free
MONDAY
feb. 22, 2021 high 36°, low 28°
t h e i n de p e n de n t s t u de n t n e w s pa p e r of s y r a c u s e , n e w yor k |
dailyorange.com
S • Deficient Defense
N • Permit delayed
C • “Wyred” Up
SU is renewing a federal environmental permit that expired four years ago. The permit covers emissions and related operations taking place at the university. Page 3
SU sophomore Amanda Kruman creates her own jewelry for company Fully Wyred, and her business is gaining customers through social media. Page 7
No. 4 Orange’s poor defensive effort led to an upset loss against No. 13 Army. Syracuse had weeks of practice and played its first ranked opponent in a season-opener since 2011. Page 12
on campus
Record low Without heat, water or electricity, Syracuse University students in Texas are still taking classes remotely
By Sarah Alessandrini asst. news editor
During a University Senate meeting in January, Chancellor Kent Syverud announced that Syracuse University will commit between $40 million and $70 million to a faculty diversification fund. But some faculty members hope the university’s efforts will reach beyond just hiring a diverse pool of instructors. SU will split the funding, which will go toward hiring 10 to 15 academics from underrepresented backgrounds, between the Office of Academic Affairs and the hiring college, SU officials said in a statement to The Daily Orange. The fund will fully renew approximately every three years.
By Sarah Alessandrini asst. news editor
T
ereyna Ancira’s family home lost power around 3 a.m. Monday morning. Ancira, a Syracuse University junior majoring in English and textual studies, is taking classes remotely in Houston. Her family home lost power after the state initiated rolling blackouts to conserve energy and prevent Texas’ power grid from failing. The state told Ancira and her family they’d be without power for 45 minutes to an hour, which later turned into an entire day. “We were in our living room under comforters, and we could see our breath with a lantern as our light source,” Ancira said of the difficult conditions her family faced Monday evening. “We closed room doors, covered up drafty windows and went to sleep for the night.” Ancira couldn’t attend class Monday, but SU students studying remotely in Texas said classes were the least of their concerns after a historic drop in temperature last week left millions of Texans without power, heat or clean water. Without heat, sophomore Lillian Zhao had to wear three layers of clothing just to keep warm inside her own home in Houston. Her family was without power from Tuesday until Wednesday night. “When we didn’t have power, that was the number one thing — I just wanted to be warm,” Zhao said. “School was probably the last thing people would be worried about.” Zhao, who studies architecture and has been taking classes remotely from home, took her Zoom classes on her phone Tuesday. If not for a backup generator the family borrowed from a nearby friend, Zhao wouldn’t have been able to take her classes at all. Her professors were understanding and allowed her to complete her assign-
Faculty say fund isn’t enough
ments at her own pace, she said. Although Zhao’s power has returned, she’s still without running water or a working bathroom as of Sunday night. Texas doesn’t have the infrastructure to handle extreme cold or even a few inches of snow, and streets are often left unplowed and unsalted, students said. “In the 21 years that I’ve lived in Texas, it’s snowed twice and didn’t even stick to the ground,” said Susie Teuscher, a junior marketing and advertising major who lives near Houston. “I just didn’t think anything of it, and neither did any of my family.” Few people were prepared for the below-zero wind chills that spread across the state last week, students said. “On Tuesday, it was 18 degrees here, and Syracuse was 36,” Zhao said. “I thought that was pretty ridiculous.” When Arjun Menon heard about the snowfall earlier in the week, he began monitoring the temperatures for his hometown of Frisco, which is about 30 minutes north of Dallas. Menon, a sophomore broadcast and digital journalism major, currently lives on campus, but his parents are back home. When Menon saw that the temperature had dropped to single digits, he knew the situation was worse than anything he’s seen in Texas before. “Watching it from a distance has just been crazy because this is something that I’ve never lived through,” Menon said. “The last time it snowed like this, I got school canceled for see texas page 4
If you want us to stay, then you have to find a way to make it attractive for us to stay three or four days, but never power outages or people dying of the cold.” At least 27 deaths in Texas have been attributed to the severe weather, according to CBS. Some Texans died from carbon monoxide poisoning as they used gas stoves or their cars to try to stay warm. Menon’s parents only had electricity for about an hour one day and eventually decided to drive to the home of a friend in Dallas who hadn’t lost power. The severity of the conditions varied across the state, Teuscher said. She lives in The Woodlands, just outside of Houston. But when the snow hit, she was spending the weekend at her boyfriend’s house in Lubbock, eight hours from her home. She’s currently still stuck there. While the Wi-Fi cut out at times, her boyfriend’s home never lost power, and Teuscher was able to connect to her cell phone hotspot to take virtual classes. But the situation for her family, which was just eight hours away in the Houston area, was drastically different. They have no running water and have
Biko Gray assistant professor of religion
The university’s future provost, which SU is still searching for, will be at the forefront of implementing the fund, Syverud has said. But faculty of color said that hiring professors and creating positions won’t be enough to change the culture at SU alone. They would also like to see the university invest in retaining faculty of color and in strategies that make Syracuse a feasible place for them to live and work. “When we talk about money, it’s not just about throwing money at faculty — it’s about creating a space where they can survive and thrive as people,” said Charisse L’Pree, an associate professor in SU’s Newhouse School of Public Communications. “That’s more than just a paycheck. I’m hoping that money is also used to build an infrastructure that makes people want to stay.” Last year, the university launched the Diversity Opportunity Hires Initiative to support its efforts to hire teaching and research faculty from diverse backgrounds through its Cluster Hires Initiative, which places scholars with similar see fund page 4