free
THURSDAY
march 22, 2018 high 35°, low 25°
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 |
N • Career support
Peter Vanable, dean of SU’s graduate school, said on Wednesday the university is creating a new career center for graduate students. Page 3
O • Taking a stand
Student Life columnist Rashika Jaipuriar commends high school and college students across the U.S. for using their voices to take a stance on gun control. Page 5
dailyorange.com
P • Voices for change
SU students are heading to the March for Our Lives protest on Saturday in Washington, D.C. as part of a Student Associationsponsored bus trip. Page 9
SWEET 16 PREVIEW SEE PAGE 16
suny-esf
President Quentin Wheeler to resign amid rising tensions By Haley Kim, Jordan Muller and Sam Ogozalek the daily orange
WHEELER
S U N Y-E S F President Quentin Wheeler announced on Wednesday that he would resign from his position by the end of June
as the campus reeled from increasingly tense relations between faculty and administrators. Wheeler made the announcement in an email to SUNY-ESF student listservs at about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. The president’s statement came a day after the college’s Academic Governance body approved the first steps in voting no confidence in Wheeler for the second time in less than two years.
AG first voted no confidence in Wheeler in November 2016, citing what they said were examples of poor leadership and a climate of fear. Conflict between faculty and administrators continued after the 2016 vote, notably in the wake of the administration’s controversial decision earlier this year to remove three faculty department chairs just days before the start of the spring semester. “Opposition to initiatives
focused on the financial, academic, and research foundations of the College have become a distraction to our students, faculty and staff, and the administration,” Wheeler said in the email Wednesday afternoon. SUNY Chancellor Kristina Johnson and the SUNY Board of Trustees will work with SUNY-ESF’s Board of Trustees to appoint interim campus leadership effective July 1, according to a SUNY press release. The chancel-
lor and boards will also begin a search for SUNY-ESF’s next permanent president, per the release. Wheeler said in his email he would try to ensure a smooth transition as he leaves SUNY-ESF. Multiple campus groups have put pressure on Wheeler in recent weeks. The college’s Graduate Student Association expressed support for a non-renewal of Wheeler’s
see wheeler page 4
gso university politics
Grad leader details health insurance plans
Committee endorses union drive By Gabe Stern staff writer
JACK WILSON, president of Syracuse University’s Graduate Student Organization, said any new graduate student health insurance plan selected by SU in coming months will be “way less expensive” than the current plan. kai nguyen photo editor By Kennedy Rose asst. news editor
Syracuse University plans to make significant progress on possible changes to graduate student health coverage by the end of the spring semester, a high-ranking university administrator said Wednesday. During a press briefing, Graduate School Dean Peter Vanable said SU also plans to release more information about a potential change to a new graduate student health care plan at
the beginning of April. There is no publicly released information on how much money graduate students would save on a new insurance plan since SU is currently in the “request for proposal,” or RFP, phase. In the RFP phase, the university calls on health insurance providers to propose rates for health care, GSO President Jack Wilson said. SU is considering bids from multiple insurance providers, and expects proposals on Friday, Wilson said. Graduate student health care has proven to be a conten-
tious topic at SU in recent years. Wilson, though, said any new plan selected by SU will be “way less expensive” and the university has guaranteed that any savings will go to graduate assistants and graduate fellows in the form of subsidized health insurance plans. “If we can have a plan that is less expensive while still being better, that’s going to mean more money in everybody’s pocketbooks,” Wilson said. Gerald Kominski, director of the University of California, Los
Angeles Center for Health Policy Research, said the cost of healthcare is often closely related to age, so the university would be able to save money if graduate students were placed in a pool with other young, low-cost students. Graduate assistants currently on SU’s employee health insurance plan have heavily subsidized plans because they are placed in an insurance pool with faculty, who are typically older and more likely to have various ailments, Wilson added. see insurance page 6
The Employment Issues Committee of the Graduate Student Organization officially endorsed Syracuse Graduate Employees United in their efforts to unionize at Wednesday night’s meeting. A report that the Employment Issues Committee presented to the GSO senate was the first time the group has extensively discussed unionization efforts this semester. Ben Sadlek, Adrianne Traub and Hunter Thompson, who presented the report, emphasized that a possible graduate employee union would have contractual power, collective bargaining and “meaningful accountability to administration,” in an extent that the GSO cannot currently exercise. “This goes into a deeper debate,” Sadlek said during the senate meeting. “The argument for a union in general is that there’s a legal mechanism that we have more bargaining power (over SU administration).” Patrick Oberle, a representative from SGEU, said during the meeting that he hopes a union will not only increase bargaining power regarding graduate health care and stipends, but also working conditions as a whole. If enacted, a graduate student union would represent all graduate employees and fellows who have a W2 at the end of the year, Oberle said. New York University was used as an example of an institution that successfully unionized and improved the working conditions for graduate employees during the presentation. NYU most recently recognized a graduate student union in 2013. As a result, NYU graduate students received an increase in graduate stipends by nearly 40 percent, and a large majority of their healthcare was covered by the university. Both of these issues are well-known concerns that Syracuse graduate see unionization page 7