The Ithacan Thursday, April 19, 20 12
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Volume 79, Is s u e 2 6
An active struggle The intertwined stories of two students who set out to make a difference.
Faculty seek pay increase for adjuncts By ELMA GONZALEZ ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
Morgan arrived at the airport in Accra on a summer night in June. Her eyes searched, glancing between holes in the crowd of Ghanaian families who she imagined were on their way home. Morgan was farther from home than she’d ever been. Her eyes finally fell on a man holding a piece of paper with her name written across it. “Morgan?” he asked. “Hi, I’m Morgan.” “Welcome to Ghana.” He took her bag and walked toward an unmarked van. It was about midnight, warm and dark. There was another man in the backseat, and the two talked in a language Morgan didn’t understand. As the van wound swiftly through jungle dirt roads, African drumming vibrated her seat. The driver had no qualms about digging in the back for a new cassette when he got bored with the rhythm, veering into what would be opposing traffic, had there been any. After about three hours they dropped Morgan off at a hotel where the room had a single bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. It wasn’t until the sun rose the next morning that she realized the orphanage was about 100 yards down the road.
Full-time faculty and the Labor Initiative in Promoting Solidarity are taking a stand for part-time faculty who will not receive a raise for the second year in a row following the approval of the 2012-13 budget by the board of trustees. In a letter sent to all faculty, President Tom Rochon stated that there is a general 2.5 percent increase for fulltime faculty and staff STEPP BREEN said salaries, and a 0.5 part-time faculty percent additional don't receive equal increase for recom- consideration. mended individuals. However, this increase only includes full-time faculty and staff as well as eligible part-time staff and faculty who have an ongoing position. It does not include part-time faculty who are holders of parttime per-course appointments. Full-time faculty members Zillah Eisenstein, professor of politics, and Michael Smith, associate professor of history, sent a letter and a petition signed by 67 other full-time faculty in February to the board of trustees, Rochon, Provost Marisa Kelly and the deans from every school at the college raising the issue that it is a matter of “grave unfairness” to not extend the raise to all faculty, including part-time faculty. Rochon and Carl Sgrecci, vice president of finance and administration, declined to comment before the board of trustees’ official response. LIPS held a panel Tuesday in which part-time professors, full-time faculty and students discussed part-time faculty issues including the hours they log in, the respect they receive as professionals on campus, the lack of job security as adjuncts and the lack of health care benefits. Senior Chris Zivalich, a member of LIPS, said the group is demanding equal pay and equal benefits for part-time faculty by reallocating funds without increasing tuition. The three panelists who are part-time workers were Jennette Kollman, lecturer in theater arts, Vera Whisman, lecturer in women’s studies and Jenny Stepp Breen, lecturer in politics. Whisman, who has been an adjunct faculty member at the college for more than 10 years, said though she struggles without pay during summer break and in January after winter break, she has chosen to stay at the college because of the atmosphere and the roots she has set in Ithaca. Whisman and the other
See activism, page 4
See budget, page 4
Senior Morgan Milazzo poses with children from an orphanage in Ghana. Junior Laura St. John takes a stand in a Jobs with Justice protest last Milazzo often wonders about the children she volunteered for. year. Jobs with Justice advised LIPS in its living wage campaign. Courtesy of morgan milazzo
by taylor long staff writer
Thirty or so students form a haphazard circle of desks, and a seeing-eye dog yawns in the corner before shifting attention to the bone she’s been working on all week. Josette the black lab has become a sort of mascot for the tense silence that occasionally falls over the classroom. Silence is the sound of her jaw closing firmly around the bone. Crunch. Scrape. Pant. Slobber. It’s a grotesquely cheerful backdrop to discussions that routinely revolve around grave exhumations, rape and mass slaughter. Junior Laura St. John often slings her backpack over her shoulder and walks out of the room, sighing, “… if it wasn’t for that dog, this class would make me go nuts.” The images of trauma themselves don’t bother Laura as much as their subtext. She leaves Associate Professor Peyi SoyinkaAirewele’s Politics of Memory course asking questions she’s not prepared to answer, silenced by an internal conflict, mesmerized by the complexity of human interactions. Thinking about it keeps her up at night. Last spring around this time, Laura was one of the loudest voices of protest on campus, fists clenched, feet stomping and voice raised for her friends and co-workers — dining hall employees without a living wage and
without enough money to feed their families. She pokes fun at herself now. “Oh, back in my activist days …” Senior Morgan Milazzo knows the joke well — the fine line separating then from now. She sits at the front of the room beside Josette in class with legs crossed, writing furiously in a notebook. About two years ago, Morgan sat in a smaller classroom, which was dizzyingly hot and thick with the smell of petrol. She was responsible for keeping orphans from dipping their noses into Dixie cups of gasoline, props in a lesson about water. “Water has no smell, water has no smell, water has no smell …” The children repeated the phrase over and over again. It was Morgan’s only teaching lesson and her first day teaching at an orphanage in Ghana — the country one professor referred to as “Africa for beginners.” “I wanted to be one of those people who saves the world and saves Africa,” she laughs, embarrassed. “I used to say that. I was a gem freshman year.” Morgan and Laura went into volunteering and activism thinking they knew what they were doing, but they’ve stumbled across a long list of practical and philosophical questions they hadn’t bargained for. They occupy the tenuous space between past and present, intention and result, personal and political.
Distance dash Students organize indoor triathlon with a scoring twist, page 19
courtesy of laura st. john
Welcome to Ghana
new moves
Student with cerebral palsy finds inspiration by learning dance, page 13 f ind m or e onl ine. www.t heit hacan.org
vital link New SGA board needs more than transparency for students, page 10