CATCH THEM ALL
MAKING THEIR MARK
Students played a game of EIU Go, where they tried to find Pokemon on campus, for the second day of ROC Fest
The tennis teams are seeing a youth movement on the court as freshman players succeed
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“TELL THE TRUTH AND DON’T BE AFRAID” Wednesday, September 27, 2017 C E L E BRATI NG A CE NT UR Y OF COVE RA GE E S T . 1 915
VOL. 102 | NO. 28 W W W . D A I L Y E A S TE R N N E W S . C O M
Mattoon alumni reflect on shooting Current Eastern students concerned for family, school last Wednesday By Brooke Schwartz Staff Writer | @brookesch_wartz A phone call, a text and some rumors of shots fired at Mattoon High School interrupted Eastern students and community members’ days last Wednesday. Student Body President Luke Young and freshman biological sciences major Carson Gordon, both alumni of Mattoon High School, could not believe it when they heard about the incident, where one student was shot by another in the cafeteria last week. The student was transported to a local hospital and was later reported to be in stable condition. Young was in the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union Food Court when he heard what had happened on the radio. His first thought was for the safety of his sister, who is a senior at Mattoon High School this year. “I was really scared, because I knew my
sister was at lunch at that time,” Young said. “So I was texting her, calling her, and she eventually said that she was fine, and she was actually at home; she’d gone off campus for lunch that day. So very, very blessed there,” he said. Gordon was on her way to her job at the Admissions Office when she got a call from her mother.
ing to sort through the rumors to find any grain of truth that might reassure her or her family just a little bit, she said. For Gordon, this was different than just hearing about a shooting, because she could picture exactly where it happened. “It was where I took my graduation photos, it was where I got asked to Homecoming, stuff like that,” Gordan said. “It just really changes how you experience it. It makes it so much more real and so much
toon and everyone affected by the shooting. As the shock value starts to wear off, Young hopes that some sense of normalcy can return to his hometown so people can start to heal. One way the students are trying to heal is through the “Believe It Or Not, I Care,” mentoring program, Gordan said. The program gives each senior a freshman buddy with whom they eat lunch with once a week. Gordon said BIONIC members were waiting at the doors of Mattoon High School on Monday to escort students Carson Gordon, MHS alumnainside the building to try and calm the nerves of the student body. Both Gordon and Young said that to more powerful.” continue to heal and learn from this inciBoth Gordon and Young praised Mat- dent, it must be remembered. toon and surrounding communities for “I think it’s important that we don’t just their overwhelming support and concern. forget about what happened, because it’s “I think when something like that hap- easy to just push it aside and pretend like pens, when you have a community that this horrible thing didn’t occur,” Gordon comes together, rallies together and isn’t said. full of hate and spite, but rather just comes “But the truth is that it did, and we can together, I think that’s the best outcome choose to let it overpower us, or we can you could hope for when you have a situa- make something great out of our school.” tion like this,” Young said. Brooke Schwartz can be reached at 581Gordon said a lot of local high schools 2812 or bsschwartz@eiu.edu. have been wearing either a green shirt or a green ribbon to show their support for Mat-
"It was where I took my graduation photos, it was where I got asked to Homecoming...it makes it so much more real,” “I knew that she knew that I was working, so I figured it was important.All we really knew at the time was that there had been a shooting, and we didn’t know if anyone died or how many people were affected by it,” Gordon said. “So it was just kind of like this is what’s happening, and we just had to wait for more information.” Gordon said that night at work was rough because she was not able to check her phone, and there still was not a lot of concrete information released. It was hard being out of the loop and try-
Jaenike Grant funds community creativity By Chrissy Miller News Editor | @DEN_News
JORDAN BOYER | THE DAILY EASTERN NE WS
Theatre arts professor Jean Wolski helps her students rehearse at the theatre wing in the Doudna Fine Arts Center Tuesday afternoon. The students were rehearsing a play to perform for children visiting Eastern’s campus. These tours are funded with a Ruth and Vaughn Jaenike Access to the Arts Fund grant.
The Ruth and Vaughn Jaenike Access to the Arts Fund allows students, community members and faculty to receive up to 50 percent of the funds needed to make their ideas for artistic activities and performances come to life. Dan Crews, director of programming for the Doudna Fine Arts Center, said the grant has been in place for nearly 20 years and has helped multiple people share art in the form of musical performances, theatre and workshops each year. “We give grants from a couple hundred dollars to $1,000, in that range,” Crews said. “It’s been very popular.” The grant is named after Vaughn, a previous dean of the College of Fine Arts, and his wife Ruth. “The grant itself was a mechanism for people, not just the university, but people from the community and the surrounding area, from a lot of different communities to tap into funds that would help them present arts programming in their community,” Crews said. The grant is offered once in the fall and once in the spring. For the fall semester, applications will be accepted until Oct. 13. About six to eight projects receive funding through this grant each year, Crews said. “It bridges the gap between the local communities and Charleston,” Crews said. “It makes people more aware are things that are taking place here on campus.” The grant is awarded after the applications are reviewed by a committee composed of the music, theatre and art chairs as well as the director of the Tarble Arts Center and himself, Crews said. “We look at the ones that have the most merit, the ones that would be the most suc-
cessful and the best written grants,” Crews said. “If it sounds like they have a surefire plan of how they’re going to pull off their event we’ll like to help them.” Performance studies professor Jean Wolski is able to do a Children’s Theatre tour with the grant. During the tour, her class performs for the elementary schools each year. She said schools apply for the grant to help pay the cost of bringing the tour show to their students. “We also have had schools apply for the grant in order to bring their students to EIU to see productions here,” Wolski said. Wolski said the goal of the tour is to bring the arts to underserved communities. Earl Halbe, a Charleston resident who used the grant the past two summers to do theatre performances in the park, said without the grant, the performances he and his wife put on would not be possible. “(The park) was sort of underutilized and we just thought the community might appreciate something going on down there at the band shell down there in Columbus Park,” Halbe said. The grant brings arts to the community in a big way, Halbe added. An example of this is this past summer, when nearly 500 people total attended the Shakespeare in the Park performance he put together. Halbe said the access to the arts this grant provides is, “not only for people in the community to come and see a show, but for people to actually perform, it scratches that itch.” Completed application forms may be submitted to Dan Crews, Doudna Fine Arts Center, EIU, 600 Lincoln Ave., Charleston, IL 61920 or by email to decrews@eiu.edu. Chrissy Miller can be reached at 581- 2812 or clmiller9@eiu.edu.