Daily Egyptian DAILYEGYPTIAN.COM
THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 2015
SINCE 1916
VOL. 99 ISSUE 55
Non-tenure track faculty face uncertain future tyler DAvis | @TDavis_DE Up to 317 non-tenure track faculty will be notified they may not have positions at the university in Fall 2015 as a result of Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s proposed budget cuts. The university, in an attempt to brace for Rauner’s proposed 31.5 percent cut of state appropriations to higher education, will inform these staff members if their contracts will be renewed by Friday.
Jim Wall, the president of the NonTenure Track Faculty Association, said these professors and professional staff are known as on-term appointments, which means each member is hired for either a semester or nine-month term. The association, which has between 500 and 600 members, is comprised of two groups — the other is continuing appointment, which is granted to faculty after five years in the association.
Student loses home to earthquake in Nepal Austin Miller | @AMiller_DE Nikesh Maharjan started his Sunday by showering and browsing the web. Maharjan, a graduate student in physics from Nepal, then used his tablet, went to CNN.com and saw the devastation of the magnitude-7.8 earthquake of his native country, Nepal. He logged into Facebook to make sure his family was OK and was eventually able to call his brother. “I came to know there was a huge earthquake and our family was safe,” Maharjan said. “But my home is gone.” He said their home was located in the capital city of Kathmandu, which was 50 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake. The 5-story house was shared with 12 to 15 family members, seven or eight being small children. At the time of the quake, his aunt was throwing a party, hosting nearly 25 in the house. Thankfully, they were all on his aunt's side of the house. “If they were on my side of the house, they would be gone,” he said. “We are very blessed that no one was on that side. I am fortunate that God saved our family.” He said many of his family members were too afraid to go back in, with some of them only going in to get cooking supplies and clothes. They became some of the thousands of people made homeless after the disaster, and moved into a nearby school. Minendra Rijal, Nepal’s minister of information and communications, told CNN the government was unable to make an exact estimate on the total number
of people displaced, but said 4,700 tents and 22,000 tarpaulins have been made available. Rijal said more tents were being sent from Thailand and India, and an additional 100,000 from Pakistan. Maharjan’s brother told him there is no way to save the house — there is no alternative to demolishing the place he called home. He said until then, his family would have to stay somewhere else. He said he is unsure when that would happen, with aftershocks still occurring nearly every 3 hours. To provide aid from Carbondale, the Nepalese Student Society has been taking donations at tables in the Student Center and Morris Library, and created a page on GoFundMe.com. The online campaign has raised more than $1,300 so far, with a goal of $35,000. The desire to help others has brought together the diverse people of SIU. Noah Leverett, a sophomore from Carbondale studying math, said one the first friends he made at SIU was from Nepal. Leverett said he did not know how to help at first, being a broke college student. But he was asked by a couple of Nepalese students he had become friends with to help at the tables. He said many Americans get so wrapped up in their own struggles, they forget about the rest of the world. The current death toll stands at more than 5,200 people, but that means thousands more must deal with loss of family members and friends.
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Please see NEPAL | 3
Per the current collective bargaining agreement between the association and SIU administration, there is no guarantee of re-appointment for any on-term faculty member. The administration either re-appoints, denies re-appointment or tells the member he or she may be brought back, but it is undecided. Wall said those who fall into the “maybe” category are sometimes notified as late as August.
“Most on-term faculty, and even continuing faculty, teach an awful lot of undergraduate classes and are heavily engaged with students in dayto-day instruction and laboratory learning experiences, for instance, the Clinical Center or WSIU,” Wall said. He said the loss of this staff will greatly diminish students’ experiences, which could hurt enrollment. While most of the 317 members will not know their employment
status until the state budget is finalized — which could happen later this summer — some employees will be notified they will not be re-appointed before then. “It is likely that most term [nontenure track employees] will receive “maybe” letters due to the uncertainty of the budget,” according to the Chancellor’s budget webpage on the SIU website. Please see LAYOFFS | 3
Lemonade for leases
A JA G ArAMAn | @AjaGarman_DE Bryanna Beavers, left, a Carbondale resident, and Jameelah Thomas, leasing manager at the Saint Germain Hill apartments and a senior biological science major, hand out free lemonade to passersby Wednesday on the corner of West Mill Street and South Poplar Street. The stand was built to earn the attention of potential new residents for both Saint Germain Hill and The Metropolitan Apartments in Carbondale.
Discussion shifts to Baltimore riots, injustice evAn Jones | @EvanJones_DE Amid the controversy regarding deaths by police officers across the U.S., the Zeta Phi Beta sorority hosted “Still I Rise,” a discussion on women’s roles in social injustice Monday night. Stories shared by audience members often strayed from the event's original theme of women's roles in social change but Lolita Mack, president of the graduate chapter of Zeta Phi Beta, said that was not a negative thing.
Sharing personal stories and opinions gave the event another purpose aside from its original intent, she said. The open discussion began with online videos depicting scenes of police officers firing on unarmed AfricanAmerican males, including some who were already detained. The two facilitators of the event, Chasity Jones, vice president of the undergraduate chapter of Zeta Phi Beta, and Aseedaw Deal, a lecturer in the Rehabilitation Institute at
SIU, asked audience members to describe their gut reactions in two words. Words like, “surprised” and “disbelief” were contradicted by others who described the scenes in the videos as, “same old, same old.” The event was scheduled several weeks before the death of Freddie Gray, a Baltimore man who died while in police custody on April 19. Please see DISCUSSION | 3
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