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RUTGERS UNIVERSITY—NEW BRUNSWICK
WEDNESDAY APRIL 10, 2019
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AAUP-AFT pickets for ‘hollowed out’ faculty BRENDAN BRIGHTMAN NEWS EDITOR
The Rutgers American Association of University Professors and American Federation of Teachers (AAUP-AFT) held its “Final Warning: Strike or Contract” picket outside the Board of Governors meeting yesterday, where members chanted, gave speeches and walked with signs in front of the Paul Robeson Campus Center in Newark, New Jersey. The AAUP-
AFT has been negotiating a new contract for 13 months, and a strike has been authorized by 88 percent of the union. “We are here to picket the Board of Governors to tell Barchi to do the right thing,” said Deepa Kumar, president of AAUP-AFT and an associate professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies. “What a strike does is it shows who actually makes Rutgers work.” SEE FACULTY ON PAGE 4
Super Bowl champs to speak at 2019 commencement CATHERINE NGUYEN NEWS EDITOR
At the Board of Governors meeting yesterday afternoon, the faculty union picketed for health insurance, raises and pay equity across all three campuses. BRENDAN BRIGHTMAN / NEWS EDITOR
At the most recent Board of Governors meeting, Super Bowl LIII champions and Rutgers alumni Jason McCourty and Devin McCourty were named as this year’s commencement speakers at the SEE COMMENCEMENT ON PAGE 4
Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker voice support for AAUP-AFT’s strike plans BRENDAN BRIGHTMAN NEWS EDITOR
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who have announced their candidacy for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president, have tweeted their support for the Rutgers American Association of University Professors and American Federation of Teachers (AAUPAFT) and their strike preparations. “I stand with AAUP-AFT Rutgers professors who are prepared to strike in order to defend affordable, quality higher education. When we organize and stand together, we win. #UnionStrong,” read a post on Sanders’ official Twitter account on Monday night. It was then retweeted by the AAUP-AFT’s account.
Sanders was the first national politician to voice support either way in the ongoing negotiations between the AAUP-AFT and the University. The endorsement came the day before the union was set to picket outside the Rutgers Board of Governors meeting at the Paul Robeson Campus Center in Newark, New Jersey. “Educators at every level of our education system deserve better. I support the Rutgers AAUP-AFT in this fight for equality & dignity. Rutgers faculty are on the front lines every day for their students — we should all be united in the movement to support them,” read a post by Booker yesterday. The union’s tweets yesterday continued to advocate for greater
diversity among faculty, calling for University President Robert L. Barchi to allow faculty governance and best hiring practices. “But who controls the expenditure of these funds and with what guidelines?” read one of union’s posts. “It’s important to note that while the University can underwrite recruitment and retention efforts, as it has done, the faculty make the ultimate hiring decisions within their departments and schools. We are working with departments, deans and chairs to ensure that candidate pools include diverse candidates and that our commitment to diversity is a priority,” said Dory Devlin, senior director of University News and Media Relations, to The Daily Targum last month.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is currently running for president, was the first of two national politicians to voice support for the faculty union’s willingness to strike. FLICKR
Rutgers study finds bacteria may travel by air, not just by humans LEONARD TAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
The type of bacteria that was studied lived in temperatures higher than 150 degrees Fahrenheit. This is because there were fewer types of other bacteria in the hot springs. FLICKR
Research conducted by a Rutgers professor suggested that bacteria may not only travel globally by hitchhiking off of hosts such as humans, but also by traveling through the air. The concept of “hitchhiking” on host organisms is a well-known concept. Dr. Konstantin Severinov, a principal investigator at Waksman Institute of Microbiology and senior author of the study, said the spread of antibiotic resistance around the world has mostly been associated with people traveling and being in contact with others. “You hear a story of a person in the nearest hospital dying from a
nasty infection and often it turns out that person visited this or that faraway country, so that the presumption is that people with certain microbes in certain places will become vehicles to transport these bacteria around the world. So you can imagine that a people-mediated spread is a large factor in bacteria ecology,” he said. The new hypothesis of bacteria traveling through air came from collecting samples of thermophiles, a type of bacteria that grows in temperatures hotter than 150 degrees Fahrenheit around the world. “These are bugs that require higher temperatures for growth,” Severinov said. “They live in hot springs at neutral pH, in water
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(which) is not boiling but is on the hotter end.” The study used thermophiles specifically because they were easy to find since they occupied such a hostile environment. As opposed to more hospital environments like human intestines, hot springs have a lower diversity of bacteria, Severinov said. Although the exact mechanism of how they might travel through the air remains largely unknown, research has shown clear signs of travel. Severinov said researchers found that bacteria living in hot springs in Chile, Italy and Russia — countries that were thousands of SEE HUMANS ON PAGE 4