4-17-15

Vol. 105 Issue 153

@thepittnews

Brianna Kiesel drafted to WNBA Stephen Caruso Contributing Editor

Friday, April 17, 2015

Pittnews.com

Holocaust survivor speaks amidst controversy

As a finalist for the Nancy Lieberman Award, which is awarded to the best point guard in women’s college basketball, Brianna Kiesel knows what it feels like to be on top.

But with one call, she is going to have to start from the bottom all over again.

During Thursday night’s Women’s National Basketball Association Draft, the Tulsa Shock selected Kiesel with the 13th overall pick, the first pick in the second round.

“It feels amazing. I’m so excited, and it’s like a blessing just seeing my name up there,”

Kiesel

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Holocaust survivor Edith Bell spoke to students and community members Thursday. | Jeff Ahearn | Assistant Visual Editor

Dale Shoemaker and Mark Pesto The Pitt News Staff Some called it a remembrance, but others called it a repurposing.

In a joint effort, Pitt’s branch of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace hosted Edith Bell, a Jewish woman and Holocaust survivor, to speak in the William Pitt Union on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom HaShoah, Thurs-

day evening at 6 p.m. About 100 organizers, Jewish and non-Jewish students on campus and community members gathered to hear Bell’s talk.

Before Bell even made it to Pitt, however, a column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Wednesday surrounded the event in controversy by blaming organizers for repurposing a day of remembrance to talk politics.

Brian Albert, a mid-Atlantic campus coordinator for the Zionist Organization of America based in Washington, D.C., publicly

opposed the event in the column, calling Bell’s scheduled appearance at Pitt anti-Semitic.

Bell, who has, according the American Civil Liberties Union website, taken a “propeace” view on the conflict in the Middle East, denied claims that the event was anti-Semitic at her talk, In his column, Albert argued against Pitt offering students Outside of the Classroom Curriculum credit for attending Bell’s

Holocaust

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April 17, 2015 | The Pitt News | www.pittnews.com

Pitt increases

tuition 8.5%

In FY 2016, gov. tom wolf proposes $ 151.21 million in funding (11% increase).

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The Pitt News Crossword, 4/17/2015

Funding

In FY 2010, The State gave Pitt $184 million.

In FY 2011, funding dropped to $136.24 million (- 19% decrease).

2011

lf Wo

After years of education budget cuts from former Gov. Tom Corbett, Gov. Tom Wolf wants to put money back into Pitt’s pockets.

In his first few months in office, Wolf has proposed to reverse Corbett’s education cuts. For Pitt, the decrease in appropriations, at its peak, included a 19 percent cut from $184 million in 2010 to $136 million in 2011, according to Corbett’s 2010 and 2011 fiscal budgets. Pitt responded by increasing tuition to make up for the lost money. Wolf’s proposal seeks to reverse the education cuts in as little as two years, starting with a $14.92 million increase from last year, according to Wolf’s press secretary Jeffrey Sheridan.

Under Wolf’s new budget, Pitt will receive a total of $151.21 million in 2016, an increase of almost 11 percent, according to Pitt spokesperson, John Fedele.

However, if universities accept an investment, Pennsylvania would require the institution to “freeze their tuition.”

This would mean schools could not raise tuition from its current level for at least one year. Overall, Wolf proposed a $1 billion investment in all levels of education, but in order for any school to receive funding under Wolf’s plan, that school may have to agree

Co rb

Gabriel Naccarato Staff Writer

ett

Gov. Wolf proposes to increase Pittʼs state funding

ACROSS 1 Math course 8 Oslo Accords participant 14 Broad-minded 16 Ranks 17 Tennis shot delivered from between one’s legs 18 Cold-climate coat 19 “Sounds good!”

20 Duo 21 Almond Joy cousin 22 Conference, informally 24 Suit at a shoot 27 Nine-digit no.

28 Secretly send a dupe email to 31 Unique 32 Large moth 35 Spicy Indian dish 37 Blogosphere backdrop 40 Oklahoma city 41 Marriott competitor 42 One way to get a hand 43 IBM-inspired villain 44 Quarterback’s target: Abbr.

46 One targeting the quarterback 48 Socially inept 51 Point one’s finger at 54 Apartment manager, for short 55 Chronological start?

58 Slapstick performer 59 Ceremoniously ushers 61 Geometry giant 62 Yardsticks 63 Like the smell of rising dough 64 Letter that hints at how 18 answers in this puzzle should be filled in DOWN 1 ABA member 2 Sad 3 Sad

5/1/15

By Max Carpenter

4 Broad shoe size 5 Jacques Cartier or Jules Verne, e.g.

6 Really let loose 7 All over again 8 Los __, New Mexico 9 Formally abandon 10 Declare 11 Fronded bit of flora 12 “__-in His Lamp”: Bugs Bunny cartoon 13 Impatient utterances 15 Slacks, briefly 22 Strolling areas 23 Bolt with great speed 24 “Arrested Development” surname 25 High-profile caucus locale 26 Hillock 28 Main impact 29 Minos’ kingdom 30 Modern crime head?

33 Function 34 O.T. book

Thursday’s Puzzle Solved

©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

36 Rod with power 38 Court case 39 “The Wolf of Wall Street” star 45 Pigtailed redhead in a restaurant logo 47 1974 Mocedades hit 48 Leather craftsperson’s beltful 49 DOD branch

5/1/15

50 Hospital division 51 __-deucey 52 Footprint, maybe 53 Partner of Caesar 55 Swedish King __ XVI Gustaf 56 “Night” author Wiesel 57 Isaac’s hirsute son 60 N.T. book

April 17, 2015 | The Pitt News | www.pittnews.com

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4 FROM PAGE 1

KIESEL Kiesel said. “I’m just blessed to have this opportunity to play professionally with some of the best players in the league.”

Kathy McConnell-Miller, Pitt head coach Suzie McConnell-Serio’s sister, served as a Shock assistant coach before leaving Tulsa to become an assistant coach at Pitt.

The Shock, which went 12-22 last year, had already selected Amanda Zahui B. from

April 17, 2015 | The Pitt News | www.pittnews.com the University of Minnesota with the second overall pick of the draft.

ACC coaches named Kiesel to the First Team All-ACC and to the All-ACC Defensive Team following her 2014-2015 senior season. She averaged 18.2 points, 5.0 rebounds and 4.6 assists per game.

Kiesel is also Pitt’s first WNBA pick since the Detroit Shock picked Shavonte Zellous in 2009 and the second draft selection in program history.

The Shock play their first regular season game June 5.

FROM PAGE 2

FUNDING to a tuition freeze. Currently, Student tuition and state appropriations fund Pitt’s main budget , according to spokesman John Fedele.

“Unfortunately, when funds from the commonwealth decline or do not keep pace with inflation, there are only two ways of making up the difference: tuition increases or budget cuts,” Fedele said in an email.

Specific projects, including research

grants, restrict Pitt’s budget, Fedele said, making cuts difficult. Pitt cannot transfer these funds to cover other expenses, Fedele said, and is why it must increase tuition.

In 2011, The Pitt News reported that when Corbett cut Pitt’s budget, the University responded by raising tuition by 8.5 percent.

Because of these restrictions, when Pitt has a budget decrease, the tuition must increase, according to Fedele.

To stop the cycle of budget cuts and tuition increases, Sheridan said Wolf is dedicating his term to fixing Pennsylvania’s education cuts.

According to Sheridan, Wolf wants to focus on state schools, including Pitt. “Wolf will invest in completion rates and boost relationships with businesses,” Sheridan said.

“The goal is to have at least 60 percent of Pennsylvanians with degrees of high value by 2025.”

If Pitt chooses to receive aid from Wolf’s proposal, the University will receive an $80.9 million investment, according to Sheridan, but state-related universities, like Pitt, “will have to keep tuition as low as possible if they choose to receive the money,” Sheridan said.

According to Fedele, Pitt has not decided its budget yet.

“The budget process for this year is currently underway; our final appropriation has not been voted on by the legislature,” Fedele said.

Paul Supowitz, vice chancellor for community and governmental relations, said the budget would not be complete for the next few months. On March 24, representatives from Pitt presented Pitt’s budget testimony before the House and Senate appropriations committees in Harrisburg, according to a University release. The deadline for legislators to approve Wolf’s budget is June 30.

With Wolf having recently taken office, the budget is guaranteed to take longer to pass, Supowitz said.

“Usually, the governor presents the annual budget in February, but a new governor gets a month extension,” Supowitz said.

After the budget passes, each state school has to have its own budget passed as a bill, according to Supowitz. Pitt will receive money from the state after the bill is passed.

For now, however, Wolf is focused on gathering support for his budget, according to Sheridan.

“Wolf has been traveling throughout the state,” Sheridan said. “[He] is contacting representatives on every level of government for better education.”

April 17, 2015 | The Pitt News | www.pittnews.com FROM PAGE 1

HOLOCAUST talk, therefore “legitimizing” the event. He wrote that by relating the current situation in Gaza to the Holocaust, members of SJP are “trivializ[ing] the crimes committed against the Jews.”

At the talk Thursday night, Bell said she was “furious” when she read Albert’s editorial and argument that “SJP and Edith Bell will claim that the descendants of the ghetto fighters are the new Nazis.”

“I thought, ‘He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know what I’ve said, what I stand for, but magically he knows what I’m going to say tomorrow night?’” Bell said. “I guess I disappointed him because I didn’t say what he expected me to say.”

Bell instead devoted the majority of her speech to a description of her experience during and after the Holocaust.

“It’s hard for me to criticize Israel, but I feel that Israeli policies are wrong [and] selfdefeating in many ways,” Bell said.

Before the event, Zach Schaffer, Pitt junior and president of the Hillel Jewish University Center, said as a result of the event, he received multiple phone calls and text messages from upset Jewish students and Pitt alumni. They felt SJP was repurposing an important day for Jewish people, he said.

“We’re deeply upset that SJP is repurposing this day rather than using it as a day of remembrance,” Schaffer said.

Dara Levy-Bernstein, a member of the leadership board of Jewish Voice for Peace in Pittsburgh, a national organization that co-hosted the event with SJP, rebuffed accusations that the event was anti-Semitic.

“Obviously, since we’re a Jewish organization, we find it hypocritical and absurd to call a Holocaust remembrance event anti-Semitic,” Levy-Bernstein said before the event.

Levy-Bernstein added that she thought the timing of the event was legitimate.

“We just want to hear Edith Bell speak and hear what she has to say,” Levy-Bernstein said.

Before the event Thursday, Kenyon Bonner, vice provost and dean of students, confirmed in an email that the OCC offered students credit for attending Bell’s talk but said the views of student organizations “do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Pittsburgh.”

“OCC designation does not imply University endorsement of an event’s stated and/

or implied viewpoint,” Bonner said. “As an institution of higher education, the University values freedom of thought and expression.”

Bonner added that students could receive OCC credit in the global and cultural awareness goal area “based on the description [of the event] provided by SJP.” According to that description, SJP invited students to hear Bell discuss “her life under the Nazi regime, her later experiences in Israel and how her overall life experiences and witnesses have affected her stance on Palestine,” according to the OCC website.

“Open and civil discourse amongst and

between members of our community is valued even on contentious issues,” Bonner said in an email Thursday afternoon.

Pitt spokesman John Fedele said Pitt was not considering taking any action in response to the controversy.

At her talk, Bell refrained from talking politics and told her story of surviving the Holocaust.

Although her family moved from their native Germany to the Netherlands in an attempt to escape Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies, the Nazis deported Bell and her parents to concentration camps soon after Germany

5 invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. She spent the next five years as a prisoner at camps including Westerbork, Theresienstadt and Auschwitz.

“I tell my story because we tend to forget that when we talk about the numbers, the cold numbers, that each of those numbers — each person — had family, friends, community ... a whole society is affected by their death,” Bell said.

Soon after a group of Russian soldiers liberated Bell in 1945, she returned to Am-

Holocaust

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HOLOCAUST sterdam, where she married a man she had met in Westerbork. The newly-wed couple emigrated illegally to Palestine in December 1947 but became Israeli citizens when the United Nations founded the state of Israel in May 1948.

“I loved it. I got adjusted very well,” Bell said. “It felt good, being somewhere where you were wanted ... I didn’t know about the

April 17, 2015 | The Pitt News | www.pittnews.com Arabs and the other peoples that had been displaced.”

Bell said her sister, who escaped the Holocaust entirely when she moved to Palestine in 1934, and the rest of her family still live in Israel.

Schaffer said although Bell’s speech was peaceful and her story was inspiring, he felt that the atmosphere of the question-andanswer session that followed Bell’s speech was hostile toward Israel.

“I felt hate in their questions,” Schaffer said.

Schaffer said although Bell’s talk wasn’t what Albert’s column said it would be, a few of her statements troubled him, particularly her claim that, because Hamas was democratically elected, she didn’t consider it a terrorist organization.

“To hear her defend Hamas really hurt,” Schaffer said. “The U.S. classifies Hamas as a terrorist organization. They shoot rockets at my friends and family in Israel.”

Raghav Sharma, a sophomore politics and philosophy major and SJP board member, denied claims that anti-Semitism motivated

T P N S U D O K U

them to invite Bell to speak.

“It’s by no means a repurposing of the Holocaust,” Sharma said. “Bell’s perspective on the Holocaust is something everyone should be paying attention to.”

Demetri Khoury, vice president of SJP and a sophomore electrical engineering major, echoed Sharma’s statements.

“We are in no way at all using this Day of Holocaust Remembrance for anti-Semitic purposes,” Khoury said. “Our club’s main goal is to promote peace and seek justice. We just want the voices of the Palestinians to be heard.”

Today’s difficulty level: Medium Puzzles by Dailysudoku.com

April 17, 2015 | The Pitt News | www.pittnews.com

EDITORIAL

7

OPINIONS

Casual Fridays A late night stab Last month, an Ohio resident didn’t dance around a serious salsa issue with her husband. Phyllis Jefferson and her husband, Ronnie D. Buckner, did what any reasonable couple would do on a Sunday night — get into a red-hot debate over who finished the snack.

Things took a dip for the worse, though, when Jefferson stabbed her husband in the groin with a pen.

After detaining Jefferson, authorities uncovered quite the scoop — Jefferson previously threatened to stab her husband for double-dipping. When Jefferson reportedly asked her husband for forgiveness, Bucker said, “I’m nacho husband anymore.”

Jell-O slots Say goodbye to waiting long hours for your JellO shots to solidify. Make your friends Jell-Ous in 2016 with Jevo, the automatic Jell-O shot machine.

Similar to a Keurig, it can produce 20 Jell-O shots in 10 minutes. The Jell-O slots will make their sugary splash at the Nightclub and Bar Show in Las Vegas this coming March. What happens in Vegas won’t stay in Vegas, though. If Jevo does well, the Jell-O shot maker will surely jiggle its way into bars on college campuses.

Who cut the cheese?

If hell had a smell, Emi Mamiya would think it resembled what her husband left in their bathroom during a potty session Sunday afternoon. The stink — coupled with her husband’s attempt to pass his toilet wisdom to their 3-year-old toddler without washing his hands — led Mamiya to slash her husband’s face.

Mamiya claims she wasn’t trying to kill her husband, she was just trying to join in by cutting the cheese.

Rock, paper, citation This weekend, a teenage girl decided to take her fate into her own hands.

The teen, who authorities alleged had been drinking at a Texas music festival, narrowly avoided a citation when she played rock against an officer’s scissors. So, for future reference — in a game of rock, paper, citation, always go rock.

Up in smoke Florida just got a little hotter. Last Wednesday, one Floridian decided to “bring the heat” and burn a hole in his neighbor’s wallet. Mohammed Almarri, in a wave of fiery passion, broke into his neighbor’s apartment, forced him to retreat to the balcony and microwaved his wallet.

Looks like someone messed up making hot pockets by a long shot.

TNS

COLUMN

Passion vs. paychecks: It’s a major decision Ben Morgenstern Columnist

Sometimes life feels like a BuzzFeed quiz. Are you more concerned with being passionate about your job, or are you a money monger? While we are still busy studying Shakespeare and biology, it’s hard to say how we will feel in our future jobs.

New York Times Best Seller “Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow” by Marsha Sinetar encourages people to follow their hearts when it comes to choosing a career path.

But it might be more advantageous to choose a career path that provides job stability in the future. This isn’t what a student wants to hear when trying to pick a major.

As we all know, college graduates are increasingly struggling to find jobs relating to their majors. To avoid underemployment pitfalls, students should choose a more secure career path to pursue in college.

Careers that are traditionally occupied by people who have not had a college education, such as taxi drivers or firefighters, have seen an incredible spike in numbers of college graduates. In 1970, less than one percent of taxi drivers or firefighters were college graduates. That number has now grown to more than 15 percent.

However, this trend extends beyond taxi drivers and firefighters — it’s indicative of a national

pattern.

According to a study from Slate’s Moneybox blog, a whopping 16.8 percent of college graduates between the ages of 21 and 24 are underemployed, meaning that they are either unemployed entirely or working a part-time job for which they are overqualified.

It appears as if students who choose to pursue their passions end up rendering their hard-earned, and costly, degrees meaningless.

A study conducted by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity found that 48 percent of employed college graduates are in jobs that do not require a four-year

Morgenstern

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April 17, 2015 | The Pitt News | www.pittnews.com

FROM PAGE 7

MORGENSTERN degree.

Job-hopping — or switching from one job to another because of job instability — is also common in careers that do not provide sufficient stability, which can lead to several mental incapacitations, according to a study posted on livescience.com.

Moreover, having a stable career can still lead one to happiness even if it’s not one’s

THE PITT NEWS Natalie Daher Editor-in-Chief editor@pittnews.com

Harrison Kaminsky, News Editor news@pittnews.com

Matt Barnes, Opinions Editor letters@pittnews.com

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aeeditors@gmail.com Chris Puzia, Sports Editor sports@pittnews.com

Theo Schwarz, Visual Editor photos@pittnews.com

Ellie Petrosky, Copy Chief tpncopydesk@gmail.com

Stephen Caruso, Layout Editor tpnlayout@gmail.com

dream job. CareerBliss, an online jobs site, compiled 25,000 reviews from the site’s users on how happy they were with their job, and it found that the “happiest jobs” included careers like database administrators, quality assurance engineers and software developers.

All of these jobs have one very prominent attribute in common: high, stable wages.

Obtaining a job that better lines your pockets prevents the misery that comes with student debt. Researchers who conducted a 2013 study at Northwestern University

E S T A B L I S HE D 1 9 1 0

Danielle Fox, Managing Editor manager@pittnews.com

Abbey Reighard, Assistant News Editor Dale Shoemaker, Assistant News Editor Courtney Linder, Assistant Opinions Editor Dan Sostek, Assistant Sports Editor Jeff Ahearn, Assistant Visual Editor Mason Lazarcheff, Multimedia Editor Jesse Irwin, Social Media Editor Sam McGinley, Assistant Copy Chief Emily Hower, Assistant Layout Editor

Copy Staff

Sarah Choflet Anjuli Das Kinley Gillette Johanna Helba Emily Maccia Sierra Smith

Bridget Montgomery Sarah Mejia Michelle Reagle Megan Zagorski Sydney Mengel Amanda Sobczak

found a significant increase in stressful and depressive symptoms in graduates with student debts of $30,000 or more.

However, as unpleasant as student debts may be, it is not the only path to a hapless life. According to the study, “Although the specific health and psychological impact of student loans are unknown, they are generally considered a safer debt for students to carry, as compared to ones like credit card debt, considering an educations’ ROI when compared with other investments.”

Though students may view determining

a major as an arduous task, it is incredibly important to take into account the longterm effects of that choice and not immediately default to passions.

Declaring a major is a simple clerical action — a John Hancock on a half-sheet of paper — but the economic and cognitive ramifications extend beyond those naive college years.

Ben Morgenstern primarily writes about education and social issues for The Pitt News.

Write to Ben at bdm46@pitt.edu.

Editorial Policies Single copies of The Pitt News are free and available at newsstands around campus. Additional copies can be purchased with permission of the editor in chief for $.50 each.

Opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the students, faculty or University administration. Opinions expressed in columns,- car toons and letters are not necessarily those of The Pitt News. Any letter - in tended for publication must be addressed to the editor, be no more than 250 words and include the writer’s name, phone number and University affiliation, if any. Letters may be sent via e-mail to letters@pittnews.com. The Pitt News reserves the right to edit any and all letters. In the event of multiple replies to an issue, The Pitt News may print one letter that represents the majority of responses. Unsigned editorials are a majority opinion of the Editorial Board, listed to the left.

The Pitt News is an independent, student-written and student-managed newspaper for the Oakland campus of the University of Pittsburgh. It is-pub lished Monday through Friday during the regular school year and Wednesdays during the summer.

Complaints concerning coverage by The Pitt News, after first being brought to the editors, may be referred to the Community Relations -Com mittee, Pitt News Advisory Board, c/o student media adviser, 435 William Pitt Union, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15260.

The editor in chief has the final authority on editorial matters and cannot be censored, according to state and federal law. The editor in chief is selected by the Pitt News Advisory Board, which includes University staff, - fac ulty and students, as well as journalism professionals. The business and edito rial offices of The Pitt News are located at 434 William Pitt Union, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15260.

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April 17, 2015 | The Pitt News | www.pittnews.com

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April 17, 2015 | The Pitt News | www.pittnews.com

SPORTS

ONGOING STORY

COLUMN

New athletic director to inherit an evolving position Kevin Wheeler Staff Writer

With a new athletic director on the way, Pitt’s athletic department could be in for a makeover.

The search to find the new leader of the athletic department began in December 2014, when Steve Pederson agreed to part ways with Pitt.

According to Randy Juhl, Pitt’s interim athletic director, the University will name a permanent director by June 30, the end of the University’s fiscal year, with the help of the search firm DHR International. But details have remained confidential, and Pitt’s sports information department has kept quiet and the same goes for the 14-member search committee, which is made up of Pitt coaches, student-athletes, administrators and faculty.

Athletic departments have taken on more responsibilities as college athletics grow in importance, leaning more and more on athletic directors as leaders rather than planners. Sports Illustrated writer George Dohrmann, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for his work uncovering academic fraud within the University of Minnesota’s basketball program, said hiring an athletic director now depends more on a candidate’s business background than anything else.

“An athletic department is essentially a huge multi-million dollar corporation that, if run properly, can generate tens of millions of dollars more per year

Gap year: Let players go high school to pro

than one that isn’t run properly,” rly,” he said. “It’s not good enough any ny more to be an alumni of the school or a beloved former coach or a longtime time associate athletic director. You need to be a guy who really knows how w to run a business.”

An athletic director’s success ess then relies on communication inside ide and outside of athletics, consistent nt fundraising and the development off a winning mentality across all sports. ts.

Connee Zotos — a former athletic director with 20 years of experience erience in higher education — said athletic directors’ mindsets have changed since the start of her career..

“The motto in athletics, across the board, used d to be, ‘My way or the highway,’” Zotos, now a professor of sports management at New York University, said.

“Athletic departments almost used to find comfort in their isolation as a separate entity on campus. I think we’re seeing a shift in that thinking from athletic directors who don’t want to be in it alone any more, and they need help.”

According to Zotos, an athletic director is responsible for student-athletes, campus administrators, sponsors, alumni, media, boosters and many more “stakeholders,” as Zotos calls them. As more people become involved in the athletic department, an athletic director has to pay more attention to external factors — such as media, alumni and donors — instead of focusing solely

Alex Wise Staff Writer

Lamar Patterson 4 years

“An athletic department is essentially a huge multi-million dollar corporation” George Dohrmann

Director

12

Duke already alread has a lot of haters, and as the shakiest No. 1 seed, they also had h a lot of doubters. All year, Duke was the Jekylland-Hyde team t of the NCAA, but they were dominant when it counted — the NCAA Tournament.

Now, Duke Du men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski has the arduous task tas of keeping the momentum moving despite the inevitable los loss of more than half of his younger players to the NBA. Freshman point guard and Final Four MVP Tyus Jones Freshm declared on o Wednesday that he will enter the draft, following fellow fres freshman teammates Justise Winslow and Jahlil Okafor.

Add graduating gra senior Quinn Cook to the list of departures, and Duke D is left thin in the returning contributors department, as well as the baby ballers department. m But with the exodus of three star freshmen — one and dones — to the NBA, basketball fans will label Duke as a “freshman factory,” a term casual basketball fans like to throw at schools that lose their top recruits to the NBA after one year.

At Kentucky, John Calipari currently runs the most notorious freshman factory in the game, with three freshmen leaving this year for the draft, including their second-best scorer Karl-Anthony

Wise

Pitt has produced a few recent NBA draft picks with varying experience before going pro...

Steven Adams 1 year

DeJuan Blair 2 years

11

April 17, 2015 | The Pitt News | www.pittnews.com FROM PAGE 10

WISE

Towns. Others schools, such as Kansas, Arizona and Syracuse, have, to a lesser degree, been criticized by basketball commentators for “renting” players for a year.

“What good is one year of a college education doing these kids?” critics ask.

I’ll admit it’s the right question, but critics are directing it at the wrong people.

A player must be one year removed from high school to be drafted under the NBA’s draft eligibility rules. Although that player is not obligated to spend that year playing at the college level, it makes sense for aspiring professionals to spend their in-between year competing at the highest level possible.

The critics are correct in saying that this off-year doesn’t do much for players. Education certainly doesn’t seem to be the top priority for athletes in revenue-generating sports, and exploitation of high-level recruits is common by universities. Look at Shabazz Napier, a key player in UConn’s NCAA tournament win last year, who said during a press conference that he had some ”hungry nights” where he went to bed starving,

lacking a big enough meal plan as part of his scholarship.

Perhaps, then, we need to examine what gives the NBA the right to dictate what basketball players do with a year of their lives.

2005 was the last year in which players

to try.

The NFL has a similar rule when dealing with young athletes. To be eligible for the NFL draft, a player must be three years removed from high school. As opposed to the NBA’s restriction, the NFL rule makes sense.

Not every player would be successful following this path, but the NBA should not have the power to deny a player the ability to try. were allowed to make the prep-to-pro jump, and the list of players who have been successful straight out of high school is star-studded — LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Amar’e Stoudemire, Kevin Garnett and Tracy McGrady are just a few examples.

Not every player would be successful following this path, but the NBA should not have the power to deny a player the ability

There isn’t a high school player alive that’s physically or mentally ready for professional football. It is too fast and too tough a sport for a kid with senior prom still fresh in his mind. This makes the in-between years in college necessary for development. Jonathan Martin, an offensive tackle in the NFL, couldn’t handle the locker room environment, and he had three years the NFL re-

11 quires of a player.

As Joe Walton, a former NFL player and former Robert Morris head coach, said in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “I think the rule the way it is, is good. When most kids first get out of high school they are not physically strong enough to give the pros a try.”

But basketball is different. There are no Richie Ingonitos to scare of a young rookie, and you can’t convince me that Duke’s Okafor is any more ready for the NBA now than he was when he graduated from Chicago’s Whitney Young High School last year. The college competition posed no threat to him. Okafor spent this season trashing post defenses and befuddling help side guards with cross-court passes, and the extra year of making amateurs look foolish didn’t help him mature He should have had the opportunity to go pro out of high school. Guys such as Winslow, Arizona’s Stanley Johnson and Kansas’ Cliff Alexander, as well as half of Kentucky’s team, should likewise have had that opportunity.

Jones’ declaration for the NBA draft didn’t surprise anybody. He may not have been as ready for the league last year as some of his classmates, and he may still be unprepared now, but he deserves the right to try.

12 FROM PAGE 10

DIRECTOR on the operations within the athletic offices.

Alumni donations are a large part of an athletic department’s success.

But with both increasing or decreasing at the same time, it’s hard to balance spending. A new head coach is a big investment, but one a successful team most likely doesn’t need, and a unsuc-

April 17, 2015 | The Pitt News | www.pittnews.com cessful team can’t afford.

The National Bureau of Economic Research found in 2008 that an alumnus would donate between seven and eight percent more money per year after their school’s basketball or football team won its conference championship.

Juhl, who said he is not a candidate for Pitt’s athletic director job and plans to retire within a year, emphasized the importance of a healthy relationship between the next athletic director and Pitt alumni.

“[Alumni] are proud of having gone to Pitt, and [the athletic department] want to do nothing but to increase that source of pride for them,” he said. “We also need their support both in attendance and in donations in order to run a topflight department of athletics. There isn’t a single department in the country that doesn’t rely on support from alumni and friends in order to operate.”

In addition to the internal search committee, Pitt hired a Chicago-based search firm, DHR International, in Feb-

ruary to help find candidates for the athletic director job. Dohrmann said a firm could help by using its exclusive contacts to provide schools with more information than a typical athletic department could acquire.

“If you’re paying a search firm, you’re paying them to know the insights or what skeletons are out there,” he said. “You want the firm to do the background that you don’t have the time or the resources to do.”

Dohrmann said a school’s typical payment to a firm for an athletic director search ranges from $30,000 to $90,000, but some schools have paid search firms much larger sums of money for assistance in the past.

According to Dohrmann, from 2005 to 2013, the University of Tennessee paid more than $360,000 to fill six different positions in athletics. North Carolina spent more than $255,000 on a search firm for only two months worth of work over a three year span from 2010 to 2013 for multiple positions. The University has not disclosed its payments to DHR International, and Ken Service, Pitt’s vice chancellor for communications, declined to comment on the amount.

Although athletic directors face different challenges now than they did years ago, Zotos said every school has a different opinion about what constitutes a successful athletic director.

“Every athletic department has its own character, and it starts a tradition based on past leadership,” Zotos said.

“They’re such complex organizations that to try to give a blanket look at what an athletic director means at an institution is nearly impossible.”