Check inside for the January issue of PRISM Monday, January 22, 2018 | Vol. XCIII, Issue 2 | Binghamton University | bupipedream.com
The Free Word on Campus Since 1946
Women's Weekend
Paid leave offered to research workers Employees to be paid for maternity leave, family care Yuri Lee News Intern
A new state law will provide Binghamton University’s employees of the Research Foundation for SUNY expanded family leave benefits. In 2016, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed New York state’s first phased-in Paid Family Leave program into law. As of Jan. 1, 2018, the law has gone into effect, providing New Yorkers job-protected paid leave that can be used to bond with a new child or care for relatives with serious health conditions, among other circumstances. The Research Foundation for SUNY, a private nonprofit educational corporation, supports nearly $1 billion in SUNY research activity annually. It also provides sponsored programs administration and commercialization support services to SUNY faculty who are conducting research. Since the Research Foundation is a private employer, it has already started providing the policy to their employees. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 was one of the first attempts to provide employees with leave coverage. The federal law guarantees employees 12 weeks of unpaid leave without risk of job loss. The Paid Family Leave program will provide job protection while also paying New York state employees during
Katherine Scott/Pipe Dream Photographer Binghamton area residents marched and spoke out in protest of the Trump administration. The second annual Women’s March was organized by the city of Binghamton and the Southern Tier chapter of Citizen Action of New York, a grass-roots organization that advocates equality for marginalized groups.
More than 1,000 'reflect and resist' at second annual Women's March on Binghamton Erin Kagel Pipe Dream News
Raising signs and shouting chants, residents of the Binghamton area joined people of cities throughout the country to protest President Donald Trump’s administration at the 2018 Women’s March on Binghamton this Saturday. More than 1,000 men and women congregated at the Martin Luther King Jr. Promenade in Downtown Binghamton and marched to United Presbyterian Church of Binghamton at 42 Chenango St. carrying signs that read, “Boys will be boys held accountable for their actions,” and “A woman’s place is in the resistance.” The crowd chanted “Women’s rights are human rights,” “Black lives matter” and “The people united will never be defeated,” as a part of the march’s theme, “Be Heard.” The march was organized by the city of
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“We have not lost our ability to turn this moment into a historic movement. And we have not lost our ability to hope. — Donna Lupardo Assemblywoman for New York's 123rd District
Binghamton and the Southern Tier Chapter of Citizen Action of New York, a grass-roots organization that aims to dismantle various institutional forms of oppression including racism and sexism. Shanel Boyce, the Citizen Action community organizer for the city of Binghamton and a second-year graduate student studying social work, said that the Women’s March is a necessity in today’s political climate. “We realized that the Women’s March is a call to action, and it’s also about unity,” Boyce said. “A lot of times, people need spaces and people to surround them so that they can plug back in and recharge and there is nothing better than marching with hundreds of women and men and allies that are supporting the same cause that you do.”
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Competition increases for RA spots BU prof. researches Number of applications up 27 percent in three years
RA application stats
Sasha Hupka Assistant News Editor
Olivia Merseburg has wanted to be a resident assistant (RA) since she was in high school. But for Merseburg, a sophomore majoring in political science, and the hundreds of other students at Binghamton University currently applying for positions for the 2018-19 school year, a spot is far from guaranteed. Last year, just over 20 percent of students who applied to be RAs were hired, down from about 24 percent of applicants got spots in 2016-17 and 27 percent were hired in 2015-16. For students looking to hold an RA position, getting hired is becoming more and more challenging. Inarra Sorathiya, a sophomore double-majoring in political science and sociology, said she was aware of the difficulty of getting a position when she applied, but still wanted to do so because RAs can be role models to fellow students. “I’ve had friends who are RAs who have told me that being an RA is the best thing, but it is really competitive,” Sorathiya said. “Everyone knows you, people connect with you and want to talk to you, and it’s just one of those special spots on campus.” The primary factor driving the
Number of applicants
Number of applicants hired
500 400
436 371
344
300 200 100
94
2015-16
90
2016-17
88
2017-18
Cory Bremer/Designer Manager Above are numbers from the past three years of RA resident assistant applications. The numbers show a 27 percent increase in applicants, partially driven by rising housing costs.
growing competition is an increase in applicants. The number of applications submitted to Residential Life for RA selection jumped by roughly 27 percent between 2015-16 and 2017-18. At the same time, the number of applicants hired dropped slightly, from 94 to 88. Part of the rise in applications can be
attributed to rising costs of room and board. For the 2017-18 academic year, annual housing rates run from $9,068 for a double in College-in-the-Woods or Hinman College to $14,242 for a family apartment in Susquehanna Community.
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Easter Island heads Findings challenge narrative of Rapa Nui people Julia Donnelly Pipe Dream News
Often referred to as the “Easter Island heads,” the moai statues found on Chile’s Easter Island are the focus of one Binghamton University professor’s research. Carl Lipo, professor of anthropology at BU, is conducting research that could shift the historical understanding of the Rapa Nui people, the inhabitants of Easter Island who built the moai statues. His work could also improve archaeological research methods. The team’s research has put forth a new narrative about the Rapa Nui people, Lipo wrote in an email. “Many of the aspects of what people assumed about the past was not rooted in evidence that could be linked to the archaeological record,” Lipo wrote. “Instead, people had made claims based on previous claims that went back several hundred years.” According to Lipo, the European narrative holds that the Rapa Nui were responsible for their own decline because of extensive environmental damage to
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the island. But the Europeans brought disease, quickly enslaved the Rapa Nui people and raised thousands of sheep on the island. “The ‘story’ of Rapa Nui reflected cultural norms of our contemporary times,” Lipo wrote in an email. “The ‘demise’ that we have seen on the island in the past 200 years has been the result of impacts by Europeans.” To conduct its research, the team utilized structure from motion-mapping technology, a type of photography that models 3-D structures that otherwise can’t be seen correctly in photos. This allows for a 3-D representation of the engravings on the pukao, or the “topknot” hat-like structures found on top of the moai. The petroglyphs, or rock carvings, found on the moai statues are detailed in the study’s structure from motion technology and changed the accepted narrative of the Rapa Nui people. The transport of these large stones to create the moai and pukao are a result of a hierarchical system with strict social roles. Instead, the researchers discovered that small groups of people were responsible for the individual statues.
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