BEST OF EVANSTON 2016
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The Daily Northwestern Wednesday, February 24, 2016
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In Focus
SEARCHING FOR SAFE SPACES Black House controversy ignites debate over safe spaces at Northwestern
Photo illustration by Mande Younge and Daniel Tian/Daily Senior Staffers
By MARIANA ALFARO
daily senior staffer @marianaa_alfaro
Surrounded by hundreds of other protesters, Qunsia Daniel marched past security and into the Henry Crown Sports Pavilion basketball courts, surprising an audience of student-athletes, alumni and top University officials. As Daniel and the other protesters — many of them black Northwestern students like her — engulfed the audience, they rose their fists in the air and chanted, “Power!” Protest leaders took the stage where, minutes before, school administrators had been celebrating the groundbreaking of a new athletic facility.
Chanting into a megaphone, student leaders faced trustees and University officials they said failed to provide them with a safe space on campus. The rest of the student protesters stood in the back, listening intently before leaving the room singing, “You can’t stop the revolution.” That moment, Daniel said, was exhilarating. “It would’ve been cool to have heart monitors on everybody — so much unity, and we moved as one body,” the SESP senior told The Daily in the weeks after the protest. “It was just beautiful.” Two weeks after the protest, students wrote to University President Morton Schapiro demanding changes to University curricula, buildings and demographics to make NU more inclusive for
minorities. The demands include removing John Evans’ name from buildings and positions, creating a U.S.-centric inequalities and diversity requirement for all majors and renovating the Black House and the Multicultural Center. Controversy about safe spaces for marginalized communities at NU swept through campus this academic year after the University announced in August plans to move administrative offices into the Black House and the Multicultural Center. The changes would have reduced space for minority student groups that use the buildings, including For Members Only, Alianza, Muslim-cultural Students Association and Asian Pacific American Coalition. Many students and alumni responded
with outrage. Following a quarter of open discussions on campus where people spoke about the importance of the Black House, administrators canceled the changes in November. During one November discussion, Vice President for Student Affairs Patricia Telles-Irvin was moved to tears after listening to students and alumni describe the Black House’s impact on their NU experience. At the end of the session, she told The Daily the concept of a safe space is “very real” and said the University must provide spaces “where students can feel comfortable, validated, where they have a sense of belonging as well as of support.” Although administrators said the original intent behind moving Campus
Inclusion and Community offices into the MCC and the Black House was to have campus resources for minority students in a central location, Telles-Irvin said she understood why students wanted their meeting space respected. The Black House Facility Review Committee, a group of faculty, alumni and students, will submit a report to Telles-Irvin in March with recommendations on how to improve the Black House. Telles-Irvin said renovations to make the Black House and the Multicultural Center more useful, including installing new computers and software, are already underway. Yet the issue of safe spaces still looms » See SAFE SPACES, page 4
Police: NU students report burglary Northwestern renews
contract for NU-Qatar
By MARISSA PAGE
daily senior staffer @marissahpage
By FATHMA RAHMAN Evanston police responded to a reported burglary in the 2000 block of Maple Avenue at a Northwestern student residence on Tuesday night, police said. Evanston police Cmdr. Melissa Sacluti said there had been a disagreement about a stolen iPad and three young adults reportedly forced entry into the residence to try to recover the device. “Essentially we were trying to organize an exchange where (one of my roommates) fixed up a MacBook Air for the person who stole his iPad in return for the iPad,” a 21-year-old NU student and resident of the home said. “Instead, the person came over with two other people and then busted their way into the house without the iPad just to take our MacBook Air and they were threatening us.”
the daily northwestern @fathma_rahman
Zack Laurence/The Daily Northwestern
ROPED OFF Police respond to a reported burglary in the 2000 block of Maple Avenue.
Evanston Police Chief Richard Eddington said an unknown number of officers was deployed to the residence. He said he had received no report of anyone being injured. Sacluti said she was not sure whether
Serving the University and Evanston since 1881
the three suspects who broke into the residence had any affiliation to NU. Robert Pillote contributed reporting.
mpage@u.northwestern.edu
Northwestern will maintain its Qatar campus for an additional 10 years after extending its agreement with the Qatar Foundation through the 2027-28 academic year. In 2006, the Qatar Foundation invited Northwestern to open a campus in what is known as Education City, which NU did in 2008. “NU-Q has met and exceeded expectations as it has produced new talent for communication and media industries in Qatar and the region,” Provost Daniel Linzer said in a press release Tuesday. “We’re very pleased to continue this important academic enterprise.” Linzer traveled to NU-Q last week to sign the contract, which extends the current one that was set to expire in 2018. The agreement
was important to ensure future classes would have a place from which to graduate, said NU-Q Dean and CEO Everette Dennis. NU-Q offers majors in communication and journalism through the School of Communication and the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, respectively, in addition to some liberal arts classes through the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Dennis said “It’s a school designed to provide an array of communication professionals and other educated people for this region,” Dennis said. “We’ve been here for eight years and the school has been deemed to be quite successful in terms of developing a unified curriculum, hiring a high quality faculty, some of whom come from the home campus, and recruiting students of quality.” Currently, NU-Q has 207 students in residence and has produced 149 graduates — 25 » See QATAR, page 13
INSIDE Around Town 2 | On Campus 3 | Opinion 12 | Classifieds & Puzzles 14 | Sports 16