HOOSIER DADDY
RETURNING ROYALTY
The Eastern men’s basketball team fell to Ball State, 73-56, on a two-game road trip after losing to Indiana.
Miss Black Illinois 2015 visited campus to hold a workshop on the details of pageantry.
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Tuesday, November 17, 2015 “TELL THE TRUTH AND DON’T BE AFRAID” C E L E BRATI NG A CE NTUR Y OF COV E RA GE 19 15- 201 5
VOL. 100 | NO. 61 W W W . D A I L YE A S TE R N N E W S . C O M
Senate to Hunger Banquet on year-long hiatus close part of meeting By T’Nerra Butler Multicultural Editor | @DEN_News
By Cassie Buchman Administration Editor | @cjbuchman The Faculty Senate will invoke the Open Meetings Act to close part of the meeting at 2 p.m. Tuesday in Booth Library. The first hour of the meeting will be open like any other Faculty Senate meeting, and the second hour will be a closed executive session with only the senate members. Jemmie Robertson, the faculty senate chair, said this means no observers and no administration. “We’re going to discuss some private matters,” Robertson said. “We’re conducting this according to the Faculty Senate constitution and the relevant Illinois state law.” The executive committee agreed to have a closed meeting, Robertson said. Robertson said the purpose of the closed meeting would be to discuss the faculty’s vote of no confidence in Blair Lord, the vice president for academic affairs. Meetings are required to be open to the public unless they discuss the appointment, employment, compensation, discipline, performance, or dismissal of specific employees of the public body or legal counsel for the public body, according to the Illinois Open Meetings Act. This includes hearing about a complaint against an employee of the public body. “We may discuss it to a certain extend in the open session, but there’s some matters relating to it that we need to discuss privately,” Robertson said. The executive committee of faculty senate and faculty senator Grant Sterling, a philosophy professor, met with President David Glassman Monday morning about the vote. They will also discuss some of the details of this meeting in either the open or closed portion of the senate meeting. Robertson said at some point the executive committee will talk about their meeting with Glassman. “He definitely received the message and is taking it under advisement,” Robertson said. During the open part of the meeting, the senate will vote on a resolution from economics professor Teshome Abebe about the evaluation methods used for administrative staff. The resolution comes as a result of some people feeling the methods currently used are not as transparent and effective as they want them to be. Robertson said some people could feel this way because this creates a system where administrators evaluate each other. “I’ll give you a good recommendation if you scratch my back,” Robertson said. “And I’m not trying to imply that there’s been any malfeasance, but there’s a perception for the potential for that.” Robertson said this resolution is suggesting the administration revise their evaluation practices. Robertson said they will also vote to adopt or revise the language in the resolution. “We will discuss that in senate in the open session, but some other legal issues came up that we thought it was best to do behind closed doors in the second session,” Robertson said. The Faculty Senate will also finalize their decision on who should receive the Luis Clay Mendez Distinguished Service Award. “It’s a teaching award the Faculty Senate gives annually,” Robertson said. Cassie Buchman can be reached at 581-2812 or cjbuchman@eiu.edu.
For years, the Hunger Banquet has tried to serve as an awareness event on the topic of starvation, and this year those who usually participate in it tell why they did not plan for the affair. The Haiti Connection usually has the banquet the third week of November, but instead they cancelled it and planned a trivia night. Ivy Handley, a junior special education major, is a member of the Haiti Connection and said one reason students did not do the banquet was because students would only show up for the extra credit. Handley said a student would walk in, get their extra credit and five minutes later they would leave. “I don’t know if they would have come if they just knew about it,” Handley said. “I don’t know how much people really got out of it.” Handley said the banquet had many advantages; she said it helped people to realize some do not know what their next meal is. She said often Americans forget how fortunate they are and something like the Hunger Banquet helps them to be humble. “Even if you pray for these people it helps to recognize that there are people who have it worse than you,” Handley said. “We are walking in solidarity with our citizens in Haiti.” Roxanne Sorci, the president of the Haiti Connection, said the organization wanted to take a break on the Hunger Banquet to focus on raising money for projects they do in Haiti. During the trivia night, they raised over $2,000. Although Socri said the main focus is not gaining money at the Hunger Banquet, she said last year’s banquet raised $70 compared to this year’s money at the trivia night. “We wanted more of a fundraiser because with the Hunger Banquet we don’t raise a lot of funds our goal is to raise awareness,” Sorci said. One of the projects they do is taking a family out of poverty and helping them build a home. Sorci said even though the community did not see a Hunger Banquet this year, they can expect one next year. She said hunger is a situation people cannot take lightly and the organization would not either. “The Hunger Banquet draws attention to something that doesn’t really get a lot of atten-
FILE PHOTO | THE DAILY EASTERN
Emma James, a sophomore psychology major, and Stacy McQueen, parent of Lauren McQueen, serve apples, oranges, and bananas at the "Hunger is Not a Game" banquet on Nov. 12, 2014 at the Newman Catholic Center.
tion,” Sorci said. “I feel that not a lot of students know that people around the world actually go to sleep hungry.” Roy Lanham, the advisor for the Haiti connection, said back in 1990 the students from the Haiti Connection brainstormed a way to gain awareness about hunger related issues and poverty. He said the first the banquet was in the basement of Andrews Hall. The event was moved from place to place and one year the banquet was cancelled because of limited space, Lanham said. The concept of the Hunger Banquet is to show community members, students and faculty and staff how it would be to live an impoverished lifestyle. He said people simulating the second world would have limited food and those in the third
world countries would have rice and water. At first this event was held as a fundraiser, Lanham said, but as time went on it was implemented just to bring awareness. “Things were going good for a while,” Lanham said. “But when you’re maintaining things they begin to get stale and that’s exactly what happened.” After the years went by the students sought out for a change and came up with the idea of a market place. Students would get a storyline and many of the scenarios include participants getting a small amount of money and figuring out how to make it stretch. T’Nerra Butler can be reached at 581-2812 or tabutler@eiu.edu.
Community bands together to raise money for children’s Christmas gifts By Mackenzie Freund City Editor | @mgfreund_news The eighth annual Band Together for Kids will be at 5 p.m. on Wednesday at the Veterans of Foreign Wars at 1821 20th St. Citizens Against Child Abuse, Housing Outreach Prevention and Education of East Central Illinois, sponsors the event. Band Together is a fundraiser that helps raise money to give Christmas gifts to children in need. Althea Pendergast, a member of the board of directors for Citizens Against Child Abuse and Band Together chair, said there are different situations families and children end up, which requires them to need assistance.
“It came to our attention that there were a lot of kids who did not get anything because they did not qualify for alternative programs or missed the deadlines,” Pendergast said. Pendergast said there are families that do the best they can who can not always provide Christmas gifts for their children who also do not qualify for certain programs. The aid in Christmas gifts goes to teenagers who may be homeless, along with children who have gone into emergency housing, Pendergast said. There are also situations where the family lost their home to a fire, families who have lost jobs, or other situations they do not expect themselves to be in. “There are a lot of families out there who are
doing the best they can who do not qualify for programs,” Pendergast said. Pendergast said there is no specific monetary goal for the event. “We try to raise enough to get gifts for at least 30 kids,” Pendergast said. The people who receive the Christmas gift aid are kept confidential, so only the people involved in giving the presents are those who are the members of Citizens Against Child Abuse. Pendergast said the VFW has been nice, helpful and supportive of what the fundraiser does. The Band Together event will include a dinner, silent auction, live music and a 50/50 raffle.
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