Investigative Reporting 495
Hot ideas
Safety concerns
• Firefighting: Is equipment, training, etc.
safe?
• EMS: who are members, what is their
training? What is their record?
• Police: What is the safety record? Read
this first:
http://www.securityoncampus.org/schoo
ls/cleryact/
Rutgers compliance with
OPRA.
• Get the law (it’s short)
• Contact Government Records Council
(Trenton)
• Talk to NJFOG people.
• Devise a spread sheet of requests and how
many were successful.
• Talk to people. (Leslie Fehrenbach for
starters.)
Percent of grads in the military
• Compare to other state universities.
• Talk to grads who have done it.
• Find out about grads who died; get their
stories.
• Talk to current military veterans at
Rutgers: are they getting administrative
support?
Outlaw fraternities and
sororities
• Which ones are they?
• Any trouble?
• What is the downside to being nonofficial? Upside?
• Dangers to Rutgers students.
• Parents’ point of view.
Patterns in course evaluations
• Evaluation system is all online now.
• Does it produce more or fewer replies
than paper?
• Compare to ratemyprofessor (it’s all
online, including Rutgers).
• Who is responsible for it?
• What has it done to improve education
at Rutgers?
• It wasn’t supposed to be used for hiring
and tenure, but it is. Trace history.
Institute-forming at Rutgers
• What is it?
• Is it just to make money, improve
reputation?
• Almost every longtime prof has one?
Why?
• Downside.
Who is entitled to student
directory info?
•
•
•
•
Why is it collected if it isn’t used?
What problems has it caused?
Spam email problems
Who is in charge of it?
How green is Rutgers?
• Compare to other state universities.
• Find out things like cloth diapers,
energy-efficient appliances, hybrid
vehicles, recycling, dryers or
clotheslines, cloth bags at bookstores,
etc., bicycling.
• A general report or zero in on any
aspect you think shows the real story.
Do athletic contributors get
access to players and
coaches?
• Are the contributions good for tax writeoffs?
• Do they influence coaches, athletic
director, etc. and how?
• Who are they? (The big ones).
What are the rules about
romance?
• Between professors and students.
• Between staff and students.
• Between higher level employees and
lower-level. (McCormick did this —
twice.)
• Get stories, find out disciplinary action.
• Have there been any cases about this?
Climate changing at Rutgers
• State climatologist in residence at
Rutgers.
• Has Rutgers seen global warming? How
has it affected life in the area.
• Arboretum on campus.
• Go to
http://climate.rutgers.edu/stateclim/
State of day-care/night-care
•
•
•
•
•
What do students and staffers do?
Is it a sufficient system?
Is is costly?
Where are they?
Who runs it, how does it work?
Security at social functions
•
•
•
•
Is there prejudice/racism over security?
Compare white and non-white functions.
Get stories.
Get stats: how many officers were sent
to various events?
Funding for campus media
•
•
•
•
Why are there disparities?
How is money doled out?
Talk to editors, radio managers, etc.
Is there prejudice against, for example,
the Medium and Black Voice?
• Is there political prejudice?
Campus inequities
• Newark, Camden, New Brunswick.
• What are their budgets?
• Why does Rutgers always announce
improvements at all three?
• Talk to administrators, students, etc., to
compare services.
Suicide at Rutgers
• Incident at Targum few years ago. Get
details.
• Is it common?
• Why does Targum have a policy on it,
and what is it? Do other publications
have policies?
• Why is it downplayed?
• Get human-interest stories.
Tyler Clementi/Dharun Ravi
• Almost anything about suicide or
bullying.
• Where is he now (Dharun)?
• The trial. Its effects.
• This year’s freshman class; what has
(or has not) been done to avoid another
similar case? (Maybe nothing?)
Semi-legal highs
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Salvia
Bath salts
Laughing gas
Cough syrup
JWH-18, a cannabinoid
Dextromorphan
Oxycodone (oxycontin)
What is the budget of PR?
• How much does the communications
office get? What is it used for?
• How much is spent on photography?
• How much is spent on printing vs.
online?
• Is the office wasting money?
• New consolidation of PR magazines for
staff.
Use of athletic facilities for
ordinary students
•
•
•
•
•
•
Who uses them?
How often?
What do they cost?
Where are they?
Is there waste?
What percentage of students use them?
Rutgers old alumni
• Karl and Bert are just two of the many
anti-McCormick alums.
• Get their stories. Find out more.
• What is the Rutgers 1000?
• What are the competing philosophies of
bigger sports vs. reduction of academic
reputation?
Condition of Rutgers golf
course
•
•
•
•
•
Where is it?
What is its history?
Money coming in, going out?
What is its condition?
Used by small elite?
Who got tickets for fall football
— and how?
•
•
•
•
•
Cost
Permitting (ticket license)
Location of seats
Who ARE these people?
What is their connection to Rutgers or
N.J. power structure?
“Embedded” reporters
Enterprise story
• Anyone can do it.
• Firefighter, EMS, anything you can
volunteer for.
• Even sports (read Paper Tiger, by
George Plimpton).
How do they choose
basketball tourney locations?
• Why has Rutgers been passed over?
• Who decides?
• When are future ones — and where?
Who checks grades of
athletes?
• What are the requirements?
• What does the NCAA require?
• Discuss “gut” courses — speech for
athletes.
• Can ordinary students take these
courses?
“Sinister” looks
• Cell phone cameras, etc. make coaches
look sinister.
• Posting online
• Cameras in locker rooms
• Cameras in rest rooms
• Violation of privacy?
• What does “reasonable expectation of
privacy” mean?
Who are we?
• Racially, get stats from OIC
• SATS, how does Rutgers rank, today
and yesterday?
• Rank in HS class over the years, up or
down and why?
• Socio-economic level
• Male-Female/Racial
• Trends.
Energy consumption of
stadium
• How has the new stadium affected it?
• More cars?
• Any movement to get people to take
mass transit (buses to parking lots don’t
count).
• Garbage, upkeep, etc.
Historic preservation
• DeWitt an example another is Low.
• How many buildings have been
destroyed?
• Get history.
• New College Avenue — will it destroy
buildings?
• Eminent domain — does Rutgers have
it?
Local theater in NB and
campus
•
•
•
•
•
Up, down, changed?
What are they, what have they been?
Who is in charge of them?
What has happened to their budgets?
The State Theater, Crossroads, and oncampus.
Mortgage
meltdown/resurgence
•
•
•
•
•
Staff, students, faculty affected by it?
Has Rutgers been affected?
Get stories.
Get stats.
Background yourself about it.
Student loans
• Good team topic:
– Students who graduated and have big debt
– How the law changed over the summer
– What can today’s freshman expect?
– Calculate how much money a graduating
senior expects to make vs. level of loans
• Talk to parents, loan officers, govt.
officials
More student loans
• Who is Sallie Mae and why is she
saying those terrible things about me?
• Go to studentloans.gov
• Students paid more than they should
because of government program
• Tons of ideas out there: hottest issue in
America: the next mortgage meltdown?
Increase in foreign students?
• Are they used as low-paid lab techs?
• Are they increasing or decreasing?
• What is the university doing to help? Is
it really help?
• Who are they? Get stories?
• Talk to AAUP.
Ages of professors, staff
• Will a lot be retiring soon? (Baby
boomers).
• What will the result be?
• What are they?
• What changes have they seen?
• Major turnover going on.
How do you become a
Rutgers supplier?
•
•
•
•
•
Hurtles?
What if you are a small company?
Pay-offs?
Ways to get around the system?
How does the system work?
Employment at Rutgers
•
•
•
•
•
Are postings real?
Are jobs filled as they post them?
Get background stories from staffers.
How many (%) are hired from within?
Get number of jobs posted during a
certain period and the number of
outsiders hired.
Changing face of downtown
• Use George and Albany streets as center.
• Business declining or growing?
• Effect of New Brunswick Tomorrow and
DEVCO (link is in Sakai resources).
• Talk to downtown businesspeople,
reporters, residents, David Harris, the
poor.
• John Lynch backgrounder.
J&J
• How strong is the influence of Johnson
& Johnson?
• Grants handled directly through Old
Queens.
• Who are the players?
• How much do they give to Rutgers?
• What do they get?
Parking in NB
•
•
•
•
•
Is the system corrupt?
Payments are too high?
How are Rutgers students affected?
How to get a parking meter card.
Do they rip off students?
Can you vote on College
Avenue?
• No polling place.
• Used to be one in gym. What
happened?
• Talk to William Hamilton, city attorney,
to start. Then city clerk.
Rutgers history (Enterprise)
• Series on how buildings were named.
• And why. Lack of knowledge by
students.
• McCormick Hall, Bloustein School
• Nothing for Fran Lawrence. Review his
career. (recently died)
• What was Rutgers like in the old days?
• Talk to alumni.
Fraternity violence
•
•
•
•
•
Is it a problem?
Initiation
Hazing
History of problems.
Students who died in fraternities.
Text messaging
• Since Virginia Tech.
• How many signed up?
• Has it been used elsewhere? What
were the results?
• What else is Rutgers doing to protect
students?
Outside jobs
• How many professors have outside
jobs?
• Do they report it? Must they?
• Are there conflicts? Do they work in
fields they teach?
• What is the Rutgers rule on it?
How many Rutgers people
have served?
•
•
•
•
Students, faculty, staff.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, elsewhere.
Get stories.
See how the numbers measure up to
other state universities?
Rutgers health centers
• Get health dept. reports on them — county and
state.
• Are they effective?
• Complaints?
• Student stories.
• What the county health dept. inspects
• County health report. Check out animals (p
61/actually 41)
• OPRA (or just ask) for individ. Health reports.
Rutgers dining halls
• Get health dept. reports on them —
county and state. Easy to get.
• Are they decent?
• Complaints?
• Student stories.
• Also, other eateries on and off campus.
Do a chart, report, or story.
The chapels
•
•
•
•
•
•
Kirkpatrick and Voorhees
Weddings up, down, unchanged?
Outsiders allowed?
What do alumni think?
Making money?
Are they incongruous in today’s
atmosphere?
ADA
• How is Rutgers doing on the Americans
with Disability Act?
• Get report.
• A long way to go, or is it almost all
accomplished?
• Check out controversy about Geology
Museum.
Crime on campus
• Petty crime, more than an annoyance.
• Serious crime — is it reported?
• Which campus is safest? Most
dangerous? Why?
• Get stories.
• Clery reports.
Grade inflation
• Is it real?
• How does it work?
• Talk to students and faculty. Also
deans.
• How does it affect education in light of
the sports scandal?
• Discuss the effectiveness of the “D”.
Computer fees
• How is it used?
• What is the oversight on it?
• How does it compare to other state
universities and other RU campuses?
• Who has a say in which programs are
installed?
• Should it be listed on your term bill
separately?
Retire and consult?
• Can Rutgers staff retire and come back
as consultants?
• What happens?
• Get records of vendors.
• Consultants’ records.
• Is it profitable or is it bad education?
Legal fees
• How much does Rutgers spend on legal
fees?
• What does it get?
• Difference between staff lawyers and
private “consultants”.
• Who gets the most?
• Include staff attorney involved in sports
scandal.
Scholarships
• Many HS grads fail to keep
scholarships. Why?
• Who loses scholarships at Rutgers?
• What is the story behind it?
• What happens to the money?
School violence in NB & Pisc.
• Is it serious?
• How does it affect Rutgers (some
students have children going to those
schools).
• Talk to editors of school papers, get
violence reports from the state.
• Talk to officials of each district.
Contracts
• Who is getting big contracts to do work
at Rutgers vs. who makes big
donations.
• How does it affect the Board of
Governors and Board of Trustees?
• Relate it to sports.
Dual management
• Why are there two governing bodies at
Rutgers (Trustees and Governors).
• What does it take to get on?
• How does it compare to other universities
(theory is that Rutgers doesn’t have highpowered members, but rather loyalists
instead).
• Follow recent fight bet. Sweeney and
Board.
Fire safety
• Talk to NB and state fire marshalls, ask
to see what it takes to get an inspection,
or read up on past (recent) inspections.
• Contact Underwriter Laboratories (Amy
Hammil).
• Google: Center for Campus Fire Safety.
• Google: Campus Fire Watch.
Vendors
• Get Rutgers contracts with vendors and
interview them.
• Pick a subject area and learn the heck
out of it; then write the story.
• What does it take to become a vendor?
What happened to Douglass
and Cook?
• There were promises made about their
programs. Have they been kept?
• The Women’s Program, so-called.
• The campus: is it a shell of its former
self?
• What do women’s rights advocates
say?
• Former DC and Cook grads?
Campus buses
• Get the contracts. Who are they, what is
their company history, and especially
their safety record (in and out of
Rutgers)?
• Have they had a lot of accidents?
• Who checks up on them? State? Feds?
• Where are they located?
• Trace ownership.
A “designer” freshman class
• Admissions picks certain ethnic groups.
• Is it quotas? Explain what that is.
• How has the freshman class changed
over the recent past, and compare to
distant past.
• Who picks them? What are their
qualifications? Who writes to
requirements?
New Brunswick/Pisc. crime
• What are the “bad” neighborhoods?
• Do students live there?
• How does crime stack up against
downtown revitalization?
• Where are the hot spots?
• Who polices football games? (CIA?)
Prostitution
• Cases in New Brunswick, Piscataway,
Middlesex County.
• Cops used to run it.
• Talk to merchants.
• Several arrests over the summer.
– Here
– And here.
Gambling
• On campus and off campus
• Arrests, convictions
• How extensive is it? Do frats, dorms
have ongoing games?
• What does Rutgers do to ameliorate it?
• Are there “game nights” at campus
functions?
• Sports gambling.
In-state/out-of-state students
• How is it trending?
• Theory is there are more out-of-state to
make up for lost state budget.
• Talk to students.
• What are their problems (transportation,
etc.)?
RUSA
• Check its budget
• How have the new by-laws worked?
• Does it do anything besides give money
away?
• Prejudices in its grants.
• Case in Newark of religious group that
got lots of money.
Banking in NJ
• Are any banks in danger of shutting
down? See Failed banks list
• Check local banks.
• List of troubled banks. Search “NJ.”
• What is the FDIC?
• Divide non-performing assets by
tangible equity.
Virginia Tech in NJ?
• The measure (A-2405) builds upon the
work of the state Campus Security Task
Force created following the April 2007
massacre at Virginia Tech to
recommend ways for New Jersey's
colleges to enhance on-campus safety.
• NJ Campus Security Task Force: get
latest report. Google it.
Car theft on and off campus
•
•
•
•
•
Get stats from NB cops, Rutgers cops
Check Clery report.
Talk to students.
Compare campuses.
Talk to professors, get stories.
Rutgers a terrorist target?
• Talk to police, security experts
• Is the campus protected, or is it an open
university?
• Football games
• Large gatherings
• Terrorists attending school here?
• 6 most likely targets in NJ
Problems with Rutgers’
largest freshman class
•
•
•
•
•
•
Dorm space: solved by BEST hall?
Classroom space
Computers available
Does extra tuition help the budget?
How many are in-state and out?
Does it lower Rutgers’ status
academically?
Keeping up with Rutgers news
• Read the Targum (you can subscribe
online)
• Go to http://rutgers-news.newslib.com/
Rutgers Day ‘internships’
•
•
•
•
Is it cheap labor?
What do they learn?
How much do they give?
See me for details.
Internships in general
• How many students do them?
• What do they learn?
• Is it just free labor, esp. now that the
economy has tanked (WWOR
example)?
A Critique of the Cuts
Almost no university high-ups, including
Rutgers, shed vice presidents or took
salary cuts at the top, but was quick to
reduce faculty and freeze raises.
Results?
Do college employees steal?
• Low-level employees may be caught stealing more often, but
universities are largely inept when it comes to monitoring midand upper-level managers who are the most likely to perpetrate
significant fraud at an institution, an expert on such crimes said
at the National Association of College and University Business
Officers annual meeting here Sunday.
• Contact Angela Morelock, a forensic accountant who has
investigated dozens of fraud cases, said colleges have
dangerous blind spots when it comes to catching criminals in
their midst. While the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners
(ACFE) estimates that 41 percent of fraud cases are carried out
by individuals at the management level, universities and other
organizations devote most of their resources to monitoring
lower-level employees, Morelock said.
Rutgers profs reject buyout
• Most eligible Rutgers profs declined a buyout
in 2010. Why?
• Rutgers said 38 veteran professors took a
More on buyout
•
•
•
•
Why did they reject the buyout?
Talk to those who took it?
Check out:
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/
07/rutgers_university_offers_year.html
Barchi’s troubles
•
•
•
•
His stock ownership.
Faculty doesn’t like him.
Mishandled sports scandals.
Others?
New Jersey exports students
• New Jersey exports more college students than any other state,
and its colleges and universities attract relatively few students
from elsewhere. Some higher-education advocates say they
hope those facts will get attention from a task force appointed by
Gov. Christie to make changes in a system he says has not kept
pace with other states'. Did it?
• Find out what the panel said, and get its report.
• Talk to out-of-state students.
• Where do they go, and how much does it cost?
• Check this link.
Follow the money -- takers?
• The American Institutes for Research’s Delta Project
investigates trends in tuition.
• How does Rutgers tuition increases compare to other
colleges nationally?
• How much has Rutgers gone up compared to the
Consumer Price Index. Everything is here. (Bureau of
Labor Statistics).
PSE&R?
• Ralph Izzo, head of PSE&G’s parent company,
is former head of the Rutgers Board of
Governors.
• Who is he? Why was there a demonstration
against him in Connecticut in August? Check out
Resources for Youtube video.
• He is involved with greenhouse gases, solar
power, all kinds of relevant issues.
• Check out members of Trustees
• Ditto on board of Governors.
Rutgers sports at the top
academically?
•
Rutgers clearly appears to be fostering confusion as to the meaning of
the NCAA’s newest academic measurement for sports teams, known
as the Academic Progress Rate, or APR. The statistic is by no means,
as has been suggested, a “Gold Standard” for rating academic
performance. The APR does not in any way measure academic
excellence, nor is it supposed to. It measures, instead, minimal
progress towards a degree, i.e., minimum eligibility, retention, and
graduation. To quote President McCormick (letter of 5/14/07), it
measures “eligibility, retention, and graduation of each scholarship
student-athlete.” The APR calculation ignores Grade Point
Averages, except to determine compliance with minimum
eligibility requirements, nor does it reward honors program
participation. Rutgers is fond of publicizing that its Football Team’s
APR ranks 7th nationally among other Football teams. That does not,
however, mitigate the fact that Rutgers eliminated its highest academic
performing teams.
Rutgers sports at the top
academically? (See next slide)
• From the Star-Ledger:The most accomplished academic football
team in the Football Bowl Subdivision calls Piscataway home.
One month after being cited as the only state university to finish
in the top 10 percent of the Academic Progress Rate (APR) in
football for a third straight year, Rutgers made history today
when the NCAA announced that the school was No. 1 in the
ratings for the multi-year period starting in 2005.Rutgers finished
with a record score of 992 out of a possible 1,000 to top the
APR rankings. Stanford had held the record with a score of
982.The top five Football Bowl Subdivision schools in terms of
APR are Rutgers (992), Air Force (988), Rice (987),
Northwestern (986) and Duke (983). couldn't be prouder of our
State University's football program's latest success, N.J. Gov.
Chris Christie said in a statement. “This tremendous
achievement is a testament to the hard work and dedication of
the student-athletes, coaches and the academic support staff at
Rutgers.”
The 2011-2012 story
•
•
•
•
This is what Rutgers said in 2011.
Latest stats come out in early October.
Last year’s stats. (2012)
Search around.
Building debt: State college construction/State college's (sic) owe
$3.8B. thanks to construction. They're turning to students to help
pay for it.
Building debt, slide 2
Building debt slide 3
• The new 150,000-square-foot Campus Center at The
Richard Stockton College of New Jersey will have a dining
hall, theater, offices and meeting rooms, providing a
central location for all student services. The price tag:
more than $60 million.Funding for the center was among a
record more than $1.2 billion in transactions managed in
2008 by the New Jersey Educational Finance Authority,
which handles bonding for most of the state’s public and
private colleges.New Jersey’s 12 public four-year
colleges carry more than $3.8 billion in capital debt, most
of it acquired within the past decade. This year, they will
spend more than $250 million on debt service for their
mortgage payments.
NJ Educational Facilities
Auithority
• Read the report.
• Go through their site.
• You’ll find a small group of people (5-6)
spends scores of millions of dollars
annually.
Sex harassment at Rutgers
• Memorandum to: Members of the University Community From:
Richard L. McCormick: In 1980 the university first developed
and distributed the procedures for filing complaints of sexual
harassment. Over the years, the legal and social contexts of
civil rights harassment evolved and now include, in addition to
sex-based conditions imposed on some aspect of work or study,
the creation of a hostile, offensive and intimidating environment
that interferes with work or study for a member of a protected
class. Congress and the New Jersey Legislature have
expanded the list of protected classes, and the state and federal
courts have defined and reaffirmed the responsibility of the
university, as an employer and as an educational institution, to
intervene in harassment within its halls.
Sex harassment at Rutgers
• Check out articles in Resources.
• Sex harassment via the internet, the last
Rutgers to be charged with sex
harassment, and lots of other interesting
stories.
Athletic Program
• Rutgers’ finding pot of gold in football
program is a pipe dream.
• USA Today and Bloomberg News
revealed that Rutgers has the highest
athletic spending of any university in the
six biggest football — 40 percent of the
budget comes from tuition.
Athletic Program
• Get a “piece” of this story: computer
use (aging computers, lack of
programs), student activities (lower
budgets, fewer issues of newspapers),
data bases available at the library, lost
professors to other universities, failure
of Pres. McCormick’s (and now
Barchi’s) “Taj Mahal” College Ave.
Philosophy Dept. “Scandal”?
•
Ishani Maitra (philosophy of language, feminist philosophy), Assistant
Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, Newark and New
Brunswick, and Brian Weatherson (epistemology, metaphysics,
philosophy of language), Associate Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers
University, New Brunswick, have both accepted tenured offers from the
Department of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
effective January 2012. This marks the third senior departure from
Rutgers in the last 12 months (the others being Alan Code, who is
going to Stanford, and Tim Maudlin, who went to NYU).Source
<http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2011/08/maitra-weathersonfrom-rutgers-to-michigan.html>
The new president
• The search — get details.
• Gov. Christie said the next president of
Rutgers University should decide
whether the price of competing in toplevel college sports is too high. What do
you think of his decision? Will it help or
hurt Rutgers?
More athletics
•
•
•
Rutgers University forgave $100,000 of the Greg Schiano’s
interest-free home loan two years ago. The women’s basketball
coach (Vivian Stringer) got monthly golf and car allowances. Both
collected bonuses without winning a championship.
Meanwhile, the history department took away professors’ desk
phones to save money and shrank its doctoral program by 25
percent. After funding cuts by the deficit-strapped Legislature,
New Jersey’s state university froze professors’ salaries, cut the
use of photocopies for exams and jacked up student tuition,
housing and other fees.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Will Rutgers sell beer at home
games?
• Some 36 Division I schools are currently
selling alcohol in some capacity.
Included are seven of the eight schools
in the Big East. W. Va. Made a decision
to sell beer, leaving Rutgers as the sole
holdout. AD Tim Pernetti said Rutgers is
considering the move for 2012.
• What happened?
Who will be the secondhighest paid teacher?
• Check out Norman Samuels.
• McCormick to get $335,000 a year.
Example of IR video
• Youtube video
PIRG
• From their email: “The Rutgers New Brunswick NJPIRG
Chapter is a student-run organization that works to engage students on
campus and in the New Brunswick community on important public
interest issues. We give students leadership opportunities to become
an integral part in organizing and running our campaigns.”
• This fall, they intend to register 4,000
students to vote. That will require a lot of
money.
• Where does it come from, where is it going?
Someone should look into it.