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Blasts from the past
This week in 1898, GettyLeeks reported that there was mold found in Penn Hall. Two students stated that they had seen mold on their dorm wall when they came back from spring break. The college swiftly moved the students to a different dorm. The college compensated them with a $18 check, which is equivalent to $500 today. The students were pleased with the college’s swift actions that they decided to give the college a decent amount in donations when they became rich and famous. This week in 1978, a large snowstorm struck the Gettysburg area. There were about 8 inches of snowfall in one day. When students that day passed Stevens Hall, the famous ‘Blue Boy’ ghost was causing some mischief. Students were hit by snowballs the entire day, from the direction of Stevens Hall. At first, people believed it was one of the students from the Hall, but soon one of the students from the hall saw the Blue Boy in one of the windows, pelting people with snowballs. One professor was even knocked over by a snowball to the back of their head! Now, people stay away from Stevens during snowstorms to not get hit by Blue Boy’s snowballs! This week in 2003, the college had been offered too many statues of Lincoln. Being the college in the town where a president gives an important address means you are asked to take a lot of statues of said president. The college wanted to take some of the statues, but there were so many interesting and unique statues, that the college just did not know which ones to take. An emergency Student Senate meeting was held to deal with the issue. One of the major ideas was to build a “Lincoln Sculpture” Museum right next to the Penn Hall. Although it did not happen, there are still some whispers about the possibility of this museum. This month in 2013, there was a Get Acquainted Day catastrophe! The famous ‘orange dots’ that are given to students who have decided to come to Gettysburg went missing. Parents who were excited to get pictures of their child with their orange dot to post on Facebook were upset when they were told the dots were missing. An email went out to the entire campus stating that anyone who found the missing orange dots would be given 50 dining dollars. Many coffee addicted students began looking for the dots to get the reward for their coffee fund. The orange dots were never found that day, making that the year dubbed, “the Year No These archived “blastsof from Dots.” the past” were compiled by Thesewriter archived “blasts from staff Shannon Zeltmann the past” were compiled by thanks to Special Collections staff writer Shannon Zeltmann in Musselman Library. thanks to Special Collections in Musselman Library.
Sunday April 1, 2018
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Accelerated Administrator Removal Program (AARP) developed to promote sustainable excellence B y B enjamin P ontz M anaging N ews E ditor
Citing the need to reduce personnel costs in this age of sustainable excellence, the college announced a complementary program to the Faculty Retirement Incentive Program (FRIP): the Accelerated Administrator Removal Program (AARP). The program r e q u i r e s e a c h department to reduce its administrative staff by at least 25 percent without losing workplace productivity, a challenge most administrators believe will be daunting but many other members of the campus community think is long overdue. “How many A ss ociate D irectors of Miscellaneous Nonsense can we possibly need?” wondered Marco Cruz ‘19 before adding, “Well, there is a lot of nonsense around here … we probably need someone to keep it all organized.” Bob Royer, Executive Director of Nonsense Administration, worries about the impact AARP will have on his department, which is
slated to lose at least six employees. “Without four principal executive senior associate directors of interdivisional programming, we’re really in some trouble in terms of administering all of the projects that we get assigned from the 36 different divisions across campus,” he said, noting that College Life alone has 17 divisions that work on collaborative projects with no clear benefit to the campus community. “I don’t know how the committee on committees will function.” Others are concerned about the effect on the campus climate of terminating people whose jobs have no apparent value. “What kind of workplace is it where we say that if you don’t contribute something productive, your job is going to be eliminated?” wondered Mel Moore, Deputy Coordinator for Quality Management in the Office of Interrelated Feel-Good Initiatives. “That’s just not the type of campus climate most administrators here want.”
College administrators celebrate making the cut from the latest round of AARP (Photo courtesy of Gettysburg College) According to a recent campus climate survey, 88 percent of administrators reported feeling overworked and underpaid, while 73 percent said most of their colleagues were overpaid and underworked. “Why does Marsha in accounting get to keep her job while my work is completely integral to the functioning of the college? All she does is make sure bills get paid,” bemoaned Priscilla Davis, who oversees the supervisor of the shift manager in
Quorum present at faculty meeting
There hadn’t been this many Welch/The Gettysburgian) B y J amie W elch E ditor - in -C hief Commenting that it was “the most faculty she’s ever seen at a faculty meeting” and that they “can finally approve the last six years of minutes,” President Janet Morgan Riggs stood in shock Thursday in Mara Auditorium as the Kahoot! digital voting system showed that at least fifty percent plus one of those who have faculty voting status were present at the start of the meeting. “It is really great to see that the faculty have decided to become engaged in the process of governing the institution again,” Riggs said. The uptick in attendance followed previous faculty meetings at which the attendance had precipitously dropped off to the point that Scheduling Coordinator Cathy Zarella threatened to move faculty meetings to CUB 230.
Inside This Issue
Volume CXX, No. 14
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people in Mara since Todd Green came (Photo Jamie “We need to use our campus spaces effectively, and putting 20 people in a room that can hold 300 is grossly irresponsible,” Zarella said. Zarella said that she is not concerned about upsetting the faculty with the move to the Glatfelter 007 conference room. “I don’t care that it’s the faculty...maybe I’d be more willing to work with them if they could figure out how to submit a 25Live request earlier than three hours before they need a space,” she said. The attendance issue came to a head at last week’s faculty meeting when Char Weise, Professor of Economics and Chair of Faculty Council, stood up and announced that they have to actually get something done. “We’re going to have to vote on these motions at the next meeting, so I would encourage you to tell
your colleagues to come to faculty meetings, especially the ones for the rest of the semester, or else we won’t be able to do the business of the faculty,” Weise said. “It’s their job.” Riggs echoed Weise’s sentiment. “I don’t want to go to the Board of Trustees with a [Freedom of Expression] philosophy statement and tell them that there weren’t enough faculty who came to the meeting to vote. That would be really embarrassing,” Riggs said. Riggs closed Thursday’s faculty meeting by begging the faculty to come back for the April 5 meeting, and announced that to encourage even greater participation future faculty meetings would be fully catered. “You know what? We are going to make the meetings Host Provider too!” Riggs added in desperation.
Washing Health Center How To: Lose machine runs out of wishing salt packets, a YAFhole in 10 Days, wells, closes, pg. 4 pg. 2 pg. 3
the Student Outreach Program. “When I do my job better, they just fire other people, giving more work to me, but now I’ve been fired, so sucks to be my supervisor, who now has to directly oversee the overseer of overseers of students!” While some students believe the number of administrators is severely bloated, those same administrators each produce volumes of charts, tables, and graphs to demonstrate their supposed worth. Nevertheless, at least 80
positions are expected to be affected by AARP, leaving some administrators to wonder how the work will get done. “Listen, if they expect me to increase the actual time I spend fulfilling my job responsibilities from 15 minutes to 18 minutes each day, they have it coming,” one anonymous mid-level administrator in Information Technology said. “I’ll just retire at 45 and cash in on my full pension.”
College announces 50 percent tuition cut after wildly successful campaign
Photo courtesy of Gettysburg College B y B enjamin P ontz M anaging N ews E ditor T h e r e p o r t a l s o c i t e d success from last year’s As the Gettysburg organ sales drive, which Great campaign draws to allowed parents as well a close after eight years, as current students to President Janet Morgan donate an arm and a leg Riggs announced that toward their education. tuition would be cut in “Our parent half from $67,000 to relations staff was able to $33,500 for the 2018-19 make the case to parents academic year. that if they simply “As we learned donated a gallbladder, from the cinematic tuition payments would masterpiece that was the be less galling,” the campaign kickoff video, release said. “For current greatness takes action. students who were not We set a goal to raise equipped to donate at $150 billion, and, after the $75,000 level, we sitting in our offices were able to create sending out harassing individualized organ messages to students, packages and even allow parents, faculty, and students to sell their soul alumni, we exceeded in order to participate in it,” a press release from the campaign.” the college, featuring the The release standard fireworks photo cautioned that, despite used in all celebratory raising $183.2 billion, messaging, said. “Thanks the college would only to the efforts of our be able to afford the current students, each of tuition decrease for one whom donated more than year. $75,000 to the campaign, “We have to pay we are able to reduce top-dollar for the tuition commensurately -Continued on page 3by $33,500 for one year.”
IFC introduces “FratPass” card, pg. 5
Sunderman Strings to open for Springfest, pg. 6
Hanson fungus: a failed cover-up, pg. 7