Monthly Archives: September 2014

News

Market Basket strikes cause strife

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With the Demoulas family fighting and the Market Basket chain coming to a near halt, it has affected some students here at NECC.

It was early July when the Market Basket board of directors headed by Arthur S. Demoulas fired Arthur T. Demoulas who had been serving as president of the company since 2008 according to an article in the Boston Globe.

An uproar took place when employees walked off their jobs and customers boycotted the stores. The loss of Artie T, led to both customers and employees going to the Market Basket headquarters in Tewksbury and protesting.

Within a couple weeks, Market Basket’s profits were falling sharply. With no food coming out of the warehouses and stores slowly emptying of merchandise, the Market Basket Board of Directors decided it was time for the stores to cut all hours to part time employees and schedule employees to the store’s needs.

Viviana Padilla, a NECC general studies student said, she has worked part time in the Lawrence store for 5 years.

“It was my first job,” said Padilla. In Padilla’s store they started scheduling part timers one day a week then eventually told her do not not bother looking at the schedule as there were no hours for her.

With school starting around the corner and hours being cut, Mariah Cruz, a liberal arts student who worked part time in the Haverhill store started to worry. She lives at home with her single mother and siblings. She helped her mom out with bills and food for her family. She also worried about the added cost that was coming due to starting school. 

“I now have no income,” said Cruz.

Some students were not given the official word they were laid off. Matthew Gagnon, a business transfer student who works part time in the Haverhill store said he technically still has a job but would not be given any hours. 

“I have not been able to pay bills, and I usually help my dad out with bills. It has been a little bit of a struggle,” said Gagnon. 

Gagnon also said he will be given hours for this week.

For weeks there were assurances that Market Basket was moving closer to a deal, but there no deal until last week, causing students to look elsewhere for work and shoppers other places to shop in the meantime.

Jasmine Montilla, a radiology student works at Stop and Shop and is seeing the influx of customers that once shopped at Market Basket. It has affected her in a different way by putting stress on her.  “I am getting complaints from customers about the pricing and how expensive Stop and Shop is compared to Market Basket.” Montilla understand the customer’s anger but does not understand the complaints that are coming her way being a cashier.

The Market Basket saga of the summer of 2014 came to an end last week when Arthur T. Demoulas bought the remaining 50.5 percent of the company giving him soul ownership with his three sisters.  This deal could not come soon enough for some students, as they want to get back to work and start helping out with their families.

Opinion

Stroll through the journalism program

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My parents always told me when I was young that I would constantly change my mind about what I wanted to be.

One year, I wanted to be an actress. The next, I wanted to be a pastry chef. If the future Ashlee came to me and said I was going to be a journalist, I would laugh and walk away. 

All throughout middle school and up until my senior year of high school, I despised having to write any type of report or write anything in general. 

I would have never thought in a million years I would be a journalist until my senior year of high school. One of the classes I took was sports journalism. 

Out of the 15 students that were in the class, I was only one of two girls. 

I said to myself, “I should change classes,” although I had heard that the teacher who taught the class was great. 

So I decided not to drop the class, and one of our first assignments was to write about a sports team at my high school. 

I ended up choosing the hockey team. I showed up to one of their practices and I started interviewing players. After I got my interviews done, I needed some action shots. 

Although the coach wouldn’t let me on the ice without a helmet, I asked this player that was on the bench if I could borrow his helmet. He let me use it, and I went on the ice to get my action shot with this smelly helmet with a used mouth guard two inches from my mouth. 

In the end I got my action shots and my article came out great. Once I put my hands on the keyboard to type, the words just stared coming, and in an hour I had a story done. 

I knew from that point forward this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I ended up joining my school newspaper “The Blue and White” and becoming the editor in chief. 

I always remember where I came from and without my teacher Mrs. Guthrie I wouldn’t be where I am today. 

It’s funny how one class can change your future for the better. I finally knew what I wanted my major to be when I registered for classes at Northern Essex as a Journalism/Communication major. 

I have been on the NECC paper the “Observer” since fall of 2012, and I couldn’t be happier. When people ask me “why journalism” I tell them there is no better feeling then seeing your work put out there for the public to see. 

It’s not as easy as it looks. You have to develop people skills when interviewing and be able to get the research you need for your story in a short amount of time. 

What I love most about being a journalist is that I can speak my opinion and say what I want to say. 

Journalists are sometimes called “the voice for the voiceless”. 

I believe there is no better description out there for what we do.

News

Marcia Winters speaks on counseling and health services at NECC

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NECC counseling services offers a safe place for students to address problems affecting their lives, and for students, faculty and staff to receive appropriate referrals to aid them in areas of life where they may be struggling.

Marcia Winters, a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and Social Worker (LCSW) is the counselor for NECC’s Haverhill campus. Newly hired Karen Fehr (LCSW) is the counselor for the Lawrence campus.

“We see students mainly that might be experiencing some difficulties: depression, anxiety, mood disorders, sexual assault, coming out … grief and trauma and alcoholism and drug abuse,” said Winters.

Counseling hours for the Haverhill campus are from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday through Friday in the Sport and Fitness Center, room D117.

Counseling hours will likely be the same on the Lawrence campus. The location for Lawrence Counseling Services has not yet been posted.

“I’ve been doing this a long time. I’m director here, and before that I was director of counseling at Fisher College and Mount Ida College. And I also worked at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston,” said Winters.

For the first three sessions of counseling, Winters will establish what difficulties the student is having, and then she will likely make a referral for further help. Students cannot use NECC Counseling Services long-term.

“The most common issues are relationships, depression and anxiety,” said Winters. “Also, we see students with learning differences: dyslexia, Aspergers or on the autism disorder spectrum.”

Referrals vary depending on what insurance the student has.

“If they have MassHealth, it’s a little bit more limited … it’s almost impossible to see a psychiatrist,” said Winters. “[With] the school insurance, they get initially eight visits, and then they can reapply for more visits. I think it’s up to 26 visits.”

Winters established the counseling services on Haverhill campus two years ago.

“The counseling and health services here were let go about 10 years ago or 11 years ago,” said Winters.

“They did it for financial reasons; it’d be nice to have at least one nurse here.

“I am familiar, though, with Mass Bay and some of the other colleges, and they do have a nurse. A nurse is good for immunizations and all the record keeping; right now I guess they use [an] outside firm. They’re not medical people.”

“I think they thought that a lot of people didn’t use it because a lot of people really come here as commuters. Because they come back and forth to school, they may have their own primary care outside,” said Winters.

Winters also offers educational resources to students interested in psychology, and she has plenty of references and referrals on file for students to access.

“It’s a warm, safe place to come,” said Winters.

To schedule an appointment with Winters, call 978-556-3104. Health services resources and references for students can be found at http://www.necc.mass.edu/student-services/support/.

News

NECC to bid public safety

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Public Safety is an important department on any college campus. NECC contracts with a private company called Eagle Investigative Service, Inc., or EIS, for its public safety.

“Eagle was the public safety company that was under contract [four years ago]; so this was bid out before I got here, and I think they’ve been here 12 years,” said Vice President of Administration and Finance and CFO David Gingerella.

EIS provides 24-hour surveillance in Haverhill and surveillance in Lawrence during operating hours. Safety officers on campus were hired and trained by EIS.

The head of Public Safety is former Lawrence police officer Gene Hatem. Hatem was an officer for 32 years, and he spent much of his time as a Sergeant Detective in Investigations.

“College keeps us very busy,” said Hatem.

EIS was founded in 1996 and specializes in private security, crisis response training, public safety and private investigative services. The company is located in the Christine Building (Second Level), at 236 Pleasant Valley St., in Methuen, Mass.

Training for NECC’s current public safety officers was completed in 2012.

EIS is currently looking to hire at least one additional part time security officer for Haverhill and Lawrence.
The basic requirements stated on the posting are a minimum of associate degree or the equivalent in related experience. CPR certification and first aid is required, and trainees must be able to pass a 40 hour training program.

Candidates must: have a Mass. driver’s license, basic computer skills, be able to lift up to 50 pounds, and pass a full background check.

EIS prefers if speak and understand Spanish, and have one to three years of related experience and former police experience. These criteria are not mandatory.

Public safety also publishes Annual Safety Reports which contain crime statistics and information about the Public Safety Department. The latest report available is from 2013 and contains crime statistics from 2012.

On page eight of the Annual Safety Report, it is says, “Public safety officers do not operate with police powers and do not carry weapons.”

The Jeanne Clery Act and Campus Crime Statistics Act make the Annual Safety Report a requirement.

NECC puts out an RFP, or Request for Proposal, when looking a to contract a new company. The RFP is posted on a state site known as CommBuys, a “procurement system for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Executive Departments,” according to the site.

“This year, we’re taking the next step. We’re preparing the RFPs. We have a consultant that helps us do the RFPs; he’s a lawyer out of New Jersey that actually does this for a living,” said Gingerella. “We have his major contracts.They’re called the Berkshire Group, the group that helps us do this. They write the RFPs [and] they go out and help us find people to solicit and do the bidding. The two big ones that we’ll be doing will be Public Safety and the Day Care Center.”

The Berkshire Group is based out of New Jersey and provides financial consultation to many institutions of higher education such as NYU, Brown University and the Massachusetts Higher Education Authority.

The RFP for Public Safety is being written now, and it should be published sometime in November. Bids from security companies should come back by early January.

If EIS is not contracted again, it will finish out spring semester and a transition will be made to the new company

“The date is June 30, if we were going to switch contractors. We would start doing the transition sometime in April or May, and then July 1 we’d do the final switch-over,” said Gingerella.

“It’d be up to the new company to tell us how they would be able to handle [hiring the guards from the other company],” said Gingerella. “More than likely, we would say that some of the individual that had been there have a significant amount of time and knowledge; if we were changing companies [the current security guards] could certainly stay with EIS if EIS had a contact where they could move them. But if they didn’t, they would be laying them off anyway, so they would be applying for the jobs and would be more than likely be considered for them.”

“We are being extremely careful on how we do this because we know how important public safety is to faculty, staff and students of the college,” said Gingerella.

NECC public safety can be contacted by calling (978) 556-3333. In an emergency, dial 911. Public Safety can be found on the first floor of the Spurk building on the Haverhill campus, or in the Franklin Building on the Lawrence campus.