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Friday March 15, 2019 vol. cxliii no. 28
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STUDENT LIFE
SHELLEY SZWAST / OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS
The new Trustee Reading Room includes more study tables, chairs, and soft seating.
Firestone renovations end, attendance soars By Marissa Michaels Staff Writer
Students have been flocking to the newly renovated spaces in Firestone Library. In February, the completion of the renovations on the Trustee Reading Room in Firestone brought about the end of the library’s official 10-year renovation project. The library website announced, “After almost a decade, the Firestone renovation project is complete!”
Over the last five years, before renovations were fully completed, Firestone saw an almost 63-percent surge in people coming to the library, according to the University’s press release. Increased attendance marks a great success for the renovation, which aimed to make Firestone a useful space for more students as one of the largest open-stack libraries in the world. According to Firestone’s website, the main goals of the project were “improv-
BEYOND THE BUBBLE
ing reader and study spaces, upgrading Rare Books & Special Collections areas, introducing sustainable building features, updating life-safety systems, and renovating graduate study rooms, exhibit spaces, and shelving areas in the library.” The goal of providing students the tools necessary to succeed was at the core of the renovation’s mission. “The project focused on creating a building that is well-suited to support modern library services
and contemporary approaches to scholarship, while also providing inspiring, f lexible study and work spaces,” the University wrote in the press release. “The renovation also incorporated a number of sustainable features, greatly improving the energy-efficiency of the building.” The renovation made Firestone more environmentally friendly by including light sensors, heat-insulated windows, and other sustainable features.
The long-term renovation drastically changed many spaces inside the library but preserved its gothic exterior. According to the press release, the challenge of the renovation was keeping Firestone, the main library on the University’s campus, open while it was undergoing construction. Now, with the completion of the Trustee Reading Room, all parts of Firestone are open for use. The library website explains the changes to the See FIRESTONE page 2
ON CAMPUS
Davis pays tribute to Marielle Franco Head Video Editor and Staff Writer
GAGE SKIDMORE / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
President Trump made the announcement at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Trump announces plans to penalize universities for not supporting free speech By Marissa Michaels Staff Writer
President Trump announced on March 2 that he will withhold federal funding for colleges that do not support free speech. Though the Trump administration has not released any further details, University faculty and administration feel confident that the move would
In Opinion
not affect the University. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Md., Trump said, “I will be signing an executive order requiring colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal research dollars.” Trump’s statement was met with raucous cheers from the attendSee TRUMP page 3
Columnist Morgan Lucey argues that activism is a worthy endeavor, even if it takes time to show tangible results, and contributing columnist Jasman Singh pushes for more intellectually stimulating on-campus jobs.
PAGE 4
Political activist Marielle Franco’s black feminism aimed to understand and transform the world. She hoped it wouldn’t just respond to one group’s needs, but to all of ours, Angela Davis said in her tribute to Franco on Thursday, March 14. A year after Franco’s assassination, Franco’s name has become a rallying cry in a polarized Brazil. At the time of her death, she had been serving as a city councillor of the Municipal Chamber of Rio de Janeiro for the Socialism and Liberty Party. She was an outspoken critic of police brutality and champion of black feminism and the LGBTQ+ community. “I’m extremely sad that I never had the opportunity to meet her in person,” said Davis, who only learned of their common aspirations, involving feminism and fighting racism, after Franco’s death. Davis is an author, professor, and civil rights activist. She is a professor emerita of History of Consciousness at University of California, Santa Cruz and the co-founder of Critical Resistance, a group dedicated to dismantling the prison-industrial complex. She was a prominent member of the Communist Party USA and the Black Panther Party, and was imprisoned for a year as a result of her in-
volvement in prisoners’ rights activism in 1971. Franco believed that even with its 500-year legacy, racism can be abolished, said Davis. “She remains a beacon of hope to people around the world who deeply believe in the imminent possibility of radical transformation in Brazil, in the Americas, and all over the planet,” she said. Davis then criticized the practice of calling only U.S. citizens “American.” She noted the term follows the same colonialist logic that historically allowed the category of “human” to refer solely to humans who were white and slave-holding. If the designation “American” applied to inhabitants of all the Americas, Davis said she would be proud to call herself one, adding, “Then Marielle Franco would be my American sister comrade.” Noting that Franco was an elected official, Davis said American feminists must be more vigilant in working across multiple divides, including those between government and non-government affiliated activists. In this vein, Davis emphasized the importance of providing mass support for Senators Omar, Tlaib, OcasioCortez, and other women of color recently elected to Congress. She went on to analyze how Franco’s feminist approach helped her strategically critique police violence. “Black feminism calls upon
Today on Campus 4:30 p.m.: Excavations at a Forgotten Female Pharaoh’s “Temple of Millions of Years” McCormick 106
us to reimagine our connectedness, our relationalities, and how they might be expressed if we are not forever encumbered by the increasing obsolete structures of the capitalist nation state,” she said. The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson helped start an important conversation about challenging the militarization of the U.S. police force, according to Davis. People witnessed police in military uniforms with military-grade weapons, moving through the streets of Ferguson in military vehicles, she said. “After the immediate outcry, they packed up the clothes and weapons that made them so obviously military,” she said, stressing that the police continued using military technology and other tools despite these surface changes. Ferguson and the emergence of Black Lives Matter shifted the focus of anti-police violence discourse away from policing individual police officers, Davis explained. She further elaborated that the problem does not reside in the attitudes of the individual police officers responsible for the violence, but in the larger embeddedness and interconnectedness of many factors. Davis says the term “intersectionality” encompasses these factors, as well as the contributions of women of color and working class women. See DAVIS page 3
WEATHER
By Sarah Warman Hirschfield and Yael Marans
HIGH
65˚
LOW
41˚
Showers chance of rain:
50 percent