WINTER IS HERE
ACADEMY EXCLUSION
Let laziness kick in and use these apps to survive the season , Focus, page 14
DePaulia
Racial controversy at the Oscars Arts & Life, page 18
The
Pinnacle award winner, No. 1 College Weekly Newspaper
Volume #100 | Issue #12 | Jan. 25, 2016 | depauliaonline.com
8 campus sexual assaults recorded since August By Mariah Woelfel Multimedia Editor
ADJUNCT
ACTION Unionization movement arrives at DePaul By Megan Deppen & Brenden Moore Print Managing Editor and News Editor
Motivated by low wages, flimsy benefits and a 2014 precedent-setting ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), adjunct faculty members are rushing to unionize at institutions across the country. Recent momentum at local schools has brought the movement to DePaul, possibly forcing the issue to a head soon. Unionization efforts have hit religious and secular schools alike; Columbia College, Roosevelt University and UIC’s adjuncts have already been unionized, and the University of Chicago’s non-tenure track faculty voted to organize in October. And with the results of an authorization vote by Loyola’s adjuncts to come down as early as this week, making inroads at DePaul would be a next logical step. The issue became prominent two weeks ago after Rev. Dennis Holtschneider, C.M. and Provost Marten denBoer sent emails to faculty and staff about “union solicitation at DePaul.” Both said that while they respect faculty’s right to choose who represents them, they would prefer to maintain a direct relationship. DePaul currently employs 925 full-time professors and 1,900 adjunct faculty, according to the adjunct fact sheet. “Our preference is to maintain a direct working relationship with adjunct faculty — without interference from a third party that has no connection or commitment to DePaul and its students, and that may not understand our culture and our values,” Holtschneider said in the email. Holtschneider also said the union organizer who approached adjuncts was affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), something the
An adjunct professor’s open letter to Fr. Holtschneider Opinions, page 12. union has confirmed. “There has been a group of faculty from DePaul involved in the Faculty Forward Chicago campaign since the inception of the campaign more than a year ago,” said SEIU Local 73 spokesman Adam Rosen. Rosen added that these faculty members have since “had conversations with many full-time and part-time faculty in regards to forming a union” and “are currently building a strong committee of support on campus.” The issue stems larger than just unionizing faculty. In a separate interview with The DePaulia, Holtschneider said allowing faculty to unionize under the current NLRB standard would mean that the NLRB has certain jurisdiction over parts of a religious institution that are not religious. This, Holtschneider said, would blur the boundaries of church and state because a state entity would be able to determine which parts of the religious institution are under their jurisdiction. It would disregard religious institutions’ first amendment rights, he said. Law School professor Steven Greenberger said that under the current state of the law, “adjunct faculty do have the right to organize, even at (religiously) affiliated higher education institutions, so long as they are not involved in religious activities, which would be principally teaching religious lessons.” Holtschneider said the university would appeal the NLRB’s jurisdiction standard to the courts, not merely to oppose unions, but to maintain independence as a complete religious institution, not one divided into religious and nonreligious parts.
See ADJUNCTS page 6 PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY CAROLYN DUFF | THE DEPAULIA
When DePaul freshman Madison Keys saw a notification a week and a half ago from Public Safety that a sexual assault was reported on DePaul’s Lincoln Park campus, she started to question her own safety. “It honestly just made me want to be more cautious and not walk anywhere without my roommate,” she said. When told that this is only one of eight incidents of on-campus sexual offenses since August 2015 — one reported each month, with two in November and January — she was shocked. “I don’t even know what to say,” Keys said. “I saw that alert, but that’s ridiculous.” The eight sexual assaults recorded during the six-month span is more than the total number of assaults recorded in 2012 and 2013 combined, and only one less than the number of sexual assaults recorded by Public Safety in the entire year of 2014, when nine sexual offenses were recorded. When a sexual assault is recorded, the alerts students receive about them vary due to the Clery Act, the federal act that requires universities to disclose information about crime on and near campus. It has been mandated for universities to follow since 1991. Of the eight assaults recorded from August to November, the student body received alerts on three of them. The other five offenses fall into circumstantial categories where Public Safety is not legally mandated to send out a safety alert. “The first circumstance is if the offender is taken into custody and there’s no threat. The offender was identified right away, the offender was taken into custody, there was no ongoing threat,” Bob Wachowski, the Director of Public Safety, said. “Another is some of (the reports) that are reported happened a couple months ago, so as long as there’s not an ongoing threat to the community that is posed, then we would choose not to post it.” One of the sexual assaults from November and another one in December fall under this last circumstance, in which a report is taken of a crime that happened months in the past, but alerts were not sent out. The assaults were reported to have taken place in March 2015 and October
See ASSAULTS, page 8