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