The New HampshireThe New HampshireVol. 100, No. 02 September 10, 2010 Serving the University of New Hampshire since 1911Friday

State funding for the Univer-sity System of New Hampshire remained stagnant for the second straight year, prompting a 4.9 per-cent increase in the cost of atten-dance for in-state students at UNH for the 2010-2011 academic year, and a 40 percent increase in fi nan-cial aid grants for New Hampshire residents.

The USNH, which along with UNH includes Plymouth State Uni-versity, Keene State College and Granite State College, received a $100 million approximation from the state legislature equal to the amount it received in the last two fi s-

cal years. When infl ation is factored in, state aid to higher education in New Hampshire has decreased over that time period.

The cost of attending UNH for in-state residents, including tuition, room, board and mandatory fees, increased from $21,617 last year to

$23,524 this year. Out-of-state resi-dents saw their costs increase from $35,587 to $37,494.

Tuition rates were approved and released on June 24. This year’s 4.9 percent increase is less than the 6.2 percent increase last year. The USNH’s board described the in-

crease as “modest.”New Hampshire ranks last in

the nation in state support of higher education. According to Grape-vine, an annual compilation of data on state tax support for higher education, New Hampshire spends $104.01 per capita on higher educa-

tion. Wyoming, on the other hand, spends the most on higher educa-tion, at $561.22 per capita. Ac-cording to documents provided by David Proulx, UNH’s assistant vice president of Financial Planning and

State funding stagnant; USNH boosts fi nancial aid

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION/TYLER MCDERMOTT

UNH: University of No Help

UNH School of Law

COURTESY PHOTO

Thomas GounleyEXECUTIVE EDITOR

The University of New Hampshire and the Franklin Pierce Law Center became affi liated Aug. 30 in a move that had been discussed for over two years.

Only minor hiccups as

ATW opens

Roundabout, path among many campus changes

When students came back this year after a blistering, heat-fi lled summer, they were welcomed with many new physical construction changes to the campus.

The university received a fed-eral grant for bike and walking paths heading from West Edge into campus. What started as a grant for paths transformed into revamping the gateway for campus, director of Campus Planning Doug Bencks said.

Bencks said the idea to put in a roundabout at the junction of Main Street and North Drive was some-thing UNH wanted to do and with construction being planned for the paths, acting now would save mon-ey. The total cost of the roundabout, road and paths was $1.3 million, he said.

“It seems to be accomplishing what it was designed to do: to fa-cilitate traffi c fl ow and slow down speeds on the roadway,” Rene Kel-

ly, Deputy Police Chief of Durham, said.

Kelly said that the fl ow of traf-fi c after Saturday’s home opener football game was expedited due to the new roundabout. The round-about also breaks up what once was a straightaway in and out of cam-pus, where speeding had been an issue in the past, he said. One of the primary purposes of the roundabout was to help the fl ow of traffi c leav-ing North Drive.

“Prior to the roundabout, it was diffi cult for the buses to get out of

Gregory MeighanSTAFF WRITER

Sophomore Evan Jones walked outside for the fi rst day of classes in a sweatshirt. He spent the rest of the day sweating in classrooms under the 90-plus degree temperatures.

To him, it was a small price to pay for the opportunity to live in fi rst-year dorm Adams Tower West, which caused the wardrobe confu-sion in the fi rst place.

“The AC was cranking in here that day, and I had no idea how hot it was out,” Jones said with a laugh. “So I strolled outside all bundled up and saw everyone else already sweating in sleeveless shirts. That’s been my only problem here. There really isn’t much to complain about.”

Jones is one of 177 residents living in one of the buildings for-

Chad GraffMANAGING EDITOR

The roundabout has drawn the most attention from the multiple campus changes.

ERICA SIVER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

CONSTRUCTION continued on page 3ATW continued on page 3

TUITION continued on page 3

Signs point toward Passion Pit as SCOPE’s “big announcement” for fall concert. Page 13

The New Hampshire Friday, September 10, 2010 3

Merely known as the New England Center, a two building hotel and restaurant. Last spring, the center, formerly one of New Hampshire’s Seven to Save, closed its doors as a hotel and reopened this fall as an on-campus dorm. According to most students, it’s been a smooth transition for the most part.

“Everything seems to be go-ing really well around here,” Jones said.

All of the buildings’ rooms are spacious “suite triples.” Each has their own bathroom and contains three lofted beds, curtains, wall-to-wall carpeting, and air conditioning with in-room controls.

For the most part, the fl oor plans are the same for each room, and each features a large window at the far side.

Many of those windows open out to a breath-taking view of the woods.

“That’s going to look sweet in the winter,” junior Josh Lieberman said as he stared out the window.

But it’s the dissimilarities of the rooms that have drawn the most complaints from residents.

Some of the rooms in the building have one sink compared to others that have two. Some rooms have one dresser while others have two, and some residents have found trouble with too few power outlets, while others have plenty.

“We called and complained since we only have one sink and one dresser,” junior Kayla Pelletier said. “But they said that they told us it would be like that. I don’t remem-ber them saying that, and it wasn’t like that on the tour.”

Others got lucky and are reap-ing the benefi ts.

“We got a little of everything,” junior Kerry Murchie said with a smile. “Two sinks, two bathrooms and plenty of outlets.”

The New England Center closed just over two months ago. Combined with the closing of Smith Hall, which displaced about 100 students, the school felt it was the right move to take advantage of the New England Center as a dorm.

The decision was made after the center estimated it would take between $17 and $20 million in renovations to keep it competitive with industry standards.

The tower, which was built in 1988, immediately caught the eye of upperclassmen.

Some students feel the new dorm could become one of the best places to live on campus, right there with Mills Hall and Con-greve Hall.

“I think it’s going to be like the Mills one day,” junior Rebecca Findley said. “There is already a wait list. People really want to live here.”

The building is reserved for non-freshmen, but mainly houses sophomores and juniors.

Two big lounges offer areas for students to study and relax without the hassle of traveling to a library. And for some, like community as-sistant Liz Ross, it offers a chance to use a kitchen.

“So far so good,” she said while pulling sugar cookies out of the oven.

Ross has run into one problem though – roommates.

According to her, it’s not that she doesn’t like living with others, but it can make her job as a CA diffi cult since everyone, including CA’s, are forced to live with two roommates.

“I haven’t had any major is-sues yet,” Ross said. “But it can be tough when I need to talk with a resident one-on-one or go on 2 a.m. rounds.”

Hall Director Victoria Wilson didn’t respond to calls and e-mails seeking comment.

The move also meant that more students would live in Area One of campus and could be one of the rea-sons Stillings Dining Hall expanded its hours before the start of school.

The dorm’s back exit is a min-ute walk from Stillings and a three minute walk to the Whittemore Center, erasing some of the fear that the building would not be in enough of a central location to make it vi-able.

“It’s surprisingly a lot closer than I thought,” junior Joe Gabriel said. “I love it here.”

North Drive because they had to deal with incoming as well as out-going traffi c on Main Street,” Bev-erly Clay, manager of UNH Trans-portation Services, said.

Clay said that the roundabout allows drivers to only have to deal with the outbound traffi c in order to get into the roundabout, which speeds up the wait.

She said the bus drivers have not had problems navigating around the roundabout, but have had some near accidents.

“They kept in mind large ve-hicles when they were planning it,” Clay said. “We have had some close calls from people failing to yield, but that is all.”

There have been no accidents at the roundabout since its comple-tion.

The pathways along the road are not made from traditional pave-ment that sheds off water. The pathways are made out of porous asphalt.

The new, more absorbent sur-face will create better drainage dur-ing rain, and safer paths in the win-ter, Jamie Houle, the site manager for the UNH Stormwater Center Environmental Research Group, said.

The UNH SCERG over the years has seen their data pointing that permeable pavement technol-ogy makes sense to start covering campus.

Bencks said the area between Hood House and Hamilton Smith Hall was slated for repaving, but instead of just throwing on another coat they went with porous pavers.

“Porous pavement costs about 10-20 percent more in materials, but when you add in current regulations for any impervious surface with other regulations you have to do, it becomes even,” Houle said.

Houle said that winter main-tenance will be easier as well, be-cause research has shown that the amount of salt needed on porous pavement can be reduced by 75 percent.

The moisture is absorbed through the porous technology and into the ground, which lessens the risk of water to rest on the surface and turn to ice.

The Eliot Alumni Center, Lot E1, West Edge, the new walkways, and the area between Hamilton Smith and Hood House are all uti-lizing the porous surface, Houle said.

Bencks said some other nota-ble construction projects include the wooden bridges between the Me-morial Union Building and Horton Hall, new concrete stairs between the Diamond Library and Spauld-

ing, and a new entrance courtyard for Paul Creative Arts Center to help celebrate its 50th anniversary.

Interior work was done in Hamilton Smith and Horton, but no major academic building renova-tions comparable to James Hall will be done until UNH has the funding, which Bencks said would be around fi ve years.

Buildings next in line are Ham-ilton Smith and Nesmith Hall, he said.

The MUB put $137,000 into renovating the Strafford Room.

The director of the MUB, Marry Anne Lustgraaf, said that they intended on spending $68,000 on the room that had not had any work done in more than 50 years.

The price skyrocketed when they removed the fl oor and real-ized that corners were cut in the initial construction, she said. The previous fl oor had some soft spots and certain spots beginning to splinter.

“The new fl oor is virtually in-destructible,” Lustgraaf said. “A wood fl oor dancing, you can’t beat it.”

The Strafford Room serves so many functions that Lustgraaf wanted to make sure it was durable and state of the art. The MUB has seen and tasted other new reno-vations in the form of the Union Court.

“We are trying to make it a des-tination spot and not just a place of convenience,” Andrew Porter, the retail area manager, said.

Porter said Union Court had lost money in each of the last four years, and surveys showed that stu-dents were not happy with the value and satisfaction of their meal.

This year they have made their salads healthier, easier and less of a cost restraint on themselves.

Their other food is being made fresh, whether it is their pizza that is no longer just taken frozen out of a box, or the grilled food that they make fresh every day.

Porter expects students to re-ally enjoy this year more than past years.

To commemorate the changes to the Union Court, Porter and other employees held a Re-Grand Open-ing on Thursday.

Jessica Charlesworth is a se-nior at UNH, and Thursday was the fi rst day she ever had free food in Union Court. Charlesworth and many other students enjoyed the free food and drinks.

“I like free food, but the fries are messing up my diet,” Charles-worth said. “I love the salad bar, so I will defi nitely go back in and get a free mini-salad.”

Budgeting, New Hampshire would have to increase its funding 26 per-cent just to be on par with the state ranked 49 (Massachusetts). The state has a similar last-in-the-nation ranking when calculations are made based on higher education appro-priations per $1,000 of personal income.

“New Hampshire is far and away the lowest state using these measures,” Proulx said.

Although UNH is trying to increase revenue through other sources, most notably by increas-ing alumni donations and research and development partnerships as outlined in the UNH Strategic Plan, the cost of attendance increase is the only guaranteed way that the university can increase funds im-mediately.

And although the out-of-state rate might prompt more sticker shock, the majority of this burden has fallen on New Hampshire resi-dents.

“The cost of attendance for a non-resident student has risen at infl ation levels (using the Higher Education Price Index, or HEPI) since 1991,” Proulx said. “Resident student cost of attendance has in-creased at a rate signifi cantly higher than infl ation since 1991.”

The primary reason behind the cost of attendance increase, accord-ing to Proulx, is that state support has actually decreased since that time adjusted for infl ation using HEPI and only slightly increased adjusted for infl ation using the Con-sumer Price Index.

The USNH had been hoping for an increase in state funding. In

its “Budget Request for Fiscal Years 2010-2011,” released in 2008, the system called for the state to cover a greater percentage of its expenses. “For the FY08-09 biennium, the State of New Hampshire provided 12.9 percent of all revenue needed to operate the state’s public higher education system for four year insti-tutions,” the report reads. “The Uni-versity System respectfully requests that the state invest an equivalent of 13.5 percent for Fiscal Year 2010 and an equivalent of 14.1 percent for Fiscal Year 2011.”

At UNH, state appropriations accounted for 13.3 percent of oper-ating expenses in the most recently completed fi scal year, and Proulx expects it to account for an even lower percentage this fi scal year.

TUITION: State makes poor marks in school funding

ATW: Smooth sailing so far in fi rst-time dorm

Rooms at the New England Center feature three beds, a bathroom, a large window and wall-to-wall carpet.

ERICA SIVER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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TUITION continued on page 13

CONSTRUCTION: Grants help school cut costs on changes across campus

The New Hampshire Friday, September 10, 2010 13

Students, families feel the effects

According to the Project on Student Debt, an initiative of the Institute for College Access & Suc-cess, graduates of New Hampshire colleges and universities in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available, had the fi fth-highest average student debt in the nation at $25,785. The proportion of gradu-ates who had some amount of debt, 70 percent, was the sixth highest in the nation.

Broken down by college and campus, UNH had the third high-est average per student debt in the state at $27,516, trailing only Col-by-Sawyer College and St. Anselm College, both of which are private institutions. Seventy-fi ve percent of UNH’s Class of 2008 graduated with student debt.

According to fi gures published in the New England Journal of Higher Education, the average fam-ily needs to spend 36 percent of its before-tax income to send a child to a public four-year institution in the state of New Hampshire, com-pared to the national average of 28 percent.

These numbers have grown more critical in the past two de-cades.

“If an in-state student’s cost of attendance had grown at the rate of infl ation since 1991, that student would be paying about $14,000 today,” Proulx said. “Instead an in-state student is paying over $22,000. “

Put another way, UNH Presi-dent Mark Huddleston noted in his February address introducing the UNH Strategic Plan that the typi-cal New Hampshire family in 1978 spent about 40 percent of their after-tax income for tuition, fees, room and board. Today, he said, that num-ber is closer to 60 percent.

“This is not where we want to be and something the president is focusing on in the UNH Strategic Plan,” Proulx said.

Making fi nancial aid a priority, looking toward the

futureAs part of its June media re-

lease, the USNH stated that each of its institutions would commit to an increase in fi nancial aid for New Hampshire residents that would be at least 40 percent higher in the coming year than what they had provided two years ago, despite no change in state funding. At UNH, the numbers have gone far beyond that benchmark.

“For FY09- the 2008-09 academic year- we had awarded $5.7MM in tuition grants to New Hampshire resident students by the fi rst week of September,” Suzy Al-len, director of the Financial Aid Offi ce, said. “For the current year, on virtually the same date, we have awarded $11.3MM in tuition grants to New Hampshire resident stu-dents, representing an increase of about 80 percent.”

The USNH system will spend more than $75 million on institu-tionally funded student fi nancial aid next year, which will ensure “there will be little or no net increase in costs for New Hampshire’s most needy students,” according to the release.

A USNH spokesperson did not respond by press time.

And the demand for it has been there. The Financial Aid Offi ce re-ceived $25,113 on-time FAFSA for the 2009-2010 academic year. This year, they received $27,938. Across the USNH system, the number of students eligible for Federal Pell Grants jumped by 35 percent in the last year.

And while the USNH made no specifi c commitment to out-of-state students, fi nancial aid has increased for them as well at UNH.

“Between 2008 and 2010, again based on the fi rst week of September, our awards for tuition grants for non-residents have grown from $10.6MM to $16.8MM,” Al-len said.

Given New Hampshire’s “Live

Free or Die” nature, no one expects a drastic change in state appropria-tion levels. According to Proulx, however, the USNH is submitting a funding request that includes a fi ve percent increase in FY2012 over FY11 and a 4.76 percent increase in FY13 over FY12.

“We are expecting to be suc-cessful with our request,” he said.

Even if that request is granted, New Hampshire universities will face unique challenges.

“The challenges are that we are the state’s fl agship research uni-versity and with low state support, it is diffi cult to fully meet our mis-sion while maintaining access to all students and keep our prices low,” Proulx said. “It is something we are very focused on. Something that will have to change if we want to remain competitive.”

The UNH Police Department sent out its fi rst campus crime alert message of the year over Labor Day weekend when a female student was allegedly robbed on campus Monday morning.

According to the message, an unidentifi ed white male allegedly snatched a Clutch purse from the student between 1:00 a.m. and 1:30 a.m. on Monday along a walkway between McLaughlin and Congreve Halls.

“The victim’s wrist purse was stolen, and her cell phone was

knocked to the ground,” Deputy Police Chief Paul Dean said.

The female student was not hurt, and she notifi ed police of the incident at 3:00 a.m.

Immediately following the in-cident, UNH Police issued a cam-pus-wide alert via e-mail and text message in accordance with the Clery Act.

The Clery Act is a federal act that requires all universities with federal fi nancial aid programs to publicly disclose information about campus crime.

After further investigation, an alert updating the situation was sent out Tuesday at 3:00 p.m. that reas-

sured the university community that Monday’s reported incident does not “present an immediate risk to the UNH community or part of a larger pattern of crime on campus by an individual assailant.”

According to Dean, the case in now closed.

“The police have fi nished their investigation and have concluded a robbery did not take place in this instance, and the matter is closed,” Dean said.

Further details have yet to be released in this reported incident, and the police department declined to provide further clarifi cation on this case.

Case dropped in Labor Day weekend robberyAlexandra Churchill

STAFF WRITER

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TUITION: USNH, UNH work to boost fi nancial aid to students

Breaking down UNH

tuition

In state tuition: $10,730Out of state tuition: $24,700Platinum meal plan: $4,324Transportation fee: $51.50Technology Fee: $83Student Athletics Fee: $441Student Recreation Fee: $225.50Memorial Union Fee: $168.50Health Services Fee: $288.50Maintenance Fee: $165Student Activity Fee: $48Residence Hall double: $5,528In state total: $23,524Out of state totals: $37,494

Source: unh.eduAll totals per year

According to an anonymous tip given to The New Hampshire, popu-lar mash-up band Passion Pit listed a show at The University of New Hampshire on their tour dates page of their website yesterday, raising suspicion that the band may be head-ed to Durham as the main band/artist SCOPE is set to bring this fall. Just hours later, though, the trip to UNH was removed from the website.

According to SCOPE Publicity Director Kristen Morin, the student organization will make a “big an-nouncement” at University Day on Tuesday.

“We have something planned,” Morin said without confi rming or denying that Passion Pit was the band set to play at UNH. She did say that the band/artist that comes will play at the Field House. “Ev-erything is ready to go. We’ll an-nounce it around noon at ‘U’ Day (on Thompson Hall lawn).”

The bands website, www.pas-sionpitmusic.com, lists multiple stops on an upcoming tour, includ-ing stops at the University of Illi-

nois and University of North Caro-lina, but the band does not have a show listed on the site between Oct. 8 and Oct. 20.

Homecoming weekend is Oct. 8-10, but SCOPE has already booked comedian Lewis Black for Oct. 10.

SCOPE President Mike Cer-maske wouldn’t give details about the Tuesday announcement, but said he’s looking forward to sharing the news with the school.

“We can’t say anything about that (Passion Pit). That’s always been our policy,” he said. “But we do have something planned soon.”

Passion Pit is most known for their hit “Sleepyhead.” The band features fi ve members with Michael Angelakos on lead vocals.

Last year, SCOPE brought artists Akon and MGMT, and Cer-maske stressed the importance of mixing up genres.

The mash-up artists Passion Pit may just be the mix-up SCOPE is looking for.

“People will just have to wait and see what transpires,” Cermaske said.

Chad GraffMANAGING EDITOR

SCOPE mum on possible Passion Pit appearance