10-4-2023

The Pitt News

T he ind epen d e n t s t u de n t ne w spap e r of t he Unive rsity of Pittsburgh | PIttnews.com | October 4, 2023 ­| Volume 114 | Issue 33

ONE YEAR LATER:

Students reflect on alleged assault in Cathedral page. 2

Pamela Smith| Contributing Editor

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‘A Band-Aid on our concerns’:

Punya Bhasin

Asssisstant News Editor

One year after the sexual assault in the Cathderal, students say the University seemed to only put a “Band-Aid” on their concerns.

On Oct. 6, 2022, Pitt police released a crime alert describing an alleged sexual assault that occurred at midday in a stairwell of the Cathedral of Learning. Pitt students took to the Cathedral the next day, demanding Pitt take action to improve campus safety.

Following the protests last year, Dean of Students Carla Panzella promised some of the student leaders and protest organizers that she would set up a meeting with them to discuss changes the University could make.

Additionally, the University hosted a student town hall following the protests to further discuss solutions for sexual assault on campus.

During the town hall and in meetings with Dean Panzella, students suggested a number of changes, including more cameras on campus, a mandated one-credit course about sexual assault, more survivor support programs and widespread changes to the Title IX office.

However, the only notable change from the University was a shift in responsibility from administrators. Dean Panzella who stood at the forefront of the University’s response to student concerns, has now transferred the responsibility from her jurisdiction in Student Affairs to the Office for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion — a much smaller department within the University. This decision left many student concerns about the Cathedral incident still not addressed.

Now, one year later, those same student leaders like Megan Sharkey, who were promised meetings and tangible results, said they feel the University has “deprioritized” and shifted responsibility away from University

Megan Sharkey poses for a photo while riding a bus. Image via Megan Sharkey

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leaders who once gave “hope” to students as the “face of the movement.”

As Sharkey, president of Take Back the Night, reflects on her demands for change, she said she is unable to see how University administrators, who once gave her hope, fulfilled their promises.

“That was promising in the moment, but I genuinely cannot pinpoint any real changes the University made after it or if Title IX [Office] has really changed to any capacity,” Sharkey said.

When asked how she felt about the student meetings last year, Dean Panzella said they were productive — a sentiment not felt by Sharkey or from the other student leaders in attendance.

“Last year’s meetings with students were productive,” Panzella said. “We explored challenges and listened to how the students were feeling to help identify possible solutions. We were able to distill pressing issues into nuanced and actionable items.”

Sharkey attended the first meeting held

by Dean Panzella, but she was never invited back. She also did not receive any specific invite from either Dean Panzella or the OEDI to follow up on changes the University has made, and at one point she wondered if it was because she “said something wrong.”

“I can't help but wonder if because I wasn't at the second one I got booted from communication, their email list, but also I'm the president of Take Back the Night, I'm a student leader — I feel I should have been notified of that,” Sharkey said.

Carrie Benson, the director of sexual violence prevention and education at the OEDI, said she was unable to attend the early meetings with Panzella due to parental leave, and at the first meeting she did attend, Panzella shifted the work entirely to Benson’s department.

Panzella said the decision to shift the work from Panzella’s department of Student Affairs to the OEDI was “mutual.”

“This shift moved the work to the experts in this area at Pitt,” Panzella said. “OEDI is uniquely positioned, with the engagement of other stakeholders and their programs, resources and staff expertise to address these important issues at Pitt.”

Sharkey, who now works with Benson and participates on a sexual assault prevention task force, said she did not recall ever receiving a specific invitation or update from Dean Panzella that the work was no longer being

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One year after the alleged assault in the Cathedral handled by her — something that Sharkey contends is a “disheartening” choice Panzella made.

“That’s super jarring, because I was sitting next to the dean [in the first meeting], and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, here's a person who wants to make a change and is in this position that can serve us in a way,’ and it does hurt to know that she kind of removed herself from the conversation,” Sharkey said. “It's just dis-

Alexa Pierce poses for a photo in Schenley Plaza. Image via Alexa Pierce

heartening to hear.”

The shift in responsibilities from Student Affairs to OEDI also left some explicit student concerns to fall through the cracks.

Benson said she herself never asked for more cameras to be installed on campus, a request made by students in the town hall and in a petition.

“I personally did not,” Benson said.

The University of Pittsburgh Police Department declined to provide the exact number of cameras or security guards on campus for safety reasons. They additionally declined to specify when and by how many the University increased the number of campus security guards.

“We can confirm that we have permanently increased the number of guards present in the Cathedral of Learning, as well as the number of cameras across campus,” the University of Pittsburgh Police Department said.

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Eyeing election, organizers for a graduate workers union launch card campaign Jack Troy

Senior Staff Writer

Organizers for a graduate workers union at Pitt began collecting authorization cards on Monday, a way of gauging support that could trigger an official vote on unionization.

The move comes after Pitt announced a substantial downgrade to health insurance for graduate workers with academic appointments in August.

“By signing your union card today, you tell the Pitt administration that they cannot make any more changes to our working conditions without consulting us first,” Alison Mahoney, a fourth-year theater arts graduate student, said.

Among the changes, enrollees in the plan lost fully-covered hospital stays and must pay a $250 individual deductible, up from zero. Copays have spiked as well — in some cases from $5 to $30. The University contends that the new medical plan, which combines the two plans offered last year, will help tamp down cost hikes in the long term.

“As healthcare costs continue to escalate, by combining both undergraduate and graduate student health insurance plans and pools, we will be empowered to

negotiate in such a way as to help us offer more affordable plans to all students in the future,” Pitt spokesperson Nick France previously told The Pitt News.

Pat Healy, a fifth-year information sciences graduate student and teaching fellow, characterized the card campaign kickoff in the Cathedral of Learning as partly a response to the new medical plan.

“I think the energy we’ve seen over the past couple of months, especially after these health insurance changes, it’s the most angry I’ve seen people in my eightand-a-half years at Pitt,” Healy, who also attended the University as an undergraduate, said.

But Healy knows better than most this escalation was preceded by years of painstaking work to build one-on-one connections. They first joined the organizing committee in May 2019, one month after graduate workers rejected unionization by a margin of 39 votes.

“It’s very likely that this card campaign would have happened anyway had those health insurance changes not happened,” Healy.

Pitt did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this new phase of the union drive.

Organizers will need to submit signed

Graduate workers assemble to protest in Schenley Plaza on Monday.

Jack Troy | Senior Staff Writer

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Graduate workers write letters advocating for unionization in the Cathedral of Learning on Monday. Jack Troy | Senior Staff Writer

cards to the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board from at least 30% of roughly 2,000 eligible workers to begin the election process.

If graduate workers eventually came down in favor of unionization, they would join United Steelworkers, which represents faculty in their negotiations for a first contract with administration and recently helped staff union organizers trigger their own vote. The exact details of the staff union election have yet to be determined.

Healy viewed the card campaign kickoff, which attracted around 100 supporters, as a strong start.

“You’re going to be seeing us around with cards for a little while here,” Healy said. “But obviously, this is a fantastic turnout.”

Graduate workers’ grievances go beyond healthcare, though it appeared as the most salient issue at a rally in Schenley Plaza that followed the card signing event. Several union supporters also cited meager stipends and poor working conditions as reasons to ditch shared governance.

“My experience at Pitt has been precarious, dehumanizing, ableist and sexist, but I’m still here, and so are my union Oc tober 4, 2023

siblings,” ninth-year anthropology graduate student Anika Jugovic-Spajic said.

“Let’s channel our anger, frustration, sadness, fear into solidarity, and into getting our union.”

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Every service industry comes with specific challenges, given the variety of services available for purchase. From eyelash extensions to regular table service at restaurants, one grating, everpresent facet is unavoidable.

If you’re a more regular customer of establishments, you might think this refers to the tip option at the end of every receipt and on every Square card reader or iPad. Suppose you, like the vast invisible majority of people, have to work. In that case, you know that what’s irritating isn’t tipping itself, but rather the constant reminder that you are living and working in economic conditions so poorly and apathetically engineered that you will never be able to afford a decent life.

I’ve worked a lot of positions in the food service industry, from jobs where tipping might seem obvious, like a server, to positions in kiosks or at takeout counters, where tipping must seem irrational to the customer, given their steadfast avoidance of it. I do, at some level, get the frustration. I’ve seen the endless TikToks about the dreaded iPad questionnaire, and the apparent thrill customers get from carefully writing out a

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“$0.00” in the “tip” section of their receipt — if all I did was scoop your ice cream or hand you your drink or your order, why would you tip me? It’s not like I waited on your table, laughed at your bad jokes and asked, with a borderline alarming level of interest, if you and your party were “celebrating anything tonight.” Why should you tip me if I didn’t provide the extra-mile service you associate with tipping?

The short answer is this — because we don’t make enough money to live. If you have the option to tip a worker, it’s probably because they’re making dangerously less than either the minimum wage or an actual living wage. The fact that customers may tip workers is a perfect excuse for management to not pay them a decent wage.

This further normalizes both the ridiculous middle-man bureaucracy of “management” and the miserable cycle of wage labor as a whole, where our survival within its confines relies not on our ability to complete the tasks within our job description, but to ingratiate ourselves to customers and to management that earns five times as much doing half the work.

Furthermore, that cyclical grip of tipping practices isn’t actually separate from the “legiti-

mate” situations in which to tip. You might think that a five-dollar tip on a 30-dollar tab is fine.

After all, you have just probably dished out a lot more money than the food or drinks were worth, but your server doesn’t get a percentage of the meal profit —they get those five dollars and the amount they make per hour, which usually isn’t much more than that.

Your server, in most cases, isn’t actually that bubbly, that interested in your life or that awed by your manicure. If they say it’s no problem at all to take your — perfectly fine — meal back to the kitchen to have it remade, they’re lying. It’s a huge problem, it’s inconvenient for the chefs and for all the other patrons and it’s unbelievably annoying.

They’re not actually all that naturally suited for serving — they don’t really have that unlimited patience, that unflinching resolve to smile while you study a menu you’ve had in front of you for 10 minutes like you just learned how letters work in conjunction with each other to form words.

They’re just hoping against hope and experience that you, a person who has decided to go to a restaurant or a bar and pay a stupid amount of money for a drink or a meal, are willing to tip the person bringing you the purchased product,

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like tipping, do it anyway which in many cases costs double or triple the amount they make per hour. If you’re willing to pay for an overpriced pizza or pasta dish, or to shell out $17 for a cocktail, why aren’t you willing to tip your server?

The problem is twofold. First, we’re in a dire economic situation in a country vehemently opposed to the socialization of labor, so we have to pretend that customers are like overgrown, cranky toddlers that must be appeased at each turn in order to make a sustainable amount of money instead of just receiving a decent, livable wage from employers. Secondly, instead of recognizing the reality of this situation, and the precarity that it implies, a huge number of customers seem to take it upon themselves to interpret the option to tip as a personal, targeted affront on them.

I’m sorry that it ruined your day when the girl serving you your $6 ice cream cone or $12 boba turned an iPad towards you and you caught a glimpse of your reflection along with your absolute disregard for the living conditions of the people whose work you take for granted. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for you to have to tip your server on a $200 check just because

Fikayomi Olagbami | Illustrator

she didn’t laugh all that hard the fourth time you made a joke about how you “hated” the food on the plate you practically licked clean, and the service didn’t really feel “exceptional” to you. Have you considered learning how to make your own food in your own kitchen?

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