Mirror - Vol. 28, No. 16 - February 06, 2003

              February 6, 2003 Vol. 28, fss Fairfield University's Student Newspaper
Faculty real-life
Football program may be disbanded this week
BY MIKE PIGNATARO
Faced by a budget crunch,
Fairfield's athletic administration
said the university's football pro-gram
may be disbanded by the end
of this week and join the likes of
fellow-MAAC schools St. John's
and Canisius, which cut its pro-grams
earlier this year.
Director
EDITORIAL
Student athletes hurt
if ptogtam ended
Page 12
REACTIONS
Football players
sound off on possible
disbandment
Page 15
of Athletics
Eugene Doris
said a budget
meeting was
scheduled for
late Wednes-day
Feb. 5
where a deci-sion
would be
made whether
to keep the
program or
not. The result
of that meeting was not available
at press time, but the decision
will be posted online at
www.fairfieldmirror.com on
Thursday.
"It's been a difficult budget
year for athletics. ... We've been
lucky in the past," Doris said. "It's
highly speculative right now. The
fate of the team right now is un-known."
Doris cited budget cuts and
the struggling local economy as
chief factors behind the possible
disbandment of the program,
£1 .PEE
Chris Donato/The Mirror
Budget line drive: Alumni Field might see less use if the football program is disbanded this week.
which was a club sport until the
mid-80s and reinstated as a Divi-sion
I-AA non-scholarship varsity
sport in 1996. In 2001, the foot-ball
program was alotted $ 170,747
by the university to cover overall
team expenses, according to the
Fairfield University Athletics Dis-closure
Act documents.
Two weeks ago The Mirror
asked Doris if there was any pos-sibility
that the football program
would be disbanded, and Doris
said that anything was possible
when considering budget cuts.
"If you take a look at society
itself and the economy, econom-ics
of education are always in
question," said Doris two weeks
ago. "I mean we're in question
every year. We have to go into the
budget committee and justify what
we're doing and why we're doing
it. They have those meetings ev-ery
year for a reason."
At St. John's, an extensive 18-
month review focusing on maxi-mizing
student-athlete develop
SEE "FATE" ON P. 15
Student poll: library ranked as best campus resource
BY CHRIS ZEITZ
Half the student body liked
the Dimenna Nyselius Library and
half did not in 1997. According to
polls, students have the highest
opinion of the library among ma-jor
campus resources millions of
dollars and five years later.
Ninety-seven percent of stu-
MTRPOP library popularity
1T1.1.JV-IV%JJV Students gave the library higher marks
SNAPSHOT than in 1997. Here is how they responded
28%
Very Positive
What is your opinion of the library? Is it..
69%
43%
40%
I I- i Positive Very N«
11997 survey
[2002 survey
0% 3% 2%
Source: Classes of James Simon and Kurt Schlichting
Numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding
'■ » * * ■ ' '' ' ' J J i i i i
Negative Negative No opinion
dents said that they had a positive
opinion of the library, according to
a random polling in mid-Novem-ber
of 261 Fairfield University stu-dents.
In 1997, that number was
merely 46 percent.
The library prevailed in the
minds of students among nine re-sources,
ranging from FUSA to the
Health Center. Students expressed
an 87 percent positive rating for
campus computer labs, placing
these resources also among the
most favored. Statistically, the re-source
that faired the poorest was
the campus dining hall, with 51
percent of students with a negative
opinion.
The most recent "Senior Sur-vey"
also showed that the library
had the highest satisfaction rating
(86 percent) among campus re-sources.
Similar to the poll of the
entire student body, five years ago
the library was ranked near the
bottom with only a 27 percent sat-isfaction
rating, according to Joan
Overfield, Director of Library Ser-vices.
Students interviewed about
the strong poll results and library
officials pointed to the $16.7 mil-lion
building program as the "most
visible" improvement over the past
five years. According to
Overfield, the completed addition
doubled the available square foot-age
in the 2001-2002 academic
year.
"The added space allowed
new service opportunities such as
the 24-hour computer lab and cafe/
study space, the auditorium, an
enlarged Information Commons, a
second open computer lab, group
study rooms and an electronic
classroom," wrote Overfield in an
email.
SEE "SUCCESS" ON P. 4
experiences
benefit classes
BY SUSAN KEANE
GROSSMAN
Kristin Rodriguez, '04, a mar-keting
major, looks over a case
study she was handed in class and
is surprised by how realistic it
seems. A few minutes later her
professor informs the class that this
case was taken from his own ex-perience
in the business world.
Similar to other professors,
her professor has consulting expe-rience
in the business world, and
shares this valuable knowledge
with his students.
This kind of experience is
beneficial and encouraged by the
university according to academic
Vice President, Dr. Orin
Grossman.
"In general
the university
encourages fac-ulty
to have con-nections
outside
the university in
the professional
world," he said.
"For example,
in the School Of
Nursing, it is important that pro-fessors
have outside experience in
the clinical world so that they can
maintain their clinical skills and
have knowledge about the latest
technology and treatments.
"In professional schools like
the School of Nursing not only
would you encourage faculty hav-ing
outside work experience, but
you would expect it." Grossman
continued.
According to university
policy, any faculty member em-ployed
full time by the university
is required to file any outside em-ployment
with the academic vice
president and the dean of their
school.
Although there is no policy on
the amount of hours or extent to
which they may be involved with
any outside employment, there are
some limitations, according to Dr.
Grossman.
"The general rule of thumb is
that any professor employed out-side
the university should not work
the equivalent of more than one
day a week," he said. "We don't
want any faculty member involved
in another place that would take
away from class time, advising or
mentoring. Our first priority is the
students."
Students seem to agree that as
SEE "FACULTY" ON P. 4