Now open in Lincoln Park
A look at the fashionable and tasty new offerings around campus Arts & Life, page 16
Vol. # 97, Issue # 15
| February 18, 2013
Putting the ‘D’ in Blue Demon
By NATHAN WEISMAN Contributing Writer
Several students who went to the men’s basketball game against Notre Dame received a shirt sporting the slogan “Fear the D” in honor of National Blue Demon Day Feb 2. Since then, the shirt has generated demand and sparked conversation on campus and online. Many see the shirt as a form of school spirit. Others see something different. The shirt’s fame started with a tweet Feb. 1 from the DePaul Residence Hall Council. The tweet simply read “Fear the D” and had an attached animated picture showing the slogan on the shirt that was to be handed out the next day. A day after the shirts were given out at the game, a student posted a picture to the funny section of Reddit.com. The picture under the title “I’m not sure DePaul University understood the second meaning of this...” generated 1737 “up votes,” the Reddit equivalent of a “like.” For many, “Fear the D” is not just a reference to DePaul’s beloved Blue Demon mascot. In fact, it is an innuendo for “fear the” penis. “Either DePaul University spent their Christmas break growing a sense of
GRANT MYATT| The DePaulia
In this posed photo, a student wears the popular t-shirt distributed Feb. 2 in honor of National Blue Demon Day. humor, or somebody made a big mistake,” said Murphy Row, who wrote an article in response to the Reddit post on Cosbysweaters.com. “DePaul is an institution of higher learning and there is a lesson here. When the 21-year-old intern
giggles at a suggestion for a slogan, take a minute to ask the intern why he or she is laughing before you print it on a t-shirt and hand it to a stadium full of students.” According to Greg Greenwell, the director of communications for athletics at
Climbing the tenure track
Controversial faculty process impacts students as well as staff By JEREMY MIKULA Staff Writer The word “tenure” has become a hot-button topic at DePaul in the past 6 or 7 years – particularly for those faculty members who felt aggrieved the system was broken and professors deserving of tenure were wrongfully denied. In the past 23 years, DePaul has actually had a high success rate with 88.8 percent of applicants being granted tenure, according to numbers provided by the office of Academic Affairs. Yet, it was the 11.2 percent who were denied tenure that sparked controversy and discussion – and one big reason why the Faculty Handbook is currently being rewritten.
THE CONTROVERSY OVER TENURE DePaul
has
never
been
without its share of controversy when it comes to tenure, particularly in the past decade when there were a number of high profile denials with the cases of Norman Finkelstein, Melissa Bradshaw, Namita Goswami and Quinetta Shelby. In each of those cases, supporters accused the university of discrimination on the basis of gender, political views and race. However, Barbara Speicher, who chairs Faculty Council’s Committee on Committees, warns the controversy can’t necessarily be summed up as such. “I don’t know that you can make a sweeping generalization about that,” she said. “Some believe that ethnicity or gender or political views had a lot to do with it, and some people think that the process worked and there wasn’t any problem with those decisions. And others would say the process didn’t work because of a lack of clarity, hence why
we’re trying to resolve that.” The highest tenure denial rate in recent history was the 20062007 school year. According to the office of Academic Affairs, nine out of 42 applicants were denied tenure – a notable drop from the previous year, in which
“
The tenured faculty are expected to conduct research. Research plays many parts, but the thriving idea at DePaul is scholar-teachers.” THOMAS DONLEY
all 45 applicants were granted the honor. The following year, in 2007-2008, 44 of 51 were granted tenure. In the past two academic years, tenure was granted to 94.6 percent (35 of 37) of applicants in the 2010-2011 academic year, while 90 percent (36 of 40) were in 2011-2012. All of the statistics – from
DePaul, the slogan on the shirt was written by The Blue Crew, a student organization. “We worked with (the athletic department) to distribute some of the shirts
demographic breakdown to type of full-time faculty – might not be perfect. According to Speicher, “no one” knows the “magic number,” while Thomas Donley, who co-chairs the Faculty Handbook Revision Task Force (FHRTF) said the breakdown of faculty type can vary. “It depends on how you calculate them,” he said. “You can talk about the percentage of total credit hours taught by full-time faculty, you can talk about the percent of total credit hours taught by tenured faculty, you can talk about the percent of total credit hours taught by non-tenured faculty, or by parttime faculty. And then you can talk about the percent of faculty that are tenured, that are not tenured. So, it really depends on which question you’re asking. Moreover, it’s very collegespecific.” Regardless of the numbers, both Donley and Speicher said tenure is important to DePaul as a university and to students. “The tenured faculty are expected to conduct research. Research plays many parts, but the thriving idea at DePaul is See TENURE, page 14
See FEAR, page 9
Got mail? Not on Saturdays
U.S. Postal Service cutting Saturday mail means more than just fewer catalogs. Opinions, page 13
Three arrested in attack on students Three suspects were charged with home invasion and multiple accounts of robbery at two DePaul student parties. News, page 3