Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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Illinois international students must pay extra for costs of tracking laws BY ALINA DIZIK DAILY 1LL1NI (U. ILLINOIS) CHAMPAIGN, ILL (U-WIRE) - More than 4,000 international stu dents at University of Illinois will have to pay additional fees to com pensate for the costs of enforcing new, post-Sept. 11 tracking laws. Office of International Student Affairs Director Ivor Emmanuel said he does not know how much those fees would be. The tracking laws will force ed ucational institutions to monitor student visa status and interna tional student attendance closely, starting Jan. 1. A student visiting the country on a tourist visa could not stay and study in the United States, Emmanuel said. International students who were accepted to the university had to follow special rules before Sept. 11. They must show the uni versity they can pay for tuition be fore admittance. "I have to get statements from banks to prove that I can support myself," said Ovgum Aki, an in ternational student from Cyprus. International applicants can not apply for federal aid but may work at the university up to 20 hours a week. About 80 percent of international students are at the graduate level and are eligible for university fellowships and assist antships, Emmanuel said. After receiving applications, in dividual academic departments automatically consider interna tional students for assistantships and fellowships. , . Marlen Vavrikova, originally from the Czech Republic, trans ferred from the Rochester School of Music because of a fellowship offered by the university's College of Fine and Applied Arts. During her second year at the university, she received a teaching assistant ship. "I'm in a performing field; if they like my performing quality, they will give me aid," Vavrikova said. International students can reapply for fellowships and as sistantship positions once they've paid for their first years. International students fill about 40 of the 200 research assistant ships in the civil and environ mental engineering department each year, professor Neil Hawkins said. Despite recruiting U.S residents "first, the department depends on the expertise of students through out the world, Hawkins said. "Support for international stu dents for graduate study is impor tant," said Deborah Richie, assistant dean of the Graduate College. "The international students contribute to the diversity on campus." Law school CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 know whether Freeman helped Nexsen Pruet on the case. Montgomery said it’s common to discuss faculty members’ in volvement with a case if the case involves potential donors to the law school. “When I’m attempt ing to solicit money, I really want to put the best face on the law school that I can,” he said. “I do have conversations from time to time with law faculty about out side consulting work.” Freeman said he was consult ed informally by Trenholm Walker, the lawyer representing Nexsen Pruet in the case. But he said he didn’t agree to be an ex pert witness. He said he saw no need to dis cuss the matter with the dean be cause he gets calls like the one from Walker often and had mini mal involvement. “I just talked to Trenholm about it,” Freeman said. “I’m not in the case.” In the malpractice case, devel oper James W. Myrick said the firm violated ethics rules by rep resenting a competing developer that was interested in the same Charleston County property he wanted to develop. Myrick claims he lost $525,000 on the deal. Nexsen Pruet disputes the al legations. “In our view, there was no legal malpractice,” Walker said. “And second, there was no harm caused to (Myrick) by any thing the firm did.” Walker also said the firm knew nothing of Bland’s request for law professors to be expert witnesses. The law firm’s board voted in 1999 to give $25,000 a year for 10 years to the law school. Heather Hoopes, a spokeswoman for Nexsen Pruet, said the firm had been giving to the law school for years. “There’s no connection be tween our contributions and any thing else,” she said. “And Nexsen Pruet will continue to support USC law school.” In his deposition, Wilcox said he asked Montgomery about the case in the fall of2000, after Bland approached him. At the time, Wilcox said, he was up for pro motion from associate to full pro- • fessor. Wilcox said Montgomery told him it was his “strong prefer ence” that Wilcox not get involved in the case against Nexsen Pruet. “I took that as a clear indica tion it was his preference to not become involved, and that is all I needed not to become involved,” Wilcox said. Wilcox subsequently was promoted to full professor. Adams, the other professor, wouldn’t discuss his involvement in the case. But he has since de cided to be an expert witness for the developer. Adams is a tenured professor, which protects him from being fired. “I know there have been times when he has told me, ‘I will have to check with the university’s fund-raising people to see if this is somebody that we’ve targeted,’ ” V Adams said in his deposition. “And in each of the instances that happened, he’s got back to me and he’s said, ‘No, there are no present plans to try to raise money from that law firm or that lawyer; you have permission to go ahead.’ ” Salaries CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 ministrators agreed to meet with Arizona legislators in a special session to discuss all increases, according to Odom. Odom said USC needs state money for professor salaries be cause the only way the universi ty can internally raise enough money to retain faculty is by rais ing tuition. . Odom said that, though salaries’ for most USC professors didn't change from last year, other parts of the university are making sac rifices. "We are just cutting operating budgets down to zero in some cases,” Odom said. "We have some departments where they have no money left for... things sustained by a normal operating budget." The Strategic Directions and Initiatives Committee, under Odom's direction, told the Board of Trustees's Fiscal Policy Committee in March that paying professors in the proposed College of Health Sciences for only nine months a year would motivate them to engage in uni versity-supported research to make up for the other three months' salary. The American Association for University Professors reported last week a 3.8 percent increase in average salaries for universi ty professors in the United States since last year. It is the highest one-year increase the na tion has seen in more than 15 years. USC has only increased over all pay by an estimated 4 percent over the last decade, according to the Southern Regional Board of Education. The board's esti mate considers real changes and doesn't adjust for inflation. USC has maintained a hiring freeze since October to cut costs, though the university still hires some people to fill critical posi tions. But Odom said the number of professors leaving for better pay or retiring is making it in creasingly hard to keep up the freeze. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockudesk@hotmail.com Parking CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 in its annual security report. Overtime Another area of investiga tion was the amount of over time Parking Services em ployees worked. During the fis cal years 1998 and 1999, the de partment paid an average of $6,300 in overtime yearly. For the fiscal years 2000 and 2001, however, $14,800 and $13,136 were paid. The five parking enforce ment officers earned 707.5 hours of overtime for the fall 2001 semester. Sgt. James Willis, the direct supervisor of parking enforce ment, earned 260.5 hours of over time during that same period. He doesn’t have a salaried position. During one pay week in that fall semester, Willis worked more than 70 hours. In addition, every Friday dur ing the fall 2001 semester, some of the parking enforcement officers’ time sheets had been whited out to add additional overtime hours. "Some of the PEOs’ time cards were corrected to reflect the cor rect hours worked because of overtime-related duties that were not anticipated until after the time card was filled out,” Deputy Director of Field Services Eric Grabski said. Though most of the time sheets added eight-hour blocks, Grabski didn’t say what constituted an ex tra days’ worth of work. Huggins said most of the parking enforce ment officers work on home foot ball game days. But these hours were usually added on Fridays, and were sometimes added dur ing weekends when there were no home football games. “We are simply getting better at writing tickets.” DERRICK HUGGINS DIRECTOR OF PARKING SERVICES Questionable postage For fiscal year 2001, Parking Services spent $28,051 on postage, an average of $1.18 per * student. Mailing each student a parking pass twice a year (some thing the department doesn’t do), would have cost $16,135. Huggins said Parking Services is paying more for postage because the department is trying to get more students to sign up for park ing spaces before school starts. In that case, their parking stickers would have to be mailed. He also said the big packets of mail sent to freshmen about parking make up a large chunk of the postage mon ey. Comments on this story?E-mail ® gamecockudesk@hotmail.com BRIEFLY Fall 2002 bulletins will be on Internet USC will implement Web based graduate and under graduate bulletins for the fall 2002 semester, according to University Public-ations. The department plans on having the bulletins ready by mid-August. The department cites environmental conser vation as the reason of going online, because more than 15 tons of paper will be saved an nually. Online bulletins will also be archived permanently on the Web site. Some bulletins will be printed and kept for campus li braries and administrators. Students win awards for book collections Two USC students were award ed last week with the 2002 Thomas Cooper Society Student Book Collecting Awards. Tonya Wertz-Orbaugh and Harry Hootman won the awards m at the society’s annual general * meeting. Wertz-Orbaugh’s collection cov ers "British and American Literary Annuals and Gift Books: An Annotated Bibliography." 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