The Alestle Vol. 75 No. 14

THE

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Professors advise caution when considering credit cards

‘Everybody’ makes audience question time and death

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Wrestling finishes fifth in Cougar Clash PAGE 8

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Thursday, December 9, 2021 Vol. 75 No. 14

the student voice since 1960

Scam emails fill student and faculty emails, new measures coming ANDREW CROWDUS reporter

With a new influx of scam emails making their way into student and faculty emails, ITS said they are working to solve this issue.

Freshman business major Kelan Branch from Belleville, Illinois, said he gets more than four emails in his junk folder weekly.

“I have five to six emails every week in my junk folder,” Branch said.

Branch believes people should be careful when opening their emails.

“There are ways to detect a fraudulent email by checking to see if that person included their name, address and organization that they work for,” Branch said. “I look up the organization and see if it is legit, notably on Reddit, as there are a lot of college or graduated users there.”

ITS said what they are doing to fix the problem is confidential to maintain security.

“These processes include software, analysis and procedures that can scan and prevent as well as reactionary processes when things do get through,” ITS said. “Even with these measures, only a small percentage of emails

sent to the siue.edu domain are delivered.

The rest are blocked.”

Junior special education major Tiven Ross from Freeburg, Illinois, said he tends to question his emails.

“The scam emails make me question all kinds of normal emails. Scam emails that should go into my junk folder sometimes appear in my main inbox,” Ross said. Those scam emails should go straight to the junk folder, or not come at all.”

Ross said he fell for a scam email that he thought was legitimate.

“Last winter, I got a job opportunity to be a personal assistant at SIUE from someone who claimed to work for SIUE. Howeve r, w h e n I ca l led t o ve r i f y if it was a rea l person, it was a really old sketchy-sounding guy and it was clear it wasn’t legitimate,” Ross said.

ITS said the most common email students should avoid are emails about unexpected job offers.

“Unsolicited email job offers, internships and business opportunities are

always a scam and will promise $300 $500 a week,” ITS said. “Often clicking through these offers and giving up your password will allow the scammer to use your email to send the scam to others at SIUE. Scam job offers via email are easily spotted as the offer of $300 - $500 a week is a consistent theme. Being vigilant is the key to protecting yourself, your friends, your family and SIUE.” ITS said the scam emails didn’t just start.

“Malicious, annoying and scam emails have been around since the first spam message was sent in 1978,” ITS said.

“Notable ma licious messages include the Melissa virus in 1999, the ILOVE Y O U virus in 2000 and many more such as the more recent CovidLock ransomware in 2020.”

ITS said because of emails “open to the world nature,” email can’t be considered part of a secure network.

“That is reserved for critical infrastructure. However, we do imple-

ment strategies to secure emails. People with bad intentions though will do their best to find their way around these strategies,” ITS said.

ITS said that security is a shared responsibility when using SIUE systems.

“This is by policy as you are ultimately responsible for what happens when you or someone else uses your eID. SIUE ITS provides training and notifications to faculty, staff and students many times a year about known and potential scams,” ITS said.

Branch himself has also fallen victim to scam emails before.

“I had an application. Shortly after that, the guy who sent me the email would keep blowing up my phone to the point where I had to block his number,” Branch said. “I got one scam email on my personal email where it said I had gotten invited to the National Honors Society and when I went to apply for it, they had subscriptions for $65. That is an automatic red flag.”

Ross said people should be cautious with the emails they pursue.

“A lot of these scam emails look somewhat real, and that’s what the scammers want you to think,” Ross said. “I think people should ask others for advice when approaching how to handle some emails.

People should be cautious and not give any personal information out.”

To see ITS’s protection and security policies in full, visit their website.

Alcohol addiction, invisible labor inspire Research Impact award winners NICOLE BOYD social media manager

The Visualizing Research Impacts competition announced its winners — a mixed media piece called “Octomom” that depicts invisible labor, and a graphical representation of splashing wine in which the data points represent genes in the fly genome.

Jocelyn DeGroot Brown, professor of applied communication studies, won most creative representation or research impact for “Octomom,” an octopus doing various household chores expected of mothers that often go unnoticed.

“We made an open-ended questionnaire just asking about the challenges mothers were facing and if they had social support, what things they are responsible for as mothers, that sort of thing.

The response was ridiculous.

We had like 300 responses in 14 hours,” DeGroot Brown said.

“These women needed a place to vent, they wanted to be heard.”

According to DeGroot Brown, she was able to make three separate studies out of the data. The study that inspired “Octomom” is based on the idea of invisible labor, which refers to unpaid and often unnoticed work that is typically delegated

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to women.

“They are in charge of all the things that make the house run smoothly and you don’t notice it unless they aren’t done,” DeGroot Brown said. “In the piece you can see she’s doing the laundry, balancing the kid. She’s cleaning, but then she’s also thinking about scheduling, and that’s one thing that takes a lot of time and nobody notices or cares unless something’s missed.”

DeGroot Brown said the results weren’t surprising, but someone had to do the research so others can build upon it. She said she wanted her artwork to include laundry, scheduling, holding a baby and a messy bun.

She also said she likes using bright colors in her art.

“I just wanted it to be colorful. I mean, it’s strange to assign a race to an octopus anyway, but I want it to be representative of anybody so anybody can see themselves in her,” DeGroot Brown said.

Emily Petruccelli, assistant professor of biology, won best presentation of research impact for “Pouring effects in alcohol research.” Petruccelli said she’s interested in how alcohol can impact molecular signaling, and how that can cause changes in behavior. She looked at whether they change

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in fruit flies after they’ve been repeatedly intoxicated.

“When I look at my data, I often just see dots and sometimes when it comes to interpretation you have to be a little bit creative, looking at the data. So I thought when I was explaining the data to students, I would mention that this is called a volcano plot and it doesn’t really have anything to do with us studying volcanoes but more like the splashing,” Petruccelli said. “Then that visualized for me the inspiration of the work.”

Petruccelli said she plans to use the prize money to buy a drug that was used in a recent study to treat alcoholic rats and alcohol tissue from humans. She said she hopes to see if the drug will work in flies.

“It actually inhibits one of the proteins that we’re interested in called STAT. So it would be a stat inhibitor, and we think that it’s involved with the creation of addiction-like behavior,” Petruccelli said. “So we’re hoping that in our model, the flies when we feed them this drug, similar to how it worked in the rat model, will see a behavioral change that’s associated with reduced addiction behavior.”

Petruccelli said she is see RESEARCH on page 2

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“Octomom” is shown holding her phone because while some may assume a mother on her phone is simply distracted, she may be scheduling an appointment or googling the proper dose of medicine for her child. | Jocelyn DeGroot Brown / Professor of Applied Communication

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Thursday, 12.09.21

Learning about credit cards is a vital part of financial literacy FRANCESCA BOSTON reporter

For many college students, university is the first time they are making their own money and paying their own bills. Credit cards can be a positive tool for some, but could cause long-term damage to others.

Several experts weigh in on credit cards and financial literacy.

Paul Rose is a psychology professor who specializes in consumer psychology.

He has published on topics such as impulse buying and frugality. Other than being a professor at SIUE, he also occasionally writes for WalletHub, a personal finance website that educates readers about financial literacy.

Rose recently wrote an article for WalletHub about credit card reward strategies, but said there are more practical messages for students. He said while credit cards can be a useful tool for students, they should be used with caution.

“Credit cards can be very useful to students as a way to begin building credit history, but there’s a huge footnote

on that, and that is that credit cards can also be used to destroy a person’s credit history,” Rose said. “If a college student isn’t ready to use a credit card responsibly, they’re better off avoiding it completely.

But if they’ve developed good habits of paying off their bills in full on time, credit cards can be a very important tool for strengthening a student’s credit history in the long run.”

Riza Demirer, professor of finance, said that he recommends that students create a personal budget before considering a credit card. He said students should access their streams of cash inflow and their cash outflow, and then create financial goals based off of those numbers.

“I would start with creating your personal financial statements, and then linking it to your personal financial goals, have some financial goals like just at school, my goal is to get it this grade, my [financial] goal is to save every month, a certain amount,” Demirer said.

Both Rose and Demirer said they recommend doing research on credit cards before choosing one. Rose said he recom-

mends looking at credit cards that have rewards that are achievable for students, such as a card that offers rewards at a lower price.

“An example is there are some cards that will give you a $200 bonus, if you can spend $500 within the first three months.

For some students, that’s achievable.

There are other cards that will give you say a $500 bonus for spending $3,000 in the first three months. For some students, that’s not going to be achievable and unfortunately what it might do is motivate the student to spend a lot more money than they normally would,” Rose said.

Senior Richard Beck, an accounting and finance major from Bethalto, Illinois, said he would call credit cards a necessary evil. He said they are helpful to help build credit to get a loan for a house, but if students do not understand the interest rates, they could find themselves in trouble. “[Students] will overspend or spend above their means, per se, then you have to worry about paying off the payments.

But on the other hand, it helps you build a credit score, which in the future can help

you get approved for a loan for a house,” Beck said.

Rose said college is a good time to build good financial habits, outside of credit card use. He said to acknowledge all the enjoyment that can be had for cheap when you are around people you care for.

“Notice that at this time in your life, you’re having a lot of fun, in spite of having very little money. If you take the long view in life, what you can learn during your college years are habits that can pay off in a huge way with gigantic savings throughout the rest of your life,” Rose said. “One of those lessons is having fun means spending time with people I really care about, and doing things that often don’t cost all that much money.”

Beck said building habits early and prioritizing what is important to you are some of the most important parts of being financially literate and that college is a great time to start building those habits.

“It’s about developing the mindset about your money. It’s just a matter of prioritizing what you think is important,” Beck said.

RESEARCH I COVER

interested in learning which neurons require STAT, but also glial cells, which are about the other half of the cells in our brains that aren’t as often discussed.

“Glial cells are important supporters of neuron help, and so we actually think that might be involved not just in neurons, but also in glial cells,” Petruccelli said.

Susan Morgan, associate dean for research and graduate education, said entries are judged by how well the image represents the research results by themselves.

“We did a Likert scale of one to seven.

Then how creative is the image in evaluating, and they have the images and they have the write up that each person provides,” Morgan said. “The ideal is we have an image that doesn’t need that write-up to convey its message.”

Duff Wrobbel, chair of applied communication studies, said displaying research creatively is like watching a funny TV show and realizing that you learned something.

“Art is engaging, and if you’re engaged in it because it’s aesthetically pleasing, but then all of a sudden you go, ‘Damn, that meant something,’” Wrobbel said. “One of the things that all of us in education know is that if I just tell you something, it’s not as impactful as if you come upon that information yourself. So if what you can do is create an artistic experience that gives people an epiphany, then the understanding is much more deep rooted.”

DeGroot Brown said the VRI competition is cool because research isn’t often accessible to people outside of academia.

“We’re in peer-reviewed journals.

Those are behind a paywall if you’re not affiliated with the university and a lot of times you read them and you’re like, ‘I don’t even know what they’re saying,’” DeGroot Brown said. “I feel like we should be doing more of that, putting our research in our own words instead of just letting it sit there or hoping that a journalist picks it up and talks about it.”

12.01.21

Officer responded to a report of an employee stating that he was approached and asked weird questions about Lovejoy Library.

Investigation continues.

Officer assisted Edwardsville PD with trying to locate subjects with flashlights walking in the woods.

Officer advised subjects were not located and gone on arrival.

12.03.21

Officer responded to a report of a resident being bitten by a dog at Woodland Residence Hall Officer took a report regarding possible suspicious activity with a SIUE account at Rendleman Hall.

12.04.21

Officer took a report of a vehicle being damaged while parked in the parking lot at Prairie Residence Hall.

12.06.21

Officer assisted Madison County Transit regarding a rider not paying for a ride because she thought she already did. Rider was explained why her pass did not work on that ride and paid for the ride.

Each “drop” on the graph represents a gene on the fly genome. The fly pictured atop the bottle is meant to draw the viewer’s attention to the fact that the research focuses on flies. | Emily Petruccelli / Assistant Professor of Biology

Officer advised there was a light pole that was struck by a vehicle and the light pole was damaged on the East St. Louis campus.

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Thursday, 12.09.21

News in brief New chancellor appointed, steps in on March 1 James Minor was appointed as the new chancellor at the Dec. 2 Board of Trustees meeting by a unanimous vote.

“We’re very excited to have Dr. Minor approved as the next chancellor of SIUE,” SIU system president Dan Mahony said.

Minor will assume his position March 1, 2022.

SG approves new leadership and clubs at meeting The senators voted on Dec. 6 to approve Lambda Kappa Sigma-Delta Delta Chapter, Students Diversity Club and Medieval Combat Club.

Lambda Kappa Sigma-Delta Delta Chapter is a sorority for women in pharmacy.

Student Diversity Club is a club dedicated to celebrating and acknowledging SIUE’s diverse student body and working to find solutions for matters of diversity that impact the campus community.

The Medieval Combat Club at SIUE, a nationwide organization for students to have the opportunity to safely practice medieval combat scenarios and practice medieval-style crafts.

Student Government also had three new presidential and personnel appointments. Kyla Wood, a freshman from O’Fallon, Illinois was appointed as marketing and communications officer. Shawn Gilles, a teaching assistant at SIUE, from Troy, Illinois, will serve as fee review commissioner. Clinton Jones, a senior from Pana, Illinois, was appointed to be the election commissioner.

BY THE NUMBERS

COVID-19 at SIUE

New confirmed positive cases (from tests conducted by SIUE and self-reporting):

Nov. 26 - Dec. 2: 26 students, 3 faculty/staff

Nov. 19 - Nov. 25: 5 students, 1 faculty/staff

14-day new positive tests: 31 students, 4 faculty/staff All prior weeks positive tests (Aug. 6 - Nov. 18): 232 students, 44 faculty/staff Total positive cases: 263 students, 48 faculty/staff

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Madison County confirmed cases by day

225 200 175 150 125 100 75 50 25 0

29

DEC

30

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Source: Madison County Health Department COVID-19 Dashboard under the Cases by Day tab as of Dec. 7

Percentage of isolation/quarantine space available on campus (as of December 7): 100 percent Source: Health, Reporting, and Testing page on SIUE’s COVID-19 website, as of Dec. 7

Tests conducted by SIUE Nov. 26 - Dec. 2: 1,642

COVID-19’S impact on Madison County

14-day new tests conducted: 1,829

All of Illinois’ regions remain under Phase 5, which went into

Nov. 12 - Nov. 18: 187

All prior weeks tests conducted (Aug. 6 - Nov. 18): 25,425

effect June 11. All sectors of the economy reopened with new health and hygiene practices permanently in place:

Total tests conducted: 27,254

• •

Positive cases identified by SIUE testing: Nov. 26 - Dec. 2: 26

Nov. 19 - Nov. 25: 1

14-day new positive cases: 27

All prior weeks positive cases (Aug. 6 - Nov. 18): 188 Total: 215

• •

Large gatherings of all sizes can resume.

All sectors of the economy reopen with businesses, schools and recreation resuming normal operations with new safety guidance and procedures.

Conventions, festivals and large events can take place.

On June 30, Illinois returned to mandated masks indoors regardless of vaccination status.

Source: dph.illinois.gov

| Kirsten O’Loughlin / The Alestle

Cannabis industry in Illinois sees increasing minority ownership — but delayed startups say they may have to sell out ROBERT MCCOPPIN Chicago Tribune / TNS

The Illinois cannabis industry is transforming to the point where half of new licenses are owned by minorities — but critics say many of those newcomers may never get to open.

At least half of 118 new licenses issued for craft growers, infusers and transporters have gone to companies majority-owned by nonwhite applicants, in contrast to the previous all-white ownership, said Danielle Perry, the state’s cannabis regulation oversight officer. Forty-three percent of the Department of Agriculture licensees are Black-owned, 10 percent by Latinos, 9 percent by coalitions of people of color and 4 percent by Asians, she said.

“This process has changed the face of what the industry looks like in Illinois,” Perry told a crowd at the NECANN Illinois Cannabis Convention. “This is proof in the pudding that using this approach to diversify the industry can work.”

The numbers may sound good, applicants said, but with 185 cannabis dispensary licenses held up for more than a year and now in a court fight, more minorities are going to run out of money and will have to sell their licenses.

“All the good intentions are great, but until we can actually open, it’s not helping us,” said Portia Mittons, a dispensary license applicant and co-chair of the Minority Access Committee of the Cannabis Business Association of Illinois.

Illinois legalized the sale of medical cannabis effective in 2015, and expanded legalization to adults in the general public beginning in 2020. Lawmakers said they wanted to diversify the industry, which was completely white-owned, by giving a bonus to “social equity applicants” who lived in areas most affected by the war on drugs, or who had been affected by low-level cannabis arrests.

But the application scoring process, run by KPMG, was complicated and costly, and ended up last year with just 21 of 937 applicants qualifying for the initial lottery to get 75 licenses for retail stores,

| Esteban Lopez / Unsplash

known as dispensaries. After howls of protest and lawsuits pointing out that many applicants had wealthy or connected white investors, officials added 110 more licenses and two more lotteries to expand the pool of qualifying applicants.

The craft grower, infuser and transporter licenses were issued this summer, resulting in the greater diversity that Perry reported. But on the retail side, Cook County Judge Moshe Jacobius has ordered all 185 dispensary licenses held up indefinitely while he decides the fate of lawsuits by a few firms challenging the fairness and constitutionality of the process.

Several license applicants said they have already burned through six figures in dollars just to apply and keep going during the delay. The longer they have to wait, the more likely they will run out of money and have to sell their licenses, said Douglas Kelly, executive director of the Cannabis Equity Coalition Illinois, which advocates for minority applicants.

“If it takes another six months to a year, you might as well tear up those (diversity) numbers,” Kelly said.

Kelly said he was part of an applicant group that got disqualified in the scoring process but was never clearly told why.

The new businesses depend on each other, because without new dispensaries, the craft growers, infusers and transporters will have nowhere to sell their goods and services except their existing competitors. If new businesses can’t open, keeping prices high, it will only strengthen the illegal market.

“In the long run,” Kelly said, “the delay will hurt everybody.”

Nic Easley, CEO and founder of 3C Comprehensive Cannabis Consulting, a national company based in Denver, said Illinois had the worst program he’s ever dealt with.

Illinois was done in by the complexity, inconsistency and secrecy of the scoring process, and bonus points that meant only veteran-owned companies could get dispensary licenses, he said.

“It was just chaos,” Easley said. “The whole system’s broken.”

The key to helping minority investors survive, speakers said, is to immediately increase their allowed growing space from 5,000 square feet to at least 14,000 square feet. The limited canopy space makes it very difficult, they said, to get financing when competing against existing growers that can go up to 210,000 square feet.

THE FALL 2021 GRADUATION ISSUE WILL BE COMING OUT ON DEC. 14 PAGE 4

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contact the editor: lifestyles@alestlelive.com 650-3527 Thursday, 12.09.21

Children’s Museum offers winter-themed activities for the start of the holiday season FRANCESCA BOSTON reporter The Edwardsville Children’s Museum hosted an “Arctic Express” event to celebrate the debut of the Nickel Plate Station, the original train station in Edwardsville that has been renovated into a functional space.

Angie Close, the museum manager, said this is the first “Arctic Express” event, but that the museum plans on making it an annual event. The event included pictures with Santa, a professional chainsaw artist, recycled art by local middle school students and a trackless train ride.

Kate Allaria, president of the board of directors, said she was most excited to show off the train station.

“The city just restored the Nickel Plate Station, and the Children’s Museum operates it. So we are just debuting our first seasonal exhibit right now, which is called ‘Into the Arctic Express,’” Allaria said.

Part of the event was to showcase art made by students at local middle schools. All of the art pieces were made of recycled or repurposed materials, such as Styrofoam coolers or book pages. Some of the entries were individual or group projects, but several were made by local fifth grade classes. The museum wanted to have a fun way to show kids that it is possible to use their imaginations while still caring for the environment.

“It is supposed to show the kids to be more aware of the environment, that they can use recycled items, you know, instead of just using unrecyclable ma-

Abominable, a creation made out of recycled paper by Mrs. Leach’s fifth grade class at Cassens Elementary was one of the featured projects. The class won $100 for entering a project and winning a top prize. | Francesca Boston / The Alestle terials and using their imagination and coming up with good projects,” Close said.

Two of the projects received $100 and several of the others

won gift cards to local businesses, such as Annie’s Frozen Custard.

Amanda Pilkington, who works as floor staff and an educator at the museum, said the Arc-

The museum featured a trackless train that kids could ride at the “Arctic Express” event, recently redone by the City of Edwardsville. | Francesca Boston / The Alestle

tic Express will be a temporary exhibit shown in the Nickel Plate Station this winter. The depot will also be able to be rented out by various groups according to Amanda Pilkington.

“We are the main ones that utilize the depot. We can rent it out for different events. We’ve had a couple of different groups that have been holding meetings there,” Amanda Pilkington said.

Allaria said she is excited to have the depot space, as they used to have to close down a room in the museum to hold programs, but now have the ability to hold events in the station.

“We have always done programming in the museum. We had to close down the exhibit room if we were gonna do programming. [Now] we can have a space for programming and they won’t impact [the museum],” Allaria said.

Aurora Pilkington, a sophomore at Edwardsville High School, works as floor staff and was helping children make bird feeders out of eco-friendly materials. She said she was happy to help

kids learn about helping the environment while making the craft as planet-friendly as possible.

“I’ve also tried to do my best in setting it up to like, re-use the stuff the best way possible,” Aurora Pilkington said.

Allaria said the museum is always growing and expanding. The museum relies on local business to partner with and to sponsor events and other aspects of the museum. She said the museum’s main mission statement is to provide learning opportunities through play and offer families chances to bond through play.

“It’s really a great way for parents to play with their children and learn together. We feel like we offer an opportunity for families to bond,” Allaria said.

Allaria said the museum is always expanding. She said there are job positions available as the museum begins to introduce new events after COVID-19 reduced what the museum could offer.

For more information on the museum including upcoming events and memberships, visit the Edwardsville Children’s Musuem website or Facebook.

Thursday, 12.09.21

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SIUE professor leads project team dedicated to recovering the written voices of women DANA MCLENNAN copy editor An SIUE professor’s project to recover works by women writers is using a $50,000 grant to create a hub for research.

Jessica DeSpain is an English professor and co-director of the SIUE Interdisciplinary Research and Informatics Scholarship Center.

The project works to create a hub where researchers can access support, technology and peer review as they recover works by women writers, of whom at least 50 percent are nonwhite and LGBTQ voices.

The project received a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund the hub.The project received a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund the hub. DeSpain is the project director for a team of 20 collaborators from across the U.S. according to SIUE’s Fall 2021 Research and Creative Activities magazine.

DeSpain, who also serves as primary investigator of the Hub, developed the idea from the Recovery Hub’s sister organization: the Society for the Study of American Women Writers, she said.

“It’s basically the work of trying to find and acknowledge the works of women writers and get them in front of students and get them out in the public and let people know that they exist.

The project works really hard to do that equitably and to think about intersectional identity,” DeSpain said. “It’s really invested in recovering the works of Latinx women and African American women, and sort of the full range of women who are writing, not just in the 19th century, but more contemporarily as well.”

The Recovery Hub exists because previously, works like this would be recovered by

printing presses, so that professors could teach them or people could buy them. However now, that has become less sustainable due to the presses not having as much money as they used to, according to DeSpain.

“So digital recovery is kind of the answer to that question, but a lot of times the scholars who do recovery work don’t necessarily have the digital skills necessary to make a solid recovery edition online,” DeSpain said. “The work of the Recovery Hub is really to help all of those different scholars learn how to do that work and give them the tools that they need to do that work.”

DeSpain said the work is important because everyone knows popular writers like Walt Whitman and Herman Mellville, but they don’t know much about the women writing during the same time period. She also said that women tended to use a different format.

“Sometimes what we recover is speeches, it’s all different kinds of ways in which women told their story. And if we don’t do the work to recover that, then that story is lost, essentially,” DeSpain said. “We only get a couple of perspectives, but not all of the perspectives that matter and that kind of informs how we understand history and literature and culture.”

Margaret Smith, a research assistant professor of digital humanities at SIUE, also works within the Recovery Hub project as a co-investigator and director of consultation.She said her job has been to design the training process and to train the consultants that offer consultation to anyone who is working on a project.

“Because digital humanities scholarship can have a lot of barriers to entry just because there’s so many different tools and technologies and it’s hard to know where to start sometimes, so one of the things that the Hub offers then is consultations,” Smith said. “We have five consultants who are librarians, some of them are

English professors and so their job is to kind of talk through these project ideas and offer guidance, resources and sometimes just someone to bounce ideas off of.”

Smith said that this work impacts society in many ways, but a change to the canon of literature as we currently know it will benefit society at large, as well as individuals due to more voices improving these types of conversations.

“To think about it in terms of what we call a canon, that’s sort of that collection of authors and voices and people that we consider to be authoritative, that we think offer us these sorts of principles or sort of very pithy statements.

Those are the things that we think of as being sort of normative for society,” Smith said. “If all we have in that foundation then are the dead white men, that’s really going to both hinder how we’re thinking about big ideas, but also, how people envision themselves within society, right. It’s a matter of representation. It’s a matter of a plurality of voices.”

Kristen Lillvus, a professor of English at St. Catherine University in Minnesota, serves as the co-investigator and director of pedagogical studies on the Recovery Hub. She said she creates learning materials for teachers to utilize in classrooms about the peer-reviewed projects that are being recovered.

“In addition to giving information about those projects, we’re also going to offer to people who visit the website, teaching materials so people will be able to access syllabi and lesson plans and maybe even sample student works.

So that they can more easily incorporate those recovered projects into their own classrooms and then their own, you know, studies and so on,” Lillvus said.

Lillvus became involved after being on a panel with DeSpain at SSAWW conference about digital projects and had discussed DeSpain’s idea for the Hub and said she knew she

wanted to be a part of it. “[I had previously worked at Marshall University] and there I had developed teaching materials for texts that were in our library archives, and I had developed materials for … university instructors, but also high school teachers,” Lillvus said. “Because I have a little bit of that experience doing that, I think it was a good fit for the Hub. So, I’m excited to be involved in that way.”

Lillvus said she is not only excited about the Hub because it features recovered works by women, but also works by women of color and to have access for scholars of color to be able to have resources for these projects.

“You know, too long academia has underserved those individuals. And so it’s making sure that digital humanities and American literature is open and accessible [for] underrepresented voices,” Lillvus said. “And so, I’m excited and I want to be a part of that project.”

Lillvus said the materials she helps create will help students and instructors understand the relationship of these recovered and lesser-known texts to the well-known texts. She, like Smith, said projects like the Hub and others will help change the canon to be more representative of society.

“There are a lot of sites that we’re really looking to as models, and I think it’s important to credit them. The Color Conventions Project for example, has long worked to make sure that Black author texts are available and also that teaching resources for these texts were available,” Lillvus said. “And we’ve seen how projects like that have already done a lot of canon changing work. So yeah, we know it can change the way that we think about American literature, and I think the Hub will be part of that.”

For more information on the Recovery Hub and their work, visit their website.

REVIEW: ‘Everybody’ is dreamlike yet comical in its approach to death EMILY STERZINGER opinion editor

Between the compelling performances from the actors and the small but stellar lighting and set, SIUE Theater’s production of “Everybody” practically transports the audience to another world.

The play, initially written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, is based on the 15th century English morality play “Everyman”. It certainly benefited from modernization, but the core of the story is kept the same.

It follows the idea of just an average person, an everyman, confronting the fact that they are going to die. The plot is quite abstract, but that makes the show very open to creative direction, which the director, associate professor of theater Kathryn Bentley, certainly provided.

One of the first things I noticed about the show was the lighting design, done by junior technical theater major Sabria Bender of Maryland Heights, Missouri, who served as the lighting designer for the production. It was colorful and varied, which worked well with the set design done by associate professor of theater and dance James Wulfsong, the scenic designer for the production, with Bender also serving as the assistant scenic designer.

The set design used “theatre-in-theround” staging, which shrunk the Dunham auditorium into a smaller set, where the audience was sat in a circle on the stage. The area of the stage used for the performance was decorated using heavy imagery of clocks and spirals, likely meant to represent the passage of time. The lighting and set design in combination made the play feel quite surreal, with the circular set and the creative use of multicolored/intentionally dim lighting made the play feel like it took place on another plane of reality.

Everybody (left, played by Ethan Sproat) begs Stuff (right, played by Joshalynn Gibson) to come with them to the afterlife. | Emily Sterzinger / The Alestle Traditionally, the show has five of the actors take on a random role at the start of the show, an element meant to represent the spontaneity of life. I was disappointed to see that this wasn’t the case for this production, but I honestly can’t blame them; expecting a full-time student to memorize almost the entire script of any play would be ridiculous, especially as “Everybody” had a run time of well over an hour.

Despite that, I felt the lack of randomness strengthened the show in its own way, as it better allowed the actors to truly embody their roles with full preparation. That

helps especially because a majority of the roles are supposed to be completely abstract concepts, such as Love, Friendship, Mind, etc. However, the deep thematic elements don’t prevent the show from being funny, as even though I had seen a different production of the play elsewhere, there were still plenty of jokes that had me laughing out loud in the theater.

I felt the entire cast was compelling when embodying these ideas, but I was particularly impressed by the titular character of Everybody, played by senior theater performance major Ethan Sproat from

Lebanon, Missouri. As the character spends the entire play confronting the knowledge of their impending death, I was compelled by how real every element felt — from the fearfulness, to angry outbursts and a solemn acceptance by the end of what was to come.

Ultimately, SIUE Theater production of “Everybody” was captivating in every sense of the word. Though the run of the show itself has concluded, I was glad to see it during its run as it was worth every minute and managed to make me laugh just as hard as it made me think.

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Diversity training helps everyone, not just SIUE employees THE ALESTLE STAFF editorial board

It’s great that university employees are required to take diversity training beyond sexual assault prevention — but why not students, too?

Diversity training aids in reducing prejudiced and discriminatory thoughts and behaviors towards several groups or individuals that are subject to potential marginalization. It also educates people who might not realize they’re saying something offensive. This includes individuals’ sexual identity and gender expression, not limited to members of the LGBTQ+ community. Additionally, it provides education and awareness surrounding issues of racism, and normalizes the integration of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds on campus.

Although implementing this training may not end marginalization instantly, the aim is to prohibit such acts, or at the very least make students aware of the serious consequences of their ac-

tions toward others, as well as on themselves. In turn, this will aid in students feeling safer in public campus areas, classrooms and other learning environments.

As employees of The Alestle, we were required to complete the training. The structure itself was minimally interactive, with the five lessons being very easy to skim through and not properly comprehend. A 20-minute to half-hour read could be seamlessly completed in a few minutes by someone who is not interested in the awareness the training aims to provide, or who simply does not want to spend the time on it. If this were implemented toward SIUE students, it is not likely that many of them would be motivated to go through such a task-like format.

Although the content itself touched on most areas of potential discrimination when faced with diversity, it was structured like a terms and conditions agreement, where ‘continue’ buttons are prompted after a mere couple of scrolls. This way, it is easy for someone who is not willing to

be educated on diversity to get away with doing just that.

The final certification step requires acknowledgment of completion through a signature, and states that disciplinary consequences in the case of non-compliance with the training’s procedures will occur. However, looking at past discriminatory acts on campus, it could be argued that such warnings are not valid enough of a reason to stop someone from being hateful to others. If the diligence to co-exist with those who are different doesn’t come from a conscious inclination to do so, it is difficult even through threats of personal accountability to prompt that encouragement.

In saying this, we understand that students come from many different social and cultural backgrounds, and it might be hard to come up with one training program that applies to all of them. One solution might be to talk in general about things to avoid saying and common struggles that different marginalized groups experience.

The Harvard Business Review suggests using diversity training similar to an experiment, with a control group, to figure out which methods work best.

Additionally, taking pre-tests and post-tests to measure people’s attitudes and self-reported behaviors before and after the training may help to determine its effectiveness.

As students, we often have to engage in class discussions about sensitive topics. It’s important for us to have the skills to navigate these conversations tactfully, and to be able to listen without getting defensive if we are called out for something. Having these skills may prevent students from experiencing microaggressions or even more dangerous actions.

College is a time to meet people different from ourselves and learn more about the world beyond our hometowns. However, it’s hard to do this with bias in the way. Having more expansive educational training may not be the end-all-be-all solution, but it certainly might help.

The concept of “bad sides of town” is very closely related to the “broken windows theory”, created by criminologist George Kelling and political scientist James Wilson in 1982. In an article in The Atlantic from that year, they theorized that the best way to curb crime rates was for police to crack down on minor offenses. A broken window in a neighborhood led to more broken windows, which led to a lower quality of life, and then, higher crime rates.

But, as Bloomberg reported in 2019, that’s not true. The “broken windows theory” didn’t lead to lower crime rates, but it did lead to more fear of the police, and people in these neighborhoods feeling more unsafe.

If you stop and think about the “broken windows theory” for more than a moment, it immediately becomes clear that the idea is absurd. To assume that more policing on minor infractions will solve the socioeconomic problems in the U.S. is nonsensical. There’s no easy fix, and if there was one, it certainly wouldn’t be to make the

lives of people in lower-income neighborhoods even harder.

People in these lower-income neighborhoods are born into these situations of being looked down upon by society, and then, because of this idea of “the bad side of town,” less people want to live in or visit those neighborhoods. Fewer people moving into those neighborhoods means less support for the small businesses there, and so, the people in those neighborhoods are stuck in their situations even more so.

Even if a neighborhood is completely ridden with crime, drug deals and everything that could scare off someone who’s never been to a big city, how would that affect you, as someone driving through the town?

If a drug dealer, for instance, was peddling something illegal and had a name for himself on a street corner, why would that drug dealer want to rob a random car driving by? Or, even if you’re certain that a gas station or grocery store is also a drug front, do you think going into the store

means you’ll instantly be arrested or associated with the crime?

The simple fact is that there’s no way every single individual living in a neighborhood is consciously working to sustain a criminal enterprise. It’s such a strange concept, but some people instinctively assume this and think about the issue no deeper.

However, deeper thought on this is incredibly necessary.

Sometimes people do get robbed or hurt in these neighborhoods, that’s true. But that’s also true in any neighborhood anywhere.

With less fear of these “bad sides of town,” and more understanding about what causes neighborhoods to be seen that way, we can improve the situation for the people residing in those neighborhoods.

I’m not asking for droves and droves of people to move into these neighborhoods and inevitably gentrify them so that the original residents cannot afford to live there anymore. I am merely asking that we, as a society, remove the stigma that these neighborhoods have had ascribed to them.

Is it the ‘bad side of town’, or just the poor side of town?

GABRIEL BRADY lifestyles editor

We’ve all heard it before.

You’re going to St. Louis for the afternoon, or maybe taking a day trip to Chicago. Perhaps it’s something as simple as a trip across your hometown to a specific restaurant.

In any of these situations, someone in your life — a family member, a friend or even a coworker — is bound to say those fateful words to you: “Oh, be careful! Watch out for the bad side of town.”

As an Alton, Illinois native, I’ve lived fairly close to “the bad side of town” my entire life. Mainly, I’ve never understood how referring to certain neighborhoods as “bad” is anything but racist.

Think back to every neighborhood that’s been labeled as “the bad side of town.” I can almost guarantee that all of those neighborhoods are the ones with a predominant racial or ethnic minority group, or just poorer people in general.

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SIUE STANDINGS

Wisconsin Northern Illinois Brown Little Rock SIUE Bellarmine

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

192.5 129.5 111.5 111.0 110.5 71.0

OVERALL OVC

SIUE Murray State UT Martin Belmont Tennessee Tech Southeast Missouri Austin Peay Eastern Illinois Morehead State Tennessee State

MEN’S BASKETBALL

OVERALL OVC

| Photo by Chris Chow on Unsplash

Wrestling hosts Cougar Clash, finishes fifth

| Kirsten O’Loughlin / The Alestle

NICOLE BOYD social media manager Six schools competed last week in the Cougar Clash, a wrestling competition hosted

by SIUE. The University of Wisconsin-Madison took first place, with 192.5 points. Next was Northern Illinois University, with 129.5 points. Brown University took third with 111.5, closely followed

by University of Arkansas at Little Rock with 111.0 and SIUE with 110.5. Bellarmine University came in last with 71.0 points.

Ryan Yarnell, a senior in the 197 weight class from Imperial, Missouri, and Saul Ervin, a 141pound redshirt junior from Morganfield, Kentucky, each finished second. The Cougars also earned third-place honors from Carde-

ionte Wilson, a 149-pound senior from Miami, Austin Andres, a redshirt junior in the 197 weight class from Wichita, Kansas and Colton McKiernan, a 285-pound senior from Richmond, Michigan.

Chase Diehl, a 165-pound junior redshirt from Johnson City, Tennessee, said he was really excited for the event, even though he didn’t compete due to redshirts not being able to compete in invitationals.

“We’ve been focusing a lot on the areas we’ve been working on since our last tournament at Lindenwood, and we’ve just been putting in a lot of extra work. All of our guys have been getting a lot of individual time in and oneon-one,” Diehl said.

Diehl said the team’s strategy was to just be aggressive right off

the whistle.

“Be smart, really get after it, right from the first whistle … [I] can’t wait to see them perform,” Diehl said.

Andres said his strategy was to wrestle hard and wrestle smart.

“A lot of mental training went into this. Our coach was talking to us about preparing beforehand, visualizing your match and just being confident when you go out there and wrestle,” Andres said.

Andres said he was excited for his second Cougar Clash. “[I’m] feeling good. Everybody really looks ready to go, and it’s exciting,” Andres said.

Max Kristoff, a 149-pound junior from Belleville, Illinois, said the team trained hard for the event, and their new Associate Head Coach, Daryl Thomas,

has been pushing them in the training room.

“Our community has been doing a lot better, our accountability has been doing a lot better and I think our training’s better, honestly overall,” Kristoff said.

Kristoff said he did extra training with his coaches to prepare.

“We got in some extra practices, some extra condition sessions, [did] an ice bath everyday this week, so [I’m] rested up well [and] feel good,” Kristoff said.

His strategy was to clear his head, as he wrestles better without strong emotions, Kristoff said.

“No good, no bad, no positive or negative. Just go out there.

I trained hard, I know I can wrestle, it’s just who’s better that day, who wants a point,” Kristoff said.

Men’s basketball head coach brings stability to the program FRANCESCA BOSTON reporter Head Coach Brian Barone was promoted from assistant coach of men’s basketball in March of 2019 and has since worked to build the program up.

Tim Hall, director of athletics, said Barone has brought stability to the program. Back in 2019, he was signed on to be the head coach for two years and Hall said Barone’s contract was extended to include two more years.

“Brian did a good job as an assistant coach, and the guys on the team really liked him and believed in him and believed in his leadership. I thought he was the right fit at the right time, and that he would need more than two years. It’s hard to turn something around in two years. So I gave him an additional two years on his contract. I’m going to give some additional years to try to make this successful,” Hall said.

Shamar Wright, a junior guard, said Barone is a coach that cares about each of his players and

3-4 6-2 3-5 4-4 3-5 3-6 3-3 5-4 1-5 3-5

that Barone has high expectations himself. Good leaders show their vulnerability and they can say, ‘I of each of his players. didn’t prepare you “I think he’s well enough for that a really good guy. last game.’ People That’s one of the will get behind leadfirst things I noticed ers that are authentic, when I actually came and that show their to school here. He vulnerability and really knows how to their humanistic side reach a personal level and Brian [Barone] is and he’s able to unvery much that way,” derstand his passion Hall said. behind everything he Barone said the does,” Wright said. best part of the curWright said Barrent season is the abilone is bringing the | Head Coach for ity to get back into a team together and Men’s Basketball rhythm and routine trying to build the Brian Barone after a season of canprogram up, making celed games and no changes from where practices. He said his main goal at the team was last year.

According to Hall, he sees the moment is to just get better Barone as an educator first and every day than they were when foremost. He said he believes that they woke up that morning.

“Our main goal is every day Barone’s transparency and vulnerability allow Barone to be a you want to be better than you know how you started today. I good coach.

“He sees what he does as know that’s kind of maybe an being a teacher and an educator odd way of looking at it. If you and a molder of a developer of can wake up every day, and acyoung men. He has a real sense of complish enough to be better at

the end of the day, then eventually that’s gonna really pay off in the long run in terms of wins and losses, athletically and academically,” Barone said.

Barone said one of the most important parts of his coaching style is the ability to listen, and since COVID-19, he said he has felt that is one of the main ways his coaching style has adapted to the current climate.

“I think you definitely have to be able to pivot, to accommodate, to understand, to be empathetic.

I think it’s very, very important to listen because it has been a very difficult year and hit people in different ways,” Barone said.

Barone said the team is excited to get a real season this year and the chance to represent SIUE. “We’re just excited to represent a great university and a great community. It’s something that every day I take great pride in.

You know, enhancing and building the brand of us as individuals but also as university and us as a community that something is very important to us,” Barone said.

SIUE Belmont Austin Peay Southeast Missouri Tennessee Tech UT Martin Morehead State Tennessee State Eastern Illinois Murray State

3-6 8-3 4-3 4-4 2-6 3-6 6-3 1-6 2-8 7-1

VOLLEYBALL

OVERALL OVC

Morehead State Murray State Belmont Austin Peay SIUE UT Martin Eastern Illinois Tennessee Tech Southeast Missouri Tennessee State

20-11 18-12 9-20 21-12 6-23 15-17 11-18 16-14 25-8 10-17

All stats are from the OVC Website

UPCOMING Wrestling at SIUE vs. Chattanooga 12 p.m., Dec. 11 Women’s Basketball at SIUE vs. Illinois State 1 p.m., Dec. 11 Men’s Basketball at SIUE vs. Kansas City 2 p.m., Dec. 12 Women’s Basketball at SIUE vs. Toledo 3:30 p.m., Dec. 19 Men’s Basketball at SIUE vs. William Woods 1 p.m., Dec. 19 Men’s Basketball vs. South Alabama 7 p.m., Dec. 21