SLIGHT WORK: Maryland field hockey rolls past Indiana in dominant 6-0 showing, p. 10
A CAMPUS TAIL: Meet Hyper, the cat you’ve definitely seen around College Park, p. 9
The University of Maryland’s Independent Student Newspaper ONLINE AT
ISSUE NO.
dbknews.com
OUR
Follow us on Twitter @thedbk
110th
8 YEAR
Monday, October 14, 2019
campus
campus
Title IX hires three staffers
black freshman enrollment up After hitting a 26-year low, African American students now make up about 11 percent of UMD’s freshman class By Jillian Atelsek | @jillian_atelsek | Senior staff writer
The office has seen high turnover in the past year The University of Maryland’s Office of Civil Rights and Sexual Misconduct has brought on a new Title IX investigator and hired two temporary staffers into permanent positions, office director Grace Karmiol said. In August, the office announced it was enlisting investigators from Husch Blackwell, a private firm, amid staffing shortages. At the beginning of the academic year, there were five empty positions within the office, three of which were investigator roles. The newly hired investigator will start later this month, Karmiol said. The office, which investigates complaints of sexual misconduct and discrimination at this university, is interviewing candidates to fill another Title IX investigator position as well as the training manager position, Karmiol said. In the meantime, the Husch Blackwell investigators are likely to remain, Karmiol said. “I’m not sure whether we will renew the contract,” she said.“It may be that while we’re still interviewing applicants for the open positions, that we renew the contract for a short amount of time. But we’re doing it on an as-need basis, so it’s not for a timed service.” Karmiol said she frequently used contracted investigators during her time as Title IX coordinator at Widener University in Pennsylvania. “I used external investigators for maybe about three of the five years I was there,” she said. by
Christine Condon @CChristine19 Senior staff writer
jillian atelsek / the diamondback
A
fter hitting a near threedecade low, enrollment o f b l a c k f re s h m e n a t t h e Un ive rs i ty o f M a r yl a n d saw a marked increase this fall, according to recently released d a ta f ro m t h e I n s t i t u t i o n a l Research, Planning and Assessment office. African American students now make up just over 11 percent of this university’s freshman class. Last year, they made up just 7.3 percent — the lowest proportion since 1992, when the office first started keeping track. O ve ra l l , t h o u g h , b l a c k freshman enrollment has been trending downward since 2006, and this year’s percentage is still the fourth-lowest the university has had. Historically, this university hasn’t reflected the demographics of its state. Black students made up at least a third of Maryland’s high school graduates every year between 2015 and 2018, but they never represented more than 12.2 percent of this university’s freshman class during the same time period. According to a 2018 analysis
newsumdbk@gmail.com
campus
Dining hall updates delayed Bathroom accessibility project won’t be done until the spring by
Victoria Ebner @victoria_ebner Senior staff writer
After years of delays, renovations to make the University of Maryland’s South Campus Dining Hall more accessible are set to take a semester longer than expected. The project — which includes installing a wheelchair lift, creating a gender-neutral bathroom and renovating existing bathrooms to meet ADA and university standards — was
— the most recent available — only six states had flagship universities with a bigger gap between their number of black high school graduates and their number of black freshmen. The analysis, by the e d u c a t i o n a l n o n p ro f i t T h e Hechinger Report, showed that just Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama and Delaware had a bigger disparity. When last year’s enrollment data was released, Provost Mary Ann Rankin wrote in a news release that the university “would be naïve to think that the tragic incidents of the last two years on our campus have not contributed to our African-American student enrollment decline.” “We must address the concerns about campus climate and hatebias incidents that UMD and many of our peers are facing,” she wrote. In May 2017, Richard Collins, a black student visiting the campus from Bowie State University, was fatally stabbed while waiting for an Uber near Montgomery Hall. Sean Urbanski, a white former student of this university, is
See diner, p. 7
charged with murder and a hate crime in Collins’ death. He’s set to go before a jury in December, after the trial has been delayed four times. Collins’ killing came amid a wave of racist incidents across the campus, including a noose found hanging in a fraternity house and white supremacist posters found on campus buildings. The next fall, several students wh o we re a d m i t te d to t h e university but chose not to enroll sent letters to the admissions department, specifically highlighting safety and diversity concerns. Many of those safety concerns have persisted. According to the results of last year’s campus climate survey — a tool that was launched in the wake of Collins’ death — when sorted by race, black respondents felt the least safe on the campus. And among those who said they’d experienced “offensive, hostile, inappropriate, or biased conduct” at this university, racial bias was the most frequently reported, at 12.5 percent. newsumdbk@gmail.com
nation
UMD pulls together records for Education Department probe The universtiy doesn’t currently maintain many of the requested documents tied to foreign governments After the U.S. Department of Education opened an investigation, University of Maryland administrators are scraping together documents related to the school’s interactions with certain foreign governments and companies going back as far as nine years. by
Christine Condon @CChristine19 Senior staff writer
The department has requested a large volume of records that the university does not currently maintain, according to an email obtained by The Diamondback. T h e re q u e s t i s p a r t o f i t s investigation into the school’s reporting of foreign gifts and contracts. “The current administrative investigation and document request is new and very expansive,”
reads a memo from Provost Mary Ann Rankin that was attached to the email. It was sent to all university vice presidents and deans on Oct. 1. The information request covers interactions with companies from China, Qatar and Russia, as well as multiple entities connected to these nations. It also covers communication with foreign sources who reside in Iraq, Kuwait, See documents, p. 7
calendar 2 OPINION 4 FEATURES 5 city 6 diversions 9 SPORTS 12
Submit tips and corrections to The Diamondback at newsumdbk@gmail.com
The Diamondback is a publication of Maryland Media Inc.