4 SPORTS
6 ARTS
How Can Athletes Trust USA Gymnastics?
‘Bull’ Offers an Intimate Glimpse Into Rodeo Life
5 CULTURE
7 OPINION
Getting in Touch With the Great Outdoors
The Consequences of NYU’s Guise of Transparency
VOLUME LIV | ISSUE 14
MONDAY, MAY 4, 2020
Teaching Assistants Plan a ‘Sick-Out’ Strike Members of Sick-Out NYU plan to take a three-day strike to advocate for graduate students’ rights during the pandemic. By NICK MEAD Deputy News Editor
JESSICA FRANCIS
This week, NYU TAs may stop teaching in protest. Sick-Out NYU released a list of demands for NYU administration to address in order to provide for students and workers.
NYU Teaching Assistants plan to collectively take three consecutive sick days starting Wednesday, May 6 to demonstrate their essential role at the university and protest NYU’s lack of support for graduate students. The strike will be orchestrated by Sick-Out NYU, a group of master’s and doctoral students aiming to gain more support from the school administration as graduate students face the end of funding for their research — or, in the case of international students, visa cancellations — during the pandemic. Doctoral student Jackson Smith is an organizer of Sick-Out NYU who plans to participate in the action later this week. “From our perspective, they’ve failed to address this crisis, or even have a full understanding of what this crisis means for graduate students,” Smith said. “It will be impossible for some of us to return to NYU in the fall. Without a guaranteed extension of funding, the only people who’ll be able to f inish their degrees will be those with independent wealth.”
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Three NYU Professors Inducted into American Academy of Arts and Sciences By NICK MEAD Deputy News Editor Three NYU professors were elected as American Academy of Arts and Sciences fellows — one of the most prestigious scholarly honors — on Thursday, April 23. The new fellows are English professor emerita Mary Carruthers, Psychology professor Gregory Murphy, Psychology professor emeritus and Anthropology professor Susan Antón. They are three of 276 members elected in 2020. “It’s more like the Nobel Prize than anything else in Humanities,” Carruthers told
WSN in an email. “I just got an email out of the blue one morning last week saying that I’d been elected to the Fellowship.” In addition to the professors, the AAAS also inducted Vice-Chairman of NYU’s Board of Trustees Chandrika Tandon, although this was not stated in NYU’s initial press release. Following a 2015 donation of $100 million to the Tandon School of Engineering, the school was renamed after her and her husband. Tandon is the founder and chair of Tandon Capital Associates and chair of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s Board of Overseers. The award is multidisciplinary, encompass-
ing f ields such as education, democracy and justice, energy and environment, the arts and science and technology, the AAAS website states. Former recipients include Martin Luther King Jr., Georgia O’Keeffe, Toni Morrison, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein. The academy has elected more than 13,500 members since its conception in 1780. The election process begins with a nomination from two already-existing members — each from a different institution — and then prospective inductees are placed on a ballot. Members vote on these ballots in sections and then place 12 members from each section
to advance to a further round. In the next round, six out of the 12 members are chosen and forwarded to The Academy’s Council and Board of Directors, who then off icially elect the members, according to the AAAS website. “The primary criteria for election are excellence in the f ield and a record of continued accomplishment,” the website reads. While inductees are generally chosen because they excel in their f ields, the exact selection criteria remain unclear. Inductees are generally not told why they are selected, Carruthers said.
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