Push for Portuguese language house Features, p.5
themacweekly.com
XC competes at MIAC championships Sports, p.7
The Last Call: Kent State 50 years later Opinion, p.8
Macalester’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1914
Mac celebrates Día de los Muertos Arts, p.8
Vol. 125, No. 8 Nov. 8, 2019
Macalester reckons with Hong Kong protest movement By HANNAH GOLDFARB Staff Writer
The rock painted in support of Hong Kong (above photo by Gabe Berman ’21) and in celebration of the 70th anniversary of the CCP (below).
St. Paul votes yes in trash referendum By HANNAH CATLIN & REBECCA EDWARDS News Editors Tuesday was election day in St. Paul and nearly 60,000 cast votes for a new class of city council and board of education, as well as for and against the city’s contentious trash collection referendum. Ward 3 city councilmember Chris Tolbert won reelection in St. Paul’s Tuesday, Nov. 5 election to his second term in office — comfortably beating his sole opponent, Patty Hartmann, with more than 60 percent of the vote. Tolbert ran on a platform advocating for gun reform and affordable housing policy while Hartmann ran an anti-establishment campaign, highlighting her desire to lower income taxes. All seven city council seats were up for election this year. Four seats on St. Paul’s Board of Education were open as well. But the major issue in this week’s election was trash. In 2018, St. Paul switched from a privatized trash collection system — in which every household independently hired its own waste hauler — to a public system. While the move streamlined
trash collection and lowered carbon emissions, it also raised income taxes and mandated that every household have their own bin — points that motivated an impassioned campaign to end public collection and go back to the old system. The resulting referendum asked residents to vote on whether or not they supported the public trash system. But, despite the vocal and well-financed opposition, nearly twothirds of voters opted to keep public trash collection. It was the trash referendum that motivated many St. Paul voters to get to the polls. “For me, it was the trash issue,” Grace Reardon ’21 said. “I don’t think people really realize the implications of voting no, that the contract is still going to have to be paid out, and the fee is still around $30 million. That’s why I vote yes.” Alexander Purves ’23 found himself on the other side of the issue. “I voted against the ordinance because I think that people should have the right to choose the trash collectors that they want,” Purves said. “Having people being forced to have certain trash collectors is infringing on their right as a consumer.
“I think that people should be able to choose whatever trash collector is suitable for them,” he continued. Others abstained from voting on the issue entirely. “Honestly, the entire issue just confuses me,” Noah Pellettieri ’23 said. “I did research on it, but it doesn’t impact my life personally, and I am not well-informed enough to have an opinion about it.” Reardon organized for the election with the student group Mac Civic Action, educating students about the races and the referendum. But it wasn’t a particular referendum question or St. Paul’s ranked-choice voting system that concerned her — instead, she worried that many Macalester students might not have realized that they were eligible to vote at all. “You can vote here in city-wide elections and still vote back home in primaries and general elections, and be registered to vote in both places or re-register to vote back home,” Reardon said. “It’s really easy to vote here, so it makes sense to just do it. You’re a part of this community.”
During the week of Oct. 1, the rock in the middle of the great lawn became a distillation of the conflict between the Chinese government and pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. First, the rock was painted in honor of the 70th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) taking power in the country. Later that day, though, an unknown individual painted over the pro-CCP message with the words “Free Hong Kong,” in simplified chinese characters. Not long after, “Free Hong Kong” was painted over with words reading “Only One China.” Hong Kong is a small peninsula off of southwestern China that was a British colony for the majority of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries until, in 1997, the city became a special administrative region of China with the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration. The terms of the declaration, commonly referred to as the handover, mandated that Hong Kong retain its capitalist economy and democracy until 2047. This uncertainty about Hong
Kong’s future has led to consistent upheaval in the region. The Umbrella Revolution, a campaign against Chinese influence in Hong Kong after the CCP proposed reforms to the region’s electoral system, lasted roughly three months during the summer of 2014. This year’s protests, which began in June, mobilized in opposition to an extradition bill in the Hong Kong legislature. The bill would have allowed certain Hong Kongers to be tried in China. The protestors’ concerns evolved to include questions about freedom and democracy in the region more broadly. Music professor Chuen-Fong Wong is a Hong Konger and based his research out of the region during the summer of 2019. He attended several protests in June. “I, like many other people in Hong Kong, joined the first few protests in June, and also maybe one more in July,” Wong said. “The first time, there was one million [protestors]. The second time, it was close to two million.” Since the first protest, tensions have escalated between protesters and police, with each side becoming increasingly violent. Protest, cont. on page 4
Students come together over classroom bias By MARGARET MORAN Associate News Editor
Students from across class years and majors gathered in the Weyerhaeuser Memorial Chapel over Breadsmith and hot chocolate on Thursday, Oct. 31 to converse about a shared experience: coping with discrimination in the classroom. MCSG President Blair Cha ’20 and fellow student Jordanella Maluka ’23 led the discussion. “My goal for this meeting is just to gather your input and just to feel how students are treated in the classroom,” Cha said. Throughout the meeting, some students cited experiencing racist jokes, sexist comments and preferential treatment for students belonging to majority groups during their time at Macalester. A few expressed feeling discouraged from pursuing particular majors because of certain professors with reputations •hcatlin@macalester.edu for discrimination. One common •redward1@macalester.edu theme was frustration with the
fact that knowledge on campus about problematic professors is widespread, but action is rarely taken by the college. Maluka became passionate about making Macalester classrooms more inclusive soon after arriving on campus, having been met with adverse perceptions about certain departments. “A few weeks after I started… I felt this negative attitude about being scared of studying certain stuff or wanting to major in certain stuff,” Maluka said. “I felt like students weren’t necessarily advised not to pursue certain stuff, but I didn’t feel like there was a positive attitude about studying what you want.” It became more personal for Maluka after one of her friends had a negative experience in a classroom with a professor. She knew she wanted to take a next step. “I reached out to the student government because I felt like they may be the right people to reach out to,” Maluka said. Discrimination, cont. on page 3