Brown and White Vol. 130 no. 21

              The Brown and White Vol. 130 No. 21
Friday, April 29, 2016 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Applications increase despite fall in rank
By MEG KELLY
Assistant News Editor
April is not an easy month for
the Lehigh’s Office of Admissions.
Beginning in late March, the halls
of the Alumni Memorial building are
flooded with high school students
clutching plastic bags with “Lehigh”
stamped on the front, a clear give-away
that its owner is a visitor to
campus.
Between hosting Lehigh Life
Day events for accepted students,
answering the flood of emails from
those who were placed on the wait-list
and assisting high school juniors
who are just beginning their college
search, the Director of Admissions
Bruce Bunnick has a lot on his mind.
Something that doesn’t keep
Bunnick awake at night, however, is
the university’s ranking.
In the 2016 edition of U.S. News
and World Report’s Best Colleges
list, Lehigh was ranked No. 47 in the
National Universities category, fall-ing
seven spots from 2015. Despite
this drop in rankings, Bunnick said
it has had little effect on Lehigh’s
admissions for this past year.
“I really take the whole notion
of rankings with a grain of salt,”
Bunnick said. “I don’t know that we
need to be ranked to prove the work
the students are doing, or the impact
they leave behind on the world.”
In the last year, the applicant pool
for the class of 2020 increased by
4.5 percent, with Lehigh seeing its
highest number of applications to
date. With 13,408 students apply-ing,
the acceptance rate also fell
below the previous year. Only 25.5
percent of students were accepted
this year, compared to 30.4 in 2015.
Given these increases, Bunnick said
he isn’t fazed by the change in rank-ings.
“It’s simply one small factor
among many,” Bunnick said. “What
the university offers prospective stu-dents
appeals to them more than
just them opening a ranking list and
seeing where a school falls.”
Neil Martin, a high school junior,
echoed these ideas following a tour
of the university Tuesday afternoon.
Although he said he did check U.S.
News and World Report’s rankings,
See RANKING Page 2
Minimum wage bill contested in PA congress
By JAKE INGRASSIA
B&W Staff
The minimum wage in
Pennsylvania reflects the federally
required level — $7.25 per hour —
but state policy lags behind 29 states
and the District of Columbia that
have raised it even higher.
A single parent with one child in
Lehigh County needs to earn about
$22 per hour to cover the basic costs
of living, according to the Living
Wage Calculator, a tool developed
by a professor at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology that esti-mates
the lowest income a family can
live off of. This calculation accounts
for most essential expenses including
food, childcare, medical and trans-portation
costs and taxes.
The Self-Sufficiency Standard
developed by PathWays PA, a
non-profit advocacy organization,
states a Lehigh County family of the
same size requires an annual income
between $40,000 and $45,000 to sup-port
itself without public or private
assistance — equivalent to about $20
per hour at a full-time job.
By either of these standards, a min-imum
wage position in Pennsylvania
accounts for only a fraction of fami-lies’
basic living expenses. A full-time
employee making $7.25 per hour
earns just $15,000 per year.
Mark Price, a labor economist at
the Keystone Research Center, said
the primary problem for low wage
workers is the diminishing purchas-ing
power of minimum wage. As pric-es
rise by about 3 percent each year,
wages remains stagnant. It had been
10 years since the legislature voted
to increase Pennsylvania’s minimum
wage.
“The things we take for grant-ed,
those of us that have higher
incomes, are much harder for folks
who are earning close to poverty
wages,” Price said. “That ends up
resulting in people having to rely on
public assistance — going to local
food banks, or relying on charities to
meet very basic needs.”
Paul Lynch, the director of Second
Harvest Food Bank in Nazareth,
said government support programs
help low wage workers make up the
difference to an extent, but the cur-rent
minimum wage simply does not
provide enough to get by on.
“Somehow our society has decided
that there will always be a seg-ment
of our community that’s poor,
and the charities and churches and
some weak government programs
will be the way that we give them
sustenance — just barely surviving
ability,” Lynch said. “(The minimum
wage) is not a real reflection of what
it costs to live.”
Alan Jennings, the executive
director of the Community Action
Committee of the Lehigh Valley, esti-mates
up to half of the people relying
on food banks to feed their families
are employed to some degree.
“There’s something desperately
wrong with a marketplace where
See WAGE Page 4
By JAKE INGRASSIA
B&W Staff
For Amanda Rivera, a 21-year-old
single mother in Reading,
Pennsylvania, $20 is a few packs
of meat and some rice. Half of
her cellphone bill. Could be a
couple of infant outfits from the
Goodwill, or enough baby formu-la
for four — maybe five — days.
She earns $8.25 per hour mak-ing
calls for a technology research
center, a wage that forces her to
live paycheck to paycheck to sup-port
herself and her 10-month-old
son, Leonardo Alexander.
Money is the biggest stress
in Rivera’s life, she said, and a
boost in the state’s minimum
wage to the proposed $10.10 per
hour would help lessen her bur-den.
“If they raise (the minimum
wage), it would take a little bit
of weight off people’s shoulders,”
Rivera said. “I’d have more to
look forward to instead of bust-ing
my butt working the 40 hours
a week and then seeing only
$200-something in my account.
I’m like, ‘Wow, I worked so hard
for next to nothing.’”
In a week, Rivera earns $330
— but after deducting state
and federal payroll taxes such
as income, Social Security and
Medicare, she is left with less
than $250 to cover her basic liv-ing
expenses such as rent, food
and childcare.
Her one bedroom apartment
costs $600 per month to rent, but
she said her landlord works with
her situation, allowing her to pay
as she can. Sometimes it is each
week. On one occasion, she owed
three months’ rent at once.
“I get my checks and make
sure I put a certain part away for
the rent, and that’s the biggest
thing,” Rivera said. “As long as I
had my rent paid, I was OK.”
She is on the hunt for a new
apartment in Bethlehem, but
other landlords are not as accom-modating,
and she does not have
the cash to put down a security
deposit and pay the first month’s
rent up front.
She turns to public assistance
to help pay for her son’s daycare,
which can cost nearly $1,000 per
month, according to a U.S. aver-age
calculated by the National
Association of Child Care
Resource and Referral Agencies.
Rivera pays a copay of just $40
per month — roughly the cost of
only one day of daycare at the
regular rate.
She considers herself lucky to
See RIVERA Page 4
How far does $20 stretch?
Samantha Tomaszewski/B&W Staff