9-11-15 by The Pitt News

ISSUE 120 VOLUME 106

EMPLOYMENT GUIDE EMPLOYMENT GUIDE EMPLOYMENT GUIDE

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Table of contents Dance the 16 hours away

Beware the casual wear

looking back at Telefact

BarbeCue on bigelow

Jobless in the gaza strip

From Pitt to PRess Box

reforming overtime benefits

A state of no ncaa unions

will art for food

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Cover by nikki moriello

News

PDM to shave off 8 hours of dancing

TPN file photo

Liz Lepro and Dale Shoemaker The Pitt News Staff

As of this spring, Pitt’s annual charity dance will require a little less endurance. The Pitt Dance Marathon, which raises money for Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, has previously been a 24hour dance marathon in February held in the Charles L. Cost Sports Center. This year, the dance will move to the William Pitt Union in the second week of April and will only last 16 hours. The Office of Student Affairs, rather than the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life, will fund the Marathon. Victoria Bianco, co-president of the PDM executive board, said the decision to make the marathon 16 hours rather than 24 came from the Dance Marathon Leadership Conference, which was run through the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals and was held in Louisiana this pittnews.com

July. At the conference, the board saw data showing there was no benefit to having a marathon that runs for 24 hours, unless it’s as well-established as Penn State’s dance marathon, THON, for example. Bianco said the extra eight hours of time is hard to fill with programs and games. Additionally, having the marathon during the day from 8 a.m. to midnight will allow families and children from Children’s Hospital to attend. The decision to receive funding from Student Affairs rather than the Greek community, Bianco said, had largely to do with a stigma that PDM was a Greeks-only event. “The common opinion [about PDM] is ‘Oh, that’s what the Greeks do,’” Bianco said. “It’s hard to attract students from all across campus when it’s seemingly run by Greeks.” Matthew Richardson, the coordina-

tor of Fraternity and Sorority Life, will still act as PDM’s adviser. Richardson said Student Affairs moved the date of the event from February to April to allow organizers more time to fundraise. Linda Williams-Mo ore, director of crosscultural and leadership development, said the changes are not a cutback, and they will maximize the amount of money it can raise for the

Children’s Hospital. Last year, the marathon saw an 87 percent increase in fundraising and raised $153,000, compared to its $100,000 goal. Williams-Moore said PDM was able to beat the goal because of increased participation outside of the Greek community. Last year, organizations like the Pitt Pathfinders and the Black Action Society participated in the fundraiser alongside members of Greek life. “The consensus is that the more the event is an all-campus event, instead of a fraternity and sorority event, the better the participation,” Williams-Moore said. Richardson said Student Affairs chose to move PDM to the Union because it’s more centrally located, and the different rooms on the ground floor will give organizers the chance to have different styles of music playing at once.

“The Assembly Room, for example, may be playing hip-hop, while the Lower Lounge is having a country music two-stepping contest or a Taylor Swiftfest,” Richardson said. PDM’s new location in the Union will also help get students involved, as a large number of students pass through the Union every day and are more likely to see advertising for the event, Bianco said. The Union is also more accessible for students living on lower campus or in South Oakland, as opposed to trudging up the hill to the Cost Center. The PDM executive board chose 16 hours to correspond with the year 2016. Bianco said the board will leave it up to future board members to decide whether or not to increase the number of hours with time. “Who knows, maybe next year’s student leaders will want to make it a 17hour marathon because there’s really no magic number,” Richardson said. “The goal is to maximize participation so we can help as many needy children as possible.” Bianco, who is also the president of her sorority, Delta Phi Epsilon, said members of the Greek community, like other student organizations across campus, have always been involved in planning and fundraising for PDM, and that’s not going to change. The only difference this year is that the PDM board is putting more emphasis on proving this is an all-inclusive event by moving it out of the specific umbrella of the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life and into the general Student Affairs Department. “We basically proved ourselves last year,” Bianco said. “[We showed] that [PDM] is something that deserves funding.”

Victor Gonzalez STAFF ILLUSTRATOR

Don’t forget the answers: A Telefact retrospective Mark Pesto

Senior Staff Writer

Someone at Pitt once wanted to know how many Barack Obamas could fit inside the sun. Jake Futerfas gave them the answer. “We took their [contact] information and told them we’d call back, and then we estimated the mass of Barack Obama, and the mass of the sun, and we worked it out,” Futerfas said. Futerfas, now 26, worked at Telefact, a free student-run telephone hot line that operated on campus from 1990 to 2013. Before constant Internet access became a millenial right, Pitt students could call Telefact, ask a question and an operator would search the Internet or hunt through old archives of books and newspapers for the answer. Until search engines like Google completely replaced the hot line and Pitt’s Student Government Board defunded the organization in 2013, Telefact advertised that it could answer any question a caller asked. The answer service, which SGB initially funded as a formula group, operated out of a tiny office whose location was a venerable campus secret — now known to be room 416 in the William Pitt Union. Four or five student employees per shift answered questions ranging from the banal to the bizarre, seven days a week, from noon to 9 p.m. pittnews.com

Telefact’s former employees said it was the best job on campus. “It was Google before Google,” Kayla Mormak, a 2011 Pitt grad, now 25, said. Mormak worked the phones at Telefact from 2009 to 2012 and coordinated the service in 2012 and 2013, as she worked toward her master’s degree. “[Telefact] brought us together,” Mormak said. “You could say, ‘I’ve got somebody that’s got my back.’ You could call with anything, even if it was stupid, or funny, or whatever. It wasn’t a big deal to prank-call Telefact.”

While most callers just asked for bus schedules, directions or event times, a few were more offbeat. “My very first call, someone called in and asked, ‘What’s the number for Poison Control?’” Futerfas, who worked at Telefact from 2009 until he graduated in 2011, said. “And I was just like, ‘Oh, my God!’” First, there was a question The inspiration for Telefact, also known as 4-Fact, came in 1990, when Joyce Giangarlo, then-associate director of Student Activities, heard about a student-run hot line at Bowling Green State University

in Ohio that answered any question a caller asked. She and Pitt’s SGB decided to create a similar service at Pitt, hoping to establish a single, centralized source for information across the University. Giangarlo and a team of SGB members traveled to Bowling Green to investigate its hot line and to bring insider tips from its employees back to Pitt. Soon afterwards, Telefact was up and running. According to Giangarlo, the very first caller simply asked, “Why?” to See Telefact on page 5

Telefact, pg. 4 which a staffer answered, “Why not?” But usually, answering callers’ questions took a little more effort. “I once spent a whole week calling archives looking for the winner of a 1950s beauty pageant — one of those farm pageants,” said Mormak, who now works as a computer security consultant. “Someone wanted to know who won in 1950 or whenever, and I found out for him. It just took me a week.” On occasion, staffers even had to take field trips in pursuit of answers. “Someone asked, ‘If you bought one of everything at McDonald’s, how much would it cost?’” Futerfas said. “So I got up, left the office, walked down to the McDonald’s on Forbes and took pictures of the whole menu. Then I came back and calculated it out.” Today, it costs around $140 to buy

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one of everything at McDonald’s. A family of answers Not all Telefact calls were so frivolous. According to former staffers, Telefact soon became a valuable repository of insider knowledge and traditions for new Pitt students. “We revived rubbing the panther statue’s nose [outside the William Pitt Union],” Mormak said. “We’d say, ‘Oh, if you’re going to take an exam, rub the panther’s nose for good luck, or step on home plate in Posvar.’” Telefact’s quirky T-shirt advertisements, which featured bizarre questions from throughout Telefact history, soon became a Pitt tradition in their own right. “My favorite T-shirt ever was from my freshman year,” Jess Edelstein, another Telefact alum, now 26, said. “It said, ‘What happens if I plug in my cat?’ and then on the back, ‘Some questions don’t have answers. For everything else, there’s Telefact.’”

“I liked the idea, it was kind of a secret society,” Edelstein, who graduated in 2011 and is now a realtor and startup cofounder in Philadelphia, said. Even the Telefact office’s location was a closely guarded secret. Until it ceased operations, few Pitt students knew the organization worked out of a small room in the Union. “No one knew where the office was,” Edelstein said. “I had friends who would stalk me on my way to work to find the Telefact office. I would take people there as their birthday present.” The beginning of the end While salaries for Telefact staffers varied over the hot line’s two-decade lifespan, Giangarlo said working at Telefact was widely acknowledged to be the best-paying student job available — and that the high pay rate was justified, thanks to Telefact’s selectivity and commitment to answering ev-

ery question, no matter how difficult. Because Telefact was a job, students could apply for a position online. On average, Telefact spent about 90 percent of its allocated money on student salaries. When it came to funding, Telefact held a privileged position in the hierarchy of student groups. A former “formula group,” Telefact automatically received 3.4 percent of the Student Activities Fund, a multi-million dollar fund collected from each undergraduate Student Activity Fee. In 2013, when the fund contained $2.3 million, Telefact got about $78,200 to pay its 16 to 20 employees for the academic year. The majority of this funding went to employees’ salaries, The Pitt News reported in 2013 when SGB voted to defund the service. In the Telefact office stood the See Telefact on page 6

Telefact, pg. 5 Competition Board, a whiteboard with a list of universities, such as Bowling Green, which offered competing fact-hot line services. The Competition Board was supposed to motivate Telefact employees, but as smartphones became commonplace and call numbers started to decline, it became a sign of the times. “One day, someone got up, crossed out all those names and just wrote ‘SMARTPHONES,’” Futerfas said. Telefact received about 100,000 calls per year during the 2008-2009 academic year, but by the spring of 2013, that number had dropped by 97 percent. Mormak, who coordinated Telefact in 2012 and 2013, struggled to keep the service alive as interest dwindled. “I never had time to stress about what I was going to do as coordinator,” Mormak said. “I spent all my time trying to save the service.”

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After more than a year of discussion, SGB voted in April 2013 to remove Telefact’s status as a formula group, effectively stripping the hot line of its funding. “I was shocked,” Edelstein said. “It was such an institution. Everyone knew about it.” On April 26, 2013, Telefact tweeted, “Sad to say, we’ve been defunded effective today at 5. Write SGB or Student Life to ask for us back! Keep your eyes peeled for our #comeback.” That optimism eventually proved unfounded. In another tweet, Telefact stated it was “trying to find a way to stay open,” but by May 1, it had ceased operations entirely. Even after the defunding, Mormak tried to keep Telefact alive. Among other last-ditch alternatives, she proposed running the service as an online search engine-like tool. “I crafted a full proposal, complete with a 60 to 80 percent decrease in our

operating budget and submitted it to [then-Vice Provost and Dean of Students] Kathy Humphrey and [then-Associate Dean of Students and Director of Student Life] Kenyon Bonner,” Mormak said. “I never heard back.” By 2013, Pitt didn’t have any qualms about cutting Telefact’s funding. “Telefact served its purpose well for its time,” Pitt spokesperson John Fedele said in an email. “But Pitt and the SGB agreed that we could no longer justify spending manpower and finances on a program that became obsolete with the ubiquitous rise in powerful, free, online search engines.” The answers live on Today, Telefact alumni look back on their time at the hot line with nostalgia. “I’m not surprised it shut down, but I’m sad to hear it,” Futerfas, who currently works as a technical services consultant in Madison, Wisconsin, said. “It was a unique college job, the sort of opportunity you’ll never have again.”

Still, better option or not, its former employees acknowledge that the world has changed and that Telefact is gone for good. “A few years from now, it’ll be so strange to tell people, ‘Oh, my college job was to Google things for people,’” Edelstein said. Telefact’s official Twitter account (@ Telefact) struggled along for a while after the service lost funding, sending out mournful messages like “Who still misses us?” on Oct. 20, 2013 and “Today would have been our 23rd birthday, we miss you all!” on Aug. 1, 2013. But even that activity ceased eventually. Telefact sent its last tweet on April 27, 2014, exactly one year and one day after Telefact was defunded. Today, the official biography for the @Telefact account reads, “We were a free fact line at the University of Pittsburgh, with the resources to answer your questions. Then smartphones came along and we became obsolete.”

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Opinions Column

Gaza’s economy: Still in conflict Alyssa Lieberman Columnist

Last week, more than 1,000 small white flags decorated Carnegie Library’s lawn — each one commemorating one of the many civilian lives lost in the Gaza-Israel conflict last summer. Students, professors and activists read only of a few of the names behind the white flags lining the sidewalk to mark the one-year anniversary of the end of the conflict. They did so with a sense of urgency, for while the memory of this tragedy fades from our societal conscious, it becomes increasingly important to keep the memory of the conflict and its economical consequences alive. Between July 8 and Aug. 27, 2014, the conflict that rocked the Gaza Strip resulted in the death of 2,100 Palestinians and 73 Israelis, as was reported in an article in Reuters. While only seven of the Israelis killed were civilians, 1,462 Palestinian civilians lost their lives to Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s controversial military offensive that many rights groups claim embodied disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks. The United Nations issued a report condemning both sides of the conflict in June. The conflict may have ended more than a year ago, but its consequences pittnews.com

continue to dictate the conditions of Palestinians’ everyday life in the Gaza Strip. According to a World Bank report released in May, Gaza’s economy is on the “verge of collapse,” largely due to the 2014 war, in which air strikes razed many neighborhoods and displaced about 11,000 Palestinians. What’s more is that Gaza faces the highest unemployment rate in the world — 43 percent of its 1.8 million residents are unemployed — as a result of the conflict. The figure is even higher among youth, as 60 percent of Palestinian youth in Gaza are without a job. Employed Palestinians still face job insecurity. Some of the region’s employers, such as Hamas, the extremist Islamic group that has governed Gaza since seizing power in 2007, struggle to pay their workers’ salaries. Forty thousand security forces and civil servants have worked for a year without salary. Hamas particularly has lost a large source of revenue, as Israel has cracked down on its smuggling routes. Although they were illegal, the smuggling routes brought in many of the needed restruction materials. Hamas, a group known for its terrorist practices, which include targeting civilians for political gains, is not the ideal employer, but Gaza’s economic situation has left Palestinians with few other opSee Lieberman on page 13

Column

Overtime reform will transform the workforce Matthew Moret For The Pitt News

Hourly pay is a simple concept — you work for an hour and your boss pays you a certain amount for that work. But sometimes, the number of hours worked have a detrimental impact on our health and happiness. Yet, legislators have allowed overtime pay — the intended counterbalancing force — to degrade over the past 40 years. Soon, however, overtime will reclaim its place as an integral part of worker protection. President Barack Obama recently announced a reform to the U.S. Department of Labor standards that direct overtime in a June op-ed for the Huffington Post. This move fulfills a 2014 executive order looking into the

effects of such reform. His plan targets the threshold pay level for mandatory overtime benefits, doubling the maximum from $23,660 annually (or $455 a week) to $50,440 (or $970 a week). This means that anybody who makes up to $50,440 a year is now able to get mandatory overtime benefits. Before, legislators deemed anyone who made more than $23,660 too highly paid to earn overtime benefits. The move is, by far, the most significant labor reform of his administration — and one that positively affects millions of American workers. The executive action called for a 60-day public comment period that ended on Sept. 4. Obama has implemented the new overtime rules, but See Moret on page 10

Moret, pg. 9

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the changes will not go into effect until 2016. The new change does not solve all of the program’s problems, but the criticism it has endured is misplaced and ignores just how overdue any reform is. Overtime pay originated as a federal mandate with the Fair Labor Standards Act, which designated 40 hours as the standard work week in 1938. Employers were then required to pay their workers 1 1/2 times their regular pay for each hour worked past that point. But the initiative had a catch: many industries were exempt from this rule. Most notably, these were industries that were part of the learned professionals category. This included teachers, anyone working in science or medicine and administrators. These exemptions were originally set to prevent the highest-earning salary workers from collecting disproportionate incomes, but they went too far. Under the Bush administration’s vague adjustment to the act, many jobs that required college degrees were exempt. Also exempted were jobs in supervisory roles. While this further cut out highly paid executives, its effects extended to relatively lowincome managers working in retail and fast food. Consequently, exemptions became more of an obstacle to fair compensation for these workers than a sign that they did not require assistance. According to a 2013 report published by the Economic Policy Institute, only 11 percent of salaried workers qualified for mandatory overtime under these conditions in 2013, compared to more than 65 percent in 1975. Since then, the government has only updated the wage threshold once, in 2004, but that change carried

with it an expansion of the already restrictive exemptions. Moreover, the 2004 increase from $250 per week to $455 did not accurately make up for the growth of inflation. As the National Public Radio pointed out, the overtime threshold in 1970 was comparable to the country’s median pay level at the time. The $455 threshold, however, was and remains only about half the median. The President’s new threshold is actually higher than the current median of $801 per week. The previous threshold of $455 was $590 below the poverty line for a family of four. This measure has also reorganized the model for future increases, which is potentially the largest formal change. Previously, the act did not have a mandate in place to revisit overtime rules in light of changing economic conditions. Now, the new measure has pegged the minimum salary threshold to the 40th percentile of national incomes. With this change, the future relevance of overtime benefits has become much more secure. But more significant than the specific fiscal change is the sheer scope of its effects. The Pew Research Center has estimated that the change is likely to extend overtime benefits to nearly five million more people, most of them low-level, white-collar workers. According to a Gallup poll from 2013, only eight percent of full-time employees worked less than 40 hours a week. These workers, who serve as retail managers, computer technicians and healthcare workers, will now receive fair compensation for the long hours that these occupations often require. In total, nearly 40 percent of American workers will now receive overtime, and, according to U.S. Secretary of Labor Tom Perez, that works out to nearly $1.3 billion in new income nationwide. See Moret on page 12

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Moret, pg. 10 come nationwide. The main criticism from left-leaning groups like the Economic Policy Institute, which wanted a larger change and an indexing to inflation, has been that it is still fairly easy for employers to get around paying overtime. If their workers make even a dime more than the threshold, they are exempt, so it might seem like generally inconse-

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quential changes would allow them to escape paying workers extra. But this critique misses the point. In order to get around the threshold in this way, employers would need to raise wages to meet the new threshold level. The alternative to that is hiring more workers so that current staff need not work enough hours to qualify. What would be the real consequences of these supposed workarounds? Higher overall wages and

increased employment, respectively. Yes, they would still prevent some workers from receiving benefits, but as a whole, there is a net benefit to the overtime change. The latter issue may be a genuine concern if it causes full-time workers to be pushed into part-time. But if the core worry is that part-time workers are worse off than full-time workers, it makes little sense to fight the overtime reform instead of pushing for higher

minimum wages for those part-timers. There is no reason to resist giving benefits to the middle and working class in the name of low-income workers without discussing why these people have such low incomes in the first place. As entrepreneur Nick Hanauer wrote in an op-ed on overtime reform for Politico last year, â&#x20AC;&#x153;If corporate America didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to pay you See Moret on page 13

Lieberman, pg.9 tions, as was detailed in an article for The Atlantic. According to the May World Bank report, war, poor governance and the joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade led to Gaza’s dire economic state. This policy that has been in place since 2007. The policy essentially forces Gaza’s economy to struggle to get by without contact with the outside world by placing strict limits on imports, exports and travel to and from the territory. Additionally, without conflict and restrictions, Gaza’s GDP would be four times higher than what it is now, according to the report. Without any secure employment, Gazans have little choice but to live in abject conditions. The poverty rate in Gaza is extremely high at 39 percent and more than 80 percent of Gaza residents cannot get by without some form of aid, according to the 2014 World Bank Fact Sheet on Gaza. According to a report released last week by the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, Gaza could easily become uninhabitable in the next five years if current economic trends continue. People simply cannot continue to live without employment or support themselves and their families in the already dangerous conditions of the Gaza Strip. Raghav Sharma, a junior politics and philosophy major and the president of Students for Justice in Palestine at Pitt, said we need to place a lens on the conditions in Gaza. “The real victims in Gaza are the survivors. Over 100,000 Palestinians were made homeless by Israeli bombs last summer. Schools and hospitals have been destroyed, and the ones that remain are stretched to capacity. The blockade remains, preventing much needed humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza,” Sharma said. “Too often, the spectacle of war dis-

Moret, pg. 12 time and a half, it would need to hire hundreds of thousands of additional workers to pick up the slack — slashing the unemployment rate and forcing up wages.” Conservative criticism from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has relied on the same type of rhetoric that most labor changes receive: moves like this place unacceptable burdens on busi-

nesses and will result in overall job loss. Both of these arguments fail for the same reasons that trickle-down policies have. If employers increase wages, people, on average, will have more money and can spend it on products that these businesses make. With more money, employers can avoid firing people. This is microeconomics 101. While overtime is not the sole so-

lution to wage stagnation, it is a necessary form of worker protection. President Obama’s change may not be as extensive as the far left would like, but it is pretty close. Its moderate nature may keep it from being as hyperpartisan as issues like minimum wage raises, but that does not mean it deserves any less attention. Write to Matthew at mdm123@pitt.edu.

See Lieberman on page 25

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Culture Sketching out a future

Victor Gonzalez STAFF ILLUSTRATOR

Brady Langmann Staff Writer

Within the first two weeks of each semester, studio arts major Stephanie Taylor can usually expect to sign an accident waiver form. “The professors always tell me, ‘Be conscientious because your biggest material is your health,’” Taylor, a junior, said. With art degrees come physical — and employment — risk. Unlike most students nearing a project deadline, Taylor’s heard rumors of studio arts students who’ve cut off their hands during last-minute rushes to finish projects. She even knows one peer who almost lost a finger while using a paper cutter. And that’s not including potential allergies from painting materials, which often worsen her own asthma — partly the reason why she’s transitioned to printmaking from oils and mineral spirits. For Taylor, who is pursuing a career as a visual artist, health concerns are just one of the many challenges that separates her work from other majors. The biggest obstacle, however, comes after graduation. Along with studio arts majors from many other U.S. colleges, Taylor expects to enter a difficult job market full of visual artists hoping to make a pittnews.com

career of their personal work. According to Nicole Scalissi, a graduate student in the history of art and architecture department, in her experience,many studio arts majors rarely become full-time practicing artists. Forbes magazine recently ranked fine arts as the third-least valuable major, based on “high initial unemployment rates and low initial earnings.” Film, video and photography arts was second-least valuable. With this knowledge of the industry, many students often enroll in M.F.A. or Ph.D. programs instead of seeking work right away or enter different fields utilizing the skills they learned in undergrad. “My friends who majored in studio have all told me the same thing. Don’t expect to major in studio and be a working artist, or even teach,” Scalissi said. “These same people

have also told me that the skills learned in studio — time management, research, the ability to give and receive criticism, the willingness to fail and come up with something new — are all skills that they could apply to other types of jobs outside of art making and teaching.” Scalissi said these jobs include managerial positions in corporate retail — due to the amount of creativity required for the position — and manual labor, including carpentry and shipping. The students who enter studio arts M.F.A. programs, she said, sometimes become curators or serve residencies at art institutions around the country. Before deciding to study art history in undergrad at Pitt, Scalissi once considered becoming a graphic designer, then pursuing a career in creative writing. At the time, graphic design was a lucrative opportunity,

but the recent recession resulted in the layoffs of many graphic designers. Eventually, she decided to teach, research and write art history, which combined the critical skills she learned in studio art with the curiosity and creativity she used in her creative writing. “I loved my studio classes, but I never passionately loved the work of making as much as I would have needed to really have some type of career as a maker,” Scalissi said. “Studio is very hard work.” Taylor — who would’ve considered majoring in biology if she hadn’t punctured a pig’s lung during a dissection in high school — is optimistic, but realistic, about her career prospects. Printmaking, she said, is more economic, as she can sell more prints at a lower cost. Last spring, See Art Majors on page 19

Sweating the details: why first impressions matter Nick Mullen Staff Writer

It’s time to hang up the tights — and the sweats. Despite their popularity among students, many professionals consider yoga pants and sweat pants a hindrance to academic and occupational achievement. Numerous studies have weighed in on the “dress well, test well” belief, researching how what someone wears can affect their academic performance. The results show that there may be something more to that mantra than students realize. One study, conducted by Karen

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said. “When you dress up for Pine, professor of fashion psychology something, like an interview at the University of Hertfordshire in or date, you dress up to imthe United Kingdom, found test takpress them, but it influences ers who wore Superman T-shirts were your own behavior as well.” more confident and tested better than Another of those who wore swimsuits — clothPine’s studies ing that was obviously out of place. looked at how Though the two types of dress repdress affects first resent two ends of a dress dichotomy impressions, stating that that is more symbolic than realistic, “first impressions are formed her findings suggest that dress choice rapidly and are often highly in general influences one’s confidence accurate. After seeing a face — and performance — in work envifor just one second, people ronments. make judgments about anThis conclusion sounded plausother’s personal and occupaable to Nicole Coleman, a professor tional attributes.” of business administration at Pitt who This study blurred out conducts research in consumer psysubjects’ faces so participants chology. could only analyze dress style “When your dress is orderly, your thinking is more orderly,” Coleman See Sweat pants on page 24

Call me big poppa: mr. humphrey opens food truck

Andrew Fishman Staff Writer

As I opened my container, the savory smell of pulled pork smothered in barbecue sauce filled my nostrils. The sandwich before me — a large bun with a heaping pile of pork and vinegar cole slaw, topped with barbecue sauce — sat next to two scoops of homemade mac and cheese. I was ready to dig in. Was I in Memphis, Tennessee? Austin, Texas? Nope. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On the side of a curb, next to a food truck, staring down the side of the Cathedral of Learning. Lyle Humphrey, who is married to Senior Vice Chancellor Kathy Humphrey, opened Big Poppa’s Home Cookin’ Food Truck in July, serving up southern comfort food such as ribs, pulled pork, mac and cheese and more

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from his large white truck parked on Bigelow Boulevard. Humphrey’s is the latest addition in what has become a community of food trucks, joining India on Wheels and Pad Thai Express across the street from Soldiers and Sailors. “I’m learning every day about this food truck,” said Humphrey, the owner and head chef of Big Poppa’s. “That is the fun part of it. I’ve worked in restaurants and hotels, I’ve owned a restaurant, but this has been a really great experience so far.” As part of Bill Peduto’s mayoral campaign, he vowed to make Pittsburgh more accomodating to food trucks by rewriting the city’s strict rules on their operations. The Pittsburgh Mobile Food Coalition, a team of 14 of the city’s mobile vendors advocating for lax food truck laws since 2012, identified three par-

ticular city laws on its website that hurt its business: the vendors cannot park within 500 feet of a restaurant that sells similar cuisine or in any metered locations, and they can’t remain stationary for more than 30 minutes. These are the city’s official laws, yet Peduto’s “hands off approach” to growing the industry has avoided ticketing licensed vendors, allowing vendors like Humphrey and India on Wheels chef Jay Amin to create a home on Bigelow B oule-

vard. Humphrey used to own and cook for a restaurant in St. Louis, Missouri, before he and his wife moved to Pittsburgh 11 years ago. Now he wants to share his passion for food — specifically barbecue — with the students See Food Truck on page 19

Food Truck, pg. 18 whom his wife has worked with over the past decade. It took six months for Humphrey to obtain his parking permit, but now that he’s settled in, he’s enjoying the flexibility of his newest occupation. “If you ever want to change cities, you can’t just go and pack up that brick and mortar,” Humphrey said in the back of his truck while preparing grilled salmon, the special that day. “I can pick this up and move. It also provides a vehicle for catering. So I have a vehicle, and I have what I need in here. If something has to be cooked real quick, we can do that.” Amin also weighed in on the benefits of operating a food truck as opposed to a traditional restaurant. “As a chef in a restaurant, the chef is always in the back,” Amin said. “On a truck, I’m right in front of everything. I get to interact directly with the customers, create a relationship with them, and

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I think that is really important. They give you their feedback, and you can implement the feedback right away on the spot.” India on Wheels has been parked on Bigelow for nine years, but has operated for more than 18. Humphrey is aware of the reputation India on Wheels and others have established within the Pitt community, but the newcomer isn’t worried about the heavy competition. “The thing you’ve got to remember about food is, food is a comforting thing, so everybody sort of has their niche when it comes to food,” said Humphrey. “For instance, the Indian trucks specialize in chicken and lamb. The Thai truck is mostly food that you’re going to put over rice. Everybody’s food is good, I’ve had everybody’s food. I like all of it. But there are just little differences. Like me, I have pork. Everyone’s got something different that they enjoy.” Amin agrees with Humphrey, whom he sees more as a neighbor than a rival.

“I don’t see it as competition, but rather, the more trucks the better,” added Amin. Big Poppa’s Home Cookin’ has already been successful among students as well. “The barbecue pulled pork was restaurant quality,” said Luke Adams, a sophomore finance major at Pitt. “But overall, it’s just nice to have some added variety from the food trucks here on Bigelow.” Overall, Humphrey is excited about the opportunity in front of him, and he feels fortunate to be at a location where he can make Pitt students happy for years to come. “I’ve fed a lot of students at my house, a lot of Pitt students,” said Humphrey, referring to the time when his wife served as Dean of Students. “So over the years, some of them I have really gotten to know, so for me this was a natural location. Also, I think it’s a good spot just in general. If you stay around young people, you stay young.”

Art Majors, pg. 16 her art was featured in a show by the University Arts Gallery. She also received a grant from the Office of Undergraduate Research last summer to experiment with her next project, a series of screenprints inspired by the myth of Icarus. In the future, Taylor might follow the paths of her close friends who have graduated from Pitt’s studio arts department. Many have since worked as interns and assistants for established artists, helping with installations at museums such as the Mattress Factory. “In most situations, your name isn’t going to be associated with the art you’re making, but you’re still very present in the process,” Taylor said. “You just have to keep pushing forward while you’re doing it. It might take 20 years, but eventually you’re the one being pursued.”

Sports

Pitt builds big league media relations careers

John Gonoude and Missi Matthews have both found careers in media relations in the NFL after graduating from Pitt. COURTESY OF JOHN GONUDE AND MISSI MATTHEEWS

Jessie Wallace

For The Pitt News

Over the years, the football world has recognized Pitt as a sure-fire producer of NFL talent, with stars like Dan Marino, Larry Fitzgerald and LeSean McCoy all making names for themselves in the league. Unknown to most, however, is that Pitt’s pipeline to the NFL features more alumni than just players. The University has a track record of providing the league with media relations employees. Three former Pitt media relations interns took advantage of Pitt’s high-profile athletic department and proximity to major professional sports teams, and are currently “living the dream” working in the NFL. Twenty-three-year-old John Gopittnews.com

noude, who received a double major in communication and English nonfiction writing at Pitt in 2013, has since embarked on a media relations trek that saw stints with some of the most respected franchises in American sports. Though a “baseball nerd” his whole life, Gonoude has completely embraced his full-time position as the public relations coordinator for the Jacksonville Jaguars and enjoys experiencing something new every week. In his position, Gonoude said he may not be in the spotlight, but fans always see his work. “I do the behind-the-scenes work that goes into the whole production that everyone else sees,” Gonoude said. “My side is more involved with

writing game releases, broadcast notes, stats, anything to enhance the quality of stories.” Before obtaining his position with the Jaguars, Gonoude worked as a part-time media relations assistant with the Boston Red Sox. He also had part-time positions with the Pittsburgh Pirates and was a public relations intern for the Baltimore Ravens. But his desire to work in professional sports began in college. “Some of the best times of my life was working with Pitt baseball,” Gonoude said. “It all started with Pitt baseball.” While in school, Gonoude was the media relations assistant for various Pitt teams, which put him in charge of media coverage of the teams as well as writing athletic biographies

and the media guides for each sport. His role as media relations assistant allowed him to travel with the softball and baseball teams. Traveling let him build relationships with the players and made Gonoude feel like he was part of the team. Gonoude has embraced the workload of his profession. “There are so many hours you have to put in every day for professional sports, even college sports,” Gonoude said. “But you get used to it, you find a routine that works for you and you’re good to go. Looking back on the past four years, I wouldn’t change a thing.” It takes a special kind of person to spend their lives promoting the See Media Relations on page 23

Column

TIme to unionize Why collegiate athletes deserve labor protection

Dan Sostek Sports Editor

You don’t have to scour the landscape of collegiate athletics to find examples of malpractice and mistreatment. Recently, the Virginia Tech Hokies football team’s fine implementation system became a peak point of the college athletic terrain , as defensive coordinator Bud Foster revealed in an interview with local media that the program would fine players for various offenses. While Virginia Tech’s athletic

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director Whit Babcock shut down the system immediately after Foster’s comments went public, a photo of a list of the fineable offenses went viral on social media. Ten dollars for missing breakfast. Fifty dollars for a dirty room. Five dollars for being late to study hall. All of which would come from the players’ cost-ofattendance stipends. This is an Orwellian, totalitarian way of watching over and punishing players. This is gross misconduct and obvious exploitation but goes

unchecked because of the lack of regulation over what teams and coaches can or can’t do. This instance illustrates what is every day becoming much more clear. College athletes need a union. In the much-publicized legal battle stemming from speculation that Patriots star quarterback Tom Brady coordinated the illegal deflation of footballs during a blowout AFC Championship win against the Colts last year, Brady relied heavily on his union. The NFL Players’ Association was key in the federal court’s decision to

revoke his four-game suspension. And as President Barack Obama said at a pro-union rally in Boston , “If even Brady needs a union — we need unions.” College athletes fit right into that inclusive “we.” The primary goal of a union is to protect an employee from exploitation and unfair working conditions. A multi-millionaire zenith like Brady requires the aid of a union, yet according to a recent court ruling, perhaps the most exploited group of athSee NCAA on page 22

NCAA, pg. 21 letes apparently don’t fall under the umbrella of “employees” and therefore do not qualify for union representation. Last January, a group of Northwestern University football players, led by quarterback Kain Colter, officially requested the formation of a union for college athletes. After originally getting approval from a regional National Labor Relations Board in Chicago to unionize last March, an appeal to a national branch reversed that decision, citing that whether or not the athletes are employees “does not have an obvious answer.” Legal experts like Lester Munson deemed the reversal a “total loss” for the student-athlete unionization movement. This is

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a stubborn and angering proposition, as time and time again, coaches, programs and the NCAA itself give us foolproof evidence that college athletes need the protective security blanket of a union. Without that blanket, the NCAA can suspend former Georgia running back Todd Gurley for

using social media during the regular season to avoid distraction. It’s why, until recently, players like UConn’s Shabazz Napier “went to bed hungry” because there were NCAA limitations to how much schools should feed players. Without that security blanket, the unregulated higher-ups re-

College athletes need the protective security blanket of a union. profiting off his name by signing some autographs for money. It’s why schools like Clemson are allowed to ban their players from

peatedly take advantage of student athletes. If the Virginia Tech fine scandal and the outrage surrounding

Napier’s comments show us anything, it is that the NCAA and schools seem to respond to public outcry. College athletes deserve better protection than waiting for the media to criticize practices of schools and the NCAA. They deserve a union. It should be said that a call for unionization is not a call for compensating athletes. It is not an affront to the importance of coaches or a stable athletic department. What it is is a cry for decency and fairness, to have a tangible resource to go to when they, the semi-voiceless studentathletes, need amplification. It’s a fairness that unions afford professional, revenuegenerating athletes like Brady throughout their entire careers. It’s time that revenue-generating “amateurs” have the same right.

Media Relations, pg. 20 of professional athletes. Yet Gonoude managed to meet such a kindered spirit at Pitt, who now works some thousand miles — and a climate — away from Jacksonville in Buffalo, New York. Chris Fanelli is the media relations assistant for the Buffalo Bills, and, like Gonoude, his career began in the media relations department at Pitt, where he worked closely with the basketball and football teams. Unlike Gonoude, he knew football was his preferred area of work. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do [after graduation],” Fanelli said. “But if I worked in sports, I wanted it to be the NFL because it’s the biggest sport in the country and I love football.” Fanelli’s day-to-day tasks are similar to Gonoude’s — including coordinating interviews for players, writing press releases and putting together the season’s media guides. The opportunity to work for the Bills was a result of accumulating experience during his time at Pitt Between his junior and senior years at Pitt, Fanelli worked as a

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game day intern and media relations intern for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Working with the Pirates helped him make connections with the Steelers, who then assisted Fanelli in building his resumé by aiding the team during the 2014 NFL Draft. According to Fanelli, networking is the biggest catalyst for a career in media relations. “A lot of working with sports media relations is connections,” Fanelli said. “It’s about who you know. I got lucky.” The connections he made with the Steelers then allowed him to branch out to his current position. “Being able to go to games and have my life be surrounded by sports is what I like the most,” Fanelli said. “I’m not just sitting in a cubicle. Working with a NFL team is just a cool experience.” While Pitt helped place alumni around the country, some sports media success stories stayed close to home and right in front of the camera. Missi Matthews, a 2006 media and professional communications graduate, has been the Pittsburgh Steelers’ team reporter and host for

online webcasts for the last four seasons. “I love football,” Matthews said. “So just being able to be around football 24/7 is amazing. It’s an awesome organization to work for.” Like Gonoude and Farelli, Matthews began in Pitt’s media relations offices, but she did not particularly enjoy public relations. With a little help from adviser and Executive Associate Athletic Director for Media Relations E.J. Borghetti, she explored other areas within the communications field. With his assistance, not only did Matthews land an internship with WTAE, a local news station, but she also got a job with the University’s television station. “I started working for Panther Vision [Academy]” Matthews said. “I was getting the chance to interview the football and basketball teams. It was the best of both worlds, the news world and the TV station.” Matthews always knew she wanted to work in sports. Early in her career she had bounced from being a news reporter in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, to becoming a hybrid reporter, who broadcasted news and

sports in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. “I feel like Pittsburgh has played a role in every step I’ve taken,” Matthews said. “Through connections with people and just the city in general.” Matthews heard of the open reporter position with the Steelers through a connection she made at Pitt. She applied and, much to her delight, received a position with the team. “I’m a Pittsburgh girl,” Matthews said. “I grew up rooting for the Steelers, so this job is a dream come true.” Pitt offered several outlets for these three particular students to succeed within the sports industry. Through internships, connections and relationships with Pitt media relations staff members, dreams became realities just a few short years after graduation. “It’s incredible how it’s such a small world in this field,” Gonoude said. “College to professional, department across department, the people you run into and the time you spend with everyone, I think that’s something that’s very special and underrated about this profession.

Sweat pants, pg. 17

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for a maximum of five seconds. Pine found even minor adjustments to the subjects’ dress choices — in this case, a fitted suit over an “offthe-peg” one — impacted participants’ first impressions of them. The results showed the man in the fitted suit scored higher in both confidence and trustworthyness than the man wearing the regular suit. As a result, the study concluded that we shouldn’t underestimate our clothing choices when judging how others will perceive us. According to Coleman, making a good first impression is more important than looking comfortable if you are seeking an office job after graduation or working toward a promotion. “Any job you currently have is a path to the next job,” Coleman said. “You want to make sure the impression people have of you is a favorable one. You’ll never go wrong by being slightly dressed up, but you can go wrong the other way.” With the research stacked against them in professional settings, sweat pants remain seemingly ubiquitous around campus. After all, how could you convince students to wear anything else after an all-nighter spent at Hillman, especially during finals week? “As college students, we work hard and juggle a lot during the school year,” said Bridget Deely, a Pitt student and contributor to fashion blog, CollegeFashionista. “Sometimes wearing sweat pants shows that someone is stressed out or exhausted to the point where they don’t feel like putting any more effort [into getting dressed] than necessary.” In defense of loungewear, Coleman said she understands dressing

up for class isn’t always possible. “In general, faculty understands that our students are balancing so many different roles as a student, so we’re much more flexible with what’s appropriate,” she said. Unlike sweatpants, Stasia Lopez, a career consultant with the Office of Career Development and Placement Assistance at Pitt, said yoga pants can blur the line between office and loungewear. “Yoga pants are going to be a little tougher [to categorize] because they make luxury yoga pants like Alexander Wang, Michael Kors and even cashmere leggings by Donna Karan that even top executives have admitted to wearing and loving,” Lopez said. But Lopez said one must be cautious with yoga pants, because of the occasional “see-through” or tight nature of the pants. To Deely, yoga pants do trump sweat pants when trying not to look like a bed rat, but like the spandex material composing the legwear, it’s a stretch to say they make a great look. “Yoga pants are like the attractive second cousin of sweat pants,” Deely said. “They are definitely more appropriate to wear in public settings. But at the same time, they are still something you wear to feel comfy or work out, which means I wouldn’t necessarily choose them as my go-to for class.”

Lieberman, pg. 13 tracts us from the sort of everyday violence that the Palestinians are being subjected to. This violence will not end so long as the U.S. can provide Israel with unconditional support.” Perhaps the best way to instigate meaningful change within Gaza would be to urge Israel to lift its blockade on the territory. Israel faces mounting pressure to end this repressive policy. An online petition calling for the end of the blockade has accumulated more than 100,000 signatures thus far. As Sharma mentioned, the blockade has prevented vital reconstruction materials from entering the Gaza Strip. Of the 5,000 tons of cement, steel and other materials required to rebuild the territory, Israel has only permitted five percent into Gaza. As a result, not one of the 19,000 structures destroyed last summer has been rebuilt. Palestinians are trapped in living

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conditions too close to those of last summer’s conflict. We must not forget the hundreds of thousands of other invisible flags that filled Carnegie Library’s lawn last week, marking the lives of all of those impacted by this conflict who continue to suffer. Alyssa primarily writes on social justice and political issues for The Pitt News. Write to her at aal43@pitt.edu

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University of Pittsburgh researchers are recruiting family members of people with Type 1 diabetes for a research study. The study screens relatives for risk of Type 1 diabetes and eligibility for further studies that are aimed to delay or prevent diabetes in those with high risk. Eligibility includes: -Ages 1-45 years, have a sibling or parent with Type 1 -Ages 1-20, have a cousin, aunt/uncle, or grandparent with Type 1 Those interested please call 412-6927241 or e-mail david.groscost@chp. edu Sacred Heart School in Shadyside is looking for volunteer basketball coaches. Clearances will be required. If interested, please contact Michele Cromer at mcromer@gtnlaw.com or 412-901-4268.

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