THE DAILY TARGUM Vo l u m e 1 4 3 , N u m b e r 4
S E R V I N G
T H E
R U T G E R S
C O M M U N I T Y
S I N C E
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 7, 2011
1 8 6 9
Today: Rain
COSTLY INJURY
High: 77 • Low: 69
Fifth-year senior Mason Robinson tore his ACL on Sunday, leaving the Somerville, N.J., native with his second season-ending injury during his time in Piscataway.
Self-reporting absence system alters attendance process for professors BY ANKITA PANDA METRO EDITOR
NELSON MORALES / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Students and staff enjoy refreshments yesterday at the launch of Scarlet Latte in Alexander Library on the College Avenue campus.
University launches library café, lounge BY ANASTASIA MILLICKER ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR
The Scarlet Latte served its first Scarlet Knight dark roast coffee yesterday afternoon during its ribbon-cutting ceremony. Deans, library staff, students and coffee drinkers alike gathered for the opening of the first University café situated in the basement of the Alexander Librar y on the College Avenue campus. The plan to create a café in the librar y was in the making for more than two years, said Marianne Gaunt,
University officials put a policy, the Self-Reporting Absence Application (SRAA), into effect this semester — one that both professors and students admit will test student honesty and integrity. SRAA is a result of numerous faculty complaints regarding the disorganized manner in which absences were reported in the past, said Barry Qualls, vice president of Undergraduate Education. “We’ve had questions here for years about student absences and illnesses, particularly in the sciences,” he said. “Faculty members have wanted students to document their illnesses for lab.” In response to students reporting absences to teachers through email, in person or by obtaining a letter from the dean, many professors asked officials to create a centralized system. The final result — the SRAA, which requires students to record upcoming absences through the Student Information Management System (SIMS) — was inspired largely by the University of Michigan, which successfully used a similar model, Qualls said.
vice president of Information Ser vices and a University librarian. “A lot of academic institutions have cafés in their libraries,” she said. “In fact, Montclair [State University] has one, and I said if Montclair could have one, why not Rutgers?” The Scarlet Latte came about two years ago when Gaunt met with Vice President for Student Affairs Gregor y S. Blimling and student leadership at the Rutgers Club to talk about
“If the student will use the policy, the system automatically sends a note to the professor in the class. So automatically sending the letters means the faculty members know that the student has been absent, know the reason and can record it in the grade book,” he said. Students should use the SRAA system to report any upcoming absences, but professors ultimately decide whether the absence is excused or unexcused, Qualls said. For students who do not use the system and are absent without notifying the professor, absences would still be considered unexcused. Qualls said he believes this system is already an improvement from the last because students are forced to be accountable for their own illnesses and absences. In the past, many deans approved student excuses without checking if the absence was verifiable, he said. “The deans never question the student because they never ask for any documentation,” Qualls said. “We want students to be accountable for their actions.” But Marjorie Yuschak, an assistant professor at the Rutgers Business School, said while she likes the idea of
SEE SYSTEM ON PAGE 4
TOXICOLOGY RESULTS SHOW PARISIO AS CLEAN DURING ARREST Former University student William Parisio was indicted Friday morning for the murder of his girlfriend Pamela Schmidt in March. Parisio, 23, of Cranford, N.J., was also charged with unlawful possession of a weapon and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, Union County Prosecutor Theodore Romankow said in a statement. According to the investigation, Parisio struck Schmidt, 22, of Warren, N.J., with a 12-pound dumbbell weight and strangled her. Schmidt was two months away from graduating from the University with a degree in psychology and had plans to attend the graduate School of Management and Labor Relations at the University before her death. She was issued her
diplomas posthumously. Parisio’s mother said in an nj.com article that her son abused the now-illegal synthetic drug bath salts during his time at the University. But toxicology reports show the substance was not present in the defendant after his arrest, Romankow said. “Now knowing that there was no bath salts in his system makes it even more horrifying in that he did this fully and knowingly and murdered my daughter in cold blood,” said Schmidt’s father Werner Schmidt Jr. in an nj.com article. “[Parisio] should pay with the strongest the law will allow.” —Amy Rowe
SEE LOUNGE ON PAGE 4
Journalism course connects students, 9/11 families BY ALEKSI TZATZEV STAFF WRITER
RAMON DOMPOR / SENIOR STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
New Jersey newspaper editors talk to students in the “9/11 Student Journalism Project,” a class where they interviewed victims’ children.
As part of the “9/11 Student Journalism Project,” 20 journalism students at the University had the unique opportunity of retelling neverbefore-heard stories of victims’ children nearly 10 years after the attacks. Taught by two journalism and media studies professors, Ronald Miskoff and Elizabeth Fuerst, the course allowed a small group of University and high school students to inter view the children, ages nine to 28, of those who perished in the attacks on the World Trade Center. “The idea was that the ‘children’ of 9/11 would be able to open up to the students of Rutgers, because there would be some sort of generational
cross-pollination, so to speak,” Miskoff said. The mission of the semester-long course was to allow children of the victims of the World Trade Center attacks to speak out 10 years later, and to do so in a comfortable environment with their contemporaries asking the questions. “A number of the children mentioned to the Rutgers students that they have never given an interview and probably would not have given an interview if it were somebody else,” Miskoff said. In the interactions between the students and the children, Miskoff said the children gave out information they never shared before, because in most cases, they were not even asked. He said a feature in this week’s “People” magazine
titled “The Children of 9/11” had interviews with mothers and children who were not born at the time of the attacks and reported how the children were growing and developing without the fathers they never met. But the “9/11 Student Journalism Project” was much different, he said. “The people we interviewed were nine, 10, 11 years old [at the time] and had vivid memories of that day, and as a result the stories were so much more interesting,” Miskoff said. The children of the victims recalled playing baseball with their fathers and faint memories of spending time with their families in their tales. Students were actively involved in their stories by researching and choosing
SEE COURSE ON PAGE 4
INDEX UNIVERSITY Twenty-six new study abroad programs extend students’ worldwide reach.
OPINIONS Groupon and National Louis University in Chicago teamed up to offer tuition discounts.
UNIVERSITY . . . . . . . 3 STATE . . . . . . . . . . . 9 OPINIONS . . . . . . . 10 DIVERSIONS . . . . . . 12 CLASSIFIEDS . . . . . . 14 SPORTS . . . . . . BACK
ONLINE @
DAILYTARGUM.COM