THE HAWK THE HAWK September 24, 2014
Dan Reimold
remembered at St. Joe’s and in the college media world
September 9, 2015
The Student Newspaper of Saint Joseph’s University | Volume XCIV | Est. 1929 | www.hawkhillnews.com
Campus call center shut down, students lose jobs
Sexual Misconduct Policy Revised New programming to provide stronger definitions and resources for students
100+ students to be out of work come late September KATRYNA PERERA ’16 News Editor Graduate student Ting Hu planned to head back home to China to study for the summer, but when she was offered a management position at her job that would sponsor her visa, she decided to stay in the area. Two months later though, Hu was informed that the call center where she worked was to be closed. And because of this, her employer would no longer be able to sponsor her visa to stay in the United States. On Aug. 3, 172 student employees of the Telephonic Research Operations (TRO) call center were told that their workplace was to close on September 30, 2015. According to the notice, Saint Joseph’s University’s contract with the center, located in the Alumni House, and its main client, Marketing Systems Group (MSG), had expired. And as a result, the student jobs would be terminated. The job cuts have a varying effect on students. For some, the extra change they earned through the center will become tighter, while others are now losing funding that is necessary for them to continue their studies on campus. Maria Spirk, ’17, is spending the semester studying in D.C. but said she had expected to return to work at the center in the spring. “I’m kind of frustrated because I know a lot of kids worked there and it was really convenient for all of us,” said Spirk. “I’m a little disappointed that I’m not going to have a job when I get back.” The call center was the largest and most diverse employer of students on campus as well, hiring Federal Work Study and non-work study students, international students, and both graduate and undergraduate students. TRO, which has been in operation on campus since 2002, completed data cleansing for market research companies. Student employees identified and categorized telephone numbers through automatic dialers and research companies sent these clean databases back to their clients. TRO was an independent, third party company with no business or financial ties to the university. Saint Joseph’s acted only as a middleman, providing the physical facility and student workers, according to Joseph Lunardi, ’82, vice president of marketing and communications. All students were paid directly from MSG—TRO’s largest contractor—not the university, according to Marie Strasser, senior manager of the survey research center and TRO. “We were very much a stand-alone business,” Strasser said, “[and] if we needed something we had to be able to pay for it.” The center’s main source of revenue was from their biggest client, MSG, and their income was based on how much work got done, said Strasser. “It was a contractual agreement with MSG that we nego-
GINA KOKOSKY ’18 Speical to The Hawk
Photos by Joey Toczylowski ’19 & Matthew Haubenstein ’15
tiated with them every year on what they were going to pay us for our production,” Strasser said. Strasser and Hu said that employees were told that the call center was to be closed because the work completed at the center did not align with the Saint Joseph’s University mission statement. Lunardi confirmed, saying that the research had nothing to do with St. Joe’s and that, “there was nothing really academic or mission related to it.” In a Philadelphia Business Journal story detailing the center closure, Lunardi is also quoted. “We decided we wanted to use the center for more of its traditional use…the center had been profitable, but in the long run we would rather have the students doing work that is more relevant to their academics,” said Lunardi in the August 6th story. Student employees responded to the notification with a letter sent to University President Mark Reed, Ed.D., signed by 40 call center workers. The letter requested a fuller explanation of the closing, saying that the reason provided was “confusing as well as very vague.” The letter also detailed what the students say they perceive as the center’s actual alignment with the university mission. “TRO provides students with work that mimics a real office setting. We are held to the responsibilities of thinking critically and ethical decision making, as well as making sure our work is completed. Working at TRO not only prepares students for work beyond their college education, but also enriches their resumes by showing they have dealt with workplace scenarios,” the students argued. If the center were to close, “over one hundred students, both international and domestic, will be out of employment with seemingly nowhere else to work on campus,” the employees wrote. Two weeks after the letter was sent, a reply arrived from the Office of the President, signed by Reed, saying that the actual reason the center was closed was not due to the mission of the university, but rather a lack of grant funding. “The TRO was not closed because the operations do not align with the university’s mission. The TRO was closed due to the fact that the external grant used to fund its operations was not secured for the upcoming academic year,” said Reed in the August 11th email. Continued CALL CENTER, Pg. 3
Saint Joseph University policies regarding sexual misconduct were overhauled over the break in order to align with federal law requirments. On June 15 two new campus-wide policies, the Sexual Misconduct Policy and a revised Policy Prohibiting Discrimination, Harassment and Retaliation went into effect after gaining approval from both the University Council and Board of Trustees. Recent changes to federal law required that universities update their sexual misconduct policies in accordance with The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act and amendments to The Clery Act. The new St. Joe’s Sexual Misconduct policy includes exact definitions of what is considered to be sexual misconduct as well as how a survivor can go about handling a situation that has occurred. The new policy also highlights the importance of reporting acts of sexual violence and provides survivors with information on their individual rights, as well as the campus’ legal responsibilities in order to ensure its protection. “We all know right from wrong, and the same things are still wrong,” siad Mary Elaine Perry, Title IX Coordinator. “There is more detail in there about what that means—definitions of sexual misconduct, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. We also had to add definitions and information about dating violence, domestic violence and stalking.” Members of an ad-hoc committee that were charged with updating and drafting a new policy are hopeful that it will have a positive effect on the St. Joe’s community by giving students the opportunity to become more informed of their rights and make campus an overall safer place. A change in how legal investigations of misconduct allegations are carried out was also included in the new policy. It is now required that an external investigator Continued POLICY, Pg. 3