The Ramapo News 03.08.12
XLII NO. 16
A PUBLICATION BY THE STUDENTS FOR THE RAMAPO COLLEGE COMMUNITY the rundown
arts
WOMEN’S HERSTORY MONTH
&
entertainment
INTERNSHIP TIPS
Keynote speaker Beatrice Fernando detailed her story of human trafficking. Page 3
MEN’S VOLLEYBALL
Our writer shares helpful advice on how to land, and work at, your intership. Page 11
Entering the season with high expectations, the men’s volleyball team is 12-5 this year. Page 13
Invisible Children Group Captivates Campus VIRAL ‘KONY 2012’ VIDEO GARNERS ATTENTION FOR AFRICAN CAUSE
Teach-In Sparks Talks on Student Debt, Funding Concerns By RACHEL WINTERMUTE Staff Writer
A representative from the Invisible Children organization was invited to speak to the Ramapo community on March 7 by the Center for Civic Engagement. The charity aims to raise awareness about the abuse of children in Uganda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic, who are forcibly recruited as soldiers for the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Invisible Children has received widespread attention in the past few days, when a 30-minute long documentary called “Kony 2012,” directed by Jason Russell, hit the web. The film details the atrocities committed by army leader Joseph Kony, and calls for his arrest. It aims to make Kony “famous” to further aid his capture. “Kony 2012” was screened for Ramapo students at Wednesday night’s event.Photos by Donna Elazar. Logo courtesy of Chris Shultz, Flickr Creative Commons
In observance of the National Week of Action for Education, faculty and students at Ramapo held three events last week as a part of a movement they called “Teach-In: Bringing Occupy to Ramapo.” The events, held March 1 and March 2, were the first three roundtable discussions in a fourpart series set to conclude next Wed. March 14. Communication arts professors Patricia Keeton and Christina Smith, along with student Danielle Corcione, led the events last week and, according to occupycolleges. org, joined the 69 other colleges across the nation that also participated in “Day of Education” on March 1. “It’s part of an ongoing struggle to bring awareness to the lack of funding for Ramapo,” Smith said. “I know that you students feel it see OCCUPY on page 2
With a Strain on Budget, Libraries Seek to Save their Resources By ELYSE TORIBIO Editor-in-Chief For years, colleges and universities have forked over hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide students and faculty with easy access to print and electronic research materials. Recently, however, big publishing companies like Elsevier have come under fire for overcharging institutions for subscriptions to their journals and “bundling” frequently used publications with more obscure, nonessential ones at a high cost. When a state school’s budget is stretched thin and expenses are reviewed to see where costs can be cut, one might not expect that a low-profile service like the library would even make it into the conversation. In reality, colleges find access to research materials so essential to the institution that smaller schools could be driven to consider lowering student enrollment to afford the exorbitant costs of scholarly journal subscriptions, some of which can run upwards of $100,000. Leaders in the academic field around the world have begun to boycott these publishers, citing that expensive
weekend weather
prices limit who can access their research---research that they feel should be readily available to everyone. A group with much more at stake in this issue is the college librarians whose job it is to ensure that students don’t end up stiffed on resources at the hands of the publishers. Leigh Keller, serials and information literacy librarian at the George T. Potter Library, explains that vendors of these subscriptions base their prices on different criteria, and essentially assign the criteria that will make them the most money. Some schools, like Ramapo College, are given a price based on full-time enrollment (FTE): the higher the population of full-time students, the higher a subscription would be, Keller explained. Meaning that even if only a small portion of the student body (those in the School of Theoretical and Applied Sciences, for example) regularly accessed a science journal, the College is charged under the assumption that everyone is using it. And with FTE, vendors don’t necessarily differentiate between prestigious Ivy Leagues that get millions in funding and donations, and state schools that are getting less and less aid.
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“William Paterson [University] has high FTE, and Princeton [University] has about a thousand fewer students,” Keller said. “So Princeton pays significantly less.” She explained that this situation is not unique to publishers and colleges. “It’s not like this issue isn’t transferrable. It happens in homebuying. You could buy the exact same house in a different location and the cost would be different,” Keller said. Because of the dramatic difference that a 1,000 fewer full-time students can make, it’s no surprise that in a period of economic turmoil, schools are rethinking the number of programs offered, and even the number of students they will allow to be enrolled. “This is a huge issue, and it’s something we’re always talking about,” Keller said, referring fellow college librarians. Another method, like the Carnegie research class, works in favor of the vendors when dealing with big research institutions. “Vendors might also charge based on how many times a journal is accessed, so some big research schools are based on that,” Keller said.
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see JOURNAL on page 6
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