Mirror - Vol. 38, No. 24 -April 24, 2013

              THE MIRROR Student-run newspaper Week of April 24,2013 Vol. 38, Iss. 23
www.fairfieldmirror.com ]V1
fairfieldmirror
The Fairfield Mirror
Maintenance staff to rally Sat.
By Salvatore Trifilio
News Editor
On Saturday, April 27, as
students head off campus for this
year's Clam Jam, they will notice
members of the maintenance staff
participate in a labor rally.
The rally will be held near
Fairfield's main entrance gates,
but not on university property,
from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m.
After the meeting with ad-ministration
twice during the
week of April 1, members of the
maintenance staff have voted
down the administrations initial
contract offer and have decided to
take action.
In "a total group effort" the
33 members of Fairfield Univer-sity's
maintenance staff almost
unanimously voted down the of-fer,
with only two members absent
and one abstaining to vote.
Although the group is not in
agreement with the initial con-tract
offer, they are in agreement
for what their next course of ac-tion
should be.
John Minopoli represents the
electrical department of the main-tenance
staff and assured their
demonstration will be peaceful.
"It's a rally, not a strike, not
a protest, just a peaceful demon-stration,"
Minopoli said. "It's just
Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson spoke at the Regina A. Quick Center in front of a sold-out audience on Monday night. Nick DiFazio/The Mirror
Famed astrophysicist sells out Quick Center
By Martin O'Sullivan
Editor-in-Chief Emeritus
For anyone who was disap-pointed
when Pluto got kicked out
the planet club, you might be inter-ested
to know that the reason for
its declassihcation was standing on
campus this week.
On Monday, April 23, Dr.
Neil deGrasse Tyson spoke to a
full house at the Fairfield Univer-sity
Quick Center of the Arts in a
speech entitled "Cosmic Discovery
(and what it takes to enable it)."
Aided by the projections be-hind
him, Tyson used his time on
stage to describe several aspects
of the cosmos as well as why we
should care about delving into
space: "There has to be a system
that supports it, that funds it, that
cares about it, that cares about the
fruits of those discoveries."
Tyson is known for being a
supporter of doubling the size of
the federal budget for NASA, citing
that it would reignite American in-novation
and quench the American
"fear of science."
As for Pluto, it would seem
that size also matters. "Pluto had
it coming," said Tyson. "Our moon
is five times the mass of Pluto. No-body
told you that, did they? You
Pluto lovers out there."
As one of the first scientists
to publicly denounce Pluto as a
planet, Tyson said, "I lost five years
of my fife dealing with the press
and pissed-off fourth graders." He
shared two instances of "hate male,"
one from a fourth-grader and the
other a seventy-two year old. "I
have a filing cabinet of hate mail
like this."
In a further effort to make the
audience consider the relativity of
size, Tyson showed a picture taken
of Saturn from the Cassini space-craft.
READ KING ON PAGE 3
to make the public aware of, you
know, to help our families."
"Should there be a rally or
demonstration planned for Satur-day,
we certainly will respect and
not interfere with it," said Mark
C. Reed, Senior Vice President
READ RALLY ON PAGE 3
Former Stag
spreads OCD
awareness
By Christina Mowry
Contributing Writer
On April 17, National Alliance on
Mental Illness Fairfield and the Psychol-ogy
Club teamed up to host an event en-titled
"Opening Doors, Opening Minds"
to raise mental health awareness.
This event featured Fairfield alum-nus
and Cinefest 2012 winner John Tes-sitore
along with four other speakers.
Each speaker provided a look into his
or her personal experiences with mental
disorders.
President of the Psychology Club,
Abbey Matys '13, spoke about the club's
focus on breaking the stigma associated
with mental disorders.
To kick off the event, Catherine
Maslan, senior nursing student, took
the stage. Maslan is the co-president of
NAMI, an up-and-coming club at Fair-field.
NAMI encourages students to help
end the negative stigma typically asso-ciated
with mental disorders. Whilst on
the stage, Maslan interacted with the
audience by playing a quick round of
"myth or fact" to break the ice and intro-duce
the theme of the evening - break-ing
the stigma.
After Maslan's activity, John Tes-sitore's
documentary "Heroes Get Re-membered
but Legends Never Die" was
shown to an attentive audience.
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Student debt concerns Fairfield University undergraduates
By Enxhi Myslymi
Associate News Editor
Sophomore Artemisa Ngjela
wakes up at six in the morning every
Tuesday and Friday, so she can make
it on time to her Religious Studies
class at 8:00 a.m.
Having to drive to school was
not an issue her freshman year be-cause
she lived on campus.
However, this year, Ngjela de-cided
to commute an hour from her
home in Waterbury Fairfield for her
next three years, but not due to per-sonal
preference.
"It was cheaper to commute,"
Ngjela said, explaining that financial
costs pushed her to begin commut-ing
in order to save over $12,000 in
room and board per year. "I didn't
want to drown in debt by the time I
graduated," she added.
Ngjela is not alone in her senti-ments.
An increasing number of stu-dents
are taking on student loans as
tuition continues to rise and college
becomes less affordable.
Majority agrees: Aid should in-crease
According to an unofficial sur-vey
of 65 students at Fairfield, about
50 percent believed that their finan-cial
needs were met. 88 percent of
students also agreed that aid should
be increased for students, especially
given the 3 percent tuition increase
for next year.
Fairfield has increased its finan-cial
aid budget and has been pro-viding
students with more aid, but
in a school that costs an average of
$55,000 a year to attend - including
room and board - student loans are
necessary for a majority of students.
Even though financial aid packag-es
average to $28,140, students still
need to scrounge up another $30,000
each year.
It becomes increasingly diffi-cult
to pay for school when students
have other siblings attending college.
Several students feel that Fairfield
should take into account the number
of children a family might have in
school at once.
Distribution of aid: Fair or un-fair?
However, according to Karen
Pellegrino, Fairfield's Dean of En-rollment
and Financial aid, Fairfield
does take familial situations into
consideration.
A financial aid formula is used
as a basis for the amount of financial
aid given, but Pellegrino stated that
Fairfield "does [its] best to look at
individual circumstances" that stu-dents
may have, adding "Fairfield has
always been an institution to fill fam-ily's
needs" offering aid to 80 percent
of students.
However, federal budget cuts
have been making it difficult to dis-tribute
aid because "federal aid has
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