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Student band Shallow Alcove doesn’t need a professional recording studio to make its music — it only needs a hockey stick and some blankets. Page 11
Syracuse University and the Theta Tau chapter’s legal teams will appear at a hearing Thursday as lawsuits against the university continue in court. Page 3
IN THE
PAINT SEE INSERT
Women faculty are divided over SU’s response to university-wide pay gap Story by Lydia Niles feature editor
I
Illustration by Ali Harford managing editor
n December 2017, Syracuse University released a faculty salary review report showing a statistically and economically significant university-wide gender pay gap. The report showed that women faculty made as little as 77 cents to the men faculty’s dollar. Four months later, on Equal Pay Day in April, more than 200 women faculty came together to criticize the gender pay disparities in a spread advertisement in The Daily Orange. Next to signatures of women professors from every school and college at SU, a statement outlined their collective demand that the university address long-term effects of the pay gap, among other grievances and acknowledgements. By July 2018, some women professors at SU had received their salary letters from their school’s dean’s offices. The documents specified their salaries for the 2018-19 school year and if their salaries were raised to that of male colleagues. In September 2018 — nine months after the initial report — during the first University Senate meeting of the fall semester, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Provost Michele Wheatly announced that the university had resolved the pay gap by allocating $1.8 million in funds to close it. But faculty said the communication leading up to that point and after created a wave of confusion, as well as skepticism on whether or not pay inequities across the university had been resolved. In an emailed statement to The D.O., Wheatly and Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs LaVonda Reed said that, after developing a recommendation for deans and providing them with a portion of the $1.8 million in funds, the deans were “tasked with reviewing them and making the appropriate adjustments.” The autonomy in communication surrounding the salary gap,and in the monetary measures taken to adjust that, has created inconsistent responses from faculty in SU’s schools and colleges — particularly at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. The Maxwell School did not use the university’s report to make salary adjustments, and instead conducted its own data analysis. The school had one of the largest salary discrepancies between men and women faculty, according to the university’s report. Maxwell Dean David Van Slyke concluded from his office’s independent study that salary inequities were only present at the full professor level, while the university report found inequities at each level. The independent study also concluded that inequities in the Maxwell School were much smaller than see pay
gap page 8
on campus
SU deans, administrators support Cluster Hires Initiative By Catherine Leffert asst. news editor
Several college deans, administrators and department heads said they support Syracuse University’s recent decision to make 53 hires in seven domains across its schools and colleges through its Cluster Hires Initiative. The initiative involves hiring professors in “clusters” that
are expected to work on similar themes of research across various fields. Each school and college will share the cost of its cluster hires with the university. “It will enhance education by hiring scholar educators, align new hires with research and teaching trends of societally relevant areas, and allow us to play to strengths and make our university more competitive, and our
You’re bringing in people who already know that there are other people on campus who want to collaborate with them. Joanna Masingila
dean of su school of education
graduates more successful,” Zhanjiang “John” Liu, vice president for research, said in an email. Liu helped spearhead the Cluster Hires Initiative and said it will break structural barriers and allow for campus-wide collaboration among faculty and graduate students. “It kind of encourages faculty to think outside the box and think about interdisciplinary programs with faculty from different depart-
ments and different colleges to work together,” said Ramesh Raina, chair of SU’s biology department and a member of the Provost Review Committee. The seven initiatives chosen were aging, behavioral health and neuroscience; artificial intelligence, deep learning, autonomous systems and policy; big data and data analytics; bio-enabled science see hires page 8