours either you use them or you stop accruing.” Minor said administrators are trying to deliver a “balance” of benefits that
Milken researcher links childhood lead exposure to future criminal behavior
FILE PHOTO BY KATE CARPENTER Staff discussions at the Friday meeting ranged from concerns regarding the paid leave system to decreased staff turnover within the University.
satisfy employees of different generations. She said millennials and Generation Z employees value paid time off while Baby Boom and Generation X employees are focused on bolstering their retirement portfolios and health benefits. Minor said the council should have representatives on the Benefit Advisory Committee — a faculty and staff group that provides feedback to administration on employee benefits — to represent their concerns on leave policies. Minor also said staff members can serve on an internal review committee that will investigate any use of firearms by the GW Police Department after officials announced in April that some GWPD officers will be equipped with firearms this fall. She said the internal review committee will also include two faculty members and two students. “You’ll be in charge of looking at the police report, you’ll be in charge of saying ‘Was this an appropriate use of force?’ even if they just pulled out their weapon and pointed it at somebody,” Minor said. Bridget Schwartz, the president of the Staff Council and the director of student employment, said Minor is one of the Council’s biggest backers. “Sabrina is arguably the Staff Council’s biggest support and advocate,” Schwartz said. “And she
worked incredibly hard to have our bylaws approved so that we could move forward.” Kim Fulmer, the vice president of the Staff Council and a member of the council’s organizing committee, said in April that former interim University President Mark Wrighton tasked Minor to help a 10-person organizing committee establish the Staff Council. Prior to the Wrighton administration, staff members attempted to establish a staff governing body but were unsuccessful due to a lack of support from former University Presidents Steven Knapp and Thomas LeBlanc. School representatives on the Staff Council said they joined the governing body to amplify staff concerns like staff recognition from administrators. Tara Davis, the representative for the School of Medicine and Health Sciences and the director of research operations and finance for the SMHS, said the Staff Council is necessary in order to help give the staff a voice in making change at the University. She said that as GW continues to grow, more “administrative infrastructure” is necessary to ensure staff are represented in University-wide decisions. Officials formed a shared governance task force in 2022 consisting of trustees, executive-level staff and faculty to improve
Officials relaunch course audit program after pandemic pause IANNE SALVOSA NEWS EDITOR
Alumni and community members can further their education at GW this fall after officials opened registration for the revival of the Course Audit Program last week. Alumni and residents of Foggy Bottom and Mount Vernon may register for a select list of over 300 in-person courses, spanning from Biology of Cancer to Space Law, on a not-for-credit basis and discounted rate. Officials previously allowed alumni and campus neighbors to audit courses prior to the pandemic but placed the program on hold in March 2020 after campus shut down due to the spread of COVID-19. “GW is proud to offer a variety of educational opportunities to foster a community of lifelong learners,” the course audit website states. Prospective course auditors must be an alumnus, a Foggy Bottom resident in the 20037 or 20006 zip codes who is at least 60 years old or a resident in the area surrounding the Mount Vernon campus who is at least 60 years old, according to the course audit website. The course audit website states that auditors must pay $100 per course and associated fees for labs, music and art courses. Alumni must purchase
a GWorld alumni card for $10, which allows access into campus buildings and the GW Libraries available to them when they were a student, and community members must purchase a Friends of GW GWorld card for $15, which allows access into campus buildings, Gelman or Eckles libraries, the Vern Express and brunch at Pelham Commons. GW courses cost $2,080 per credit hour for part-time undergraduate students, ringing in at $6,240 for a three-credit course — $6,140 more than the audited cost. Officials suspended campus access to Friends of GW cardholders at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 and reactivated access in January but did not reinstate the Course Audit Program alongside other community benefits like access to Gelman and Eckles libraries. Officials said in January that they want to ensure that campus neighbors receive benefits for living near a “prestigious” University. Alumni under 60 years old could audit courses at $125 per course while alumni at least 60 years old paid $65 to audit courses in the 2009-10 academic year, which enrolled 216 course auditors. Course auditors said in 2010 that they continued their education at GW post-graduation to keep improving their writing skills and “reinvent” themselves.
trust between administrators and the rest of the GW community, which did not include staff members ranked lower than administration level. The Presidential Search Committee that selected University President Ellen Granberg consisted of five faculty, eight trustees, a trustee emerita, former Student Association President Christian Zidouemba, former Alumni Association President Will Alexander and Vice Provost for Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement Caroline Laguerre-Brown. The committee did not include nonadministration staff members. “There’s so many times, especially in the academic environment, [where] of course students are recognized, faculty are recognized, but sometimes staff members, we feel like we’re left out sometimes,” Davis said. “We just want to make sure that everyone, all issues are addressed, and there are professional opportunities and the workplace concerns are addressed.” Shawn Bayrd, the representative for the School of Nursing and the College of Professional Studies and a program associate at the Office of Community Engagement for the School of Nursing, said the Staff Council is an “exciting” platform through which staff can help shape the operations of the school.
Lead exposure in utero and during childhood can lead to an increased risk of criminal behavior in adulthood, according to a Milken Institute School of Public Health study released earlier this month. The study — led by Milken graduate student and environmental health doctoral candidate Maria Jose Talayero Schettino — reviewed previous research that correlated lead exposure to increased crime and determined childhood lead exposure is linked to an uptick in criminal behavior. Talayero Schettino said policies to regulate products containing lead, like ceramic pottery, are vital in middleincome countries where lead exposure is more common, like Mexico and India. Children, especially those under age six, are most vulnerable to lead exposure because they absorb lead more easily compared to adults since their nervous systems are still developing, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Average lead blood levels have decreased by more than 80 percent in the United States since the 1970s due to regulations on the presence of lead in water and paint like the Lead Contamination Control Act, according to the CDC. Talayero Schettino said lead is most often found in clay or ceramic pottery used to store food and drinks in middle-income countries. She said in Mexico, where she was born, 20 percent of
children have lead poisoning and that countries with a heightened risk of lead exposure, like India and Mexico, have fewer regulations or enforcement for products containing lead compared to the U.S. “Even though countries such as the U.S. have very strong policies to prevent lead exposure, in low- and middle-income countries, we’re not doing enough,” Talayero Schettino said. “So we need to go to the sources. We need to really pay attention to this problem and start implementing political action so that we’re not getting exposed to this.” She said lead exposure can have neurological effects, like a lower IQ and attention and behavior disorders, as well as negative health effects like cardiovascular disease, kidney disease and reproductive problems. Talayero Schettino said behavioral disorders caused by lead exposure are associated with violence and aggression, which may result in criminal behavior. Talayero Schettino said other researchers have determined a correlation between lead exposure and violent behavior at the population level — like research where city-wide crime dropped after officials banned lead from gasoline — but her study is the first to examine the relationship among individuals with lead exposure using previous research. She said individual-level examination allows for less biased results because the study accounts for external factors like socioeconomic status and geographical location.
FILE PHOTO BY RAPHAEL KELLNER | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Milken graduate Maria Jose Talayero Schettino said her study is the first to examine the relationship among individuals with lead exposure using previous research.
Classics professor, ancient social structure analyst dies at 62 RACHEL MOON
CONTRIBUTING NEWS EDITOR
Diane Cline, an associate professor emerita of history and classical and ancient near Eastern studies, died last month after battling cancer for more than a year. She was 62. Cline taught at GW for more than 14 years after beginning at the University as a visiting associate professor in 2001 in the Classical & Ancient Near Eastern Studies department, which studies classical and ancient civilizations in the Mesopotamian region. Her students remember her as a professor whose energetic and passionate teaching inspired them to study classics, and her colleagues and friends remember her as a warm presence and impressive academic who they will greatly miss. Cline won the Columbian Prize for Teaching and Mentoring Advanced Undergraduate Students in 2017 and the Morton A. Bender Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2018. Cline was also twice named a Fulbright Scholar, a prestigious title given to academics seeking out international or cross-cultural research. In her last autobio-
COURTESY OF ERIC CLINE Diane Cline, a two-time Fulbright Scholar and winner of the Morton A. Bender Award for Excellence in Teaching, is survived by her husband, Eric Cline, and her children, Hannah and Josh Cline.
graphical lecture in April, “A Life in Classics,” Cline said she first became interested in classics when she visited the Parthenon in Greece as a teenager. Cline received her bachelor’s degree in classics from Stanford University and her masters and doctorate degrees from Princeton University. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, Cline said in her lecture she wanted to do something “for today” to help her country and left GW to join the National Security Agency, where she did intelligence work for four years. She returned to GW in 2006, where she was known by many students as “Lady Cline.”
Eric Cline, Cline’s husband and a professor of classical and ancient near Eastern history and anthropology at GW, said he first met his wife while they were both studying at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. He said Diane Cline was usually the smartest person in the room but “never showed it.” Cline said one of his fondest memories of his wife was the summer they spent together in Crete while she was teaching Greek at the University of Crete with her second Fulbright degree. He said they would try different restaurants while they were traveling in Crete and make jokes about one
particular restaurant that the other archaeologist did not like. “Every time we would go to the restaurant and we’d have a great meal. And then while walking home, one of us would say, ‘But you know, it’s not like it was 10 years ago.’ So that became kind of our catchphrase,” Cline said. Eric Cline added that their former students told him that he introduced them to archaeology but Diane Cline “brought it to life” by teaching the culture of ancient civilizations and taking students to Greece during spring break to supplement the learning they did in the classroom. He said he fondly recalls the look on students’ faces when he took over one of Diane Cline’s Greek history classes last year and students realized she would not be teaching the course. “I walked in the first day and everybody’s faces dropped. And I’m like, ‘I know, I know. I’m the wrong Cline. You wanted Lady Cline, I’m afraid you got me,’” Cline said. “That was one of my favorite moments, just watching their faces drop when I walked in.” See CLINE Page 3