News

By Emma Loenicker After the campus-wide town hall held on Nov. 16, many students, faculty, and staff were left with more confusion and frustration than they had felt beforehand. There was a general expectation that this meeting would provide clarity about the Sound Future proposal, and open the door for more transparency from the administration, but instead, the meeting fueled more tension. Many are disheartened by the strategies being used to recover from a looming ten-million-dollar budget deficit. The buyouts being offered to beloved professors and the possibility of program...

By Hannah Lee During this year’s midterm elections, many predicted a “red wave” in which many Republicans would be elected to positions of political power. Historically, the president’s party has generally lost elections at the state and national levels in midterms. This year, however, many Democrats won over states and positions and kept their control over the Senate. There were also many historical firsts for those elected to these positions. Many attribute these results to a higher Gen Z voting turnout. According to the Center for Information and Research on...

By Hannah Lee On Nov. 14, 2022, the Children’s Hospital Organization (CHO) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) asked President Joe Biden and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to declare Respiratory Syncytial Virus (or RSV) a national and public health emergency. This was in response to the growing levels of hospitalizations for children with respiratory viruses. Pediatric units across the United States are completely overwhelmed with babies and toddlers with RSV or the flu, and some parts of the country, such as Rhode Island have run out...

By Emma Loenicker Since May 2022, a council of Tacoma Art Museum employees has been making efforts to unionize. They are organizing for livable wages and benefits, no further staff reduction, accessible grievance procedures to create accountability, transparency from leadership, standardized hiring and training procedures and influence in decision-making processes to improve their work conditions. This effort would make the TAM Washington’s first major art institution with unionized workers. On Oct. 17, TAM’s board of trustees received the workers’ letter requesting union representation. In the letter that TAM Workers United...

By Albert Chang-Yoo On Oct. 28, the Board of Trustees voted to affirm a plan created by President Isiaah Crawford aiming to avoid an estimated $10.5 million structural deficit by 2025. The vote was held at an open session following a week of deliberation. The recommendations include much of what the Academic, Administrative, and Auxiliary Program Review (AAAPR) report had advocated for; however, there were also important differences between the proposals. the proposals. President Crawford presented his plan in a less-thanprecise bullet-pointed slideshow entitled “A Sound Future: Recovery and Renewal.”...

By Albert Chang-Yoo   On Sept. 26, 2022 the Comprehensive Academic, Administrative and Auxiliary Program Review (AAAPR) submitted a lengthy list of recommendations to combat the University’s financial woes. The review found that in order to avoid an expected $10 million deficit by 2025, the University must make significant changes, including faculty downsizing and program consolidation. President Crawford will submit a preliminary report to the Board of Trustees today and final recommendations will be voted on in February.   The Comprehensive Academic, Administrative, & Auxiliary Program Review was created by...