1997-02-17; Central Michigan Life

              Central Michigan LIFE
Volume 79, Number 62
Mt. Pleasant,   MI 48859
©1997 CM LIFE
77 years of serving the community
MONDAY
February 17, 1997
12 pages
20 employees have
bid out of Dining
Services since '95
By Angela Cook
LIFE Staff Writer
LIFE Photo/Jeremy J. McNamara
(above) Shanta Smith, Flint sophomore and member of   Bloodlines, rock the house at the Night of the Apollo in Pearce Hall,
Saturday night. Night of the Apollo was sponsored by Organization for Black Unity.
0/tA/0£
LIFE Photo/ Steve Kanoza
(left) Dancers from the Aisha School of Dance in
Detroit perform a traditional African dance to drums
at the first Afrikan Marketplace on campus Saturday
in the IET building.
About 20 American Federation
of State County and Municipal
Employees Local 1568 employees have bid out of Dining
Services since ARAMARK took
control in 1995, the local union
president said.
Rae Goldsmith, associate vice
president for Public Relations
and Marketing, said the number
of people bidding out of Dining
Services is not tracked.
"We're not surprised some of
the Dining Services workers
would exercise their contract to
move out of the unit," she said.
Linda Philo, AFSCME president, said Dining Services
employees with the highest
seniority are bidding out of
Dining Services, and as a result,
379 years of seniority have left
the department.
Philo said she calculated the
years of experience put in by the
workers who have ammmmm^mmammwmmmmm
bid out of Dining
Services in the
past two years.
"That's how
many years of
seniority walked
out the door," she
said.
Goldsmith said
one of the reasons
attributed to those
bidding out may
be the instability
and uncertain circumstances of
Dining Services,
such as the subcontracting agreement with ARAMARK and the
limited term contract      with      the
union
"There has been
a lot of uncertainty
"It was the hardest decision I've
ever had to make. I
felt like I was
deserting them."
LINDA PHILO,
AFSCME president
"We're not surprised some of the
Dining Service
workers would
exercise their contract to move out of
the unit."
about Dining Services for about
two years," she said.
Goldsmith said when workers
bid out, they are replaced by
workers taken from a pool of
relief workers. Temporary workers are used only when the pool
of relief workers is low, which
rarely happens.
"(Bidding out) is not causing
any problems," she said. "We
have no reason to believe that
they are of less quality to perform the work. We do have a
good pool of relief workers.
"They've been willing to train
and things seem to be in working order," she said.
Philo said more workers would
leave Dining Services if opportunities to work elsewhere on campus were available.
Philo bid out of Dining
Services in January. She is now
a custodian and said it was not
an easy decision.
"It  was  the   hardest  decision
mmmmmmmm^—^m  I've     ever     had     to
make.   I   felt   like   I
was deserting them,"
she said.
Patty Zuker, custodian, left Nov. 10
after 16 years in
Dining Services to
work for Facilities
Management.
"We have seen
more Dining
Services workers
walk off the job in
the last two years
than in all our years
of employment,"
Zuker said.
She said she bid
out of        Dining
Services because she
no longer felt like a
valued employee and
she could not afford
RAE GOLDSMITH,
Associate vice president for Public Relations
and Marketing I the wage cut.
1 Dining Service
See RELOCATION Page 2
New registration
method will allow
online class enrollment
By Jeremy H. Dickman
LIFE Staff V\''.v-
Anew class registration method allowing students to sign up
for classes online is in the earlv preparation phase by the
Registrar's Office.
"It's in the planning stages, that within the next year or two we
want to be able to have online registration," said Assistant Registrar
Elaine First.
When the Registrar's Office recently purchased new hardware to
operate the STAR system. First said they also received approval for
an additional device for online registering.
The online registration service will allow students to add and drop
classes online. First said. Students will be able to find out which
class sections are available and register for them on the spot.
To use online registration, students would simply access the CMU
mainframe server with their user id just as they would to access e-
mail. First said
"It's a separate component of STAR," she said.
Online registration is a way for students to have more help with
signing up for classes.
"It's certainly going to be a benefit for students," she said.
The new STAR system hardware, targeted to begin with summer
registration (Feb. 24), will not change student use, First said.
Although STAR's speed should improve with the new hardware,
See ONLINE Page 2
About 180 gather to conclude celebration
By Wendy Williams
LIFE Staff Writer
International Week concluded
Friday with its second annual
International Week Banquet in
the Bovee University Center.
The audience of approximately
ISO people included students,
faculty and staff, community
members and current and former international students.
The program began with a
speech by Chris Viers, associate
director of International
Education. Viers spoke of the
need for students to be able to
"function in a global society," and
also commented that international students help to "expand
our horizons."
There are currently 337 international students at CMU from
55 countries, the highest enrollment ever. CMU also has 67 students studying abroad this
semester in 20 countries.
Viers talked about a new program, beginning this fall, consisting of an additional 100
study abroad programs in 50
countries, for which students
will pay CMU tuition.
LIFE Photo/Corey Hendricks
Friday's second annual International Banquet concluded the International Week's activities. Faculty
and staff members, current and previous international students and community members attended.
Following   Viers,   Mary   Ellen
Brandell, chair of        the
International Advisory Board
and interim vice provost of
Academic Affairs, spoke of a new
global   reality   higher   education
faces. Brandell stressed the need
for students to prepare for a
"global society," saying that students will live in a different
world and must learn diversity
and acceptance.
James Crawley, coordinator of
International Admissions, said
he was pleased with the events
of International Week.
See BANQUET Page 2	
CMU student
died Saturday
Jennifer Gregoria,
Southgate senior, died
Saturday morning.
Gregoria was diagnosed in
June of 1995 with Non-
Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
Last summer, Gregoria
received a bone marrow
transplant from her brother.
Funeral arrangements
were not available at press
time. See Wednesday's CM
LIFE for more details.
Telephone companies ask for per-minute Internet charge
Hi Local telephone companies
are not looking to change
their access methods or rates
By Jeremy H. Dickman
LIFE Staff Writer	
To reduce the amount of traffic on telephone lines, many telephone companies
are asking the Federal Communications
Commission to consider charging
Internet users a per-minute rate fee for
Internet access.
Ben Heskett, in a Jan. 24 article on the
World Wide Web site
http://www.cnet.com., said the FCC convened a "Bandwidth Forum" on Jan. 23 to
discuss the problems of Internet congestion on public telephone lines or the public switched-telephone network.
The telephone companies want to
receive monetary help in increasing the
capacity of the PSTN to handle more traffic, Heskett's article said.
However, the article added, others in
the communication industry believe the
Internet providers should have to pay the
extra costs because once the system is
improved, the service providers will gain
monetary benefits.
Local telephone companies in the
Mount Pleasant area are not looking to
change their access methods or rates.
"Ameritech has not involved itself in
that manner asking for Internet access
charges," said Frank Mitchell, media
relations manager for Ameritech, Corp.
However, one immediate way
Ameritech is addressing the problem of
telephone line overload is by adding more
capacity in some of the most used areas,
Mitchell said.
"We are working with Internet Service
Providers to find some other solutions,"
Mitchell said. "We don't think that (access
charges) offer any long-term answer to
keeping Internet traffic from competing
for capacity on lines on telephone network with regular telephone traffic."
In the future, Mitchell said, the solution could be something such as a data
network or a separate network at the
point of overload.
The data network would allow users to
enter the network when accessing the
Internet and bypass the overloaded area,
and would free up the regular telephone
lines, Mitchell said.
"Everybody wants to get on the Internet
See CHARGES Page 2