Brown and White Vol. 133 no. 25

              The Brown and White Vol. 133 No. 25
Tuesday, December 12, 2017 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Provost Hall transitions to Lehigh
By JESSICA HICKS
Deputy News Editor
Colorful PEZ dispensers fill
the walls of Ricardo Hall’s office,
neatly lined on wooden stands
built by his father-in-law. In front
of the dispensers sit framed pho-tos
of his family, particularly his
daughters, who have played an
important role in helping Hall
acquire his collection.
Family is important to Hall,
Lehigh’s new vice provost of
Student Affairs. He said the stars
aligned when he heard about the
opportunity to work at Lehigh —
it afforded him the ability to take
the next step in his career all
while being closer to family.
Hall previously served in a vari-ety
of roles at Wake Forest and
Clemson universities and most
recently worked as associate vice
president of Student Affairs at
University of Miami since 2006.
Patricia Whitely, the vice presi-dent
of Student Affairs at Miami,
said Hall simply loves working
with college students and is able
to connect with them to bring
about change.
“He is able to enact, embrace
and challenge change,” Whitely
said. “He is able to have uncom-fortable
and sometimes difficult
conversations, especially around
diversity and inclusion, and stu-dents
respect him as well as enjoy
Tax bill could impact grad students
him.”
While it was difficult to leave
Miami’s year-round warm weath-er
behind him, Hall said he was
excited to arrive at Lehigh as the
university was beginning a new
plan for the future.
“When the Path to Prominence
was introduced, I said to myself,
‘This is so forward-thinking,’”
Hall said. “The university recent-ly
celebrated its 150th anniver-sary
and now institutional lead-ership
is saying, ‘We want to do
even more, be even better, be
more prominent.’”
See HALL Page 3
Sara Boyd/B&W Staff
Ricardo Hall, Lehigh’s vice provost of Student Affairs, shows off his PEZ collection in
his office on Dec. 5 at Williams Hall. Previously, Hall was the associate vice president of
Student Affairs at the University of Miami.
By LAURYN RAGONE
Associate News Editor
Chuck Fisher came to Lehigh with
dreams of changing the world for the
better.
After receiving his undergradu-ate
degree in biotechnology from
Marywood University, he is now
pursuing his doctorate in molecular
and cellular biology at Lehigh.
He spends hours in the lab as a
research assistant, sometimes even
on the weekends. It’s his full-time
job until he obtains his doctorate.
Fisher receives a stipend of
$25,000 a year as a research and
teaching assistant. Lehigh provides
him with a tuition waiver to cover
his tuition, a bill he never sees.
Under current law, Fisher and the
other doctoral candidates do not pay
federal income tax on the tuition
waivers.
Now with the provisions in
the United States House of
Representatives’ tax reform bill,
Fisher will have to pay tax on his
tuition waiver. The proposed tax bill
makes those waivers part of taxable
income.
With the new tax reform bill,
Fisher said sustaining his cost of
Courtesy of Nick Ungson
Nick Ungson, ’18G, the Graduate
Student Senate president, discussed
the provisions in the House tax reform
bill affecting graduate students in their
senate meetings. Ungson is pursuing his
doctorate in Social Psychology.
See TAX Page 4
living will not be feasible.
Fisher said the stipend covers
rent, health care, groceries and gen-eral
costs of living. He said with the
change happening so fast, it’s diffi-cult
to accommodate. Fisher and his
wife, a Catholic school teacher mak-ing
only $19,000 a year, are already
trying to manage their costs.
Fisher is one example of 1,942
Lehigh graduate students and grad-uate
students nationwide who face
increased taxation if the final Senate
tax bill makes tuition waivers tax-able.
While the tax bill passed in the
House in a 51-49 vote, the same bill
did not pass in the Senate. In fact,
the provision on making waivers
taxable was removed. The next step
is for the Tax Reform Conference
Committee to discuss the legislation
changes.
Pat Toomey, the U.S. senator for
Pennsylvania, was asked Wednesday
night to be a part of the committee.
“The Senate bill does not change
any of the tax treatments on incen-tives
paid to graduate students, as
the House does,” read a statement
released by Toomey’s office. “Should
the tax treatment of these incentives
come up for debate during the con-ference
committee, it is important to
remember that tax reform extends
beyond singular changes and deduc-tions.
So while both the House and
Senate plans to adjust tax treatment
Panhellenic
Council installs
quota for
upperclassmen
By EMMA DILLON
B&W Staff
In a close 5-4 chapter vote on
Nov. 30, Lehigh’s Panhellenic
Council passed a secondary quota
for sophomores during formal
recruitment.
The secondary quota mandates
that each chapter must accept
a certain amount of sophomore
women participating in recruit-ment
per round.
In years past, few sophomores
were offered an invitation, oth-erwise
known as a bid, to join a
sorority.
In some cases, sophomores
were cut within the first round of
formal recruitment.
In 2017, 65 percent of soph-omores
who rushed were not
placed in a chapter, compared to
19 percent of first-year students.
Panhel’s vice president of
external recruitment, Sabrina
Schulman, ’18, said the initiative
to enforce the secondary quota
began after a sophomore who
did not receive a bid emailed the
Panhellenic Council adviser.
The student complained about
the bias against sophomores
within Lehigh’s Panhellenic com-munity.
As a result, the adviser
conducted research asking soror-ity
members about their protocols
during recruitment and found
that the bias did exist and the
numbers supported it.
Madison Hirsh, Panhel’s vice
president of internal recruit-ment,
spearheaded the change in
quotas.
She said after looking at the
drastic numbers, she recognized
there was something wrong with
the Panhel community and want-ed
to initiate change.
Hirsh started to search for
solutions by having conversa-tions
with each chapter’s recruit-ment
chair about the cause of the
problem and potential secondary
quota numbers.
“It’s not that the chapters
thought the sophomores were
bad or that they didn’t have the
qualities sororities look for in
potential new members,” Hirsh
said. “But the sororities were
rationalizing the issue for a weird
mix of reasons.”
Once the statistics had been
presented to the sororities, it
was clear something needed to
change.
To ensure more sophomores
See QUOTA Page 3