Read about the new epidemic in college basketball, diagnosis: ‘one and done’
Prism hosts its annual Queer Wedding See Features page 15
Vol. CXXXVI, No. 9
See Sports page 21
Serving The College of New Jersey community since 1885
March 21, 2012
Contract tensions Live from the College it’s Seth Meyers By Stephanie Petit Correspondent
By Brianna Gunter Editor-in-Chief
Seth Meyers hurried out onto the stage and grabbed the microphone. Wearing his wide, trademark grin along with a plaid button-down shirt, blue jeans and New Balances with trailing shoelaces, the “Saturday Night Live” comic launched straight into his first joke of the night: “(The opening act) and I were so excited to be here. We thought we were coming to a college of New Jersey, and we find out we’re at The College of New Jersey … I mean this is the big time.” Big time or not, Meyers’ standup performance at the College on March 16 evoked some pretty big laughs with the sold-out Kendall Hall audience. Never hitting a false note, much of his comedy came from personal stories (which one could only hope were exaggerated), like messing up his handshake with the President, a bar fight in a Las Vegas club and a time he thought he had been recognized, only to discover that the man who shouted “Oh my God!” was reacting to a car crash further down the street. “I thought to myself, ‘You are such a dick. You thought that someone would react the same way to seeing you as they would see CONTRACT on page 3 to a car crash,’” said a grinning Meyers, who is best known for his role as
SNL’s “Weekend Update” host. “But then I thought, ‘What if the driver of the car also saw me?’” Similar to some of his best work on SNL, Meyers boldly delved into political subjects for a large part of his performance. Recently, he said, it was announced that there might now be less than 50 al-Qaida in Afghanistan — “If there’s less than 50, do we really need the whole U.S. army there? Couldn’t we just send like the Duggar family? Like the Duggar family in a tank?” Meyers also addressed the now-famous incident when he gave an unexpectedly prescient joke about Osama Bin Laden while hosting the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner last May, totally unaware that U.S. intelligence had found Bin Laden and Navy Seals would kill him within hours. “The night of the Correspondents’ dinner I thought I did a really good job … I was looking forward to a day of press,” said Meyers, confessing his disappointment when President Barack Obama, who had laughed at his Bin Laden joke along with everyone else at
the dinner, stole back the spotlight by giving the announcement of the terrorist’s death the very next day. “If my jokes weren’t that good, Osama would still be alive today.” See SETH page 12
Matthew Mance / Photo Assistant
A small group of students gathered Wednesday to show support and start garnering ideas to help the College’s faculty, who have been working without a contract since July. “We just wanted to get some students together to support them,” senior psychology major Cassidy Bartolini said. Bartolini and junior women and gender’s studies major Remi Lourenco learned about this issue from their WGS professor Nelson Rodriguez and knew they needed to do something. “I think it hit home because we both really like this professor,” Lourenco said. Gov. Chris Christie has issued demands regarding the creation of a new contract for professors and staff at the College. Despite a clause stating that the former contract cannot be revoked until a new contract is signed, the governor has declared he will not adhere to this and has begun to cut sabbaticals and increments. “This is the first time we have gone this long without a new agreement,” said Ralph Edelbach, an associate professor and president of The College of New Jersey Federation of Teachers. “That is primarily because the College presidents, including President Gitenstein, have convinced Gov. Christie to put demands on the negotiating table that are totally unacceptable to us and will, we believe, negatively impact each college and its students.” Some of the demands for the creation of a new contract include faculty relinquishing career development funds, halting cost of living increases, giving up the right to negotiated salary ranges and more. Faculty members have been spotted around campus wearing buttons (above) in protest.
The Weekend Update anchor performs stand up
According to studies, GPAs are rising steadily in schools By Mark Marsella Correspondent
The day the freshman was dreading had finally arrived — the day she was to receive the grade of her freshman seminar paper. English and secondary education double major Blaire Deziel wrung her hands nervously and squirmed in her seat as she asked herself: “Why did I leave this paper until the last minute? Why didn’t I do enough research? What am I going to do about this awful grade?” After receiving her paper, she searched for the “C” or “D” she thought would be scribbled on the back page. She did a double take, however, when she saw the letter grade. Now she asked herself a different question: “How in the world did this paper earn a ‘B’?” This was not the first time at the College that Deziel had asked herself this question. “The grading standards of my teachers at college are definitely easier than those of my high school teachers,” she said. “College is a lot easier than I expected, for sure.” According to many freshmen at the College, their high school teachers prepared them to expect much more work in college than they have actually encountered. It’s not just at the College that students are making these claims. There has been an increasing amount of national research supporting this claim — research suggesting that as time goes on, college grade point averages are climbing steadily higher for work that would have previously received lower grades. “I have heard of grade inflation and believe it is an issue,” Peter Ulrich, a guidance counselor at Bergen Catholic High School in Oradell, said in an email. Ulrich, who guides
hundreds of junior and senior high school students through the college process, said he believes “most college instructors grade fairly and students get the grades they deserve — for the most part.” The term “grade inflation” was coined in a 2003 Washington Post article by former Duke University professor Stuart Rojstaczer, who has since compiled a wealth of data on the matter on his website, gradeinflation.com. The site shows that average GPAs have steadily risen over time at 231 schools in the U.S., at an average rate of .15 points every decade since the 1960s. The average GPA of over 60 of the country’s top colleges and universities has risen from 2.93 in 1992 to 3.11 in 2007. “If I sprinkle my classroom with the C’s some students deserve, my class will suffer from declining enrollments in future years,” Rojstaczer wrote in his Post article. “In the
INDEX: Nation & World / Page 7
Opinions / Page 11
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marketplace mentality of higher education, low enrollments are taken as a sign of poor-quality instruction. I don’t have any interest in being known as a failure.” The College’s GPA records seem to follow this trend as well. According to its online index of reports and grades, the school’s average fall semester GPA has risen steadily from a 3.13 in 2001 to a 3.22 in 2007. While some may argue this rise is simply an indication of an ever-improving College, other popular N.J. public and private schools follow this trend as well. Rutgers University has risen from a 2.60 in 1968 to 3.01 in 2006, Monmouth University from a 2.91 in 2005 to 3.03 in 2007 and Princeton University from a 2.83 in 1969 to a 3.38 in 2001. Freshman history major Bill Toth believed he was experiencing grade inflation in one of his liberal learning classes last semester. “You couldn’t fail a test,” Toth said. “(The professor) gives you a grade, and then he’ll curve it to a passing grade if you fail ... I got an 84 on my midterm and he gave me six extra points. He then decided to give everybody three points because ‘one of the questions was worded funny.’” Some colleges have actually acknowledged the existence of grade inflation, and have taken steps to combat this trend. Princeton University, for example, publicly announced in 2004 that it would take steps against grade inflation by tightening its grading policy, and its average GPA has since decreased. In the 2008-2009 school year, “A” grades made up 39.7 percent of Princeton’s undergraduate grades, compared to nearly 50 percent in 2002-2003. See GRADE page 5
Graph courtesy of Stuart Rojstaczer
Editorial / Page 9
Arts & Entertainment / Page 12
Features / Page 15
Mixed Signals Bully Awareness perform once again A former teacher of 25 Check out the College’s years speaks frankly about improv comedy group bullying in schools See A&E page 12 See News page 5
Funstuff / Page 19
Sports / Page 24
The Signal reviews DeLorenzo’s Read our thoughts on this Trenton pizzeria’ s pies See Features Page 15