College Shorts Be Like Midd-- Colby Moves to Expand

Author: Edward Pickering and Andrea Gissing

Yale Graduate Students Vote Down Union

In a vote Wednesday, Yale University graduate students rejected a move to unionize. The pro-union group that led the move, Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO), suffered a sound defeat with 694 voting against the move and 651 in support.
Anita M. Seth, GESO's chairwoman, said "Obviously I'm very surprised and disappointed. It's a really split vote. We've always known that Yale is a hard place to organize a union because it's the most antiunion place." Disappointed but still determined, Seth's group will increase its efforts to win support.
Opponents of unionization cited many reasons for their collective success. Many felt that GESO's tactics were too aggressive, its leadership dictatorial. Others recalled the past history of unions at Yale and, consequently, shied away from supporting a new union. Unions in the past engaged in numerous strikes and fights with the university, they say.
Labor experts, however, agree the vote could hamstring efforts to unionize Yale graduate students for years to come and signals that graduate students at other universities may not be so eager to unionize.
The Yale vote mirrored a vote that occurred at Cornell last October. At the New York school, graduate students voted overwhelming against unionizing, 1,351 to 580. Said Harry Katz, a professor of labor relations at Cornell, "The overall record for graduate student unionization has been pretty strong, but with the last two big votes, at Yale and Cornell, going against unionization, it may be signaling that something of considerable significance is going on."
Yale administrators support the position taken by Columbia and Brown, which are seeking to annul a two-year old labor board ruling that found graduate students at private universities had the right to unionize.
Many graduate students at Yale complained that the vote had been organized and administered unfairly. The sole voting booth on campus, they noted, was located near the Humanities buildings, where pro-union sentiment ran highest, and far from the science buildings, where anti-union sentiment was strongest.

Source: The New York Times


Colleges Rush to be Renamed

According to Higher Education Publications Inc., an Arlington Va., based corporation, in the past 10 years, 162 U.S. institutions have changed their names from "college" to "university." Many of these new universities, however, are still advertising themselves as having a college-like atmosphere, while others that have retained the collegiate nomenclature tell potential applicants of their similarities with universities.
Higher education experts say that most Americans falsely assume that there are rules to determining the names institutions have, for example that schools with graduate students are universities and schools without them are colleges.
Ted Mitchell, president of Occidental College, explains that the decision behind the names is basically, "all about marketing.""College connotes a slow pace, cozy campuses, tweedy faculty, ivy-covered gothic-style buildings and a curriculum that runs to the classics. University denotes a bustling city of academic energy and scientific progress, with things always moving and shaking with an eye to the future and the main chance."
The more modern, competitive title, university, appeals to 21st-century teenagers, however. Studies done by the consulting firm George Dehne & Associatesby found that two-thirds of prospective students planned on enrolling in a public or a private university, not a college. They found, as well, that universities were more highly regarded than colleges by employers and graduate schools.
One university at least, - the former University of Wooster - has switched to being a college, but it is not likely to start a competing trend because it accomplished this rare feat in 1915.

Source: The Washington Post


Colby College Begins $6.2-Million Expansion

Colby College's Board of Trustees approved the spending of $6.2 million dollars on a campus expansion project that will result in the construction of four new buildings over the next 10 years. The project is scheduled to start later this year.
Colby officials expect on having the necessary permits in hand by early fall so that construction, starting with the groundbreaking for the Colby Green, can begin. Construction for the planned alumni center is scheduled to start spring of 2004, followed by the building of the social science/interdisciplinary building.
Landscaping and earthwork for the Colby Green accounts for almost $2 million of the budgeted amount.
The plans are the result of several years of planning with firms from Maine and Massachusetts. The plans were approved by Colby trustees in April.

Source: Colby College