8

Thursday, May 9, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
NEWS

By Roland Huget
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
05/09/19

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

05/09/19

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Thursday, May 9, 2019

ACROSS
1 Award named for 
a goddess
5 Put down
10 First choice
14 “You’re __ luck”
15 __ shorts
16 Truth stretcher
17 *Finds flaws (in)
19 “Star Wars” 
sentence inverter
20 Baseball bat 
wood
21 *Casino fixtures 
where blinds 
might be used
23 Sign-off word
25 River through 
Tours
26 Shot water?
28 Rash
31 Citation ender, 
briefly
32 Usually 
multilayered 
dessert
33 Place to unwind
36 *They make nuts 
healthy
40 __ card: 
common phone 
component
41 Closes in on
42 Half of sechs
43 Alaskan cruise 
sight
44 Iris ring
46 Milan’s La __
49 The Huskies of 
the NCAA’s Big 
East
50 *Skilled debaters
54 Tank contents
57 Tip
58 In complete 
opposition ... and 
a feature of the 
four other longest 
answers
60 Wild, all-night 
party
61 Tiny swimmer
62 Marine threat
63 Kept in one’s 
sights
64 Fixes
65 Urban bane

DOWN
1 Historic NYC 
club, with “The”
2 ’60s-’70s All-Star 
pitcher Tiant

3 Sensory omen 
regarding money
4 Wine barrel 
wood
5 Can’t stand
6 Financial records
7 Roadster rod
8 Oracle
9 Formerly, 
formerly
10 Airman, slangily
11 Pungent mayo
12 “Star Wars” 
heavy breather
13 Wipe out
18 Source of fries
22 Let out, e.g.
24 Like some fried 
food
26 Gym iterations
27 French 
possessive
28 Squirrel away
29 Fine __
30 “The Simpsons” 
disco guy
32 Old Russian 
ruler
33 Coerce
34 Thurman’s role in 
“The Avengers” 
(1998)
35 Home to K2

37 Clear, as a copier
38 Prefix with natal
39 Yemeni port
43 Showed off a 
muscle
44 Fills in for
45 Soprano 
Ponselle who 
debuted at the 
Met opposite 
Caruso
46 Slash on a score 
sheet

47 Insured patient’s 
obligation
48 Advil alternative
49 “Best before” 
cousin
51 Hoppy brews
52 Freebie
53 Intestinal sections
55 Violin music 
instruction
56 Unaccompanied
59 Bldgs. with many 
boxes

Classifieds

Students, parents, faculty and 
guOn 
Friday 
afternoon, 
about 
15 
members 
and 
supporters 
of the University of Michigan 
Lecturers’ Employee Organization 
gathered at Hill Auditorium for an 
informational picket. They claimed 

the University’s School of Music, 
Theatre & Dance administration 
was trying to drastically cut the 
course loads and salaries of two 
SMTD 
lecturers 
in 
violation 
of their union contracts. LEO 
picketers, carrying signs stating 
“#RespectTheLecs,” handed out 
informational flyers to graduates 
and families arriving for SMTD 

graduation.
According to LEO, the School of 
Music, Theatre & Dance is giving 
classes taught by lecturers Missy 
Beck and Jean-Claude Biza to 
tenure-track faculty in order to 
avoid paying Beck and Biza higher 
wages won under the contract LEO 
ratified last year.
Beck and Biza are “two of 
the 
longest-serving 
Lecturer 
faculty members in the Dance 
Department,” 
LEO 
explained. 
Beck, a Lecturer II who has taught 
in SMTD for 18 years and full-time 
for the last 15, will have her annual 
salary cut almost in half, from 
$57,500 to $29,468, according to 
LEO. Biza, who has taught in SMTD 
for 32 years, will lose almost two-
thirds of his annual salary, from 
$23,025 to $7,866.
In July 2018, after months of 
collective bargaining, LEO and the 
University ratified a new contract, 
which enacted salary increases 
and bolstered health benefits and 
job security for non-tenure track 
faculty at all three University 
campuses. Per the new contract’s 
terms, by September 2020, starting 
salaries 
for 
lecturers 
in 
Ann 
Arbor are to receive a 47.8 percent 
increase, while Flint and Dearborn 
faculty should see 50.2 percent and 
44.9 percent increases respectively.
In an interview with The Daily, 
Beck said she has an email from 

Interim Chair of Dance Anita 
Gonzalez stating decisions to cut 
Beck’s and Biza’s course loads and 
pay were made following LEO 
bargaining for wage increases.
“Biza and I got the largest raises 
in that contract agreement, and 
we’ve been the only two that’ve 
been targeted,” Beck said. “So, that 
speaks for itself in my mind.”
In an email to The Daily, 
Gonzalez said there is not an email 
from her attributing SMTD cuts to 
LEO’s bargaining success.
University 
spokesman 
Rick 
Fitzgerald 
provided 
an 
email 
statement on behalf of SMTD Dean 
David Gier, emphasizing that Gier 
has expressed “SMTD will not 
make personnel decisions based 
on LEO’s success at the bargaining 
table.”
“This review will include an 
examination of teaching loads and 
course 
enrollment,” 
Fitzgerald 
wrote. “It is a normal part of what 
any school and college on our 
campus does on a regular basis, 
particularly as new deans are 
selected. SMTD and the university 
will carefully follow the process 
outlined in the LEO contract, should 
there be any workload changes that 
affect lecturers.”
Beck defended her qualifications 
and discussed the success of her 
students, some of whom have sent 
letters and video testimonials to 

Beck’s teaching.
“I’m the one who’s actually in the 
classroom,” Beck said. “I’m the one 
who has working alum in the top of 
the field saying, ‘She taught us this.’ 
I have dozens of alum writing letters 
and sending videos — many of them 
working in Broadway, the first Black 
Elsa in ‘Frozen,’ a casting agent, 
people who are now professors of 
dance in universities, people who’ve 
won Oscars, Tony’s — saying it was 
my influence that helped them. 
Administration doesn’t listen to its 
alum, and that’s worrisome. (To 
the administration), it’s not about 
education, it’s about money.”
LEO President Ian Robinson, a 
lecturer in the Residential College, 
expressed he feels Beck and Biza’s 
pay shouldn’t be cut to save money 
within SMTD.
“They’re not hurting for that 
money,” Robinson said. “I don’t 
believe that amount of money 
means a damn to a school the size 
of this one. Furthermore, if this 
really did matter … impose it on the 
administrators ... (who are) getting 
paid what is probably too much to 
begin with, if I’m frank. But (SMTD 
administration) 
get 
raises 
and 
claw back money from lecturers by 
taking away their livelihood after 
they’ve been excellent teachers. 
How can that possibly be right?”

LEO pickets in opposition of pay, course load cuts

Lecturers’ Employee Organization holds informational event outside of Hill Auditorium during SMTD graduation

CLAIRE HAO
Summer News Editor

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

ALEC COHEN/Daily

