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By Taysha MurtaughDaily Staff Writer

A proposal to replace Sec-tion 3.4 of the Faculty Hand-book and the Memorandum of Understanding is at the top of the Faculty Senate’s agenda Tuesday. The senate will meet at 3:30 p.m. in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union.

The replacement process will begin during the “Consent Agenda” portion of the meeting.

Max Porter, professor of civil, construction and environmen-tal engineering and member of the Governance Council, will propose a withdrawal of the previous version of the policy.

Then, under “New Busi-ness,” Porter will propose the new policy entitled “Nonrenew-al or Termination of Appoint-ment.” This provision regards the termination of tenured and untenured faculty and elimina-tion of departments.

It will incorporate some im-portant procedural steps from the Memorandum of Under-standing, but unlike the MOU, will be a permanent change to

By Whitney SagerDaily Staff Writer

Enduring the blowing snow and frigid temperatures for a 10-minute walk to class may seem like torture for students,

but it’s nothing for the people who are out working in those conditions every day.

From the student who dons a Statue of Liberty costume five days a week, to the manager of the gyro and Super Dog stands who dances to keep warm, to the groundskeeper who is pushing snow at 4 a.m., spending time in the cold means getting a paycheck.

The waving Statue of Liberty

Dressing up as the Statue of Liberty and waving to people as they drive by re-ally is a job.

Nolan Murray, freshman in English, is employed by Liberty Tax Services of Ames and can be found, disguised as Lady Liberty, on the corner of Duff Av-enue and Main Street every weekday from 4–8 p.m. throughout the tax sea-son.

“With weather like it is today, it’s a little bit discouraging,” Murray said on a day when snow was falling everywhere and temperatures were in the teens.

“You got to bundle up a little bit, you know, but it’s money in your pocket, so I guess that’s kind of the drive. You just got to bundle up and just get it done every day, and when you get that paycheck it’s all worth it.”

Before going to work, Murray has a unique method of preparing for his shift out in the cold.

“It’s quite simple: I open my closet and grab every sweatshirt I can find,” Murray said.

“Right now I got about five sweat-shirts on, three pairs of pants, long underwear, wool socks. You just got to bundle up, put your facemask on, your hat on and just do it.”

Attracting the attention of potential customers — or anyone for that matter — is not hard for Murray.

Since he started working, Murray said he has received a number of differ-ent reactions from people who drive by: kids who are scared, adults who look at him like he is crazy, and teenagers who throw things at him.

“You get a little bit of everything, so it keeps you guessing, and that’s kind of the fun part about it,” Murray said.

The dancing Smiles and Gyros manager

The manager of Smiles and Gyros describes her job as “exhilarating.”

Mara Spooner is in charge of man-aging the employees who work the four gyro and Super Dog carts that can be found along Welch Avenue six nights a week.

Spooner said the stands remain open even if it is really cold outside.

“We’re not just going to wimp out be-cause it got kind of cold,” Spooner said.

However, there are limits on which stands will open if temperatures drop below a certain point.

Spooner said if the temperatures are at or below 19 degrees at 8 p.m., the Monday and Tuesday stands will not be open, but Thursday through Saturday, all stands will be open by midnight.

If at 11 p.m. it is five degrees or below, none of the stands will open, no matter which day it is.

“We want each other to have a face and make it through the night and not put ourselves in danger,” Spooner said. “We still do just a little more than you might expect.”

On nights when it is particularly cold, Spooner said she dresses in layers. These layers include leggings, several long-sleeved shirts, a red Union suit, Carhartt overalls and a hat.

“Everyone kind of finds their own favorite combination,” Spooner said, referring to the layers of warm clothes Smiles and Gyros employees wear when they are working.

Along with the layers of clothing, Spooner and other Smiles and Gyros employees will dance to keep warm during the night.

Spooner said the dancing also makes her job more enjoyable.

Despite having to endure the cold weather, Spooner said this is one of the coolest jobs she has had.

The gyro and Super Dog carts trans-form the sidewalk into a business, so it’s not just another street corner, Spooner said.

“There’s really something cool about being outside but still having control of an area,” Spooner said.

The early-bird snow remover

A majority of campus is still sleeping when the groundskeepers start clearing off the sidewalks.

Doug Harjes, groundskeeper II, op-erates one of the tractors used to push the snow off the sidewalks. Harjes, along with the other groundskeepers, is up at the crack of dawn to tackle the most re-cent blanket of snow that has fallen on campus. Depending on the amount of snow that has fallen, Harjes will report to work as early as 4 a.m.

“If it’s a lighter snow where there’s not a lot, you know, two, three inches or less, generally we come in at four o’clock in the morning,” Harjes said. “On nights when we’ve had, maybe, two days of straight snow, like we’ve had several of those this year, we may stay overnight.”

During particularly bad storms, Harjes said, he has spent the night sleep-

ing on the floor in one of the rooms in the General Services building.

“I live about 25 miles away, so to go home on certain nights and then try to come back at two in the morning is not real feasible,” Harjes said.

Dressing in layers is essential for keeping warm, especially when Harjes gets out of the heated tractor cab to shovel the snow.

Harjes said that along with typical winter clothing, he wears Carhartt over-alls, a jacket and winter gloves to keep warm.

Harjes has been working as a groundskeeper for the past 14 years. He used to work in the retail business and, despite all the snow this winter has brought the Ames area, Harjes said, he enjoys what he does.

“Even though it’s hectic when you’re actually doing it, once you get caught up and you’re just in the flow, it’s not hectic anymore. You just kind of do it,” Harjes said.

March 9, 2010, Volume 204 >> Number 116 >> 40 cents >> iowastatedaily.com >> An independent newspaper serving Iowa State since 1890 TUESDAY

Sociology Department

Professor’s complaints found unjustified

Faculty Handbook

Section change proposed

Spring Break

Haiti trip to aid victims

Braving

coldthe

Ames Jobs

Nolan Murray, freshman in English, walks up and down Main Street on Feb. 8. Mur-ray is dressed as the Statue of Liberty and encourages people to sign up for a tax service. File photo: Rashah McChesney/Iowa State Daily

Employees of all kind share stories of dealing with extreme temperatures this winter

see SENATE on PAGE 3

see SALTon PAGE 7

By Tessa CallenderDaily Staff Writer

Spring Break is right around the corner, and for most people that means going home and spending time with the family — or partying it up somewhere far away and warm. However, for 47 members of the Salt Com-pany, this is not the case. They plan to spend their Spring Break in Haiti serving those who were affected by the country’s cata-strophic earthquake in January.

“We were already looking at some form of partnering with Haiti and students from the Salt Company before the earth-quake hit,” said Lance Allgood, ISU alumnus and Global Min-istries coordinator of the Salt Company, who is organizing the trip. “Salt has done lots of trips before; for instance, in the past, Spring Break trips have gone into the rainforests of Panama or the poor countryside of Ja-maica. But for this year we were

Ongoing dispute between Krier, faculty members ends in award of damagesBy Sarah HaasDaily Staff Writer

Associate Professor Daniel Krier was found to have abused ISU administrative complaint proce-dure against two ISU sociology professors Friday. A jury ruled that Krier did not use the ISU adminis-trative complaint process for its intended use and awarded the plaintiffs, Terry Besser and Betty Do-

bratz, $18,442 for monetary damages and $24,000 in punitive damages.

The plaintiffs alleged Krier wrongfully filed complaints of gender discrimination against them because they were critical of his academic scholarship. They also claimed that he made the false complaints to eliminate them “from con-sideration of his application for tenure and to in-timidate them,” according to a news release from Mark Sherinian, the plaintiffs’ attorney.

The ruling was the culmination of nearly two years of an ongoing battle between Krier and members of the sociology department.

Krier filed an administrative complaint March 12, 2008, against five ISU faculty members includ-

ing ISU professors of sociology Besser, Dobratz and Stephen Sapp; and associate professors David Schweingruber and Susan Stewart.

The complaint was sent to Carla Espinoza, as-sociate vice president for human resources and director of Equal Opportunity and Diversity Of-fice. Krier alleged that Dobratz, Besser and Sapp engaged in misconduct including discriminatory harassment and retaliation for filing complaint of the harassment, according to court records.

At the time, Dobratz and Besser served on the ISU Sociology Department Preliminary Evalua-tion Committee. Composed of three full profes-sors and three associate professors, the commit-tee meets with each assistant professor annually,

in order to provide them with advice.In his complaint, Krier alleged that during a

PEC meeting in April 2007, Besser and Dobratz “discussed how [Krier] would never come up for tenure.” He said he found their review to be “hos-tile, dismissive” of his accomplishments and dis-couraging.

Sherinian said during the meeting the com-mittee was critical of Krier “for not having sus-tained research and publications.”

Krier’s complaint also alleged there were “re-current references” to him as a “testosterone-dripping male” and unsubstantiated rumors that

see KRIER on PAGE 3

Vote of confidence see page 10