BLACK LUNCH TABLE “The Black Lunch Table,” a collaboration of artists came to Eastern Tuesday to disucss the Black Lives Matter Movement.
BEYOND THE BREAK The men’s soccer team returns to play at Lakeside Field today after a 10-day break.
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Wednesday, September 14, 2016 “TELL THE TRUTH AND DON’T BE AFRAID” C E L E BRATI NG A CE NTUR Y OF COV E RA GE E S T . 1 915
VOL. 101 | NO. 18 W W W . D A I L YE A S TE R N N E W S . C O M
‘FundEIU’ fights back against rep.’s remarks By Analicia Haynes Managing Editor | @Haynes1943 Members from the Fund EIU campaign and Dennis Malak, the Democratic candidate for representative, spoke out Tuesday against remarks made by Republican Representative Reggie Phillips Monday at his office hours. Phillips said the Eastern enrollment statistics did not look good and negative publicity, caused by newspapers and Fund EIU, created the situation by painting the university in a negative light. “We cried wolf so loud that the total focus was on us,” Phillips said in regards to the FundEIU rallies. However, Kate Klipp, who helped give way to the movement but has since passed down the reins to students and faculty, said FundEIU was intended to deliver a positive message. “The only doomsaying or the only insinuation that Eastern would close probably came from (Eastern President) David Glassman during an appropriations meeting,” Klipp said. Klipp was referring to an appropriations meeting the presidents of all nine Illinois public universities attended early last year. “I remember watching the hearing (of the appropriations meeting) and President Glassman did mention that he wasn’t sure that Eastern would make it through (this past) spring semester without funding,” Malak said. Klipp said she feels like Glassman has been backpedaling ever since that meeting. “I find (this) unfortunate because I really feel like we were looking for a champion,” Klipp said. “Instead we have beauty pageant parents who rub Vaseline on our teeth and want us to smile even more.” Malak agreed that the rally was a positive one with good intentions.
FILE PHOTO | THE DAILY EASTERN NE WS
Members of Eastern's delegation hold up signs at the Lincoln Memorial Statue Wednesday Feb. 18, 2016 in Springfield.
“FundEIU was the hypnotist that really started putting pressure on Springfield,” Malak said. “It sparked a lot of rallies throughout the state, and EIU was the leader in fighting for the funding of higher education.” Klipp said FundEIU was born when nothing was being done in the state during the budget stalemate that first began starving state universities last year. “It was born as a very positive cam-
paign to show the state that Eastern Illinois University is worth the investment,” Klipp said. “It just seems that the lack of higher education funding was a statement of no support from the state for the students, and we didn’t find that acceptable.” Yet Phillips argued that FundEIU should have included other Illinois public universities in their rallies such as Western and Chicago State. Klipp said soon after the initial
FundEIU rally took place, multiple public state universities including Western and Chicago State contacted FundEIU to help them get the same message out to Springfield. Klipp said it was an incredibly collaborative effort that was aimed at rallying support to fund each university. “We also worked with (Eastern’s chapter of the University Professionals of Illinois) at the state level to help get the message out,” Klipp said, referring
to the rally the EIU-UPI participated in at Chicago last April. Jack Cruikshank, a political science graduate student with FundEIU, argued that it is a perception issue and one of the problems is that FundEIU was one of the only groups in Illinois at the time who was making noise about the impasse. “Of course we worked with other universities,” Cruikshank said. FundEIU, page 5
Faculty Senate addresses Vitalization Project concerns By: Samuel Nusbaum Administration Reporter | @DEN_News At its meeting Tuesday, the Faculty Senate discussed concerns about the Vitalization Project Eastern President David Glassman introduced during his State of the University Address. The project is designed to guide the budget and planning decisions when it comes to allotting resources to different programs and services. Different workgroups will recommend increasing resources for a program or service, changes to increase the program’s student enrollment and marketability, a plan for programs to improve their efficiency and programs that can be deleted. Workgroups one through six will analyze the efficiencies, viability and sustainability of existing services and programs. Workgroup seven will assess Eastern’s academic undergraduate and graduate programs.
Eight is in charge of program development and nine is in charge of Eastern’s organization of colleges, departments and classes. These workgroups will analyze student services, technology, enrollment management, intercollegiate athletics, facilities, marketing, university branding and academic programs. Jemmie Robertson, the faculty senate chair, said the nominations for the workgroups, whether they are selfnominations or nominations of colleagues, will go directly to the president. Robertson said the Council on University Planning and Budgeting will be serving as overseers of the work groups. “What Glassman wants to work on most is the faculty-to-student ratio and the staff-to-student ratio of the university,” Robertson said. Robertson also said that Glassman wants to achieve this by gaining more money with greater enrollment num-
bers. Senate member Amy Rosenstein said that by January, the committees need to make a decision on what they recommend for the programs and services. She said it reminds her of schools being treated according to their assessments, where a good school is left alone and a bad one has specialists come in and is monitored then to see if it will stay open or not. Senate member Billy Hung said he felt similarly when he read the terms of the project. “My sense is workgroups one to seven are supposed to focus more on the dollar sign, including the cost benefits of academic programing, then eight and nine are supposed to come up with a more broad-based academic vision of the school,” Hung said. “It is not clear to me how the two sides are melting together. To me it seems like President Glassman is look-
ing for two streams of input; one on the business side and one on the teaching side.” Senate member Teshome Abebe said when making decisions, the focus should be on whether or not the actions they take follow the constitution of the senate, and senate members should make sure they have the opportunity to say something when the recommendations come in. Abebe said the faculty senate should be involved in the reviews because they may have to say something at the end of the Vitalization Project’s process. “We may decide to have our own plan to present to suggest to the president,” Abebe said. “I don’t think we can, given the time and shortness people have talked about…These things can go in many different directions, and someone is going to get gored.” Besides this concern, Abebe said the institution is trying to do the best
they can for everyone and he supports their efforts. Abebe said it is important to have a transparent and mature process. Senate member Grant Sterling said he has been an advocate for these steps to happen for years. “I am optimistic in the sense that this had to be done,” Sterling said. During the meeting he told the senate he had been through something like this twice before with the university years ago. He said a plan had been drawn but nothing happened after all the work. Sterling said he thinks Glassman has the will to make the tough decisions this time. The senate decided to table the discussion until their next meeting to think about their next move. Samuel Nusbaum can be reached at 581-2812 or scnusbaum@eiu.edu.