The newly opened facilities, which have provided much needed space and resources to IPFW athletic teams and intramurals, are not currently available for use to student clubs and organizations.

“[Gates] is not a reservable space because the primary function was created for athletics,” said Student Activities Coordinator Thomas Landis.

“I am the president of what can easily be considered an alternative sports group. Our activities are primarily season-based and have needed indoor space for our growing amount of participants to continue practicing during the off-season,” said Joseph Carpenter, president of the Live Action Combat Club.

Carpenter was informed by student life that outside of reserving the racquetball courts the majority of the new facilities are not available to student organizations.

Athletic Director Thomas Bell says he hasn’t had any members of student clubs come to him about space, but even if they did, it would be hard to make space for them.

“Space here in our facility is a commodity. We’ve got to support the athletic program and meet the needs of academics. We don’t have a lot of space to accommodate more of the clubs,” said Bell.

Prior to the addition of the facilities, many IPFW athletic teams were forced to practice off-campus. According to Bell, with our Division I teams practicing in the facilities year-round, the hosting of intramurals and the limited sizes of other rooms within the building compared to its spacious hallways, making space for clubs like Wrestling and Jiu Jitsu is difficult to do.

“I understand sports teams get first dibs and full-heartedly agree, but don’t understand why the space isn’t in use, nor made available for use, during other hours for student organizations that could very much utilize the larger indoor room for their activities,” said Carpenter.

Bell suggests that student organizations searching for space should try the Dolnick Gym, but for those who find that the Gates Center should be made more accessible to students, self-advocating is key. The athletics department, while skeptical about the amount of space available, can’t make accommodations for clubs if the inquiries aren’t getting to the right people. Make your desire for space known.

Administrators in athletics should take note of this student interest and do their best to make time and space for student organizations. Student athletes deserve their space, but so do students who participate in athletic activities that aren’t recognized as official university sports.

According to Vice Chancellor of Financial Affairs Walter Branson, the university has worked hard to build a connection between the campus and the community.

“Overall, IPFW is involved in the community more than any other institution I’ve seen,” he said.

And yet, many students still believe that IPFW is its own community floating unconnected within the larger Fort Wayne community.

“I feel there is little campus connection to the community, very little interaction or involvement. I don’t see connections. I see us as a separate identity – We are IPFW and we’re isolated. Fort Wayne isn’t a university town,” said sophomore Mike Bachle.

IPFW has partnerships with organizations like the Fort Wayne Philharmonic and other non-profits, and runs venues downtown such as the Continuum Gallery, and while the university believes that being a resource to the community is enough of a connection, students aren’t feeling it.

“You’re not going to see a connection to the community until you can get people excited about being here. At colleges that have a big sense of community, the rallying factor is usually sports. When the basketball games are held at the Coliseum and we don’t have a football team or any big events that draw people here, they can’t expect a connection with the community, especially if we don’t feel a connection to the college,” said elementary education major Becca Amstutz.

“It may be that a lot of the connections we have are really involving faculty and staff. We don’t require in our majors community activities or service learning which would involve more of the community,” said Branson in response to the idea that students and faculty aren’t seeing eye to eye on campus-community connectivity.

He believes that much of the connections to the community don’t directly affect students, therefore giving them the idea that there is no connectivity.

And if this is the case, it seems that there needs to be more of a connection between the students and the administrators.

Students who don’t feel that IPFW is connected to the surrounding community need to speak up and be willing to offer their ideas on how this disconnect can be fixed. The university needs to take into account that students are like the troops on the ground – we’re living between the two different spheres, and getting our feedback can only benefit attempts at community outreach.

That’s why it’s almost scary that we haven’t received a letter to the editor in about a month.

Now, letters aren’t only good for calling us out—they’re also ways to get your opinion heard. Is there something going on, whether on or off campus, that you think needs to change? Maybe you want other students to know about something good–is there a professor you’d like to let others know teaches well?

The Communicator promotes free speech. and the newsroom welcomes any and all opinions. Your voice may be heard from many students both at IPFW and elsewhere,
Essentially, we want to hear from you. As readers, you are the audience we aim to write for, and your thoughts and opinions on things both campus and life related help us to better know what you would like to read in the newspaper each week.

To send a letter to the editor, simply email it to contact@ipfwcommunicator.org along with your name, title, address and a phone number to verify with. We’ll give you a call, and your opinion may make print.

“I just feel like IPFW is its own community within the Fort Wayne community. I don’t feel like we have much of a community outreach as far as incorporating [local] businesses. It just feels disconnected,” said VCD major Samantha Allred.

According to Vice Chancellor of Financial Affairs, Walter Branson, IPFW partners with many local non-profits, but not with as many local businesses.

One of the more recent partnerships with a business includes the hospitality services classrooms at the Holiday Inn, but this still leaves a lack of outreach to parts of Fort Wayne that aren’t on this side of Coliseum Blvd.

“From time to time we’ve held classes downtown,” said Branson. “They were for specific things, and as need went away they were discontinued.”

While holding classes downtown may no longer be a viable option, the idea of acquiring off-campus student housing comes to mind, which would increase flow between the campus and other areas of town, making certain local businesses more accessible to university students. It might also have the benefit of enticing more Fort Wayne native students to live in campus affiliated housing.

“I think it would be cool, especially downtown, to have the campus community feel, but to be farther away from campus. I feel like for those of us living in campus housing, we’re just right here—Glenbrook, Stellhorn, Maysville. There are a lot of resources that we don’t know about or utilize in the community because we’re concentrated here,” said Allred.

The university has a different standpoint on whether building or buying off-campus housing would be beneficial: “Probably not. One of the benefits of student housing is that it’s close to campus and recreation. It may not be economically viable for students, and I don’t think they’d use it,” said Branson.

The university currently has no plans to develop any of the surrounding areas, for housing or otherwise, but maybe it’s something they should take into consideration and get a student feel for.
The campus may be accessible to the community, but not all students are so sure that they have as much access to the community.

The college access channel is a member of the Alliance for Community Media, and as one of the three local cable access centers exists with the primary function of serving the local universities of Fort Wayne. The channel broadcasts online courses for students, shows live musical performances from university groups, and offers work study options to students that allow them to gain knowledge in the areas of production and operation.

Probably one of the most overlooked amenities, however, is the ability of students, regardless of major, to use this equipment.

“By and large, most students who do these programs are in media production classes. We get some from the visual and performing arts, but most students may not even know about it,” said CAtv Director Bernie Lohmuller.

Not only a useful resource for classes that may require the production of a video or program, the facilities of CAtv allow students who have no affiliation to any sort of media studies to create their own works, including programs and films of their own design.

Students choosing to take advantage of this opportunity would need to speak to the director about the proposed program or film for approval and there is the stipulation that all products made with the use of CAtv equipment must be played on the channel, but restrictions are few.

“We ask that the programs are suitable for the area we live in. Community standards are what we adhere to. We don’t allow bad language or graphic violence, but there are no restrictions on subject matter,” said Lohmuller

This allows a large amount of creative license to students, giving them both the tools to create their own television programs and the outlet for them to be seen by the community.

Mastodon Minutes, an IPFW club that runs a YouTube-based newscast, originally got its start using the studio and equipment provided by CAtv. Mastodon Minutes now has their own equipment, acquired through grants from the IPSGA, but the program has endured, and is now into its fourth season.

It’s unfortunate that this is not yet a common trend, with only 79 programs of the 201 programs and 700 online class sessions aired in 2010 being produced by students not employed by the station.

“IPFW is unique in the country for what we do here. It’s a great benefit, and students have this benefit at their disposal,” said Lohmuller.

For those students attending IPFW or Ivy Tech who aren’t camera shy, the opportunities for both creative freedom and an immense amount of free speech are up for the taking, not to mention the experience that can be gained through learning to use both the camera equipment and the editing software available through the station.

The college access channel is yet an undervalued resource that may in fact open more doors than many students realize.

Image from IPFW.edu

This year’s Homecoming week activities and celebrations were allotted $74,000 by the IPSGA, which is more than the cost of both Welcome Back Week and Spring Fling combined, according to Vice President of Finance, Kody Tinnel. This money was spent on various giveaways, food and activities such as Friday night’s highlighter party to drum up support for Saturday’s games and the Homecoming court candidates.

For some students, a Homecoming t-shirt and slice of pizza was their first knowledge that IPFW has a Homecoming celebration, an event that usually takes place during football season at most schools.

“Homecoming has been successful this year in raising awareness and spirit, but only because of the free stuff. Take away the free stuff and it’d be less effective,” said computer science major Vincent Carll.

Thursday’s festivities included a pep rally in the new Gates field house. Students were offered pizza and cotton candy if they stayed for the duration of the pep rally – an attempt that seemed to be aimed at the grab-and-go habits of the student population. Which prompts the question: Is school spirit about a sense of pride or a conditioned response to handouts?

“A dedicated crowd has spirit, but for the majority, not so much. Most people treat IPFW like a second high school – do your thing and get out,” said Carll.

This dedicated crowd of individuals is likely to be the same at all events, he pointed out. While that crowd may willingly participate in events throughout the year, much of the student body feels disconnected from any kind of university culture.

According to Kim Wagner of Alumni Relations, past graduates of IPFW come back for the Homecoming celebrations and feel a sense of pride and progress at the growth that the university has experienced.

Many current students, however mindful of the expansion, feel that a sense of community identity and true school spirit is missing. Freebies and handouts shouldn’t be what brings a school together – it should be the idea that we’re all working toward a common goal within a campus-centered community. And IPFW should expend just as much effort bringing the student body together year-round as they do to show alumni university progress during Homecoming Week.

1. Professors do most of their work outside the classroom, and thus students are extremely ill equipped to assess the amount or quality of their professors’ work. Students have the opportunity and sufficient knowledge to assess their professors’ teaching, through student evaluations, but they are not privy to the details of the rest of the work a professor does, and that is why administrators, not students, set salaries for faculty members.

2. Random people’s opinions on how much a professor should be paid are not a meaningful basis for decision making about faculty salaries. Instead of comparing professors’ salaries to salaries for jobs requiring significantly less education, it would be more relevant to consider professorial pay in comparison with other professionals with approximately the same number of years of education beyond the bachelor’s degree, such as physicians, whose eight years of post-baccalaureate training is on par with the amount of time it takes to get a PhD.

According to Health Leaders Media, “internists’ salaries in 2010 averaged $191,864, a 6.6% increase over the $179,958 average salary in 2009.”

Although we have found multiple news stories about increasing salaries for physicians over the past few years, we find no outcry at all against this fact, whereas attacks on professor salaries, and on tenure, are constant. We seem to agree, as a culture, that patients do not have the necessary knowledge to assign a fair salary to doctors, everyone seems to have an opinion on how much professors should be paid, the terms of their employment, etc.

3. The average salary data from the Chronicle of Higher Education provided by [“It Takes a Village” author] is presumed to represent IPFW faculty, though that is not specified in the article. When talking about average salaries for faculty at IPFW, it should be noted that IPFW ranks 12th out of 14 public institutions in the state of Indiana in terms of salaries for full professors. For associate professors, IPFW ranks 6th, and for assistant professors, 5th. Incidentally, Geyer does not mention the average salary for assistant professors—a substantial proportion of full-time faculty at IPFW—whose average salary is $58,500.

Geyer should have also considered the substantial differences in salaries between the various schools within IPFW. When asking individual students if they think their professors are worth the arbitrary amount she has chosen to provide for them, it would be necessary to specify if the professor in question was teaching their business class or their English class.

4. The Communicator article noted that IPFW faculty received raises last year but does not mention that faculty members did not receive pay raises, except those tied to promotions, or merit increases for the two years before that. Surely this fact is worth mentioning. Additionally, the article suggestd that faculty pay, not administrator pay, is “the problem” by noting that faculty pay accounts for 31.8 percent of revenue, while administrator salaries account for 17.2 percent of revenue, without mentioning the fact that IPFW employs significantly more faculty members than administrators.

Geyer could have also done a bit more research and taken a look at the biennial reports provided by the Budgetary Affairs Subcommittee to the IPFW Senate. If she did, she would have learned that the allocation of IPFW resource for administrative expenses has been steadily increasing for the last decade, after hovering at around 9-11 percent for most of the 1980-90s. Last year, IPFW was second of all the Indiana public schools in the percentage allocated for its administrative expenses.

If Geyer had spoken to an actual faculty member as part of her research, rather than getting the “university response” from an administrator, some of these points might have come to light before this under-researched article saw print.

The week of that issue just happened to be Homecoming for IPFW. The only place I found a true showing of what was going on the rest of that week was on page two, not page one or the cover, but a shafted second page.

The question I pose is why is the one and only campus newspaper not supporting the campus in which it resides on? I understand there is news to cover and articles to be shared, but when you receive funds from the students you should support what happens at home first.

Make your news relevant to here not there; make it worth while not a surplus. If I wanted to know what was happening at another campus I would have went there to read their paper or watched the nightly news.

This is IPFW, which needs to come together to show its pomp and circumstance, not dwell over the same old stuff that others have placed in the recycle bin.

IPFW prides itself on catering to the many non-traditional and commuting students that make up the student population. In order to get financial aid, these students must be considered full-time students, with a minimum of 12 credit hours. Making time for the classes themselves may not be a problem, but the real college schedule is heavier than it appears.

The university suggests that for every hour a student spends in class, they should be studying for three hours outside of class. For a student taking 15 credits, this means they should be spending 45 hours a week studying in addition to the 15 hours they spend in class.

A survey of IPFW students found that respondents spent an average of 14 hours a week studying and working on homework. The number of hours spent studying likely varies by course, but many students can’t realistically spend 45 hours a week in study.

Many students, full-time or otherwise, have commitments to jobs that help them to pay for their daily expenses and tuition. The high population of non-traditional students at IPFW means that many of those students also have families and obligations within the home to deal with, meaning that schooling, while important, sometimes has to take the back-burner.

“Non-traditional students face many challenges. Those who are successful academically have found a way to balance the demands of their lives outside of school with the academic expectations of their courses. Because they are more mature, often more disciplined, and because they are shouldering the financial responsibility for their education, they are often among the most successful students at IPFW,” said Dean of Arts and Sciences Carl Drummond.

To be sure, not all students are diligently working toward their education 24/7. They like to enjoy social and entertainment activities. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are slacking off. Between school, study, jobs, friends and sleep, the majority of students have schedules full to bursting. And many students will choose to shave a few hours of sleep off their day before they’ll slack on school work.

While students agree that doing well in a class requires more effort than idly sitting in on class lectures, they also believe that professors often don’t take outside factors into consideration. Instructors plan their course schedules around their content and the number of weeks they have to teach it, often ignoring the fact that students have more than just the one class to focus on.

“I am an honor student, but my grades are on the border line of staying in that status this semester due to not enough time to study. Many of my professors give the impression that their class is the only course offered at IPFW,” said Tricia Day, mother of three.

The solution isn’t to do away with work outside the classroom, but for professors to have a more realistic expectation of what students have the time to handle. Because the mother of two isn’t going to ignore her sick children just to finish a paper for class, and the student who has to choose between studying and making money to pay for food and gas isn’t going to call in sick to read another chapter in their textbook.

But how much of what people term noise pollution is actually a problem?

Excessive noise is relative to the area on campus that you happen to be in. A Facebook poll found that most students consider dining areas, such as the Stomping Grounds, to be the loudest areas on campus, followed closely by the rest of the student union and housing. And the area you are in will affect how the situation should be handled.

Housing, for instance, has a time schedule that limits noise, so even if your neighbor is playing their music loud enough to hear it two doors down, you probably wouldn’t lodge a complaint until after quiet hours. Tenants allow each other a certain amount of leniency when it comes to noise.

Noise levels on campus are slightly different.

Inside buildings, there is usually a cap on noise levels, especially inside academic buildings where classes take place. However, a building such as the Student Union might be different. Students hang around these areas between classes, and not all of that time is spent studying.

Yale did a study on the effects of noise on stress in 2004 and found that noise pollution can have negative mental and behavioral effects; However, this is often after very repetitive or long-lasting noises that have become commonplace to the brain by the time they have any affect – living next to a busy highway, for example.

While some individuals can get extremely loud about things that no one else is concerned about, IPFW’s campus is a public place, which means they have the right to do so. Unlike living next to a busy highway or airport, you can easily remove yourself from an area that is plagued by noisy individuals, and the library happens to be centrally located with designated quiet areas for study.

It would be nice if everyone remembered that all students share IPFW’s airspace and that many people use their campus time to study, but we all have the right to use that airspace as loudly as we choose.