October 18, 2011 | The Miami Student

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The Miami Student Oldest university newspaper in the United States, established 1826

VOLUME 139 NO. 16

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2011

MIAMI UNIVERSITY OXFORD, OHIO

TODAY IN MIAMI HISTORY In 1993, The Miami Student reported the 10th Appellate District Court of Appeals had ruled Miami University wrongly dismissed a tenured history

professor for sexual harassment. The professor reportedly told a female Chinese graduate student that he would give her an ‘A’ if she would be his girlfriend and when she declined threatened to send her back to China. The court ruled the professor should have been disciplined according to procedure for tenured faculty.

NCAA may allow increase to scholarships By Lauren Ceronie Campus Editor

The National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) is weighing a new cost of attendance scholarship that would allow universities to divert more money toward student athletes. The new scholarship would come closer to covering the actual cost of attending college, above the traditional tuition, room, board and books costs, according to Jason Lener,

deputy director for athletics for Miami University. If the new scholarship were put into place, the NCAA would put a cap on the amount of money a school could pass on to the athlete. Although the NCAA is still discussing the scholarship, the cap is expected to be around $2,000, according to Lener. “This is still in discussion mode, nothing has been decided yet,” Lener said. “If and when it does pass it will have a significant impact on financial aid.” If passed, the

scholarship would be available to athletes in all sports, according to Lener. However, the scholarship will not be mandatory for every university. Miami will most likely follow what other universities in the Mid-American Conference (MAC) choose to do with the scholarship, Lener said. “When the decision is made, it will filter down to the conference level and the universities in each conference will decide what kind of impact this would have on the budget,” Lener said.

“It’s a lot of discussion.” While Miami plans to follow the MAC’s lead on this issue, representatives from the MAC are still not sure what to make of the new scholarship either. “We’re going to wait to see what the NCAA says,” said Jackie Mynarski, MAC associate commissioner of institutional services. Both Lener and Mynarski stressed that nothing can be decided until the NCAA board of directors discusses the issue again Oct. 27. However, Mynarski said she thought the cost of attendance scholarship would probably be financially feasible for schools in the MAC. The NCAA needs to thoroughly discuss the issue because the semantics of the scholarship are extremely complicated, according to Mynarski. Part of the

problem is that not all sports deal with regular scholarships in the same way. Each sport is given a certain number of scholarships. The NCAA has determined that some of those sports, called “equivalency sports” can break up their scholarships and give athletes partial scholarships. These sports include baseball, cross country, field hockey, ice hockey, swimming and diving, soccer and track and field. Other sports, called “head count sports,” cannot break up scholarships and can only give athletes full scholarships, according to Mynarski. These include, basketball, football and women’s volleyball. For those sports that only give full scholarships, the cost of attendance money really would go toward the cost of attendance. However, the

same guarantee is not present with the sports that can break up scholarships. “If you’re on a half scholarship, how do you get the extra $2,000 without it just going toward tuition? And when you do that you start to have problems with scholarship limits and such,” Mynarski said. “It’s complicated.” The NCAA is also running into complications with student athletes who receive government financial aid, such as Pell Grants, and how a university would supplement the financial aid, according to Mynarski. Non-student athletes are able to receive Pell Grants and other scholarships up to the cost of attendance, while athletes are not. “The devil is in the details

Cost, SEE PAGE 3

Miami removes questions about suicide from faculty health survey By Adam Giffi

Senior Staff Writer

JULIA ENGELBRECHT THE MIAMI STUDENT

STRIKE UP THE BAND Miami University’s Wind Ensemble rehearses Monday night in Presser Hall.The Wind Ensemble will host a concert at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Hall Auditorium.Tickets are $3 for students and seniors and $5 for adults.Tickets available at the Shriver Center Box Office.

Women’s studies offers section exclusively for sorority members By Chelsea Davis

For The Miami Student

Next semester, Miami University will offer a section of the “Introduction to Women’s Studies” course that will be comprised exclusively of sorority members. The section was originally developed for the sorority Living Learning Community, with help from the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGS) and the Cliff Alexander Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life and Leadership. However, the class was broadened to include all sorority members, when the fact that not all sororities are part of the Panhellenic Association was mentioned. According to Madelyn Detloff, director of WGS, the section was created as a way to generate more contact between the WGS program and

Miami’s Greek community. “We have wanted to find a way to do a little more outreach to the sororities,” Detloff said. “Especially because of the stereotypes surrounding sororities and women’s studies, it makes it a really good time to do some work together.” Topics for the other five WGS 201 sections can range from challenges women face in employment to women’s health to issues of self-esteem. “[In class], we talk about a lot of different life situations, experiences and issues that apply to women throughout time and around the world,” Ann Fuehrer, the professor in charge of this section, said. The only difference is that topics, discussion and readings will be looked at from the perspective of women in Greek life and provide them with a

comfortable environment. “Many of these [topics] will apply to women in sororities,” Fuehrer said. “Stereotypes affect women everywhere, but hearing from women who share that identity would lend some support.” It is not unusual for sections of a course to be group specific. Whether it is a section for a LLC, major specific or a class/section only offered to honors students. The course is not designed to separate women – Greek and non-Greek. In fact, according to Detloff and Fuehrer, students in all sections have opportunities to interact with one another throughout the semester. The section isn’t being met with a lot of opposition from non-Greek women, but those women aren’t exactly singing

SORORITY, SEE PAGE 9

Students are often asked some difficult questions: What are the four bases in DNA? What are the three main forms of rhetoric as classified by Aristotle? How do you calculate the amount paid for goodwill? One question that is not usually on the list: Have you contemplated suicide lately? The same could not be said for Miami University faculty and staff, who, until recently, were asked a very similar question as part of Personal Wellness Profile, an element of the Healthy Miami Program. The program was introduced in January 2010. Under this plan, faculty members that complete the profile, a health risk assessment survey and visit a physician receive a $15 deductible off their insurance. Those that choose not to comply are required to pay this $15 in their rate. Faculty and University Senate member Lisa McLaughlin, associate professor of mass communication, said university employees have been discussing their displeasure with the nature of the profile since its introduction. Yet it was not until this summer that a faculty member formally complained that the questionnaire was personal and inappropriate. This prompted university officials to remove what they deemed as the most sensitive and personal questions. These are: “Do you have a

history of depression?” “In the past six months, have you thought of hurting yourself?” “Do you have a suicide plan?” Carol Hauser, senior director of human resources, was part of the decision making process to remove the questions. “Certainly, if someone was contemplating suicide, we would want somebody to contact them about where they can get help. But we try to be very sensitive to our employees’ concerns and one of our employees found that offensive, so we removed them,” Hauser said. “This would have just been one more thing to encourage people to get help.” McLaughlin said questions still remain that hint at the issues that prompted concern, such as asking if faculty and staff have recently been downhearted, sad, angry and hostile. “There are still very, very personal questions and I don’t understand why they decided some were personal and some were not,” McLaughlin said. “All of the questions on this survey are personal and potentially highly sensitive.” McLaughlin said the primary reason faculty and staff have been so upset by the questionnaire is privacy concerns. “In a manner of speaking, the questions are really none of the university’s or anyone’s business,” McLaughlin said. “The individual that complained was really complaining about privacy. What was done in response

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to that, in my opinion, has done nothing to respond to the privacy issue.” McLaughlin said that truthfully answering questions on topics that are so stigmatized by society, such as mental health issues, and so personal, could very well be jeopardizing to an individual’s right to privacy. There is a fear that the answers to these questions, especially as they are being filled out electronically, could be purposely or inadvertently leaked to those at Miami and third parties. Hauser, however, assures that privacy should not be a concern. “I can assure you 100 percent that Miami never sees that data,” Hauser said. “McCullough-Hyde, the vendor that puts this together, is held to extremely high privacy standards. That data is as secure as anybody’s data that goes to a hospital to get a test. But laws prevent them from telling us, or anyone, anything about a specific employee.” Hauser said that, from the data, Miami merely sees the full picture of how many faculty members are affected by a certain ailment, such as thoughts of suicide. With this data, the university then focuses on targeting programs to the health areas that faculty in general most need. The doctors at McCullough-Hyde Memorial Hospital, who do see the information by individual, would contact

DEPRESSION, SEE PAGE 9


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