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Serving the Rutgers community since 1869. Independent since 1980.
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY—NEW BRUNSWICK
THURSDAY MARCH 28, 2019
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Rutgers holds Giving Day event for 5th year CATHERINE NGUYEN NEWS EDITOR
Yesterday marked the fifth annual “Giving Day” campaign at Rutgers, a daylong event that encourages members of the University to donate and recognize the role of philanthropy. Nevin Kessler, president of the Rutgers University Foundation and executive vice president of Development and Alumni Relations, said that one of the purposes of the event was to highlight the importance of philanthropy in the University’s ability to fulfill its goals and missions. “In addition to generating philanthropic support for many causes throughout the University, Rutgers Giving Day helps galvanize
the University’s community around Rutgers’ priorities and principles, energizes and engages its alumni worldwide and helps inspire support of all kinds: volunteerism, advocacy and more,” he said. Donors have the choice of which school, unit or cause at the University they want to give to. More than 150 options are listed on the Rutgers Giving Day website, including the President’s Fund, which goes to University areas where “immediate support is most vital,” the Douglass Difference Annual Fund, which goes toward creating programs and offering support to students and the Rutgers Business School Dean’s Excellence SEE YEAR ON PAGE 4
Executive order links federal funds to free speech BRENDAN BRIGHTMAN NEWS EDITOR
President Donald J. Trump said that the executive order was the first in a “series of steps” the administration would take to defend free speech for students. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order to ensure colleges uphold free speech by threatening to withhold billions in federal research funding, according to an article by USA Today. “My administration seeks to promote free and open debate on college and university campuses,” the executive order stated. “Free inquiry is an essential feature of our nation’s democracy.” SEE SPEECH ON PAGE 4
U. runs instructor rating service, offering evaluations of professors MADISON MCGAY CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Rate My Professors is a website where students can rate faculty out of five stars on “overall quality” and “overall level of difficulty.” PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY GARRETT STEFFE / ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR
Though students are the ones typically receiving grades, the tables turn with online platforms such as Rate My Professors, where the instructors themselves are being graded. On Rate My Professors, students can offer their opinions on the quality of their college professors. Reviews include the name of the course taken with the professor, the grade received in the course and an open-ended portion where students can leave their overall personal thoughts. Among the professors reviewed are those teaching at Rutgers. It is not only the students who
recognize the website, but also the professors themselves. Neil Sheflin, an associate professor in the Department of Economics, said he was well aware of this site. While he has viewed the site himself, he offers caution to his students in using it, finding it to be a useful site for students only after consulting all other options. He said the reviews are more “interesting and amusing” than “accurate and reliable.” Norman Markowitz, an associate professor in the Department of History, adds that the site does not offer constructive criticism for professors. Instead, it encourages students to be more interested in ratings than the actual quality of the class.
“Rating websites like this are part of the commercialization of higher education,” he said. “Based on my experience at Rutgers, which goes back to 1971, (that) is not good.” Stephen Kilianski, a professor in the Department of Psychology, views this platform on a fairly frequent basis and has formed his own thoughts on the site. “For the most part, the comments there represent opinions, not objective facts, and thus are highly variable, extremely subjective and often lack a rational foundation,” Kilianski said. He said that most students fail to mention how much or how little they learned from the class, which SEE PROFESSORS ON PAGE 5
New volunteer-based program helps babies exposed to opioids MEHA AGGARWAL CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Baby Steps, first piloted in the spring of 2017, involves cuddling newborns in order to decrease the time they spend in the hospital and improve their long-term health outcomes. YOUTUBE
Medical students at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS) have developed a volunteer-based program, known as Baby Steps, to help newborns affected by opioid use during pregnancy. Along with the support of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) staff and NICU neonatologist Dr. Danitza Velazquez, four medical students
piloted the program in the spring of 2017. The program was developed in response to the opioid epidemic, said Samantha Freedman, a medical student and one of the program’s four co-founders. There were 42,000 deaths in 2016 due to opioid overdose, higher than any previous year on record, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Throughout the years, as healthcare providers prescribed opioid medications at greater rates,
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more people began to misuse the highly addictive drugs. The consequences of the opioid epidemic extend to infants. In response, Baby Steps aims to help newborns affected by Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS), which is seen in newborns who were exposed to opioid use during pregnancy and display symptoms of withdrawal upon birth, said Sally Tarabey, a co-founder of the program. SEE OPIOIDS ON PAGE 5