Letters to the Editor

A remarkable woman To the Editor:

Barbara Lowery was one of Penn's great women leaders and citizens for the past 32 years -- half of her too-short lifetime. During those years, she helped build the School of Nursing and improved the University of Pennsylvania as a whole.

But in academia, nothing is ever really finished. It is always being edited, researched, piloted, tested, reworked, rewritten, refined. Barbara Lowery, like her colleagues in the School of Nursing, was always an active participant in the process of making the School better, more solid, more fully grounded in quantitative and qualitative thoughtfulness. While she avoided center stage, she committed her career, her intelligence, her patience, her wisdom and her tenure to strengthen the concepts of education and research -- especially in nursing.

She was hardly alone in this endeavor. Penn Nursing has always had an extraordinary cadre of smart, determined and passionate faculty, staff and alumni. They have spent years -- lives, really -- working to build something bigger than any one of them. In addition to teaching, conducting research and, for many, providing patient care, they have sacrificed to help the world inside and outside of Penn understand what nursing does and can do, and to ensure that it exists at Penn.

What is it to look back on your life at any point, and know that you have built something that will last? In today's world, a disease, a bombing, a sniper, an unforeseen personal catastrophe could mean that we reflect on our lives far earlier than expected, if we get the chance at all.

May we have the good fortune to achieve what extraordinary women like Barbara Lowery modeled in her life. May we commit our energy and integrity to building enduring ideas and promoting service that truly make a difference in people's lives.

Kate Judge The writer was assistant dean for development at the School of Nursing until 2000. No David or Goliath To the Editor:

Graduate Employees Together-University of Pennsylvania's charges of unfair labor practices against the University ("GET-UP files charges against U.," The Daily Pennsylvanian, 10/15/02) are nonsense.

To begin with, GET-UP is supported and funded by the American Federation of Teachers, a member organization of the AFL-CIO, the largest labor union in the country. The AFT and AFL-CIO are providing resources -- legal and otherwise -- to GET-UP in an effort to expand their own dues-paying membership base. The idea that GET-UP is a small, under-resourced David fighting the University's Goliath is ludicrous.

Second, the election of a union freezes any changes to salaries and benefits. Once a union is imposed upon a work force, all terms of employment would be subject to collective bargaining. GET-UP never tells us that the University does not have to agree to any of the union's demands. It's all up for negotiation, and that process can take a long time.

Third, the University, GET-UP and the Philadelphia City controller are powerless to arbitrarily determine a student's tax status, which is determined by and can only be changed by the City Council, Pennsylvania Legislature or Congress.

If a research fellow or teaching fellow is ultimately classified as an employee, then the criteria for a certain tax status are no longer met. Under current law, the tax status of many students depends specifically on their not being classified as employees. As soon as they are defined as employees, those tax benefits disappear. A single well-meaning city politician cannot change that.

The University community should realize that there are a significant number of graduate students who oppose unionization. We have good relationships with the University and the faculty, and we do not want an outside organization like the AFL-CIO to interfere.

Unlike GET-UP, we also do not have the immense resources of the AFT and the AFL-CIO at our disposal, so we count on the University to protect our interests. The University is the only ally we have in countering misinformation.

Michael Braun Wharton graduate student

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