Strike Averted
By: Alvin Wilson Staff Writer
After nearly a year of debating, and just before the mediation date, WOUFT and Western’s administration have come to an agreement.
The university decided to give the union what it has been asking for: a 10 percent pay increase for non-tenure-track faculty.
“The University did indeed accept our offer as is, with non-tenure-track faculty getting five percent each year for the two year contract, which was the 10 percent we were holding out for,” said Mark Perlman, president of WOUFT. “And no other take-backs in other areas,” Perlman added.
The previous offer from the university included cuts to things such as faculty development and traveling funds, but the proposal that the university accepted gave NTT faculty their raises without the need for cuts.
According to Perlman, this is a much-needed move forward.
“WOU salaries will go up over $50,000 for the step one assistant professors, which is essential for us to be able to hire new faculty,” he said.
“But even with all of this, WOU faculty salaries will still be about 15 percent below comparable universities, so there is still progress to be made in the future to get WOU faculty salaries where they should be.”
According to Glassdoor.com, a website that compiles information about salaries, the average salary for an assistant professor at Western is $50,746. At the University of Oregon, assistant professors make $69,884, and at Oregon State University they make $87,948.
Not all of the schools in Oregon are comparable because of their size differences, but Western’s assistant professor pay is already 39 percent below the national average, according to Glassdoor.
Not all assistant professors at Western are non-tenure-track, but there are a considerable amount who are, and they will soon have a more competitive salary.
Perlman said he was happy about the success, but even happier that the negotiations are over.
“The whole bargaining team is happy to conclude bargaining, and there are a lot of good things in the new collective bargaining agreement,” he said.
He continued to say that the union had gained many new members over the course of the negotiations, but Perlman said it’s now time to think about finals week.
“The members of the bargaining team are going to get a welcome break from union activity, and need to focus on grading papers and final exams,” he said. “They did a lot of work in bargaining, and deserve a huge amount of credit.”
Perlman said on Tuesday that the deal had not been finalized by the other union members yet, but he was confident they would support it.
“The formal contract ratification vote by the union members is set for Thursday afternoon,” he said, “but I have no doubt that they will approve it.”
Contact the author at awilson15@wou.edu or on Twitter @awilsonjournal
Super Tuesday had me like…
By: Conner Williams Editor-in-Chief
As the presidential candidates competed for delegates on Super Tuesday, the day in the election cycle where more delegates are at stake than any other day, I talked with several Western students about their thoughts on the election.
Rosario Peralta, a staff member at the Writing Center, said that she feels the election has been civil to an extent.
“I feel like it’s pretty civil, but at the same time, we have a lot of candidates that are extremes, which doesn’t happen all the time,” she said. “I think it’s civil from the candidates’ perspective, but I don’t necessarily think it’s civil based on how the media portray things.”
“I think it’s kind of a hot mess,” said Peralta. “I was listening to the radio recently and they said ‘We never thought we’d live in a world where Donald Trump could be the winner,’ and apparently that’s the world we live in […] it’s overwhelming and terrifying.”
Peralta said that the issues she finds most important in this election are education and immigration. She is a U.S. resident, but not a citizen, so she cannot actually vote in the election. Despite this, Peralta said that she does her best to campaign and advocate for the candidate(s) that she thinks address her concerns the most.
“I think how we treat other countries and people who come into our country is a big thing for me,” said Peralta.
Taylor Waite, a senior english major, said that she is frustrated with the way the election is turning out thus far.
“I feel a little frustrated from the way that politics are cultured now and are treated as reality TV,” she said. “It’s more about who can make more of a show out of it.”
Waite said that education and loan reform are among her top concerns in the election.
“Education is huge for me in that I’m paying for college,” she said. “I think [free education] is going to be the future of our country.”
“I’m also concerned about the job market because I’m a senior, for one, and coming out with a bachelor of arts, I’m not guaranteed a job,” said Waite.
Amanda Jester, a sophomore criminal justice major, said that she is excited for the election since it will be her first time voting.
“I think since it’s the first election I can vote in, it’s fun for me since I can actually participate in it,” she said.
“I want the focus to be on improving education and social services rather than military spending and things like that,” said Jester. “I also think that women’s health and women’s reproductive rights are huge issues for me.”
Jessica Esparza, a senior english major, also said that she has a hard time believing that Donald Trump is doing as well as he is.
“I think it’s kind of a joke right now,” she said. “I thought that Trump was going to a be a joke at first, and now he might actually be the Republican candidate.”
“I thought it was going to be a publicity stunt, but he just never went away,” said Esparza.
As the polls closed at the end of the day Tuesday, Donald Trump found himself still in the lead for the Republicans with 319 delegates, according to data from The New York Times. Ted Cruz follows shortly behind with 226, Marco Rubio with 110, John Kasich with 25, and Ben Carson with eight, though Carson has announced he will be suspending his campaign. In order to secure the party’s nomination for president, a Republican candidate needs 1,237 delegates.
Hillary Clinton stretched her lead to 1,052 delegates, while Bernie Sanders currently has 427. 2,383 delegates are needed for a Democrat to secure the party’s nomination for president.
Contact the author at journaleditor@wou.edu or on Twitter @journalEIC
ASWOU receives two percent budget cut
By: Alvin Wilson Staff Writer
The Incidental Fee Committee plans to increase the amount of money students pay each term in fees while decreasing the funds for some programs.
ASWOU is one of the programs that will see cuts in its budget, but only by a small percentage.
This year, ASWOU received $294,239 from the Incidental Fee funds. This amounted to 6.9 percent of the total IFC budget.
Next year, the committee will only allocate $290,699—or 6.6 percent of the total budget—to ASWOU, which is a two percent cut from this year’s budget.
ASWOU’s budget gets distributed to many different areas, according to Sofia LeVernois, director of business and finance for ASWOU.
“All the clubs at the university fall under ASWOU,” said LeVernois. “You have funded clubs and non-funded clubs. Non-funded clubs are not funded by IFC, and then you have the other umbrella of clubs that are funded by IFC.”
Some student organizations that receive IFC funds from ASWOU are the Art Club, Triangle Alliance, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlánand (MEChA), and the Business and Economics Club.
LeVernois said the clubs can spend their money on anything from food and refreshments to guest speakers.
Other than that, she said ASWOU’s funds go toward sending their members to Oregon Student Association (OSA) meetings. OSA is a nonprofit student advocacy group that represents 110,000 Oregon students.
“We have our payroll account, and we have OSA. That helps our OSA representatives go to the different board meetings that they have to attend,” she said.
ASWOU also pays for a retreat for its members at the beginning of the year.
“It’s all to help the office function so we can be at our top point to represent and help students,” LeVernois said.
The budgets for all clubs and ASWOU departments will be reduced evenly, according to Levernois, so no clubs will be affected more than others.
She said the cuts won’t be easy, but it’s not impossible to work around.
“After talking with Corban, it was decided that we would be able to handle a two percent cut,” said LeVernois. “We have to cut back, but it’s not really preventative. It can be a burden, but there’s things to alleviate that. It’s difficult, but it’s about reallocating.”
Contact the author at awilson15@wou.edu or on Twitter @awilsonjournal
Portland’s Polluted Air
By: Jenna Beresheim News Editor
Back in May 2015, Oregon regulators discovered that federal researchers located heavy metals in moss samples throughout the Portland area. However, these regulators did not partake in their own testing until October.
The culprits were later detected as Bullseye Glass Company, a glass company promoted for the use of colored glass in art and architecture, and Uroboros Glass Studio, which manufactures glass for lamps, architectures, and kiln forming.
Results for testing Bullseye came back in January with shocking results: 159 times the safety goal of arsenic in the air, and 49 times the safety goal for cadmium.
Cadmium poses risks of lung cancer and kidney damage, while arsenic offers lung, skin, and bladder cancers.
Other elevated levels of toxic metals, such as lead and nickel, also became apparent with more testing across the Portland areas.
The amount of toxicity has become so bad in areas that residents within a half-mile of the two glass factories are encouraged to withhold from eating food grown in backyard gardens.
Another health recommendation is to wash hands after coming in contact with soil found within contaminated areas.
“It’s crazy that people can’t even eat from their gardens – it’s against everything Portland,” said Leanne Cook, a Western alumna who commutes from Portland to work at the National Center on Deaf-Blindness.
“I live right in the heart of the affected area but wish I could say I noticed a difference, I know there is one, but I can’t tell that there is,” Cook explained. “It’s frustrating to know that long-term this could have major effects on Portlandians’ lives.”
One woman speaking out against her current health problems is Sarah Livingstone, a Portland resident who lives just five blocks away from Bullseye.
“This past month I had three trips to the ER for not being able to breathe right,” Livingstone reported to the Oregonian.
Livingstone later revealed that doctors had discovered fluid in the lining of her lungs on Jan. 23 and had asked her to hold off on her second pregnancy.
“I feel like it hasn’t been talked about enough,” Cook defends, “I’m trying not to think about it.”
Kate Brown followed up with the findings, stating that she expected ‘rapid action’ from environmental regulators, as well as more money from legislature to deal with the current amount of air pollution.
Currently, both companies have voluntarily stopped the usage of such chemicals in their production of glass while more soil tests are underway.
For a short, informational video on the topic at hand, click here: http://bit.ly/1WHGjZ8
Contact the author at jberesheim11@wou.edu or on Twitter @WOUjournalnews
WOU student jobs, are they at risk?
By: Jenna Beresheim News Editor
Oregon legislators have approved Senate Bill 1532, which will allow the state’s minimum wage to reach $15 by 2022.
Western Oregon University may be affected by this bill, especially those student workers who are employed on-campus.
“Based on my early calculations, I believe it [Senate Bill 1532] could add up to 3-5% on student employee costs next fiscal year in my area,” stated Patrick Moser, the Director for Student Leadership and Activities.
“How that affects student employment in my department is highly dependent on how the Incidental Fee Committee chooses to address the budget issues of minimum wage increases,” Moser continued.
Moser also reported that, as far as campus budget impact, the Business office is already starting to study the issue at hand and how best to handle the situation.
“We are still in the middle of our budget process and determining all of the information,” commented Brandon Neish, the manager for the Budget Office.
This change in minimum wage could affect how many available job positions occur on campus, as it may prove more difficult to support as many workers at such a large increase in paycheck per person.
For students, more money in less time worked could prove to be a very appealing incentive. Although, at the same time, it could also result in cuts to student jobs, even current ones, in order to have certain student-run positions remain afloat.
After nearly four hours of heated debate, the bill cleared the Senate with a vote of 32-26. While just outside, demonstrators barricaded lawmakers within the House chamber, pounding on the walls and chanting.
According to The Oregonian, the bill would give pay increases to more than 100,000 workers, with some receiving nearly $6 more an hour.
The plan would take an estimated six years, starting the wage raise in July this year to $9.50-9.75 and ending in 2022 with ranges of wage depending on location. Portland’s urban growth boundary would see $14.75, midsize counties would reach $13.25, and “frontier” areas would expect $12.50 per hour.
The Coalition to Defend Oregon Jobs includes a wide range of individuals who fought against Senate Bill 1532.
“A massive wage hike kills small business jobs and forces schools and local governments to cut services or raise property taxes,” the Defend Oregon Jobs website proclaims. “Fixed-income seniors, working families, and college students will feel the sting.”
Contact the author at jberesheim11@wou.edu or on Twitter @WOUjournalnews
Apple-FBI in heated battle over your privacy
By: Alvin Wilson Staff Writer
Apple is refusing to give the FBI access to encrypted data on one of the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone.
The FBI has requested that Apple build the technology necessary to decrypt the data that they currently can’t access.
Bob Broeg, professor of computer science at Western, described encrypted data as being a sentence with the letters jumbled up. To find the correct order, you have to have a key.
“With most encryptions today, you have two keys,” he said. “One is a public key that you can use to encrypt something, but you can’t decrypt it without a private key. So, anybody can send an encrypted message, but only the person with the second key can decrypt it.”
Apple encrypts some of the data that is stored on their phones to protect the privacy of the user, but the government still has access to metadata, according to Dana Schowalter, assistant professor of communication studies.
“The government can find metadata whether or not it’s encrypted,” she said. “They can find—on our phone records and things like that, they can determine when we text somebody.
“But if you iMessage somebody else, for example, that’s encrypted. It doesn’t show up on your bill, and therefore can’t be subpoenaed from the phone company because they don’t necessarily keep records of that.”
The FBI wants access to encrypted information on one of the San Bernardino shooters’ phone, but Apple is afraid of future privacy violations that could occur if the government receives access to this technology.
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, sent an open letter to Apple customers.
“While we believe the FBI’s intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products,” Cook said in the letter. “And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.”
Schowalter agrees about the importance of our freedom of privacy.
“When that information is encrypted, I think people value that because it means the information is protected,” she said. “In an era where almost nothing is protected, having at least some content that could be protected is very valuable.”
Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg has publicly supported Apple’s decision, but, according to a Pew Research poll, 51 percent of Americans think they should submit to the demands of the FBI.
The FBI is arguing that Apple’s encryption policy is interfering with their ability to protect the public.
Schowalter is skeptical of this argument.
“If you take a look at what they’re asking Apple to do, I think there is some security case for being able to access that information,” she said.
“But at the same time,” she added, “asking for this backdoor seems to be a huge overreach, and I don’t think the government has shown that they can exercise restraint in what they’re collecting and how they’re using that information.”
Broeg thinks that Apple should help the FBI, but not by providing a backdoor to the government.
“I think if there was an error that the FBI needed to figure out, Apple could decrypt it for them,” he said. “But it should probably stay somewhat encrypted.”
Schowalter said the long term effects might be similar to what we saw with the Patriot Act.
“I don’t think people really notice when they’re being spied on now, so I think it just adds a layer of distrust,” she said. “I think we, in the fearmongering that happened after 9/11, consented to all sorts of breaches of our basic human rights to privacy. I think it sets a very dangerous precedent.”
Contact the author at awilson15@wou.edu or on Twitter @awilsonjournal
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