News Timeline

April 17 – Pitt service workers, represented by Service Employees International Union,… April 17 – Pitt service workers, represented by Service Employees International Union, reject Pitt’s April 15 offer to increase their salaries by 1.75 percent, in response to a 75 percent increase in the cost of health benefits for the most popular family health plan. See storyMay 11 – Pitt student Jenna Morasca adds the title of “Survivor” to her resume, which includes modeling for “Maxim” and “Stuff Magazine,” when she triumphs in the final episode of “Survivor: The Amazon.” May 16 – Pitt gets a new athletic director, Jeff Long, five months after then-Pitt Athletic Director Steve Pederson resigned. May 20 and 21 – Three armed robberies occur in South Oakland during the night and early morning hours. See storyMay 30 – Pitt service workers join city janitors and other SEIU members to rally in front of the Downtown offices of UPMC Health Plan – the workers’ health care provider. Morning traffic in the area grinds to a halt, and 17 people are arrested. See storyJune 3 – Xiaomei Jia, the wife of Pitt researcher Cailu Xu and a practitioner of Falun Gong, is freed after 19 months in a Beijing female labor camp. The practice of Falun Gong has drawn more Chinese membership than the Communist Party, but it has also attracted the disapproval of the government. June 6 – The five remaining football schools in the Big East file a lawsuit against the University of Miami, Boston College and the Atlantic Coast Conference, accusing the three of placing economic self-interest before public interest. See storyJune 18 – Billy Gaines, a wide receiver for the Panthers football team, dies of head injuries after falling 25 feet – with a blood alcohol level of .16 – from a catwalk in a Homestead church. See storyJune 20 – People leaving a baseball game in Pittsburgh’s North Side find the body of Pitt Pharmacy employee Sharon Monaco near the National Aviary. Police arrested Myron Honaker, a Pitt custodian and Monaco’s boyfriend at the time of her death, as the prime suspect in the murder. June 24 – Nine Pitt students – including five Student Government Board members and SGB president Liz Culliton – travel to Harrisburg to meet with members of Pennsylvania’s state assembly and lobby for more financial support from the state for Pitt and public transportation. See storyJune 26 – Pitt service workers sign a three-year contract with Pitt after the University agrees to grant employees a 3 percent salary increase for each of the next three years. The old contract would have expired four days later for the workers, who had refused to sign a new contract after learning they faced a nearly 75 percent increase in health care costs. June 30 – Miami and Virginia Tech announce that they have accepted invitations to join the ACC, leaving the Big East with six football-playing schools after the 2003 season. See storyJuly 1 – Faced with diminishing state support, the Carnegie Library system cuts hours by an average of 21 percent, eliminating Sunday hours at the main branch in Oakland and suspending all outreach programs not funded by grants. See storyJuly 1 – Port Authority defers the adoption of its 2004 budget, which calls for drastic route and schedule cuts to the city bus system, until the state approves its budget for the next fiscal year. See storyJuly 14 – Pitt announces tuition hikes of 9.5 percent for in-state students and 7.5 percent for out-of-state students at Pitt’s board of trustees’ budget committee meeting. The percentage increase will raise the cost of in-state tuition by about $750, bringing the annual cost to $8,614 for in-state students; out-of-state students will pay $17,926 each year. See storyJuly 28 – President Bush visits Pittsburgh and speaks to delegates attending the National Urban League conference at the new David L. Lawrence Convention Center. His visit draws the attention of seven Democratic presidential candidates, who also address the convention’s attendees, and 200 protestors gather Downtown during his speech.