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THURSDAY
nov. 11, 2021 high 57°, low 48°
t h e i n de p e n de n t s t u de n t n e w s pa p e r of s y r a c u s e , n e w yor k |
N • Mental health
About 35% of Syracuse University’s student population meet the diagnostic criteria for depression, a Barnes Center at The Arch official said Wednesday. Page 3
dailyorange.com
S • History made
C • LGBTQ resources
The LGBTQ Resource Center in Schine Student Center celebrates 20 years of providing educational sessions and social programming to SU’s LGBTQ community. Page 7
Notably absent
Former Syracuse women’s basketball star Felisha Legette-Jack will become the first woman to have her jersey retired at Sunday’s women’s basketball game. Page 12
student association
Town hall discusses sexual violence By Karoline Leonard asst. news editor
LORRAINE BRANHAM, who served as dean of the Newhouse School of Public Communications, died in 2019 from cancer. She pushed for diversification of the school during her time in the role. photo illustration by lucy messineo-witt photo editor
There are no Black women in the Newhouse School’s 2021-22 Branham Scholars cohort By Shantel Guzman asst. digital editor
T
he first cohort of Branham Scholars entered the Newhouse School of Public Communications this fall, with eight recipients from a wide range of backgrounds. Notably missing from the group are Black women. The scholarship is meant to recruit students from socioeconomically disadvantaged and underrepresented populations, according to a Newhouse press release, and give them the opportunity to attend Newhouse “debt-free.” The scholarship will be awarded to at most 10 students each fall. The absence of Black women received criticism over social media because the namesake of the scholarship, former Newhouse Dean Lorraine E. Branham, was a Black woman. Payton Campbell, who graduated from Newhouse’s graphic design program in 2021 and was the president of SU’s chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, said that in Branham’s absence and with few Black female role models left in the school, Newhouse has to put more effort into making
Black women feel represented. She said that she was one of the few Black students in her major when she graduated in May. Branham became dean in 2008 after working in the newspaper industry for about 25 years, and she was determined to diversify the school in her role. Branham died in 2019 from uterine cancer. Campbell said she remembered finishing her senior year of high school and interning at the Houston Chronicle in Texas during the spring of 2017. She had just received her waitlist notification from Newhouse. Her editor made a call to Branham advocating for Campbell, and three weeks later she was accepted. Branham was instrumental in Campbell’s ability to attend SU. She said this connection to Branham gave her the strength and encouragement to get involved with the Newhouse community. “(Branham) was why I was so involved in Newhouse … even after she passed away because I knew that I just wanted to carry on her legacy in any way that I could,” Campbell said. “I wanted to show and prove that students of color belong at Newhouse see branham page 4
During Syracuse University’s Student Association's town hall Wednesday, students expressed their anger and frustration around the university’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility Plan released in mid-October. Students said they felt the plan lacked substance and contained a lot of “fluff.” William Treloar, speaker pro-tempore of SA, said while the plan has some good goals, there’s no active outline in the plan to make those goals happen. “I really want more fleshed out ideas instead of 17 pages of milestones,” Treloar said. “That is just not acceptable for a plan of this major.” Treloar expressed to the group that he and other members of SA were disappointed with the university for not publicizing the release of the plan. He said he knew very few people who knew about or read the plan, which is 54 pages in length. Adia Santos, an SU student who helped organize the #NotAgainSU protests, agreed with him and said she was not surprised with how the plan turned out. “(The plan) is very representative of the people that created it. The people that created it, a portion of them were asked to leave by very specific protest groups. So of course the plan represents the ideas of those that we fundamentally disagreed with in the first place,” Santos said. “This was a swing and a miss for me.” Joe Ritchie, director of government relations for SA, said the plan, which was born out of the #NotAgainSU protests, did not acknowledge the experience of protesters. He said the people who created the plan hardly cared to address the real problems the protests surrounded. He said the university needs to extend the public comment period, which will end on Monday, to allow for more students to express their input. Other students at the meeting said they were unaware of the plan and that they have not talked about it in their First-Year Seminar classes, which aimed to enhance discussions of race and identity. Many freshman students in the town hall said they felt the class was insufficient and lacked real care of diversity and inclusion. “It feels like (the class) was created see town
hall page 4