ONNION

Nerd elitism?
Page 2

CAMPUS

Greek Council sponsors
tournament benefiting Red Cross.

SPORTS

XC trudges through rain &
mud in Oshkosh.,WI.
Page 7

 

Student newspaper of Illinois Institute of Technology since 1928

TUESDAY
OCTOBER
23, 2012

Volume 174 I Issue 7

technewsiit.com

OPINION 2
CAMPUS 3-4

SLIPSTICK 6
SPORTS 1

President, Provost Open Forum

Athletics, academic quality, tolerance at center of discussion

By Ryan Kamphuis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

The semesterly President and Prof
vost Open Forum has become a timeihonored
tradition at IIT Organized by the Student Gov,
ernment Association (SGA), the President and
Provost Open Forum provides IIT students a
chance to ask any questions they might have
regarding university policy to the top two indi
viduals at IIT It is for this reason that students,
staff, and faculty converged on the Hermann
Hall Ballroom during the lunch hour of Oci
tober 16‘ Attendees were greeted by a lunch
spread, a table of Affy Tapples, and the compa7
ny of Provost Cramb and President Anderson
as they entered the ballroom

After a short introduction by moderi
ators Kelly Lohr and Rani Shah, the President
of SGA and the Vice President of Student Life
of SGA, respectively, the forum begant Quesi
tions had been submitted in the weeks leading
up to the forum via the internet, and both the
President and the Provost went through an,
swering these questions

The ﬁrst question posed was by a
student wondering why student organiza7
tions were charged to use the sports facilities
in Keating Hall, while student orgs that used
facilities elsewhere on campus did not have to
pay The President answered this question, ex,
plaining that the point of charging for space in
Keating was to control demandt Space at Keati
ing is in high demand, and by charging orgs to
use the space it both limits how many orgs will
be reserving space and ensures that orgs that
do reserve space will actually go on to use the
space as opposed to making a reservation and
not showing The President also explained that
Keating is an expensive facility to operate, and
by charging student orgs, the school is able to
recover some of the extra cost it takes to keep
it open

Another question regarding sports
and athletics followed up this ﬁrst one A stu7
dent submitted a very well thought out ques7
tion regarding IIT’s current transition from
NAIA athletics to NCAA Division III athletics
The student commended the administration
on making a move to an athletic association
that will have us competing with schools more
similar to our own such as MIT and Carnegie
Mellon The student, however, also brought
up that these other schools spend quite a bit
of money on their athletics programs and have
worldiclass facilities to house their athletics
programs in. The student expressed concern
over the state of Keating Hall, saying that it
can’t match the facilities that schools like MIT
and Carnegie Mellon have The President took
the lead on responding to this question, main,
taining that by moving to NCAA Division III,
athletics will continue to support academics at
IIT The President expressed his belief that IIT
should have been a part of the NCAA all along,
saying that it will allow us to compete against
schools that have more similar academic misi
sions, something that being a member of the
NAIA doesn’t allow us to do As for the state
of Keating Hall, President Anderson admitted
that Keating wasn’t stateiofitheiart, but said

that it was okay He said that while Keating
was aging, it was still better than many uni,
versity athletic centers due to its large amounts
of open space He said that currently Keating
ﬁts the needs of our athletic program, but that
more will be needed in the future Anderson
talked ofplans to build a new rec center at IIT,
but explained that to do so, $40 million was
needed , money that the university currently
doesn’t have In the short term, however, the
school will be retroﬁtting the soccer ﬁeld with
artiﬁcial turf this coming summert Anderson
closed his statement by explained that switch,
ing to a more welliknown athletic association
supports the academic mission ofIIT because
it will bring more top students to our school

The next question dealt with IIT’s
current national ranking, and how we might
increase it Provost Cramb answered this
question, and prefaced his answer by saying
that improving a university’s national rate
ing doesn’t necessarily improve the quality of
the university He went on to explain that US
News and World Report now asks the opini
ion of high school counselors when creating
their rankings, and that these counselors skew
the rankings because they lean towards large
state schools that spend millions to make their
names well known, something we don’t and
won’t do Cramb also explained that many of
the statistics that these rankings were based on
were very long term statistics, such as the six
year graduation rate He explained that even if
huge strides were made in the short term, these
strides would not be reﬂected in our ranking
until years latert Despite his qualms with col,
lege rankings, Cramb explained that the uni,
versity is making some efforts to improve its
ranking To do this it is working to improve ref
tention between the freshman and sophomore
year, and throughout all four years Cramb
mentioned that IIT’s current Freshman reteni
tion rate is 98%, and that this will help raise
our national ranking

One topic that enjoyed a lot of cone
versation was the administration’s plan to es,
tablish a learning center at IIT in order to im7
prove professor performance The plan to do
this just gained steam because an IIT alumnus
just agreed to make a lifetime gift in order to
establish this centert Anderson and Cramb
talked about how the center would take model
professors, study their methods, and work to
share these methods with all professors at IIT
Cramb stated that this center should be es,
tablished within the next ﬁve years The cone
versation about the center lead into a heated
one about professor evaluations Cramb and
Anderson both emphasized the importance
of students completing professor evaluations
in order for an effort like this to succeed In
response to this, many students brought up in,
stances where professors deliberately told stu7
dents not to complete evaluations if they were
going to say anything negative, to which the
President replied that students in this situation
should ﬁll out evaluations anyway

In a shift from earlier questions,
the next question posed dealt with raising the
English proﬁency levels the university asks of
its international students, saying that there

isn’t enough right now, as evidenced by the
fact that international student stick to social
groups made up of people from their country,
not others The President promptly responded
to this question, ﬁercely saying that domestic
students shouldn’t be so adamant about people
speaking English He explained that interna7
tional students are stepping out of our comfort
zones by coming to America, and that domes,
tic students should help international students
Cramb then stepped in and recounted his own
personal experience as an international stu7
dent in America, explaining that no interna7
tional student comes to America without the
intent to meet and become friends with Amer,
icans He further explained that international
students try very hard to get to know others,
and we should return some of their effort by
getting to know them, helping them with their
English, and introducing them to both Chi,
cago and America

Despite the length of the President
and Provost Forum, not all questions that were
posed online were able to be answered Four
submitted questions were not answered dur7
ing the Forum, but were later answered by the
President and Provost Their answers are be,
low:

IIT is well known in Chicago, how do
we push those associations past city limits, to
have a global impact?

The Board of Trustees, in collaboi
ration with Vice President Jeanne Hartig, has
just completed a study aimed at developing
a strategy to increase the visibility of IIT at a
national and international scale One tactic
involves print and social media, another is
associated with student admissions and re,
cruitment More focus is on engagement with
alumni around the country and the world
The president, other senior leaders and faculty
members are traveling more extensively to talk
about IIT We are more aggressively courting
the interest of companies, especially through
the CMC Promotion of the university is a
task that we must all accept , aluan students,
staff and faculty Students can help greatly by
talking about IIT in a positive way when they
return home or meet friends from other uni,
versities

Is IIT working to become an “ivy
league” institution?

We are continuing on our path to,
wards excellence in all academic and non
academic pursuits To be an “Ivyleague” instii
tution we would have to become a humanities,
centric or liberal arts institution , this is not
our plant Our vision statement says we are
university with a technical and professional
focus; we will continue on this path

It was recently explained on SGA’s
votebox that the issue of hookahs had been
closed. It was explained in the description as to
why the issue had closed that the President and
Provost’s oﬂice threatened to put in place strict-
er policies by bringing up this issue. I also know
that at several points last semester the Provost
threatened to punish certain organizations
which were attempting to establish a dialogue
concerning hookahs. I want to know why the
President and Provost feel it is okay to run this

school like a police state, where simply bringing
an issue up for conversation will lead to threats
and punishments. These actions are sharply at
odds with the administration’s recent push to
‘listen to the student’ through Student Speak.

The Provost has listened to the views
of an individual and small groups of students
who wish to use a Hookah within the Univer7
sity boundaries and has made the universities
position clear about Hookah use in campus
buildings , the current ban on Hookah use will
remain in effect and there will be no change to
the current policy in the student handbook As
to “several points last semester" , the Provost
does not remember any times when he person,
ally threatened to punish any organization nor
does he think any organization was asking to
use a “Hookah’l He only spoke to individuals
about their wish for personal use

The Provost did make it clear that it
was his opinion that smoking in any building
on university owned property was already sub,
ject to the appropriate state and city laws and
to university policy, making the discussion of
Hookah use on University property moot, as
he assumed that University policy and State
law was being followed in all buildings situated
on university property If a discussion of the
potential for implementation of a current uni,
versity policy is a viewed as a threat or punish,
ment, then the Provost cannot agree with this
viewpoint

It was also made clear that the is,
sue of smoking on campus was an issue that
those advocating “hookah use" may not want
to bring into a broader discussion, due to uni
intended consequences If the discussion of the
rights and wishes of smokers on campus were
to be fully discussed, the rights and wishes
of nonismokers must also be discussed The
Provost believes that a discussion of smoking
(or of whether smoking should be allowed)
on campus is now occurring among the stu7
dent body The Provost will wait for a recomi
mendation from the student body concerning
whether smoking should be allowed anywhere
on campus property, assuming that such rec,
ommendations will take into account current
policies and the relevant city and state laws

It is the Provost’s View that everyone
should carefully consider the potential deti
rimental health effects of smoking on them,
selves and others in their decision to smoke
and should at least hold others harmless
should they decide to smoke

When will faculty/staff be trained
on working with undocumented students? De-
ferred Action - work authorization for IIT stu-
dents and who at CMC can they work with?

The issues of undocumented stu7
dents are wellirecognized at IIT As to the
CMC, I will ask Dennis Roberson to ensure
that the staff of the CMC is trained to be able to
offer advice to any students who request such
advice As to faculty/ staff training, we have no
speciﬁc training planned that is focused on the
issues of undocumented students The issue of
documentation is a personal issue and as such
is a private issue of the person There is no rea7
son for a student’s status to be known by any
staff/ faculty membeh