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EXPLORE HOW ISU’S IT DEPARTMENT KEEPS ERRORS OUT MONDAY, APRIL 9, 2018
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Vol. 130 / No. 54
Grad students fight for union Some believe unionization will help raise standards, others think it will take away opportunities to be in program ANDREW DOUGHERTY Senior News Reporter | @addough
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he Illinois State University graduate students pushing for a union for about 500 teaching and research assistants have officially received enough signatures to formally request representation from the Service Employees International Union. Sociology graduate student and union organizer Erik Zdansky said the discussion about raising the standards for graduate assistants has been an ongoing topic for several years. “Particularly for teaching assistants, we’d like to see an increase in stipends, extending the kind of benefits for insurance and other various issues,” Zdansky said. “A major issue for me is the stipend level. The fact that I can be on food stamps while being a graduate student seems a bit at odds with the mission of ISU, especially with the amount of work we do for faculty such as grading and holding office hours.” Zdansky said he has been making $8,000 the last year, which is under
the poverty line for a single person, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. A household with one person should be making $12,140 to not be under the poverty line. Even though he is walking in commencement this May and will not receive any benefits of unionizing, he knows he can help other graduate students who will be coming to ISU and will not have to struggle as much. “The important thing is to keep the idea of unionizing going and to get all the facts out, such as who counts as a union member, the issue of why teaching assistants can unionize yet research assistants can’t, and why undergraduate teaching assistants have to pay money to do labor for the university which is just silly to me,” he said. If the graduate student union does come to fruition, Assistant Director of Media Relations Rachel Hatch said the university is open to working with it. “The university works with a lot collective bargaining groups and
Monica Mendoza | Vidette Photo Editor
Trevor Rickerd, a biology doctoral student, speaks to a group of graduate students, faculty and staff members Feb. 26 outside Schroeder Hall. Graduate students are currently in the process of evaluating what items they want written in their union contract. we understand the right of people to want to negotiate. On our part we are willing to work with any group but I’m not sure where they are in the process at this point,” Hatch said. Graduate student in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology J.D. Lewis said forming a union would give graduate students a stronger voice to bring attention to unfair labor practices. “There are some students who are struggling because they’re being asked to do things that are above and beyond what they’re supposed to be doing even though the rules state in
the student handbook that you should only work a certain amount of hours, work for one professor for one course or only doing research or teaching,” Lewis said. “A lot of the time there’s a significant amount of pressure and circumstances that would push students to do otherwise.” Lewis said grad students would like to have more of a say so that when they see unfair labor practices being done, they can have a method of action and some power to change it. Lewis continued to say that a union would give graduate students
a way to voice their grievances on issues which would affect them. “A few of the issues we’re concerned about are for the economic side of things,” Lewis said. “Right now, a large portion of graduate students are getting a low stipend and a lot of us are on food stamps. We have a hard time making ends-meet and paying bills.” Lewis added another major concern was the absence of dental coverage from the university’s healthcare plan. see UNION page 3
“Right now, a large portion of graduate students are getting a low stipend and a lot of us are on food stamps. We have a hard time making ends-meet and paying bills.” J.D. Lewis, Department of Sociology and Anthropology graduate student
ISU receives cell sorter through NSF grant Device will allow researchers, students to study thousands of particles in seconds
MIKE SMITH News Reporter | @Agora_180
The National Science Foundation awarded faculty at Illinois State University with a $316,778 grant to fund a new educational instrument on campus. The instrument is a flow cytometer cell sorter which can filter and collect rare cells, some of which can be further researched and used for new discoveries. Although t is no larger than a microwave, this innovation creates potential to study unique cell structures like never before. Professors Rachel Bowden, Nathan Mortimer, Ben Sadd and Laura Vogel led the team. “It was fantastic to hear news about our proposal for the instrument being funded,” Sadd said. “A lot of work goes to submitting grants, and at the national level most are unsuccessful, so we were extremely happy to have the instrument purchase funded, especially as it is going to benefit a number of people and research areas.”
Rachel Bowden
Nathan Mortimer
Ben Sadd
Laura Vogel
Vogel also said researchers were excited about the news. “Our researchers were thrilled to hear our grant application would be funded. The highly competitive Major Research Instrumentation grant program received hundreds of grant proposals from across the country and only funded the top 16 percent of the applications they received,” Vogel said. The grant was originally submitted in January 2016, but was sent back to the professors for revisions and resubmitted in
January 2017. “We finally heard that it was selected for funding in September, so the whole process is quite long,” Vogel explained. “The FACS Melody arrived on campus in January and is ready for use.” The tool can be applied to several schools of study, including gene expression, cellular physiology and cell morphology. The device can progressively push advances in these fields of study at a high speed. Vogel said ISU researchers will use the cell sorter to study aging and the immune system, reptile and insect immunity, pollen grains, neuroscience, blood cells in birds, Leishmania parasites and the growth of microbes. “This cell sorter is a powerful tool that allows researchers to study cells or particles in a liquid suspension. It’s commonly used to analyze things like blood samples, liquid bacterial cultures and other small particles,” Vogel explained. see GRANT page 3