THE DAILY TARGUM Vo l u m e 1 4 3 , N u m b e r 4 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 NOVEMBER 2, 2011
1 8 6 9
Today: Sunny
MARCH TO THE PODIUM
High: 58 • Low: 33
After two wrestlers fell one win shy of All-American status last season, Rutgers changed its summer and in-season plans to place added emphasis on the NCAA Championships.
Future Scholars to fill maximum enrollment slots BY JOVELLE ABBEY TAMAYO CONTRIBUTING WRITER
The Rutgers Future Scholars will hit full capacity this upcoming academic year at 1,000 scholars, and will represent a par ticipating class year from eighth to 12th grade. The mentoring program, which provides a select group of students from low-income backgrounds a chance to prepare for college, also reached 100 mentors to guide students throughout the year — doubling last year’s amount, said Aramis Gutierrez, director of the Future Scholars program. “Many of [the scholars] are earning college credit already,” Gutierrez said. “They’ll come into Rutgers or anywhere else with maybe a semester’s wor th of credits, which puts them ahead of the game.” The program reached four public school communities in New Br unswick, Piscataway, Newark and Camden since 2008. But not all the campuses hosted a full mentoring program, said Megan SchrammPossinger, senior super visor of the Future Scholars education and mentoring program. Because of their dif ferent structures, the Newark and Camden campuses are limited to weekend programming and no mentors, she said. The Camden campus hopes to replicate the main campus’ mentoring model in the future. But even in New Brunswick and Piscataway, personal mentoring is of fered only to scholars in ninth through 12th grade, Schramm-Possinger said. “It’s an enormous infrastructure to tr y to build and manage,” she said. “Once we have fur ther consolidation of that, we can star t to branch out to the eighth graders.” To gather data on the program’s effectiveness, Future Scholars hired a researcher to track scholar progress, said Robert Coleman, an assistant principal at Piscataway High School and a liaison for the program. “We still have a hard time getting unmotivated kids to come take advantage of the program,” Coleman said.
SEE SCHOLARS ON PAGE 4
INDEX METRO Children walked from trunk to trunk of cars, collecting candy this Halloween.
OPINIONS A proposed amendment would give Congress power to regulate campaign money raising and spending.
UNIVERSITY . . . . . . . 3 METRO . . . . . . . . . . . 5 OPINIONS . . . . . . . . 8 DIVERSIONS . . . . . . 10 CLASSIFIEDS . . . . . . 12 SPORTS . . . . . . BACK
ONLINE @
DAILYTARGUM.COM
ALEKSI TZATZEV / ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR
Members from the Rutgers-Camden community contribute their opinions to the campus-wide search for University President Richard L. McCormick’s successor yesterday at Penn building on Camden campus.
Camden gives input in presidential search BY ALEKSI TZATZEV ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR
CAMDEN — Faculty, staf f and a few students from Rutgers-Camden expressed the need for more recognition for their campus in the search for University President Richard L. McCormick’s successor. In a discussion setting, they shared their opinions in the second of three forums held yesterday at the Penn building on the Camden campus, moderated by Michael Palis and Debra Valentine, members of the Presidential Search Committee. “It seems like our campus is systematically undervalued, in various ways, not just money but in other ways,” said Dan Cook, an associate professor in the Department of Childhood Studies at Camden. He said candidates should be able to balance their duties between the three campuses instead of focusing on New Brunswick.
SENATE GIVES $15 MILLION TOWARD NEW TUNNEL PROJECT The U.S. Senate approved a funding measure including at least $15 million for Amtrak to start designing and engineering the Gateway Tunnel Project in New Jersey. “The Gateway Tunnel is critical for New Jersey commuters and the economy of our state and the entire region,” said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., in a statement from his office. “The existing tunnel is more than a century old and not capable of adequately servicing our region’s growing number of transit riders.” He said the funding will get the Gateway Tunnel Project — not to be confused with the reconstruction efforts of downtown New Brunswick — moving to create jobs, increase commuters’ access to trains and bring a high-speed rail project to the Northeast Corridor. “People crossing the Hudson River are facing outrageous tolls, traffic jams and train service that is getting less and less reliable,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., in the same statement. “The Gateway Project will add enormous capacity across the Hudson and also pave the way for true high speed rail for the entire region.” Congestion into midtown Manhattan and increased traffic in New York City threatens the regional economy, according to the statement. The tunnels facilitating service are 100 years old and already operate to capacity at rush hour. In the next two decades, ridership is expected to double. Following the canceled ARC Tunnel project, Amtrak fast-tracked plans to build the Gateway Tunnel Project, which will increase NJ Transit rail capacity for commuters. The project will add 13 trains each hour during peak hours, increasing capacity 65 percent, while also adding eight Amtrak trains during these hours, according to the statement.
“De facto, the president of Rutgers acts as the chancellor of New Brunswick,” Cook said. “It may not be par t of [his or her] title, but essentially there is a conflict of interest.” He said rumors of the formation of the University of South Jersey, which could include the Camden campus, only deepens the division between campuses. Gov. Chris Christie’s Task Force of Higher Education suggested the possibility of a merger between RutgersCamden, Rowan University, the School of Osteopathic Medicine in Stratford (par t of the University of Medicine and Dentistr y of New Jersey) and the Cooper Medical School in a December 2010 repor t. “We are sort of an appendage, and that feeling has only deepened with all these rumors of cutting the appendix that isn’t needed,” Cook said. Erin Hoesly, a graduate student in the Department of Childhood Studies,
said the multi-campus nature of the University is a benefit, but the Camden campus still gets pushed aside. “In terms of what attributes the future president might have, I think [it should] be a candidate who comes from a multi-campus system — like [the University of Nor th Carolina], University of California or University of Massachusetts,” she said. Valentine said the search committee would build a pool of 50 or 60 candidates, out of whom, 10 to 15 will be inter viewed. “We are selling Rutgers to people who already have a job — we are telling them why we want them,” she said. “We are looking at ver y highquality candidates.” Valentine said the next president would likely be in position by July 2012. But candidates’ identities will be kept confidential as a way of attracting high-profile
SEE SEARCH ON PAGE 4
Initiative aims to shed light on campus bias BY RICHARD CONTE CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Some students may see the phrase “Stop Hate. Repor t Bias” throughout the campus on T-shir ts, buttons, bookmarks and banners in the dining halls and student centers. The words ser ve as the slogan for the Bias Prevention and Awareness Campaign that aims to raise awareness of biases at the University. “The committee encourages people to report when they see any acts of bias occur,” said Rabbi Esther Reed, co-chairperson of the Bias Prevention and Education Committee, which leads the initiative. The campaign, which the committee began planning for in 2010, started this semester and will last through the school year, she said. “Our plan is for every third Thursday of ever y the month to be ‘Bias Prevention Education and Awareness Day,’ where we encourage people to try
to be especially aware [of] any bias acts [that] happen,” said Reed, associate director of Jewish Campus Life. While BPEC does not of ficially organize any specific events as par t of the campaign, the committee hopes that hosting an awareness day ever y month will encourage student groups to hold bias awareness events, Reed said. The campaign will promote tolerance and diversity throughout the semester while encouraging students to repor t when a bias incident does happen, she said. While there are many dif ferent definitions of what bias is, the University has an of ficial definition of bias. Bias is an act — verbal, written, physical or psychological — that threatens or harms a person or group based on race, religion, color, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender
SEE BIAS ON PAGE 4