NBN Magazine Spring 2017

ETIC DYNAMIC DELEGATOR PERFORMATIVE DOESN’T CARE NOT SUCH A G R UPBEAT COMPLICITSTRONG OPPRESIVE IGNORANT RACIST PERSONABL ADEPT ACTS LIKE A 10-YEAR-OLD ENTERPRISING WHITE-WASHER ATTEN WILLINGNESS TO CHANGEDOWN-TO-EARTH VIGOROUS VERY INVESTED IN NAZLING MY VOICE COOL DIFFERENT A PERFECT STORM UNIQUE COMFOR TED THE BEST I DONT THINK HE EVER PUTS STUDENTS AT THE SAME LEVE MENTITHIGHLY POLITICALEFFERVESCENT LEADER ENGAGING RESERVED ME EMPATHETIC CAN-DO ATTITUDE STRIVES TO BE WELL-LIKED LEGEND STIC HONEST STRAIGHT-UP THEATRICAL DRAMATIC HE DOESN’T LIVE OU OPINIONS VISIBLE POLITICIAN “HE’S LIKE A CONCEPT” THEATRICAL CHAR LIST INDUSTRIOUS “FRANK TO A FAULT” RESERVED DISCONNECTED ACCE TS-ORIENTED CHARITABLE CAPITALIST WELL-LIKED CAN’T ENACT ANYTHI By the numbers: SS ABSENT FRIENDLY SWEET ABSENTBRILLIANT PRODUCTIVE ORIGINAL I Northwestern ATIVE GIFTED VISIONARY INGENIOUS MALE ACCLAIMED DISTINGUISHED T UCTIONIST ILLUSTRIOUS DISENGAGED CARELESS OLD ALERT hoopsVIGILANT make O CONSIDERATE CHANGING PROGRESSIVE LIVELY UNIQUE AFFABLE WORL history L DUDE” SOPHISTICATEDSELECTIVE LISTENING COULD DO MOREMALE AC GUISHED GRAND HONORED ILLUSTRIOUS INFLUENTIAL WELL-KNOWN OL The LIKE aftermath NT OBSERVANT AWARE CONSIDERATE CURATED THINKS AN ECONOM E AFFABLE WORLDLY “JUST A COOL DUDE” SOPHISTICATED of CULTIVATED the SAE P ETIC DYNAMIC AMBITIOUS ENTHUSIASTIC DELEGATOR USED CAR SALESM allegations A GREAT GOLFER UPBEAT DOESN’T CARE STRONG AMIABLE COMPLICIT EN NABLE FUNNY ADEPT EASY TO TALK TO CURATED OBSTRUCTIONIST ATTE NTERESTED IN MARGINALIZING MY VOICE DOWN-TO-EARTHTHE VIGOROUS PR MANY DIFFERENT A PERFECT STORM PETTY COMFORTING TALENTED SELECTIVE DEFINITIONS OF BLEM IF YOU CAN SOLVE IT”COULD DO MORE EFFERVESCENT LEADER ENG MASCULINITY RICAL GENIAL WINSOME EMPATHETIC CAN-DO ATTITUDE STRIVES TO BE W CAPITALIST TONE-DEAF HONEST STRAIGHT-UP THEATRICAL DRAMATIC CA E POLITICIAN “HE’S LIKE A CONCEPT” IGNORANT CHARMING PERFORMATI NBN’s RE TRIOUS “FRANK TO A FAULT” AGREEABLE DISCONNECTED ACCESSIBLE to TIR TED CHARITABLE EXTROVERTED WELL-LIKED CAN’T ENACTguide ANYTHING FRIENDLY SWEET ACCOMPLISHED BRILLIANT PRODUCTIVE ORIGINAL INV campus ATIVE GIFTED VISIONARY INGENIOUS MALE ACCLAIMED DISTINGUISHED G sex RED ILLUSTRIOUS INFLUENTIAL WELL-KNOWN OLD ALERT VIGILANT OBSE CONSIDERATE CHANGING PROGRESSIVE LIVELY UNIQUE AFFABLE WORL L DUDE” SOPHISTICATED CULTIVATED POLISHED ENERGETIC DYNAMIC FLE THEPOWERFUL MAN, THE MYTH, SIASTIC DELEGATOR NOT SUCH A GREAT GOLFER UPBEAT LIK G AMIABLE BELOVED ENGAGED PERSONABLE FUNNY ADEPT EASY TO TA PRISING CARING ATTENTIVE CHARISMATIC DOWN-TO-EARTH VIGOROUS P DIFFERENT A PERFECT STORM HIGHLY POLITCAL COMFORTING TALENTED OT A PROBLEM IF YOU CAN SOLVE IT” SELF-SUFFICIENT EFFERVESCENT LE ING ENJOYABLE GENIAL WINSOME EMPATHETIC CAN-DO ATTITUDE STRIV -WASHER LEGENDARY SARCASTIC HONEST STRAIGHT-UP THEATRICAL DR RMATIVE VISIBLE POLITICIAN “HE’S LIKE A CONCEPT” SPRY CHARMING CH TRIOUS “FRANK TO A FAULT” AGREEABLE DISCONNECTED ACCESSIBLE RE TED CHARITABLE EXTROVERTED WELL-LIKED CAN’T ENACT ANYTHING TIR FRIENDLY SWEET ACCOMPLISHED BRILLIANT PRODUCTIVE ORIGINAL INV ATIVE GIFTED VISIONARY INGENIOUS WHITE WASHER ACCLAIMED DISTING RMATIVE HONORED ILLUSTRIOUS INFLUENTIAL WELL-KNOWN COULD DO NT OBSERVANT AWARE CONSIDERATE MORTON SCHAPIRO I CHANGING CARELESS LIVELY UNIQ DLY “JUST A COOL DUDE” SOPHISTICATED USED CAR SALESMANMALE HIG AL DISTINGUISHED GRAND HONORED ILLUSTRIOUS INFLUENTIAL WELL-

NORTH BY

SPRING 2017

THE MORTY

PREGAME 8

9

Who runs Northwestern?

Breaking down the board of trustees Nerf wars Meet Nerf-Western, where they work hard ... and NERF harder

10 Leftbook

Prepare to be personally attacked by our #relatable content

GENIUS 14 Unsilent spring

A flashback to when NU led the conversation on climate change

17 Animal crossing

QUAD 28 Black lives, Black words,

Black spaces Finding a creative space

32 Nailing Northwestern's past

An artist reflects on Japanese American internment

36 NU sounds

Our photo team scouts out the hottest bands on campus

FEATURES 38 Beyond the ban

It’s not just about the travel ban – there are deeper issues

42 Institutional inertia

Students demand more from sexual assault policies at NU

46 The man. The myth.

The Morty.

Morton Schapiro, like you’ve never seen him before

The Evanston Ecology Center and all of its cute lil’ critters

19

GES what?

You’ve heard of this club, but do you know what they do?

51

54 Mapped out

Fashioning new solutions for low-income students

22 Rock around the block

Visiting Dave's Down to Earth Rock Shop, Evanston’s hidden gem

SPOTLIGHT 23 Making history

The statistics that tell the story of Wildcat basketball

PHOTOS BY LETA DICKINSON, EMMA DANBURY, MIA ZANZUCCHI, YING DAI AND ALEX FURUYA

Masculinity at NU What makes a man?

HANGOVER 61

Sweet sexcapes NBN shows you how to get steamy off Sheridan

63 North-winos

Skip the Norris mini course.

We’ve got your vino education covered SPRING ‘17 | 3

“

“ northwestern

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE FACEBOOK GROUP?

COVER DESIGN BY ANDIE LINKER COVER ILLUSTRATION BY EMMA SARAPPO

NORTH BY

NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

NORTH BY NORTHWESTERN managing editor Jacob Meschke creative director Andie Linker Cool Dog Group photo directors Alex Furuya & Ying Dai senior features editors Emma Sarappo & Nicolás Rivero senior section editors Daniel Fernandez & Sam Spengler associate editors Emily Karl and Meg Pisarczyk spotlight editors Meg Pisarczyk & Kosher Trader Joe’s Lucy Dwyer assistant editor Natalie Escobar senior designer Emma Kumer designers Aine Dougherty, Alex Furuya, Amanda Gordon, Lauren Bally, Lucy Dwyer, Mia Zanzucchi, Sarah Zhang, Savannah Christensen assistant photo directors Cassie Majewski & Emma Danbury photographers Claire Bugos, Leta Dickinson, sounds like Ying Dai, Alex Furuya, Cassie Majewski, Emma late stage capitalism Sarappo, Emma Danbury, Audrey Valbuena, but ok Mia Zanzucchi contributors Alex Furuya, Amanda Gordon, Brock Colyar, Carter Mohs, Candace Butera, Cassie Majewski, Claire Bugos, Daniel Fernandez, David Gleisner, Emma Danbury, Gabrielle Bienasz, Isabel Schwartz, Isabella Jiao, Isabella Soto, Julia Song, Justin Curto, Kira Fahmy, Lucy Dwyer, Maggie Harden, Marco Cartolano, Meg Pisarczyk, Mila Jasper, Mia Zanzucchi, Nicolàs Rivero, Natalie Escobar, Paola de Varona, Priyanka Godbole, Sam Spengler, Victoria Alfred-Levow, Virginia Nowakowski, Zoe Johnson

editor-in-chief Libby Berry executive editor Lila Reynolds Can UUU Mansplain It managing editors Mia Zanzucchi & Rachel Frazin To Me? assistant managing editors Isabella Jiao, Jesus Campos, Virginia Nowakowski news editors David Gleisner & Maggie Harden features editor Charlotte Hu life & style editors Danielle Cohen & Morgan Smith opinion editor David Guirgis entertainment editor Justin Curto assistant entertainment editor Victora Alfred-Levow sports editor Trevor Lystad assistant sports editor Meg Pisarczyk sports consultant Andy Brown politics editor Paola de Varona assistant politics editor Priyanka Godbole It’s my birthday and writing editor Elissa Gray I want to watch some photo editor Claire Bugos fucking turtles race. video editor Helen Lee interactive editor Maxine Whitely science and tech editors Ashwin Kulkarni & Audrey Valbuena audio editor Jakob Lazzaro magazine liaisons Maxine Whitely, Emma Kumer, Mia Zanzucchi

NORTH BY NORTHWESTERN, NFP

Why did you president Libby Berry DIY that??? vice president Jacob Meschke executive vice president Lila Reynolds treasurer Leo Ji assistant treasurer Eric Shao director of marketing Jamie Hwang director of operations Leo Ji assistant director of operations Bob Babich directors of ad sales Candace Butera & Jasmine Teng director of development Rachel Wolfe director of talent Justin Curto webmaster Maxine Whitely social media coordinators Carolyn Twersky & Mia Zanzucchi creative director Emma Kumer

About the cover: The words and phrases featured on the cover come from the students, faculty, administrators and friends of President Schapiro intervewed for this piece.

4 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

a damNBN good way to start the party.

E M A G E PR ess d we l l n n a e if l , a c t iv is m s s k l a t n a a l S t u d ie n m l r io a s s e e P f P ro e We n d y c hool of i c v S d ’s a n ees r L i fe of trust hwe s te t d r r o a o N b t e All abou d ow n t h o r g p in k g a e n Goi r n? B r

6 7 8 9

10 11

we s te h t r o N er ns co nte nt R F h a rd E e l Who ru N b a d t n a a el by o u r r o r k h a rd d W e k s c r a a t at NERF w s o n a l ly P re p a re

er to b e p

k Le f t b o o rth rs of No a e y 0 5 sy 1 So clas

classes g in t a u grad we s te r n

Life Advice

PHOTO BY YING DAI

from

Wendy Pearlman

BY GABRIELLE BIENASZ

Wendy Pearlman is an associate professor who studies comparative politics of the Middle East. Pearlman has awardwinning research on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Lebanese diaspora and the Syrian Civil War. Pearlman’s most recent book, a narrative collection of her interviews with nearly 300 Syrian refugees, will be published in June. NBN caught up with her to talk activism, wellness, and the ongoing conflict in Syria.

NBN: What advice would you give to students leading movements on campus?

WP: Don’t put so much pressure on yourself to see results immediately. Think about the long term contribution you’re making – even if you don’t see the results you want, you’re leaving some sort of legacy for other students who come after you.

How have you maintained your own wellness throughout the work you’ve done?

The trick is to not be so cold and unemotional that you’re just treating it like material. But you also don’t want to be so emotionally overwhelmed by the horror of the material that you’re unable to work. I never want to think of the Syrians I talk to as data. There are absolutely times when I find I’ve broken down crying. There were times when I felt like I couldn’t do any work. You need to be attuned to your emotional state and protect your wellness, remembering that you’re no good to yourself or anybody else if you fail to protect yourself.

How can college students maintain that balance?

We all feel a lot of pressure, and I think, especially college students, act like they’ve got it all together. There’s not often a lot of space to show vulnerability and say you’re overwhelmed. The more open we are to talk about those vulnerabilities and experiences, the more we can have open dialogue and conversation in which people don’t feel so much pressure to put on this totally invincible, successful face to the world.

In today’s crowded market for attention, how do we get people to care about something so far away like the civil war in Syria?

When I talk to people about Syria, I [find] that a lot of ordinary Americans have a sense that Syria is really complicated, something is going on over there that’s really terrible, and, “My heart cries for those poor people, but I just don’t really get it.” Most Americans can get

6 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

by without knowing, and without caring what happens in Syria. But, the degree of the absolute obliteration of human rights is so devastating that I hope we know and try to care. Those who have the sheer luck and good fortune to have been born in places where they’re safe and free have a duty to care about those who, by their luck, have been born without such privileges. There are many ways to talk about Syria, but the stories of Syrians themselves are most effective.

The personal stories demonstrate the human dimension of how devastating this is for ordinary people who’ve been caught up in the crossfire. As a human who cares about people, it moves me, but as an academic and as a professor of politics, I also find that stories can help us understand politics in a deeper, helpful way.

Considering the events and conflicts you have researched, and everything you have studied, do you still believe in change?

I definitely believe in change. It can be difficult to be optimistic, but what gives me hope is that people are enormously resilient, and what I’ve seen with Syrians is that the Syrian refugees are so strong. They don’t give up. If people who suffered such enormous injustice can continue dreaming of change, then it’s almost like we shouldn’t have the luxury of giving up hope. If they have hope, then we have a duty to keep hoping and standing in solidarity with them.

*This interview has been edited & condensed for clarity.

H

ayley Serruya wakes up early, makes a pot of coffee, spends a couple hours with her two-year-old son and puts in eight hours at her full-time job as a project manager for a manufacturing firm. But at the end of her long day, instead of putting up her feet, she cracks open a textbook and dives into her homework.

This is the daily grind for Serruya, an undergraduate student in the Northwestern School of Professional Studies (SPS). She’s finishing her bachelor’s degree in organization behavior with a focus on business leadership, one of the 12 majors offered to undergraduate students. Right now, she’s enrolled in four courses, all of which she takes at night or during the weekend. Some of these, like Serruya’s Organizational Change lecture, are as long as seven hours. “[SPS] is full of a bunch of people who, for whatever reason in their life, didn’t go to school earlier,” Serruya says. “Everyone seems to be working really, really hard because most of them are professionals working in some sort of career and they’re all very focused on finishing.”

SPS is one of Northwestern’s 12 schools, with classes offered at the Evanston and Chicago campuses. At the undergraduate level, students can finish their degree, earn a certificate or take classes for personal fulfillment. SPS also offers graduate, postbaccalaureate and professional development programs. Northwestern employees who enroll in the school receive a discount on their tuition in an effort to encourage professional growth.

Students pay per course each quarter, giving them the flexibility to adjust their course load. Because of this, even though there are 1,236 active undergraduate students enrolled in SPS, only 573 are currently in an SPS course. Additionally, several students from Northwestern’s other six undergraduate schools petition to cross-enroll in SPS courses. Athletes, for example, can take evening classes to avoid conflicts with their game schedules. Similarly, SPS students may take daytime classes for the increased variety in offerings.

“There are certain things my students deal with that I never had much experience with as an undergraduate, things like kids or family obligations,” says Ben Dalgaard, who received his master’s degree in Information Systems from SPS and is now an undergraduate professor at the school. “But

we have the same expectations of everyone.

The students have the same commitment to their studies and homework. They just have to balance that.”

SPS hires part-time faculty, including industry leaders, as adjunct professors. Many professors teach in both the day school and SPS. Their SPS courses often mirror those in the day school, although professors may tailor the curricula to fit the experiences and needs of their students. Professors supplement instruction time and lab work with online learning tools like Yellowdig and Canvas discussion boards, Dalgaard says.

“If anything happens with school, work is always the first to go. School at this point is my number one priority. But it’s not easy.

I don’t sleep a lot,” says Alexander Boone, who is completing a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. “But our professors understand, so they allot for that when designing the curriculum, which is probably why I’ve done so well at SPS.” Professors encourage students to consider situations in their day jobs while completing projects and assignments, allowing them to apply their learning to their work and vice versa.

“You really get a sense of what is happening in the industry, and don’t just focus on the theoretical that happens in the classroom,” Dalgaard says. “That’s what sets it apart in my opinion – the mix of experiences from both the professors and the students.”

Because most of the students have professional careers, they have connections and job experience that other undergraduates may lack.

“My professional network explodes because of how distinguished some of my classmates are,” Boone says. “I end

up being one or two degrees of separation away from some of the really prominent figures in the industries that I’m hoping to get into.”

Students sometimes use SPS as a stepping stone to graduate school or achieving professional goals.

“I always tell people not to underestimate what our students are capable of even though they’re going to class part time and at a later age,” says Peter Kaye, the assistant dean of undergraduate and postgraduate programs.

For those able to balance the workload, SPS offers an unconventional, but effective, way to further one’s education.

“I felt like there are just really so many more opportunities than beforehand,” Serruya said. “[I have] that feeling of ‘oh my gosh I can do anything now. I can become the governor!’”

GOING PRO

The School of Professional Studies offers the opportunity to learn and work simultaneously.

PHOTO BY ALEX FURUYA

BY CLAIRE BUGOS SPRING ‘17 | 7

WHO

RUNS As you might expect, Northwestern’s board of trustees is mostly rich, old, white men. What these 52 men (and 18 women) lack in demographic diversity they make up for in fun facts. Take a look for yourself and get to know your trustees.

NBN’s guide to your overlords.

BY MAGGIE HARDEN

W. James McNerney, Jr.

Frederick Waddell

BOEING

NORTHERN TRUST CORP.

McNery played college baseball with George H.W. Bush at Yale.

Wadell is ranked the 15th most powerful person in Chicago by Chicago Magazine.

Michael Wilbon

Ivy Beth Lewis

ESPN

FREELANCE EDITOR

Wilbon learned how to read from the sports section of the newspaper.

Lewis homeschooled her three children from first to eighth grade while simultaneously managing a sheep and cattle ranch in New Zealand.

W. Rockwell Wirtz WIRTZ CORP.

Wirtz is the owner of the Chicago Blackhawks.

T. Bondurant French ADAMS STREET PARTNERS, LLC

French’s secret to success is, “If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.” This is something his mom used to say.

w

RACE EDUCATION

18

university 20 p o t a

8 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

R3 GROUP LLC.

Pigott decided she wanted to be a lawyer after her parents took her to the Supreme Court and she saw no women serving as justices.

ed

Jane DiRenzo Pigott

d

CARLSON RESIDOR

Nelson was a professional tennis player who was internationally ranked in both singles and doubles.

11 a t t en

Wendy Nelson

to t a l t r u s te e s

GENERAL DYNAMICS

Novakovic is a former CIA agent.

52

en

Phebe Novakovic

en

m

COMBE INC.

Combe’s company invented the popular acne medicine Clearasil.

om

34 orthw e s t ed N ern nd te at

Christopher Combe

w hi

2

MERRICK VENTURES

er h t 5o

GENDER

Michael Ferro, Jr. Lupe Fiasco once asked Ferro to mentor him, and Ferro offered Fiasco a job the first time they met.

60

te

5

Tribett III started dating his wife at the age of 14.

WISSNER-SLIVKA FOUNDATION

k ac l B

2 Asian

Angelson served as Deputy Mayor of Chicago from 2011-12, where he made a salary of $1 a year.

Slivka taught himself computer programming on demo equipment in various Seattle retail stores.

RUSSEL REYNOLDS ASSOCIATES

er 3 oth

Mark Angelson

N.J. GOVERNMENT

Benjamin Slivka

Charles Tribett III

NERF WARS Every Friday night at 10, campus becomes a battleground.

BY SAM SPENGLER

A

blanket of silence falls over Fisk Hall.

The only noises are the sound of my labored breathing and the enduring hum of florescent lights. “Where are they?”

I wonder, uneasy. I crouch in my hiding spot inside a concealed alcove, clutching my only source of defense like a lifeline. A bead of sweat slowly drips down my forehead, an unpleasant reminder of how long it has been since my last trip to the gym. Without warning, cacophony erupts on the floor above me and a herd of students clamour down the stairs and around the corner. Armed with guns and swords, they charge right toward my concealed position. A zombie is in pursuit.

No, this isn’t a Walking Dead-meets-Call of Duty-meets-midterm-anxiety nightmare. It is a Friday night at 10 in a very real Fisk Hall with very real, very alive Northwestern students.

The zombie, not so much.

Meet Nerf-Western, an informal organization of students that gathers in an empty school building each Friday night to play a fun, though still competitive, series of NERF wars. While they aren’t registered with the university, they hold elections, follow a formal constitution, adhere to an extensive list of game modes and rules and make Dillo T-shirts (the true mark of an established student organization).

Like many of society’s great institutions, Nerf-Western began as a group of bored college freshmen. McCormick senior Kirby Gong, the group’s fearless leader, always considered himself a NERF enthusiast. He and his friends

from the North Mid-Quad held NERF games in the building their Fall Quarter freshman year.

By the end of the year, the games had expanded to locations like Crowe, Kresge and Swift, and in the process had attracted a much larger crowd.

What began as an informal gathering of friends blossomed into organized events and a Facebook group. Regulars started showing up, and the game modes, rules and group’s arsenal (suitcases full of plastic weaponry) expanded. As Gong grew older, he began to recruit younger students to partake in the revelry, and a community took shape.

“I’ve almost picked up a rep’ for being the ‘NERF guy,’” Gong says. Initially, the speed at which the club grew surprised him, and he found himself enjoying how it developed into a method of meeting new people.

This Winter Quarter – as Gong anticipated his imminent retirement – the group held elections. Weinberg sophomores Ichigo Willis and Andrew Walker emerged as co-presidents.

Willis met Gong when he was her resident assistant in Public Affairs Residential College her freshman year. As a part of his recruitment strategy, Gong advertised to younger students.

He approached Willis about playing, and she decided to give it a try. The community and carefree excitement had her hooked almost instantly. She started going weekly and made a number of close friends.

“Kirby’s passion was inspiring,” Willis says.

“It was so obvious how much he loved the

community he created.”

Now, she and Walker organize and lead the games, manage the Facebook group, and help run bonding events for other student organizations like the business fraternity Delta Sigma Pi and the pledge class of Delta Tau Delta.

Running events is not as simple as arming a pledge class with 60 plastic guns and swords and telling them to go crazy. There are more than 24 game types outlined in the group’s official rules (including Reaper, in which dead players return as zombies) and various rules of engagement. There are even sword and dagger fighting (AKA sparring) skills to learn.

Willis, for example, spent this year’s Wildcat Welcome week practicing sparring with Gong.

These skills come into play during regular Friday night sessions as well. Newcomers (like me) may find themselves shocked by how much – or little – skill one could have with a plastic gun. During water breaks there are gladiator matches, and pairs of more practiced members face off in duels. Rookies can try as well, but there is no guarantee of how long they’ll last.

Whether a seasoned vet or a fledgling marksman stumbling from floor to floor, it’s easy to see the appeal of the game. “It’s being able to be in the building by ourselves and not having to worry about homework and being able to forget everything for a Friday night,” Willis says.

PHOTO BY EMMA DANBURY

SPRING ‘17 | 9

#content takes a sharp left turn since November.

BY PRIYANKA GODBOLE

Create a Post

Photo/Video Album

Live Video

@how long until leftists only communicate through tagging group names?

Photo/Video

A

ccording to the (third) definition on Urban Dictionary, a leftist is “a lazy, self serving, communistic, marxist, anti-christian, islamist loving weasel (sic).” That being said, since last year’s presidential election, leftists have swept across the internet through the creation of Facebook groups that serve one purpose: to make fun of everything. Laughter is the best medicine, so many millennials have turned to a virtual world deemed “leftbook” to seek solace during what seems like the end of the world as they know it.

Communication senior Hale McSharry is well-versed in memes and an active participant of many of these online groups.

From “Are the straights ok???” to “thank mr banky,” McSharry finds groups like these to not only be places for shits and giggles, but also learning environments where he can garner new millennial perspectives on hot-button topics.

“I think a lot of people on the left side of the political spectrum place a lot of blame on the Democratic establishment for losing the election,” McSharry says. “As our policies have suddenly swung further right, I think many young people are swinging left, and Facebook groups are simple and easy ways that people become organized. I think people want new organizations and don’t want to follow the same leaders that lost in 2016.”

School of Education and Social Policy junior Camille Cooley has been tagging her friends in “dank memes” throughout her college career and agrees that Facebook groups sharing #relatable content blew up

10 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

Feeling/Activity

soon after the 2016 election.

“It was also after the election that these Facebook groups became support systems and spaces for people who wanted a place to talk to others about what they were thinking about,” she says. “These spaces give us an opportunity to share an indefinite communal groan with the rest of humanity that thinks like us.”

Cooley’s personal favorite left-leaning groups include (but are not limited to): “sounds white but ok,” “sounds male but ok,” “i feel personally attacked by this relatable content,” “swiped the FUCK right” and the OG of college Facebook meme groups, “UC Berkeley Memes for Edgy Teens.”

“The first two are both spaces where people share memes about white people, douchey guys or sometimes both. The third makes me question all of the decisions I’ve ever made in my life, the fourth makes me feel better about my Tinder swipe etiquette and the last is selfexplanatory,” she says.

Early this March, SESP sophomore Benjamin Powell created one of the newest online shitposting spaces on campus, Northwestern Memes for Networking Teens (NMNT). With more

than 6,500 members, this meme sharing Facebook group has succeeded in hitting close to home – quite literally – for many NU students.

“I wanted to use the ‘something memes for something teens’ format for the name of this group, and networking sounded good because of the alliteration with Northwestern; also it doubles as a joke about how pre-professional NU students are,” he says.

Powell is familiar with the world of left-leaning content, and describes himself as very politically active on the left. He says that while NMNT is not necessarily part of the leftbook world, its overall attitude is sympathetic to the leftist mentality.

“This [Facebook page] was intended to be a one-off joke rather than become a large group,” he says. “I’m really glad that the group took off and that people enjoy it.

My favorite thing about the page so far was when emails were sent out about the tuition increase, and it immediately went to the meme page. It was the first time I saw an extensive group of people immediately talk about and criticize something the administration had done in this format; I thought that that was a good sign of what this could be, and what this group could do.”

While it remains to be seen if SESP students will defend themselves against McCormick kids’ vicious virtual jabs, it appears left-leaning groups are going to stick around longer than James Comey’s career under the Trump administration.

BY MARCO CARTOLANO

SO CLASSY CLASS OF

1859

5 students

A look inside how Northwestern’s graduating classes have changed over the years.

CLASS OF

CLASS OF

1921

1899

475 students

130 students

Five students received bachelors degrees at Northwestern’s first commencement.

CLASS OF

1975

1,677 students 56% Men

44% Women

Of the 721 students enrolled at the time, 572 were enrolled in the college and 149 were enrolled in the music school.

The Medill School of Journalism opened this year.

CLASS OF

1984

Dance Marathon was founded this year.

1,753 students

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SAVANNAH CHRISTENSEN

CLASS OF

1995

1,803 students Actress Kathryn Hahn graduated this year. Musician Pharrell Williams was a member of this class, but did not graduate.

CLASS OF

2020

49% Men

51% Women

The first-ever class to 1,985 students know of Northwestern men’s basketball only as a tournament team.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF NORTHWESTERN LIBRARY, NORTHWESTERN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND NATE BARTLETT

SPRING ‘17 | 11

g

g

s u i n e

l is t s nmenta o ir v n e ead en NU l h w e im t to a t r p o c ke u r ip b a c k t o y A in g re – te r s t sprin n ealth ca e h l l i a s t e lil’ crit t n n u e c M s 14 U it t a er and p fo r t h p g y C e nt o a l o n c E a s to n re ’ s he Evan 16 T h e t e r o l p r ve n g Ex i ey d e s e s h t s y o a r p c r the mal o rg u e fo 17 A n i a n t t h ey d e a h m o w W ’s e her ting up a b e fo re : i t m o y n g o r e c 18 N er the a in d a n g e h e a rd is ’v t u e o g Y bud p a n it ie s S what? m u h ock Sho d R n 19 G E a h t s r t a r ra to E W hy o u ’s D ow n U e v N a D @ o t H 20 N E c k A visit 22

e blo h t d n u o Ro c k a r

Inspiring you to live smarter

unsilent

BY VIRGINIA NOWAKOWSKI

spring

Fifty years ago, Northwestern led the conversation on climate change.

I

magine rivers catching on fire, pesticides slowly poisoning flocks of birds and thousands of barrels of oil spilling into the ocean. To Americans living in the 1960s, these images – popping up on their televisions nightly and even in their cities – presented a frightening reality.

Chicago was no exception. Since the late 1800s, residents dealt with a constant output of smoke and debris that coated everything from buildings to hanging laundry. Lake Michigan was full of “stinking piles of algae and alewives,” said one article in the Chicago Tribune.

One Northwestern student saw the appalling conditions of pollution as a chance for change. “Have you heard about all of this pollution?” Casey Jason, a Weinberg sophomore at Northwestern asked Jim Reisa in 1969. Reisa, at the time a graduate student studying biological science, heard all about the pollution threatening Chicago and the United States. He was known as the ecologist of his lab.

“Well, what are you going to do about it?” Jason asked.

“Go away, kid,” Reisa said. “I’m busy.”

But Jason came back.

“He kept saying, ‘What are you going to do about it?’– he must’ve said that four or five times,” Reisa says. “I thought about it and I just decided, ‘Well, let’s have a meeting of the students,’ and that’s how it started.”

Eventually, a group of students and faculty convened to discuss the pollution endangering Lake Michigan and the rest of the country. The students decided to call themselves Northwestern Students for a Better Environment (NSBE), and they were about to do a lot.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY EMMA KUMER

Project Survival

NSBE entered the scene at a time when college campuses were boiling with Vietnam War protests.

Northwestern students built barricades, went on strike and threatened to burn down Lunt Hall, creating tensions with the administration and the Evanston community. Reisa was adamant that NSBE would take a different approach.

“We couldn’t really do anything about the environment by alienating what was then called the ‘silent majority,’” says Reisa, who served as the first group chair. “We really needed to bring the information and the information would cause many people to take up the cause.”

In the months leading up to the very first celebration of Earth Day in April 1970, Reisa worked with representatives from other colleges to plan events raising awareness about environmental issues. On Jan. 23, 1970, NSBE hosted Project

14 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

Survival, the first environmental “teach-out” in the style of countless “teach-ins” created to inform the public about issues like the Vietnam War and civil rights. “Teach-ins were very ‘in’ at the time; we were doing a ‘teach-out,’ which means we reached out to the community,” says Jim Robin, who served as chairman of the air pollution committee of NSBE. “Rather than just [staying] within the academic community, [we reached] out to the public to teach them about the environment.”

Nationally recognized environmental speakers like Paul Simon and Paul Ehrlich agreed to speak for a fraction of their normal fee. “I’m not sure how they got these people,” says Keith Woodhouse, a history professor at Northwestern. “They were kind of the all-star lineup of environmental speakers.”

Jason, who was president of NSBE at the time, recalls helping convince environmentalists that Project Survival was worth their while. “Jim [Reisa] was a wheeler-dealer …

Jim billed it as we were the most powerful student group in the country, in the environment and that we would be creating history,” Jason says. “Instead of getting $10,000 or $20,000 they accepted an honorarium of under 1,000 bucks, with the idea that they would be making history.”

The moment made history for Northwestern. Around 10,000 people flooded in or around the Technological Institute that night, and they weren’t all students.

Residents from Evanston and Chicago and environmental activists from all over came to learn more, in addition to the busloads of students that arrived from different universities. Newspapers, radio and television media, including the Chicago Tribune and NBC, covered the teachout.

It may have been educational, but it was certainly not boring. Transcripts from the night show the speakers’ warnings about the widespread destruction of resources and the need to do something now. “The air we breathe, the water we drink and our natural resource treasures must have their day in court,” Victor Yannacone, a co-founder of the Environmental Defense Fund, said at the teach-out.

“And I say to you all, as students, don’t just sit here and bitch; sue somebody.”

After a midnight “sing-out” with the popular folk artist Jim Paxton, breakout sessions began in Tech. Professors gave halfhour classes on topics like the “Depletion of Natural Resources” and “How to Save a Lake." The event continued until 6 a.m. “It was an absolute incredible happening," recalls Warren Muir, a member of NSBE. "I mean, a number of people who

said that it was a life-changing event for them. You had the sense that it was sort of a rally that would lead people in the audience to be involved, not necessarily in NSBE, but be involved in environmental issues then and publicly in the future.”

Continued Enthusiasm Bolstered by the enormous success of Project Survival, NSBE continued the charge for environmental causes. One of their first targets: phosphates.

For decades, Phosphates from detergents and fertilizer washed into the water, which created the perfect environment for algae to grow in a process called cultural eutrophication.

Lakes around the country suffered from massive algal blooms, which killed fish and made the water dangerous for human use.

NSBE wanted to protect Lake Michigan and other waterways, so they decided to take action, not by protesting, but through education. “We had our graduate students in the chemistry department buy a bunch of laundry detergents off the shelf in grocery stores and do a quantitative analysis to determine the phosphate content of each detergent,” Reisa says. “We made up a list which [had] the highest [phosphate content and] what was the phosphate per laundry load in each detergent.”

Jason approached Jewel-Osco to ask that the list get posted in their local store. “Within a matter of weeks, the sales of high phosphates detergents from that store plummeted and the sales of the low phosphate detergents just skyrocketed,” Reisa says.

“So Jewel put it in all of their stores, and then other grocery stores put the list up too.”

Laundry detergent manufacturers took notice, and began decreasing the phosphate content. But not all by choice – Chicago instituted a ban on phosphorus in detergents in 1970, praising the actions of NSBE as they announced the legislation.

NSBE also testified at local and state hearings in the early 1970s and helped introduce the Environmental Act to the Illinois state constitution. Throughout the 1970s, Illinois would create their own Environmental Protection Agency and enact clean air and water legislation. Some of NSBE's leaders would go on to shape policy at the national level. “I was studying organometallic reaction mechanisms. I was going to be a university teacher,” says Muir, who began work at the thenrecently established Council on Environmental Quality when he left Northwestern. “Instead, I got recruited to be one of the very first scientists in the White House working on federal and environmental policy because of my leadership role with Northwestern!”

Muir joined several other veterans of NSBE for a celebration marking the 40th anniversary of Project Survival in 2010. Now, almost 50 years since NSBE’s biggest accomplishments, many of the memories of the group’s innovative efforts to unite government, business and academia in a non-confrontational approach have begun to fade. But Jason says he thinks NSBE’s legacy of success remains as impressive and inspirational as ever. “What we did in the 60s [and 70s] was unique," Jason says.

"It wasn’t little projects of this, that and the other – we impacted Chicago and the nation. That doesn’t happen too often out of a university undergraduate school.”

Project Survival 10,000 people

by the numbers

9,000

cups of coffee

7,200 donuts 30

minute study sessions

“We couldn’t really do anything about the environment by alienating what was then called the ‘silent majority.’ We really needed to bring the information.”

- JIM REISA, FOUNDER

11 hours long 100+

9 keynote speakers

speeches requested of NSBE following the event

SPRING ‘17 | 15

Downloading relief A new way to treat symptoms of mental illness: a pocket therapist.

BY ALEX FURUYA “Everyone worries, but worry that is out of control can hurt you. As you inhale, focus on expanding your stomach, as if you’re inflating a balloon in your abdomen. Now focus on feeling neutral while you begin to think about the worry situation.”

My breathing and heart rate slow. My mind is clear and I feel calm. But this isn’t a therapist talking to me – it’s one of the mobile apps in the IntelliCare suite.

IntelliCare is a series of 13 apps that helps users combat problems associated with depression and anxiety. Researchers at Northwestern’s Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies (CBITs) developed the apps to treat symptoms like social isolation, sleep problems and obsessive thinking. The creators of IntelliCare used the Behavioral Intervention Technology (BIT) model, which emphasizes direct engagement in activities iCope: Allows users to create “Coping Cards” that appear before stressful events.

Job interviews and class presentations always give me anxiety. This app allowed me to create coping cards to remind myself of ways to manage nervous energy. While the coping cards did not appear as a notification because I used my laptop, just being able to identify potentially stressful events by creating the cards helped me.

Worry Knot: Advises users on how to cope with stressful situations that lead to “tangled thinking.”

The app helps users identify stressful situations and relate them to a neutral situation. For example, if I get anxious around trains, the app associates that with how I feel when I am ordering coffee at a coffee shop. By associating stressful situations with neutral ones, the user is able to feel more relaxed.

16 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

to improve symptoms over an educational approach, which is more common.

“IntelliCare is a little bit different,” says Dr. Emily Lattie, a research assistant professor at CBIT who worked on IntelliCare. “We know that people tend to use their cellphones in pretty brief bursts, and therefore [they] lend themselves more to helping people do things and get stuff done. The IntelliCare apps were really designed to help people really actively practice different skills and strategies.”

I have struggled with anxiety, specifically obsessive thinking, since I was a teenager, but options like therapy or self-help were either ineffective or inconvenient. When I first heard about IntelliCare in a news brief from Northwestern, it seemed perfect. But I wondered: Were the promises too good to be true? I decided to try it.

Unfortunately, IntelliCare is only available for Android phones, which I don’t have (the IntelliCare team is currently working to adapt the apps to iOS, Lattie says). To get around this, I downloaded an emulator called BlueStacks that allowed me to use Android apps on my laptop. This process was tedious and sometimes BlueStacks crashed, but I found the apps didn’t have to be used on an Android phone to be effective. While some features like phone alerts were lost, I didn’t let that stop me.

IntelliCare lets you pick and choose what apps you’d like to download. Depending on your selection, each app uses different strategies to cope with anxiety and depression, giving you a personal treatment plan. I chose apps that would help me with obsessive thinking and general anxiety. Here are the four I recommend: Purple Chill: Helps users with sleep problems and anxiety. Includes audio clips that instruct users on ways to breathe and relax muscles.

One of the best parts of this app is the breathing exercise, which is a video of a circle that expands and contracts. As the circle expands, you breathe in, and as it contracts, you breathe out. The app also includes other audio instructions to help users relax.

Thought Challenger: Allows users to identify their intrusive thoughts and how to cope with them.

By making my intrusive thoughts more tangible, I was able to see how unreasonable they were and how I could dispel them.

The app helped me find a pattern, and whenever I had an intrusive thought, I could remember the way I dealt ILLUSTRATION BY SARAH ZHANG with the one before.

PHOTOS BY LETA DICKINSON

W

Animal crossing

See what the buzz is all about at the Evanston Ecology Center.

hen the Evanston Ecology Center (EEC) introduced an apiary with about 40,000 honeybees earlier this spring, it caused quite the buzz. At first, the public attention was appreciated, but the EEC has received so many media requests in the last few weeks that the staff has started to decline them.

“We just don’t have the time for it,” program coordinator Matt Poole says.

In fact, the bees are only a small part of the slew of programs run

by Poole and his partner Erika Doroghazi at the EEC, located on McCormick Boulevard about two miles west of campus. Warm weather activities include night hikes with animal education, soil preparation and Girl Scout badge-earning activities. The center also hosts an indoor farmer’s market during the winter, an environmental film festival and summer camps. From May to July, Poole also coordinates onsite weddings almost weekly.

“A dozen or more things have to happen throughout the day to keep things moving,” Poole says.

“The pace is outrageous, but we can handle it.”

For Evanstonians of all ages, it’s good news that the duo are no novices to the outdoor scene. Twenty-sevenyear-old Poole, worked in various outdoor education positions before coming to the EEC three years ago; Doroghazi holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies and agriscience with a concentration in community engagement and education. She moved to Chicago in 2013 and worked as a part-time instructor at EEC and other nature centers before becoming a full-time EEC instructor.

“When we were brought in here, the place had become stagnant,” Poole says. “They’d been doing the

BY JULIA SONG

same series of programs over and over with no real changes, so we were charged with making it new and better and different.”

While they have already made progress in expanding the center’s offerings, at the rate they are growing Poole says they’ll soon need more people. With the surrounding 17acre Ladd Arboretum, EEC has an abundance of space, but limited funds. Doroghazi, Poole and one front-desk clerk are the only fulltime staff.

The center operates as part of Evanston’s Parks, Recreation and Community Services department, but the Evanston Environmental Association (EEA), a local nonprofit, helps to fund special projects like the apiary. Dick Peach, the president of the group, says they have allotted enough funds to keep the apiary running for around four years, though they want to continue supporting the project long after.

“There’s always a need at the ecology center,” says Peach, who meets with the center’s staff to get a yearly wish list outlining projects and renovations.

From this list, the EEA board determines which projects to pursue.

Each year, they also organize several large fundraisers, and this year, the Evanston Green Ball celebrated bees as the guest of honor.

“We’re there to be the backup,” Peach says. “Every year we have to fight to keep the doors open.”

The ecology center’s doors first opened in 1976 thanks to the EEA. Peach says the organization, formed by a group of concerned citizens, fundraised to establish the center as a place of citizen education. Over the 10-plus-years Peach has been an EEA board member, though, he and other members have needed to appear

before the City Council to advocate for the Ecology Center’s value. He says the city has threatened to close the center because it wasn’t making enough money to sustain itself.

Doroghazi says they plan on expanding outreach once new projects become better established.

Right now, she says the center mostly relies on word of mouth to spread its name through local schools. Emails sent out through the city’s reach also increased participation significantly, she says.

But for interested students, there are opportunities to volunteer and they can even register in the community garden plot lottery each spring if they live in zip codes 60201 and 60202.

Despite the center’s educational focus, long history and proximity to campus, EEC and Northwestern have had few interactions. The Tiny House, a sustainable 128-square-foot house created by NU students in 2012 and permanently located at the center, is one of only a few collaborations.

Doroghazi admits there hasn’t been much programming geared toward college students over the years, but it’s a possibility for the future.

“I would welcome it, but there’s a lot of projects in the queue,” Doroghazi says.

Some of those plans include a small-scale indoor demonstration of a closed-loop, vertical aquaponics system for visitors and a chicken coop next spring. So if you’re tired of therapy dogs and miniature horses, or are allergic to fur, consider the scenic walk to Evanston’s own ecology center.

“We’ve been working very hard to make some ideas reality,” Poole says.

“It is overwhelming, but I enjoy it.”

SPRING ‘17 | 17

NEGOTIATING UP

Salary negotiations perpetuate the wage gap – Northwestern is taking steps to change that.

BY MILA JASPER

D

eana McDonagh, a professor in the New Product Development Master’s Program at Northwestern, is the first and only female professor of Industrial Design at the University of Illinois (McDonagh teaches at both institutions simultaneously.) She is the only faculty member in her department at Illinois with a Ph.D. While her work is internationally renowned, she is the lowest-paid full professor in her department at U of I. “None of my colleagues have Ph.D.s and I’m not paid as much as them, and the only difference is that I’m female,” McDonagh says.

“You’re not quite demonized for it, but you are certainly set to one side as a troublemaker by just saying ‘treat me equal.’”

Although McDonagh says she’s gone through every protocol her university has for dealing with this pay difference, the university had told her the investigation into her situation is “delayed” and yet to offer any justification. For female graduates preparing to enter the workplace, this sexism is a critical issue, McDonagh says.

“You have to be tenacious and you can’t seek approval or validation from others; you have to have a very strong sense of yourself because that is what’s going to guide you when – and it’s not if, it’s when – you experience inequality,” McDonagh says.

Experts say this attitude must start during salary negotiations, where the pay gap begins.

In a study for her book, “Women Don’t Ask,” Carnegie Mellon Professor of Economics Linda Babcock found that only 7 percent of women attempted to negotiate, compared to 57 percent of men. This puts women at a disadvantage for equal pay right off the bat. Although some claim

that if women negotiated as much as men they would get what they deserve, McDonagh is evidence this is simply not true.

“Women are taught to be nice, to not take up a lot of space, to not be demanding,” says Alecia Wartowski, interim director and director of programs at the Northwestern University Women’s Center. “If you’re assertive, that’s bad.

If you’re intimidating, if you push too much, if you ask for more than you deserve­– all of those are bad qualities for a woman.”

These norms don’t just mean a woman is less likely to negotiate. She can also face consequences in the form of unconscious bias during negotiation.

Violating these gender norms makes a candidate less likable, reflected in the negativity McDonagh faced from her community.

“It’s like how they always talked about how Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire did the same job, but Ginger Rogers did it backwards and in heels, Wartowski says, “I feel like that’s negotiating for women, we’re doing it backwards and in heels.”

Salary negotiations are generally one-onone conversations, and discussing salaries with coworkers is often frowned upon. This shroud of confidentiality means women don’t always know when they’ve been slighted. According to Wartowski, the best way to overcome hurdles during the negotiating process is through preparation, persistence and repetition.

Three organizations on campus offer a way to do just that. The Women’s Center provides salary negotiation training for groups or individuals upon request. Northwestern Career Advancement offers one-on-one meetings that “meet students where they are and coach them from there,” according to Kamilah Allen,

director of student career advising at NCA. The newly revamped Women in Leadership Cohort has also provided salary negotiation training, allowing members to share their experiences and advice so that women can learn from one another in a comfortable environment.

Although these resources are beneficial to young women preparing to enter the workforce, there is still a shortage of dialogue about sexism in salary negotiation because the structure of these resources requires individual initiative.

In many ways, this makes sense. Looking and applying for jobs requires proactivity – you don’t get drafted into the workforce. Because salary negotiations are a part of this individualdriven process, it’s logical that seeking help in this area would come from the individual as well. But without active discourse, women can slip through the cracks.

“For young women graduating from college, they may not have hit against sexism in really clear ways,” Wartowski says. “They might say, ‘Well, but I’m a math major and I’ve always been told I could do what I want and I played sports and I held leadership positions.’ As they go out into the world and they start to realize, ‘Wait, the guy sitting next to me makes more than me.’”

Until women present a united front, Wartowski says, women asking for what they deserve will be the exception, not the norm. And being the exception is not ideal in a job market where companies are looking for people that will “fit in” with their team.

“I’m hoping the day will come where we’re treated as humans, and we’re not treated as ‘the other,’” McDonagh says.

PHOTOS BY ALEX FURUYA AND YING DAI

18 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

You’ve heard of it.

Do you know what it does?

What’s GES, huh?

It began as the brainchild of two Northwestern undergraduates in 2005. Since then, the conference has hosted nearly 500 delegates from 45 countries. The Summit is studentcreated and student-run with advising support from the Buffett Institute for Global Studies.

BY CANDACE BUTERA

P

PHOTOS BY AUDREY VALBUENA CLAIRE BUGOS

recious Listana, a sophomore at the University of California, Berkeley, learned about the Global Engagement Summit (GES) through a friend she had met at another social change conference. She came to the summit, which brings together students and leaders to discuss social change, to focus on her project Youth Incubator. Listana says her goal is to build an online platform that connects young activists working for social change with corporate responsibility teams of big businesses.

These companies can help provide monetary or human capital to make social projects a reality.

“I believe that having students collaborate with working professionals at that age will empower them,” Listana says. “They can take ownership on this project and also develop mentorship relationships with these people that they’re working with. Together, they can build community and solve problems in their community.”

Mentorship, connectivity and community are key components of GES. This year, from April 12 through April 16, 40 delegates from 13 different countries participated in the Summit. The delegates are student leaders with projects that address social change and social justice in a variety of fields. Despite myriad backgrounds, they all face similar hurdles: focusing their project, acquiring funding and making connections with influencers. Their projects range from affordable prosthetic hands for war-torn countries, to GPS embedded into jewelry in areas where kidnapping is rampant, and to entirely new approaches to education on increasing school quality.

“We are interested in social activism and social entrepreneurship,” co-Director Allie Baxtor says. “You’re going to fail if you can’t communicate your idea. Part of the summit’s success that we’re measuring is have we given them a chance to become better at social entrepreneurship.”

At around 100 people, GES is about one-fifth the size of typical conferences, which Baxtor says leads to a more intimate and collaborative experience. Listana agrees – by the end of the four days, she says most people at the summit know each other by name.

Each year, several delegates also return to the summit to continue workshopping their projects and receiving feedback. Others entirely change their projects as a result of the insight they gained from the summit, says Weinberg senior Amanda Stephens, co-chair of content.

This is where the Summit’s intensely crafted programming comes in. Each day from 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., delegates participate in workshops covering topics such as how to run successful marketing campaigns, network effectively and select the appropriate business models. Each day starts with a small group session, where delegates meet with three or four of their peers to discuss the prior day’s programming. The sessions run at an average of an hour and half each, which ensures delegates leave with as much information as possible. Stephens says the ultimate goal is to provide delegates with tangible skills that improve their projects once the summit ends.

“I think that at the end of the day, if at least one person has learned one thing, we’ve accomplished the job,” Stephens says.

The Outcomes staff on GES offers takeaways for the delegates after the summit, the most tangible of which is a mentor or professional in a field related to their project. Listana has a weekly check-in with her mentor to hold her accountable and make sure her project progresses throughout the year.

“Our vision is to help delegates strengthen the foundations of their projects and then expand beyond that into networking into how to actually implement it,” GES Co-Director Allison Hurst says.

On the fourth day of the summit, Listana stood at the front of the Rock Room in Norris with 20 other delegates and staff members. She was one of three delegates participating in the pitch competition, a Shark Tank-like event, judged by established business professionals and professors. The winner walked away with $500.

After the pitch competition, one of the judges approached Listana and offered to mentor her on her project. “What’s really valuable is people investing their time into what they believe in and in the work I want to achieve,” Listana says. “I’ve seen myself grow in just those five days because of the conversations in that space.”

SPRING ‘17 | 19

$147.949

million

NEH budget in 2016

For those in the arts and humanities, proposed budget cuts spark concern.

T

.he Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art may call her the associate

BY JUSTIN CURTO director of curatorial affairs, but Kathleen Bickford Berzock is a storyteller. It’s what drives her exhibitions.

A few years ago, Berzock became interested in the trade routes that brought Islam to West Africa in the Middle Ages and began research for an art exhibition on the topic. But she wanted to know what else was traveling on those trade routes.

The answer? Gold. That’s what led Berzock to her current project, an exhibition with a working title of Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture and Trans-Saharan Exchange.

“Is it important that the American public learn about the role that Africa played in laying the foundations for the world we live in today?” Berzock asks. “That’s really what’s at stake in this exhibition.”

Berzock and the Block received a $60,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), a federal agency that provides money for research and artistic projects along with educational and community engagement programs, to fund the exhibition’s development.

That allowed Berzock to travel to Morocco, Mali, Nigeria and the U.K. to develop a list of potential exhibition pieces. She also assembled a team of art historians, archaeologists and historians focusing on Europe and Africa. The grant money will cover two all-group meetings.

To put together the exhibition, the Block will need hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for the transportation and conservation of artifacts from around the world. Lisa Corrin, the Block’s director, initially hoped to receive another grant from the NEH to launch the exhibition, which would offset many of those costs.

But now she has reason to worry. President Trump’s 2018 budget proposal completely

eliminates funding for 19 federal agencies, including the NEH and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), an agency providing funds for artistic programs and organizations like the Block.

The NEH and the NEA began with President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society reforms of the 1960s, specifically the 1965 National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act. Since then, the programs have undergone various changes, leaving the NEH with a budget of close to $148 million in 2016, down significantly from its inflation-adjusted peak of $403 million in 1979.

Trump isn’t the first president to propose defunding public arts, but he is the first to propose doing it all at once. In 1981, Ronald Reagan’s incoming administration also wanted to cut the agencies over a three-year period.

At the recommendation of a special task force, Reagan eventually decided to cut their budget by just 10 percent.

As the NEH’s budget has decreased, the federal government has cut some grants entirely. Rachel Zuckert, an associate professor of philosophy, narrowly received her grant. In 1985, she was awarded $1,800 through NEH’s Young Scholars program for a high school research project about Montesquieu and Cicero’s writings on Rome. The program was cut the following year.

Zuckert received her fourth grant last year to work on a book about the work of German philosopher J.G. Herder. She was one of four professors at the university to receive a grant last year. Northwestern had the most NEH research fellowships in the country for 2016. The grant will give Zuckert a year off from teaching to finish the book, which she’s been writing on and off for the past 15 years. “[In the humanities], we really just need some time to think,” Zuckert says. “There’s a lot of pressure about publishing more, but there’s not

NEH donates up to

$50,400

for yearlong research

fellowships a lot of thought about what the most important resource for doing that actually is, which is having the time to think about things.”

The NEH isn’t just making an impact at Northwestern, though, and this funding doesn’t just affect faculty. Thanks to a $20,000 NEA grant, Selina Fillinger’s (Comm ’16) play Faceless, premiered at Skokie’s Northlight Theatre in late January. Fillinger started writing the play, which centers on a white girl who tries to join the Islamic State group, through the Department of Theatre’s undergraduate playwriting initiative during her senior year.

“It was the last thing on earth that I expected,” Fillinger says of her play’s premiere. “It’s nice to feel like you can create and eat at the same time.”

A research grant from the NEH also bolstered the creativity of Amy Stanley, an associate professor of history, when she decided her current book would not be published through an academic press. Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her Worlds looks at the city of Edo (modern-day Tokyo) between 1821 and 1862, at one point the largest city in the world, through the eyes of a real woman named Tsuneno. The money from the NEH allowed Stanley to take a leave from teaching during the 2015-16 academic year, which she used to write nearly half the book and take a trip to Tsuneno’s birthplace in Japan.

“What [being on leave] allows you to do is think, ‘OK, I don’t have to write an academic history book. What else could this be?’” Stanley says. “I don’t know if I would’ve tried to be as ambitious had I not had all that time to think.”

While Trump’s proposal has many academic, cultural and artistic organizations worried, history gives them reason for hope. Despite cuts, the NEH and NEA continue to fund projects today. And in the end, the presidential budget

is only a recommendation, as Congress often approves a very different budget at the end of the process.

That’s not to say Trump’s proposal is insignificant. Future cuts to the NEH and the NEA could reduce individual project funding and lead to fewer funded projects. Corrin says budget cuts might lead to fewer exhibitions across the country.

“I’m not convinced that they’re going to shutter the agencies,” Corrin says. “I’m hoping we’ll see the light.”

With the possibility of cuts, or defunding, on the horizon, the future of Caravans of Gold is still unknown. Berzock says the Block plans to go forward in applying for an NEH implementation grant for the exhibition, a project which she has worked on for years of her career. But the issue of NEH and NEA funding is much bigger to her – it’s a decision about the future of the country.

“As a society, do we want our government to be supporting art and culture?” Berzock asks. “Is that part of what makes us great? My answer to that is yes. I want to live in a country that invests in art and culture.”

PHOTOS BY EMMA DANBURY

The NEH gave

the Illinois

Humanities Council

$1,127,920 in 2016

SPRING ‘17 | 21

Rock around the block

Dave’s Rock Shop is Evanston’s hidden gem.

BY CARTER MOHS

A

PHOTOS BY YING DAI

complete cave bear skeleton, a pair of 10,000-year-old walrus skulls and oneof-a-kind trilobite fossils are among the many surprises in Dave’s Down to Earth Rock Shop. Despite the free museum in the basement showcasing Dave Douglass’ collection and a first floor shop with myriad offerings, the Main Street storefront often goes overlooked.

Dave’s brother, James Douglass, and sisterin-law, Susanne Ali, have run the store for eight years. While it doesn’t have the buzz of other Chicagoland hotspots like the Field Museum, Ali says that between field trips for grade schoolers and college classes, visits by collectors and tourists and figuring out what new things to buy, there are no ordinary days running the store.

“We consider ourselves kind of like an adoption agency,” Ali says. “We take something and treasure it for a little while and then pass it on to somebody who’s gonna treasure it even more, and hopefully for a long time.”

There’s no shortage of treasure in the store.

From bright aquamarine crystals the size of a roll of quarters to a lively set of fossilized crabs and even handmade jewelry, almost everything in the store is unique, according to Ali. The shop’s yearly trip to Tuscon, Arizona is its largest buying trip. Dougless and Ali travel to a rock and mineral show there and buy inventory, planning ahead to the holiday season.

More than just the shop owners benefit from these trips. The Northwestern Geology Department looks forward to its annual trip and those like it. Dave’s is an anomaly because of its location in a suburban, relatively eastern city, says Brad Sageman, a geology professor at Northwestern and long-time Evanston resident.

According to Sagement, it’s the only shop the

22 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

geology department uses when they need presents for retirements or tenures. When the department relocated to the Technological Institute from South Campus three years ago, Sageman says, they used Dave’s to help decorate their new space.

The most notable piece they bought is the slab of Moroccan fossils mounted on the wall of the department’s seminar room.

“I called up Susanna and said, ‘Next time you go to the Denver Gem and Mineral Show, keep your eyes out for a really impressive fossil slab, because we want to buy it to mount on the wall,’” Sageman says. “They sent me a picture, and it was killer. They regularly have access to stuff like this.

It’d be much harder to do something like this if they weren’t around.”

Dave’s also benefits from proximity to the university. Steve Jacobsen, a geology professor and researcher in the mineral physics laboratory, says he takes his higher level classes on field trips there every quarter. In his lab, he uses a method called Raman spectroscopy to analyze minerals that Dave’s wants to identify or confirm before selling.

The most notable instance of this, Jacobsen says, is a blue walrus tusk the shop once bought. He and his colleagues identified the blue mineral as vivianite growing in the walrus tusk. Jacobsen’s lab also confirmed the slab of Moroccan fossils purchased by the university was authentic.

“It’s kind of cool that the same system we do all this science with can be used for a community,” Jacobsen says. “They don’t pay me. It’s me supporting a local business that I really like and appreciate. I grew up in Colorado and was able to take students on field trips in the afternoon. Here in Chicago, we go to Dave’s Rock Shop. It’s the best place to see a big diversity of rocks and minerals locally.”

HISTORY

making

2016-17: Northwestern’s best season ever

total career points

87

average points per game

1,341

14.8

free throw percentage

34.2 average minutes per game

Photos courtesy of Northwestern Athletic Department, CBS and Mia Zanzucchi

BY MEG PISARCZYK & LUCY DWYER

SPOTLIGHT

Nathan Taphorn #32 Senior Led the Big Ten in 3-point field goal percentage

5.2

Dererk Pardon #5

Sophomore Led the Big Ten in offensive rebounds

average assists per game

Vic Law #4

Bryant McIntosh #30

Junior Led the Big Ten in assists

Redshirt sophomore Average 12.3 points per game

SPRING ‘17 | 23

SPOTLIGHT

79

years without an appearance in the NCAA tournament.

8

more seasons Collins is now contracted to coach.

“I just love the way our guys were talking in the huddle. not losing tonight.’ And it was them, it wasn’t me.”

wins, NU’s most ever.

THE PLA 25 20

1923-24 0 wins

15 10

1905-06 No team

5 0 5 10 15

Wins and losses over time

1953-54 First year in the Big Ten

times Welsh-Ryan Arena sold out this season (a record).

Nov. 21

They just keep saying ‘we’re - Head Coach Chris Collins

Jan. 29 Feb. 12

March 1

NU vs. Michigan March 1, 2017 Welsh-Ryan Arena

7

4

2016 -1

SPOTLIGHT

WINS March 10

BIG WINS

BIG LOSSES

Texas, #22 Indiana Wisconsin, #7 Michigan Maryland, #25 Vanderbilt

Purdue, #16 Gonzaga, #2

LOSSES

March 18 March 16

March 5

AY

2016-17

1982-83, NIT Second Round

1999- 00 Record 25 losses

2010-11, NIT Quarterfinals

25 20 15 10 5 0 5 10 15 20

SPRING ‘17 | 25

Q

QUAD 28

Black l i ve s , B l a c k wo 30 C rd s , B l a h ro n i c ck spac compli e s F in d in cations g a c re a 31 C a T h e t ive s p a added mpus 2 s ce truggle . 0 We’re of an on l o c ke d 32 N g o in g a il in N U d ailing N ment o r m s fo o r t hwe r t w o ye a r s . W s te r n’s 34 C o h a t ’s n e p a s t Re nstruct xt? flecting ing con o n 75 t h a n nectivi niversar 36 N U t y We ev y of inte sounds a l u a te N r n m e nt Our ph U ’s oto te a n ewe s t m scou in te r io r ts out t s he hott e s t n ew bands o n camp us

THE SCOOP ON THE BIG THINGS HAPPENING AROUND YOU

black lives, black words, black spaces Black students in theater discuss what it means to create their own space on campus.

BY ZOE JOHNSON

28 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

ILLUSTRATION BY EMMA SARAPPO

A mother braids her daughter’s hair. An artist strives to rise above tokenization. A college student stands on the edge of a building, looking down.

T

hese are just a few of the characters and situations explored in Black Lives, Black Words, an event held this February that showcased Black student theater artists at Northwestern. Twenty students were involved in writing, directing, producing and acting in seven 10-minute plays that highlighted the abundance of narratives, perspectives and personalities that characterize the Black experience. They explored the question: Do Black lives matter today?

Several participants say the event was unique because it created a space for Black theater artists to work and execute art together. “A space where people are actively interested and actively listening to what you have to say, and wanting you to say it, is really big in making you think that your art is worthy,” says Communication senior Mary Ann Anane, who co-produced the event and wrote one of the plays.

Theatre Lecturer Aaron Todd Douglas, who proposed and sponsored the event, says Black Lives, Black Words created that important space for a number of participants. “They felt safe enough and free enough to say what they needed to say, propriety, political correctness or whatever be damned,” Douglas says. “It felt like they needed to speak from a very personal place.”

Black theater artists say it’s rare for them to work in an all-Black space.

“You’ll see that the need for people of color in different shows basically spreads us out,” Communication sophomore Ziare Paul-Emile says, who acted in two of the plays. “Having the chance to be in a room with every person of color … was just so great, and one of the best feelings ever.”

For 40 years, the designated space for Black student theater artists was the AfricanAmerican Theater Ensemble (AATE), a student theater board that produced plays, readings, shows and ceremonies by and for Black playwrights, students and communities.

Today it is no longer in operation. “[AATE] opened up this really unique space for this authentic portrayal of raw and uninhibited Blackness in the arts,” says Leila Pree, a 2012 graduate and the last president of AATE. “We were bigger than just theater in terms of the work that we were doing, and so I think it really served [as a] way to educate the broader community on some of the experiences within the Black community.”

In the absence of AATE, students say, it is unclear what are the best options for promoting active diversity within the student theater community and how they can be implemented without resorting to tokenization.

It is unclear when and why AATE disbanded.

Few current students know much about it, though it dissolved less than five years ago. But the dissolution probably had something to do with the number of Black students at Northwestern at the time. The group was so small, according to Pree, that members each played a number of different production and artistic roles for each show.

Among students and faculty, there is some interest in reviving the board or creating a new Black theater board in its place. “I think we’re in a position now where it’s doable,” Douglas says. “The interest is there.”

Pree would like to see a return of the board as well. “I very much support them becoming a presence on campus because I think it’s a voice and a perspective that’s been missed for all these years,” she says. “It’s a disservice to the community for it not to be there.”

But others worry filling that desire with a new board would produce complacency among non-Black students. “My fear is that people would think, ‘Well, there you go, there’s a Black board, there’s something for you now,” says Robert Cunningham, a Communication junior who acted in Black Lives, Black Words. “That’s not the goal of it at all.”

Some say it may also pressure Black artists to focus only on Black art. “At the end of the day, not all Black theater artists want to be producing specifically Black theater art,” says Communication junior Kori Alston, who wrote and performed in Black Lives, Black Words. “It falls into this expectation that Black artists will then do the Black thing and want to be in the Black show and want the Black parts.”

Theater artists say no one solution exists to solve the many complex issues Black theater artists have to navigate. On one hand, student theater boards and the Wirtz Center for Performing Arts, which produces mostly graduate and faculty work, may not produce enough plays

by Black playwrights or featuring Black actors. On the other, there aren’t enough Black actors to fill the roles in primarily Black plays.

“It becomes this chicken and the egg thing.

You can’t put something on the schedule unless you have the numbers. We don’t have the numbers, so we’re not attracting enough students because we don’t have that programming,” Douglas says.

This also forces Black actors to mostly play Black characters and not get a chance to take non-race-specific roles. Cunningham feels his options are limited since he is often needed for specific roles. “I want to do something besides just playing a Black person,” he says.

The fact that race so strongly informs casting decisions can be restricting, and, in some ways, tokenizing. “First of all, we’re humans. You

know? We’re people. The difference is our skin tones, but otherwise we do the same things everyone else does,” Paul-Emile says.

The challenge is to provide opportunities without pigeonholing. “Ideally, there would be a balance between Black art and art that Black people can also participate in,” says sophomore theater major Amira Danan, who also wrote for and performed in Black Lives, Black Words.

Many artists expressed that this balance would require far more input from Black students.

“Inclusion…[is] an action of actually trying to bring people into the fold,” Anane says. “And when you bring them into the fold, don’t just say, ‘Hey, you’re there’ but, ‘Hey, you’re there, and what do you think?’”

Students say that it would also help to have more Black artists in positions of power within the student theater community. “We need to ... create space for all types of Black participation in theater,” Alston says. “We will have the people to cast and we will be casting them responsibly if Black people are doing the casting and producing and the directing as well.”

A number of productions this year have focused on providing platforms for Black student artists. About a month before Black Lives, Black Words, another major student work written and performed by Black theater artists premiered.

These Days, by junior theater major Allie Woodson, explored what it means to be a Black woman.

This month, the Wirtz Center presents Stick Fly,

by Northwestern alum Lydia R. Diamond, which will feature five Black characters and discuss the intersection of race and privilege.

Just as the many playwrights, actors and directors who worked on Black Lives, Black Words hoped, senior theater lecturer Laura Schellhardt, who coordinated the event along with Douglas, says they plan to turn it into an annual event. “We can continue to work with the next generation of students,” she says.

“We would really love to branch out and see how many people we can get involved and how many places we can pull writers from.”

Two months after Black Lives, Black Words, the event’s significance is clear. “Seeing how multifaceted we are, how many opinions we have, was just a beautiful experience,” says Bryana Barry, a junior in the School of Communication who coproduced the event and performed in one of the plays. “I have never been prouder of something that I’ve worked on this campus than that.”

Alston also recognizes the significance of the event. “The mere multitude of Black writers that got to be heard in one night was revolutionary for the theater community here,” he says. “To be able to stand up together and all sound our voices at the same time I think was impossible to ignore.”

SPRING ‘17 | 29

7%

of students are AccessibleNU users.

Chronic

COMPLICATIONS Persistent health issues make an already intense college experience even tougher.

BY VICTORIA ALFRED-LEVOW

A

136

students were granted leave last year.

lexa Sledge is a learning and organizational change major, juggling philosophy and political science minors as well as sorority membership. The SESP sophomore is a fast talker with a pierced nose and a packed schedule. To the casual passerby, there’s no sign Sledge once had a painful parasite in both her arms.

Sledge contracted the rare parasite on a trip to Brazil over winter break, and symptoms started showing on the second day of sorority recruitment. Her swelling arm hurt so much she couldn’t sleep or go to class. She first visited Searle and was told it was a minor infection. However, over the next few months, Sledge checked into hospitals in Evanston, Louisiana and Paris, eventually finding out she had a parasite in both arms. Today she’s fine – lucky to have financial support and medical advice from her parents (who are both doctors). An antibiotic administered in her nose eliminated the parasite.

Poor health from stress and too little sleep seem to be obvious struggles for many Northwestern students, but those with chronic physical conditions have

another very significant dimension of life to worry about. Ranging from monthslong ordeals like Sledge’s to lifelong illnesses, the challenges of college for these students increase tenfold. For them, AccessibleNU is more than just an obligatory line in the syllabus.

“A lot of people have stuff going on medically or psychiatrically that you just wouldn’t know about by looking at them,” says Sam*, a Communication freshman.

“I always knew [that] at the back of my mind, but when it happened to me, it became something like, oh, this is real.”

Sam was recently diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome, or IBS, a digestive condition with no known cause or cure. On a normal day, Sam goes to his dance and theater classes without interruption. On a terrible day, he’s out of commission, spending hours in the bathroom, sometimes sleeping a lot, sometimes not at all, losing energy and his appetite. He’ll question whether attending class, knowing that he might not be able to keep it together for an hour and a half.

Life-altering effects of chronic physical conditions go beyond the classroom. Both Sam and Sledge recognized a shift in their social lives (read: partying) because

of their bodies’ malfunctions. Drinking while on medications was not an option for Sledge, and alcohol has varying effects on Sam. Fatigue didn’t help either of them stay out until dawn. Sam has felt less confident going on dates, worrying his IBS may present a problem.

“It’s not like, ‘Oh, I have a cold, it’s gonna go away and then we can do it then.’ It’s an ongoing thing,” Sam says.

Students with chronic disabilities can navigate life at Northwestern with the help of four major offices: AccessibleNU, NU Health Center (Searle) Student Assistance and Support Services (SASS), and Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS). AccessibleNU helps students with disabilities obtain academic accommodations ranging from quiet testing rooms to note-taking software.

SASS advises students in crisis on how to contact the multiple Northwestern offices that might help them and handles medical leaves of absence through the Dean of Students Office.

However, students don’t always know to utilize these offices. In the 2015-16 school year, 590 undergraduates used Accessible NU, which is about 7 percent of the student body. Meanwhile, in 2013-14, 13 percent of all public school children ages 3 to 21 received special education services – a full 6 percentage points more than Northwestern’s rate.

Senior Associate Dean Mona Dugo says many students don’t contact her office, SASS, until their grades are suffering and they’re in crisis mode.

They’re so busy with clubs and the “culture of high achievement” that they don’t make time for self-care or even a break, she says.

Sledge and Sam have not gone as far as seeking a medical leave, which can last one quarter or longer. Sam says he didn’t want to contact AccessibleNU because he didn’t want to need them.

Despite the stigma, AccessibleNU Assistant Director Lauren Pourian says she often heard that professors or friends recommended the office to students, and Dugo reports the Dean of Students Office granted 136 leaves during the 2015-2016 school year, slightly more than the average 125.

“People think that a disability is [when] you’re in a wheelchair,” Sam says, describing his realization that health conditions aren’t always visible.

“You know, no one looks at me and thinks, ‘God, he spends 10 percent of his day dealing with IBS.’ I hope they don’t.” *Editor’s note: Name has been changed to protect students’ identity.

PHOTO BY EMMA DANBURY

30 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

Campus 2.0 It wasn’t broke, but they’re fixing it.

BY MIA ZANZUCCHI

T

Northwestern is also forming an appeals process that may grant he class of 2021 hasn’t even left high school yet, but their undergraduate experience will already be different from their some students an exemption, which will look at on an individual basis and can give for a variety of reasons, including personal circumstances predecessors.

They’re the guinea pig class for a component of the Housing Master and financial reasons, according to Luttig-Komrosky. The univresity Plan – a 10-year construction plan to renovate or rebuild almost every will work with students to find alternate solutions like appealing for a residence hall on campus – that will require all full-time undergraduate different financial aid package.

If new dorms and a new residency requirement weren’t enough, students to live on campus for their first two years at Northwestern. But students who study abroad or participate in programs away from the the 2017-18 school year will also be the pilot year for the Open Access Evanston campus like Medill on the Hill won’t have to live on campus Plan, a complete overhaul of the current dining hall plan. The Open Access Plan will be mandatory for freshmen, and will allow students to after their second year to make up for their time away.

The university hopes this shift in undergraduate housing will go swipe into dining halls as many times as they want. In addition to that, smoothly, since they will be beginning with a brand new crop of students the Weekly 14 will change to the Base 14 plan (14 meals a week with more “dining dollars” – which replaces equivalency meals and WildCat who haven’t known college before the residency requirement.

Jennifer Luttig-Komrosky, executive director of Residential Services, Points) at $99 cheaper a quarter. There will be no Block Plan. Its says the university didn’t implement the residency requirement as descendant, the Flex Plan, is a similar package of 110 meals a quarter a way to make more money, but rather to reshape the undergraduate open to juniors, seniors and students living in Greek houses.

Greek chapters each have different requirements and processes experience. From borderline industrial kitchens and faculty-in-residence for their houses. While some fraternities apartments to basement classroom space and and sororities have their own live-in “Our intention here is to be able to laundry rooms on every floor, the Housing Master requirement, the Northwestern chapter of Plan will leave practically no stone unturned build a philosophy that supports the Zeta Tau Alpha (ZTA) doesn’t. Hayley Miller, (even Elder, which isn’t undergoing renovation, undergraduate experience and is the Northwestern ZTA president, says she but will open to upperclassmen next year). articulated through the first and second wonders if the new Housing Master Plan will The university is also hoping to develop increase competition for sorority housing a new “philosophy” about how students live year.” because of its amenities and increased during their first two years. Luttig-Komrosky -Jennifer Luttig-Komrosky programming. This would make ZTA either says the aim of this new approach will hopefully force executive council members to live in or make living on campus the same kind of iconic experience as March Through the Arch and Wildcat Welcome. “We know absorb the cost of any empty spaces.

Fewer fraternities have live-in requirements, but for some that that you can’t just make changes to physical structures and expect to see the student experience be measurably different,” Luttig-Komrosky says. don’t, living in the house is considered an “expectation” anyway, “Our intention here is to be able to build a philosophy that supports according to former Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) President Aaron the undergraduate experience and is articulated through the first and Kaplan. AEPi almost never has trouble filling its house, and the point system they use to pick housing is often competitive. Kaplan second year.”

NU is hoping their renovated dorms will help strengthen that doesn’t think the residency requirement will affect demand for idea. For example, recently renovated Shepard Hall and 1838 Chicago living in the house, but he wonders if students might lean more (formerly home to Shepard Residential College and the Public Affairs towards rushing since they have to live on campus their second year Residential College) make up one residential community. Compare it and might not want to deal with the housing lottery a second time.

“From a personal standpoint, the requirement is going to residential halls like Bobb and 1835 Hinman, and you’ll find more programming, common spaces, classrooms and shared facilities like to go a long way towards improving the Shepard Engagement Center, which has a full kitchen, private study the sense of community on campus, cubicles and swinging egg chairs, among other things. Shepard Hall is something that I would have liked to open to students of every year, and Luttig-Komrosky says her hope is have as part of my first couple years,” that upperclassmen connect with first year students, sharing knowledge, Kaplan says. “Regardless of whether you’re in Greek housing or not, I advice and experiences.

The idea for the residency requirement didn’t come from think people in one location, close to one single person. The Undergraduate Residential Experience each other, I think that is incredibly Committee (UREC), a group of administrators, residential directors, beneficial toward building a more close students and NU community members, conducted research and led connected, a series of town halls to draft the future of Northwestern residential community.” life. This included the residency requirement, which, according to Luttig-Komrosky, NU has considered several times before but never implemented until now.

“

“

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MISSY CHEN

SPRING ‘17 | 31

Nailing Northwestern on its racist past

The Block Museum of Art remembers 75th anniversary of the university’s denial of education t0 Japanese Americans during WWII.

BY ISABELLA JIAO

K

ristine Aono’s American flag is not made up of nylon, polyester and cotton, but 65,000 rusty nails. Part of the Block Museum exhibition If you remember, I’ll remember, Aono, a Japanese American artist, created the installation “The Nail That Sticks up the Farthest...” to honor each Japanese American displaced by internment during World War II. The title of the piece comes from a Japanese proverb, Deru kugi wa utareru, which translates to “The nail that sticks up the farthest takest the most pounding.” Visitors participate in the exhibition by inserting nails into the pre-drilled holes in the wall to show solidarity and can even form words with the nails to express their own thoughts.

Aono’s piece came to the Block for the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066.

Signed by President Roosevelt in response to the Pearl Harbor attack, the federal government forced Japanese Americans, mostly on the West Coast, into internment camps based on speculated connections to the Japanese Empire. They abandoned most of their material possessions and were subjected to manual labor, poverty and incarceration.

While the installation hopes to spark discussion about this often-obscured time

Each hole in Kristine Aono’s installation in the Block exhibition represents one American sent to a concentration camp during Japanese internment.

32 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

in American history, it also offers a moment of reflection for Northwestern. In June 1942, a few months after the passage Executive Order 9066, then-President Franklyn Snyder banned the enrollment of relocated American students of Japanese ancestry.

During relocation, Japanese American students tried to transfer to universities in the Midwest, including Northwestern, because they could no longer go to school in their hometowns. Northwestern was one of the many of the schools that received these requests. Two girls wrote to the Dean of Women at Northwestern on May 11, 1924, seeking acceptance into “the University we so many times dreamed of...”

But the university did not entertain their request. In a phone call that June with the Chairman of Chicago Civil Liberties Commission, Snyder said the Board of Trustees had “reached our decision to not encourage such students to enroll at Northwestern.” Later, in a letter to the director of Japanese American Student Relocation, Snyder wrote that before the federal government could formulate a plan for distributing those students, Northwestern could not accept them, even though they were American citizens. It seemed that citizenship wasn’t enough to protect them from racial discrimination.

“I feel that Asian Americans are ‘perpetual foreigners,’” says Communication junior Yoko Kohmoto, who was born in Japan and moved permanently to the U.S. in third grade. “Even when I tell people I’m from Ohio, because of my look, people will always ask ‘Oh so where are you really from?’”

Northwestern was not the only Midwestern university to side with the government. The

“Internment tells a story about racism and that’s not a story to be told in America. The story told in America is the rise of American power to fight for democracy and freedom for everybody.

And the story about Japanese Americans does not fit, so it doesn’t get told or it gets told as a little footnote.”

– Ji-Yeon Yuh, Northwestern professor of history and Asian American studies

President of the University of Minnesota wrote in the Minnesota Alumni Weekly that after consulting with 15 other universities, he realized all “were hesitant to open their doors wide, for fear that there would be a large influx of the western students.”

Over 500 institutions of higher education admitted about 3,000 relocated Japanese American students between 1942 and 1944.

Universities and church boards provided scholarships, according to a letter the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council sent to Snyder in October, 1944. That year, Japanese American students were finally free to attend any institution, except for those on the West Coast. These schools still had to report applicants to the federal government, which decided their admittance on a case-by-case basis.

While Northwestern’s stance disappoints Kohmoto, she says she’s not surprised. Running a university is just like running a business, she says, and Snyder’s decision was probably to avoid confrontations with the government.

Today, she says, colleges are getting more vocal and inclusive as a marketing strategy that evolves along with society.

“I think colleges were afraid to stand up for what is right because it could compromise their ‘business,’” Kohmoto says, “And that’s an awful reason to treat humans based on what was not under their control.”

Many students had similar harmful sentiments. A survey of Northwestern students in February 1942 showed that 9 out of 10 students favored bombing Japanese cities.

63 percent of these students favored all-out reprisals, which would have allowed the U.S. to bomb locations that were not military objectives.

PHOTOS BY ALEX FURUYA Even today, Kohmoto suggests the recent removal of Dr. David Dao from a United Airlines flight speaks to how Asians are targeted because they tend to follow instructions without fighting back. It’s a sentiment Aono seems to share, at least in the context of internment.

“My generation would probably protest,” Aono says. “But [in 1942] for the most part, the [first and second generation Japanese Americans] went into the camps without resistance to prove that they were loyal Americans.”

But Ji-Yeon Yuh, a professor of history and Asian American studies at Northwestern, says things today are not radically different than the 1940s and obedience was not the reason Japanese Americans didn’t rebel.

“It’s not about being ‘naturally inclined’ to be submissive, it’s about being faced with no choices, about not really knowing what’s going on,” Yuh says. “In the 1940s, that specific fear of war with the Japanese Empire became a racist fear of anybody of Japanese ancestry. Today, the specific fear of a particular group of terrorists became the general racist fear of all Muslims.”

Amid the uproar caused by the travel ban signed by President Donald Trump, it’s worth remembering Executive Order 9066, still a relatively obscure part of American history.

Bienen junior Noelle Ike says that growing up, she didn’t have much discussion about the internment in history classes. Her textbooks,

she says, only give it a fleeting mention.

“I didn’t really understand the politics of it, and really how out of place it was even for that time,” Ike says.

Yuh says people rarely talk about the internment because it doesn’t fit the narrative of the American Dream.

“Internment tells a story about racism and that’s not a story to be told in America,” Yuh says. “The story told in America is the rise of American power to fight for democracy and freedom for everybody. And the story about Japanese Americans does not fit, so it doesn’t get told or it gets told as a little footnote.”

And to many Japanese American students nowadays, racial differences are still a clear reminder of the disparity in American society.

“No matter how long I live here I don’t think that white America is going to see me as full American,” Kohmoto says.

The installation includes documents of testimonies by former internees given before Congress.

SPRING ‘17 | 33

constructing

CONNECTIVITY A

t the core of Northwestern’s rebranding campaign is the slogan “AND is in our DNA.” Although a bit banal, the phrase informs the design of the renovated Kresge Hall and Kellogg School of Management’s new Global Hub. The buildings are spaces built to bolster Northwestern’s commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration and globalism: the textures, colors and curves of their interiors maximize the innovative ethos on campus.

Kresge Hall, headquarters for the Weinberg School of Arts and Sciences, was hopelessly outdated when architect Avi Lothan approached the building’s redesign. A host of aesthetic issues, including brown-painted cinder block walls, plagued the old building. “It had been described virtually by everyone who used it as ‘four stories of basement,’” Lothan says.

For the redesign, Lothan and his team set out to make Kresge a more open, inviting space by using light colors and surfaces. “All the public areas have an off-white floor, which is light reflective,” he says. “In the areas outside the stairs, we drilled through to create a skylight shaft to provide vertical light at the center of the building.”

Lothan designed the new interior to be more intuitive. The three stairwells are color-coded orange, yellow or red, each corresponding to a different part of the building. In this way, students can more easily orient themselves. To achieve a balance between durability, maintenance and appearance, Lothan and his team used materials like porcelain panels, which are sturdy but thin. “This was a way to get that kind of durability with a much more aesthetically appropriate finish,” Lothan says.

The building’s classrooms, small and engineered to absorb sound, promote high access to the best faculty in the most direct way. The desks, light and free, facilitate group discussion and collaboration.

“Our measure of success is that it feels like it was always meant to be there,” Lothan says. “I hope that most people who use the building now couldn’t think of it existing organizationally any other way.”

For Kevin Thomas, architect of Kellogg School of Management’s new Global Hub, it was imperative the building was a place that could “foster new forms of learning, idea generation and collaboration among Kellogg faculty, staff and students.”

The design of the building, distinctly curvilinear, has four loft spaces oriented around two central atria. “A building that supports global thinking needs to be open, excessively public and connected visually,” Thomas says.

These atrium spaces, Thomas says, are analogous to a town plaza, where people can meet. The open layout of the building, along with the maximization of natural light, encourages a healthier work environment. “People feel better in spaces where they are connected to their surroundings and have access to light,” Thomas says. “We added clerestories to allow interior corridors to borrow light from the exterior offices.” Clerestories, raised portions of the interior that admit light, also create a sense of weightlessness.

The central stairs of the building provide a place for impromptu meetings and lectures. The stairs, which serve as seats, maximize views to the south of campus and to the Chicago skyline. This feature of the building facilitates a sense of place and a connection to the city beyond the building’s undulating glass walls.

Thomas notes the role of Northwestern’s academic interiors as a catalyst for collaboration and innovation. “Every space is designed to spark creativity, promote learning and social interaction, and anticipate present and future use,” Thomas says.

34 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

The architecture of NU’s newest interiors reflects the university’s global aspirations.

BY AMANDA GORDON PHOTOS BY MIA ZANZUCCHI & CLAIRE BUGOS

SPRING ‘17 | 35

NU sounds

Three Northwestern bands you’ll want to add to your summer playlist.

INTERVIEWS & PHOTOS BY EMMA DANBURY & CASSIE MAJEWSKI

Bienen sophomores Dan Peters and Ryan McHenry practice in their makeshift studio.

Dan Peters & Ryan McHenry They’re roommates, songwriters and producers. Dan Peters and Ryan McHenry describe their music as a collaboration between a singersongwriter and a hip-hop producer. The two understand each other’s musical harmony and aim to incorporate more musicians into their creative work. NBN talked to the duo about their album in the works.

NBN: How did you meet?

Ryan McHenry: We were next door neighbors in Willard and became roommates this year. We both like to write music and our skill sets combine

well and complement each other.

NBN: Where do you see your work going?

Dan Peters: The song I worked on most recently is like a piano ballad, so I think I’d like to see us diversify a bit with different styles.

RM: We want to write an album’s worth of music and then bring that music to vocalists and other artists around the campus. We have very few parameters.

We want to write the music the way we want to write it and produce it the way we want to produce it.

DP: We’re about one-third of the way there and we don’t have a deadline. I’m a big fan of publishing music just to share it. I hope that people enjoy it.

Editor’s Note: These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

36 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

Kodiak Grove When Gibran Wirjawan, Nick Rueth and Vishal Giridhar met for a jam session four months ago, they knew it was meant to be.

With the recent addition of Tony Leonardi, it became official. Kodiak Grove describes their sound as a love child between Chon and Radiohead. We sat down with the band to learn more about their music.

NBN: Why did you choose the name Kodiak Grove?

Gibran Wirjawan: We were almost Imperial Pigeons. There was one line in George Orwell’s “Burmese Days” with the words, “imperial pigeons” in it and I just said it one time as a joke.

Nick was very persistent in trying to get everyone to call it Imperial Pigeons. But then I asked the rest if they enjoyed the

The Moonlight Palace What happens when you combine The Beatles’ rock instrumentation, Radiohead’s electronic sound and a smattering of Kanye West? The Moonlight Palace. NBN talked to Alex Warshawsky, the band’s leader and bassist.

From left to right: (Back row) Weinberg sophomore Ogi Ifediora, Communication junior Aiden Fisher, Bienen senior Alex Warshawsky, Bienen senior Julius JP Tucker, Curtis Boysen (Bienen, ‘15). (Front row) Communication senior Lorenzo Gonzalez Lamassonne and McCormick senior Victor Lalo.

NBN: How did you all meet each other?

Alex Warshawsky: Some configuration of us have been playing together for years in different groups, but this specific group came together for the Mee-Ow show. They call themselves one third sketch comedy, one third improv and one third rock ‘n’ roll. So we provide the rock ‘n’ roll.

NBN: What’s your musical background?

AW: Some of us did rock music, some of us are jazz musicians; we’ve got electronic producers in the band and DJs as well.

NBN: What kind of gigs do you play?

AW: Basically, any dance gig is our forte.

We’re not necessarily the band playing background music at a function – we’re the band that’s gonna be on the dance floor and everyone’s gonna be dancing.

That’s kinda what our M.O. is for now.

name Kodiak because that’s my favorite type of bear, and they all enjoyed it. We got Kodiak Grove, which is sort of a synonym for bear sanctuary.

NBN: What’s the best part of playing together?

GW: The whole learning experience – being in a band and writing music with other people. From there, you get to learn so much about other people and expand your spectrum of music Nick Rueth: Just playing. Just to be up on stage and not think about anything else and just focus on the music.

NBN: How would you describe your sound?

NR: Post-progressive pop rock?

GW: It’s hard to define because we are constantly changing and growing.

We are also very raw. We’re a much better band live than when we record ourselves because we have so much raw energy and our chemistry is just incredible.

From left to right: McCormick freshman Tony Leonardi, Weinberg freshman Gibran Wirjawan, Weinberg freshman Nick Rueth and McCormick freshman Vishal Giridhar.

SPRING ‘17 | 37

PHOTO BY EMMA DANBURY

38 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

Beyond the ban Trump’s order may have grabbed recent headlines, but one NU student has faced anti-immigrant sentiment for far longer.

BY PAOLA DE VARONA

I CAN HOLD MYSELF UP.”

On Jan. 27, 2017, Rowan Hussein’s phone lit up with a CNN breaking news notification.

The 19-year-old Weinberg sophomore was walking back to her sorority house when she looked down at the screen and read, “Trump’s orders bar people from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia entering US for 90 days.” On the list was her birthplace, Sudan, the home she left behind 12 years ago.

Rowan wasn’t exactly surprised. After all, Trump campaigned on a promise of the “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

“It was more of shock like, ‘I can’t believe it actually happened, but I should’ve expected this,’” she says. “It just never crossed my mind

that even though Sudan is a Muslim majority country it would be on the list.”

Almost immediately, the unsolicited apologies began. Vaguely familiar faces approached Rowan. Like remorseful friends at a funeral, they said they were sorry this was happening and asked if she was OK. “I think as great as Northwestern is, we have a tendency, when something bad happens, to victimize everyone who is in that group,” she says. “You don’t need to hold me up. I can hold myself up on my own.”

For many well-meaning Northwestern students, Jan. 27 was a staggering reminder that the United States has a long history of prejudice, and it’s constantly adding new chapters. For

Rowan, Jan. 27 was “another thing on the list, but still, it’s a huge deal,” she says. “This was clearly Islamophobic. I think when the president of the United States does something like that there isn’t hiding or going around it.”

Rowan can only speak for her experiences.

But since her family arrived in the U.S., she’s encountered the ways that American institutions force immigrants – especially Black and Muslim ones – to fight for inclusion. This has been true since long before the travel ban.

It’s something no judicial stay can change.

Rowan was born in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, to Khalid Hussein, an aerospace scientist, and Zoya Elhassan, a passionate women’s rights activist. Three years later, her

SPRING ‘17 | 39

only sister, Linda, was born. She grew up to be irritatingly taller than Rowan, with a quick wit to match. Rowan still remembers the huge gates of their home, which led to a yard where she played on intricately designed tile in the warmth of summer.

When she was three months old, her family moved to Gottingen, Germany. There Khalid earned his Ph.D. in remote sensing and Zoya got her master’s in women’s studies from the University of Gottingen. Rowan loved when her dad would take her to watch helicopters land at the Red Cross Hospital nearby. The family stayed in Gottingen for almost six years before bouncing among several European countries.

In 2000, Rowan’s father applied for a U.S. work visa. He wanted to move the family to Boulder, Colorado, a city with an abundance of opportunities in aerospace science. So he entered the lottery and waited.

Applying for a green card through the diversity lottery was a marathon process long before Trump’s inauguration, says Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, director of the Penn State Law Center for Immigrant Rights’ Clinic. “Even before or without the ban in place, [they] may be facing other types of security checks based on where they’re from, or because they’re from a country that has been identified as a possible national security threat,” she says. “If you’re from a country that is already oversubscribed, you might be dealing with a longer wait time.”

Rowan’s family had a different problem.

After six months, Khalid won the lottery and got a green card to enter the U.S. and work.

But Germany refused to issue Linda a passport because the family was no longer living there.

Khalid bought himself a one-way ticket to Boulder and moved into an apartment alone.

He knew it would be a while before his family could join him, but he had no idea just how long it would take to be reunited. In the meantime, Zoya took Rowan and Linda back to Sudan to live near their extended family while they worked to get Linda a passport to travel to the U.S. Two-and-a-half years later, they succeeded.

On April 20, 2005, one month before her eighth birthday, Rowan arrived in Boulder. She spoke Arabic and German. But even though

she had taken English classes since she was five-and-a-half in a private American Catholic school in Sudan, her knowledge ended after the alphabet and numbers. Three days later, she started second grade at Whittier Elementary School.

On her first day of school, as Rowan sat by the playground, a round-faced classmate sporting a black velvet track suit and a wispy ponytail asked her, “Do you speak Spanish?”

She understood this was a yes or no question, but she couldn’t quite make out what any of the words meant. Her gut told her to go with yes, and suddenly her new friend unleashed a torrent of words in a new language she couldn’t understand. But it wasn’t much of a change for Rowan. She couldn’t understand her peers’ English either.

She spent the day copying words out of a picture book to improve her handwriting, only deciphering where to sit by watching her teacher’s hand gestures. For the next few months, Rowan lived in an English daze – picking up the language as quickly as she could over the summer.

“The typical student takes two to three years to learn basic interpersonal communicative skills,” says Dr. Lee Gunderson, chair of the department of education, counseling psychology and special education at the University of British Columbia. “On the other hand, there’s the kind of language that’s called cognitive academic language proficiency, and that’s the kind of language you need to have to be able to read a textbook … That takes an immigrant, on average, about five to seven years to acquire.”

When Rowan started third grade at High Peaks Elementary that fall, her teachers had to put her in remedial English. The school didn’t offer any ESL classes when Rowan and Linda arrived. The sisters were the first students at the school who needed them.

Rowan’s teachers also placed her in the lower level math class without testing her.

They never sat down with her parents to inform them of the decision, nor did they explain it to Rowan. Little did they know, she loved math. “Regardless of where I lived, math was the same,” she says.

When the school year started, Rowan’s

22,688 There are an estimated

international students in the

U.S. from Syria, Iran, Libya,

and at Northwestern,

Somalia, Sudan and Yemen; 40 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

teachers sent her home with a week’s worth of math homework. She finished it in two days.

“You’re going through this so fast,” Rowan remembers her teachers saying, “maybe you should move up.” They put her in advanced math classes, where she remained for the rest of her time in school. By fourth grade, she was in advanced reading classes, too.

Immigrant students often enter schools that set lower expectations for them through grouping practices that track students by race and language, Gunderson says. “If there’s an English language difficulty, often teachers assume that reflects intelligence, which it does not,” he says. These lower expectations, Gunderson says, lead to poorer curricula for immigrant students, which perpetuates inequalities.

In high school, Rowan’s mom made her join the debate team to overcome her shyness.

“I just didn’t like talking to people,” she says, “because obviously English was a language I learned. I just never thought of myself as a good writer or a good speaker.”

She partnered up with Jessica Piper, an overachieving friend she made in middle school. Together, they worked on their strategy and developed their ability to confuse others in the middle of their arguments. “I like how it pushed me to think,” Rowan says. “I’m a really competitive person and it was a good place for me to put that energy every week.”

In her four years debating in Colorado, Rowan only met one other Black woman debater. But being the only Black woman in the room “was a space that I was used to,” she says. “It’s a really good driving force when someone expects you to fail and you succeed.”

Rowan and Jessica made it to the final round of the Colorado Mile High speech and debate tournament their senior year. As Rowan looked around the small, windowless classroom where she’d soon compete for the championship, she noticed she and Jessica were the only women. They were surrounded, she says, by “stereotypical, successful white men.” But while Rowan and Jessica had been underdogs for years, she realized that this time, these men were scared of them.

“It feels weird, but that’s how I had knew we had made it,” she says. “I’ve been in these

23

of the total student body this school year are international students from over 80 countries.

rooms for so long. I’ve beat them before. I can do it again.”

When it came time to apply for college, Rowan had a lot going for her: her parents had over a decade of higher education between them and could afford to put her in SAT and ACT tutoring classes. Still, neither of them had any experience applying to schools in the U.S. and neither spoke English as a first language. Rowan says they did as much as they could, but there was only so much advice they could offer about navigating the application process and proofreading her essays.

“I’m a very independent person. I relied on myself,” she says. “Everything is new and the only person who can figure it out for you is you. So you become the adult and the child.”

Rowan says it wasn’t hard to adjust to the Northwestern community. She had come from Boulder where she and her sister were the only Black students in their elementary school; she was the only Black girl in her middle school and was one of six Black students at her high school, including her sister.

“Seeing more than two other Black people on Northwestern’s campus was already so much more than I could ask for, that for me diversity and assimilating and seeing so many people who didn’t look like me was never shocking,” she says. “I found it really exciting.”

Between taking DJing lessons from her friends in Dial Up and her hectic schedule as a pre-med student, she misses some of the cornerstones of her culture. Rowan craves the Arabic she speaks at home with her family and the Sudanese dishes her mom cooks that she can’t find in restaurants in Evanston. “There are small things that make a difference and people don’t always realize that,” she says.

Even time for leisure and conversation – which she notes is a key component of Arab culture – is a luxury Rowan says she often can’t afford at Northwestern. Still, it’s a habit she can’t seem to break. Rebecca Fudge, one of her sorority sisters and a close friend, says Rowan never fails to stop by her room each night to ask how she’s doing and talk about their days.

“No matter how busy she is, she always makes time for other people,” Fudge says.

She sought out that same community on the night of the election. “I didn’t even want

During 2015, (the year of Trump’s campaign)

the FBI reported a surge in antiMuslim hate crimes

67%

to be by myself that night,” Rowan says. “I slept over at one of my friends apartments and in the morning I talked to my mom.”

After Trump’s divisive campaign and unlikely victory, “It was just incredibly shocking to come to the realization that 50 percent of America thinks that way,” she says.

As the co-chair for Community Development in the Global Engagement Summit, the diversity and inclusion chair for her sorority, Pi Beta Phi, a member of the Model Arab League and an active member of McSA, Rowan is a leader on campus. So when news of the travel ban broke, Medha Imam*, a Medill senior helping organize the #NoMuslimBan Walkout, asked Rowan if she’d speak.

On Feb. 5, 20 minutes before she was supposed to speak, Rowan sat in the Multicultural Student Affairs building. She took out a sheet of paper to write her speech, then stopped for a minute to think about how she was feeling. She was angry, and she couldn’t stay collected.

When she finally stood out onto the deck of the MSA building, she was floored by the number of people spilling out onto Sheridan Road. Earlier she’d thought that if 30 or 40 students protested in solidarity she’d be happy. But when she looked out to the street, hundreds of faces stared back.

Holding a megaphone to her mouth, her voice came out in a yell. “You have no idea what it is like to lose home at the risk of never finding home again,” she told the crowd, “to have your entire life split between two lands and become the bridge between two countries.”

Suddenly Rowan was an Arabic speaking second-grader again, getting lost in translation.

She was the only Black woman in the room at the state debate finals. She was Muslim in the face of a country that wants to erase her.

“I am the beautiful intersection of four incredibly resilient identities.” Her voice was shaky, but she kept yelling. “In my opinion, I am America.”

I am the beautiful intersection of four incredibly resilient identities. In my opinion, I am America.

- Rowan Hussein

*Imam is a former contributor to North by Northwestern.

As for 2016, the Huffington Post reported 385 anti-Muslim attacks, with half of them explicitly referencing Trump.

20 17

has seen 175 incidents in the Chicago area, as reported by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

SPRING ‘17 | 41

Institutional inertia: (n) an institution at rest remains at rest, until acted upon by the student body Despite decades of protests, the university’s response to sexual assault remains inadequate in the eyes of students.

BY NATALIE ESCOBAR

Amanda Odasz remembers the night of Feb. 6, 2017 in near-perfect detail. At 8:31 p.m. that Monday, an unexpected email from Northwestern Chief of Police Bruce Lewis landed in her inbox with a startling subject line: “Security Alert: Sexual Assault and Date Rape Drugs.” Two students said they were drugged and sexually assaulted at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon House; the email noted another student at an unnamed fraternity house had been assaulted and possibly drugged.

“I remember my first thought was basically, ‘Okay, how do I jump into action?’” says Odasz (WCAS ‘17), the former outreach chair of Northwestern’s Sexual Health and Assault Peer Educators (SHAPE). “‘How is SHAPE going to respond to this? And how am I as an individual going to respond to this?’”

She got an answer that night. Weinberg junior and now-SHAPE president Asha Sawhney posted a Facebook status asking if anyone wanted to protest outside of the SAE national headquarters at Levere Memorial Temple, the Gothic stone building that has loomed across the street from South Campus since 1930. Over 200 likes and 90 comments later, she created a Facebook group called “Expel SAE” where people posted ideas and questions for action. Soon after, a group of around 15 people crowded into the Center for Awareness, Response, and Education (CARE) office on the third floor of Searle to start planning the protest.

They came from all parts of campus – Panhellenic Association and Multicultural Greek Council-affiliated people, non-affiliated people, people of color, queer people. They wanted to make the event as inclusive as possible, says Weinberg junior and SHAPE training chair Sophie Spears. The question was how to do it. They didn’t want to protest

42 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

in the fraternity quad, because survivors might be disturbed by being in that space.

They didn’t want to protest in front of the Rock, because they wanted survivors to be able to avoid the protest if they needed to.

They talked about including campus police at the risk of alienating groups wary of the police. They talked about what would happen if protestors went into the street, how they would they make sure people could hear the speakers and even who would get the permit from Evanston for amplified sound.

The march came on Friday, four days after Lewis’s email. What began as a handful of students in front of the SAE house swelled to a crowd of hundreds of protesters marching down Sheridan Road brandishing posters and bullhorns. But Odasz, who helped lead the march, realized they’d forgotten to plan what to chant through the megaphone. Then, it came to her: consent. SHAPE training had drilled the definition into her.

“Repeat after me: consent is knowing, active, voluntary, present and ongoing,” Odasz yelled into her bullhorn. Her words echoed back from 300 voices. After a while, she switched to the three things to say to support a survivor: “I believe you! It’s not your fault! You have options!”

“I remember feeling that it was so incredibly powerful to have this huge group of people all affirming these things that are really so important for all of us,” she says.

From there, the chants alternated back and forth – “How I dress does not mean yes!” “Education is a right, fraternities are a privilege!” An occasional “Fuck SAE!” or “Fuck frats!” rose out of part of the crowd, met by nervous laughter. Small clusters of people along Sheridan stopped in their tracks to watch – some fraternity members, some faculty, some whispering nervously.

After 20 minutes or so, the throng arrived at its destination: the meadow between East and West Fairchild, across the street from SAE’s national headquarters, where camera crews from local news stations were waiting.

For the next hour, person after person stood up and talked. The same themes echoed: the hollowness of SAE’s “True Gentleman” code of conduct, toxic masculinity and the lack of accountability for perpetrators. Survivors talked about their stories of assault – some for the first time ever – while the audience listened in silence. Speakers urged those who were there to not become apathetic, to keep fighting for change and accountability even if things got difficult.

But the months that have followed have mostly been a blur of emails, official statements and ultimately, unanswered questions. On March 30, Vice President for Student Affairs Patricia Telles-Irvin announced in an email to students that the university had closed its investigation into the sexual assault allegations without finding any evidence of wrongdoing. Three weeks later, the university suspended SAE for 17 months for violating its disciplinary probation by throwing parties and serving alcohol to minors. But the student body, apparently, will get no more answers about what happened inside the soon-to-bevacant fraternity house at 2325 Sheridan Road.

Sexual assault is disturbingly common on college campuses, but the response from Northwestern students and administrators has rarely been so strong. This year’s protests have come at a time when universities have improved education and resources for sexual assault, but students across the country demand more. At Northwestern, students and administrators have clashed over the best path forward: reforming the alcohol policy, improved sexual assault prevention education, additional resources for CARE, and even abolishing Greek life at Northwestern altogether.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY EMMA SARAPPO

• a • The parallels between this year’s uproar and ones that came in the 1990s reveal how little has changed in the past quarter century.

At the end of 1991, four months of anti-sexual assault protests and a string of allegations had rattled campus. With these protests came the growing recognition that sexual assaults didn’t just happen in dark alleyways; they could happen in well-lit apartments or dorm rooms with someone you knew.

For the student body, this was a relatively new way of talking about sexual assault and women’s rights. Until this point, publicized police reports of sexual assault painted a specific picture: late-night attacks carried out by strangers in dark alleyways. The reported attackers were frequently Black men from Chicago, sometimes repeat offenders; their race and mugshots were published in Daily Northwestern articles.

THE CLERY ACT EXPLAINED You can thank the Clery Act of 1990 for the security alert email that ended up in your inbox on February 7. Signed

by President George H.W. Bush after the rape and murder of college student Jeanne Clery at Lehigh University, the law mandates that universities give their students a timely report of oncampus crime, including sexual assualt.

It’s been seven years since administrators last sent a Clery Act-mandated security alert email.

A group of senior administrators, including the Title IX office and the University Police, made the decision to send the most recent email. Telles-Irvin says that because the anonymous calls made to the university were consistent, they felt it was important to alert the community quickly in order to comply with the Act. Calls for change focused, then, on this specific threat. For example, In the 1970s, the student-organized Women’s Coalition asked the university to install better street lighting, providing self-defense classes for women or providing an escort service for male students to walk female students home from the library late at night. One April 1973 Daily Northwestern article quoted the associate director of Evanston’s public safety department telling women what they should do to avoid being assaulted: stick to well-lit routes, walk in pairs or groups, drive with the doors locked and windows closed and carry things like hatpins or books that they could use as weapons. “No rapist is going to attack you at 1 p.m. on the plaza of the library,” he said. “Rape is a crime of opportunity, so don’t give him the

opportunity.”

Today, most administrators and professors understand sexual assault as an expression of power of one over another, most often committed by someone the victim knows. But the debate about rape culture has persisted. Communication professor Laura Kipnis wrote several essays and a book about “sexual paranoia” on college campuses after two Northwestern students filed a Title IX complaint against former philosophy professor Peter Ludlow in 2014. This April she wrote an editorial, “Eyewitness to a Title IX Witch Trial,” which casts down on student’s account of waking up without underwear and later attempting suicide after the night she said Ludlow assaulted her. Following February’s sexual assault announcement, Kipnis also published a letter to the editor in the Daily, in which she argued that “leaping to action is at best a failure of due process, and at worst vigilantism,” suggesting that the allegations might turn out to be untrue.

The way we talk about sexual assault – framing it as a common, peer-to-peer crime, largely committed by acquaintances and friends – isn’t new. In October 1974, School of Education professor Ann Gordon wrote an editorial in the Daily entitled “A feminist look at rape.” When she was an undergraduate, she said, no one referred to sexual assaults that happened in fraternity houses as rapes. Instead, she said, they couched it in softer terms: a man “forced his attentions” on a woman, or “took advantage of the situation.” “Lots of women admit to having been unwilling participants in sexual acts,” she wrote. “Is it too rash then to conclude that lots of men must have forced themselves on women?”

In May 1990, a week after 50 protesters camped in front of the Rebecca Crown Center calling for NU to publicize statistics on sexual assault, the administration issued its first statement outlining its sexual assault policy.

In the statement, the university said that that sexual assault was “not only repugnant” but a criminal offense with “no place in a civilized society, let alone in a university community.” The next day, an editorial in the Daily Northwestern called the policy a “weak medicine for a disease that is already rampant on our campus.”

Clearly, that condemnation didn’t end sexual assault on campus. In October 1991, someone scrawled “--- ------ is a rapist. He attends NU. Unite. Fight Back” on bathroom walls, naming a male student who had been criminally prosecuted for sexual assault but then returned to campus after the charges were dropped.

The themes of administrators condemning rape and students, in turn, condemning the university still echo today. In 2017, when the university and SHPO ended the investigation

into assaults at SAE, Telles-Irvin wrote in an email to students “As a University we recommit ourselves to education and outreach to increase awareness of these issues, as well as confidence and participation in the reporting and investigation processes” and said the University “strives to create a campus that is safe and secure.”

Now-ASG president and vice president Nehaarika Mulukutla and Rosalie Gambrah criticised the statement in the Daily, saying “This letter exemplifies the continuous lack of meaningful, tangible actions through which the university plans to combat the pervasive culture of sexual assault at Northwestern.”

In November 1991, the Women’s Coalition sent a letter to the provost saying that fraternity brothers threw water balloons and poured cups of beer on Take Back the Night marchers as they went through the fraternity quad in their annual rally against sexual violence. Later that month, a crowd of 200 people gathered one night to protest a calendar circulated by Pi Kappa Alpha featuring sexualized pictures of women, as well as an unofficial newsletter saying that among the “Top 10 Reasons” to have attended the recent Take Back the Night March was “Bitches, man, tons of bitches!”

On Jan. 31, 1992, students marched from the Rock to President Arnold Weber’s office at the Rebecca Crown Center to protest an investigation into anonymous threats sent to the president’s office related to the administration’s handling of sexual assaults.

The protesters said that investigators were unfairly targeting students who were vocal about feminist issues.

That might not happen now; feminism is more or less mainstream on college campuses. But the protests haven’t stopped.

In March 2014, students planned a sit-in of Peter Ludlow’s “Philosophy of Psychology” class, some wearing tape over their mouths.

One hundred of them marched to the Dean of Weinberg’s office, brandishing posters with familiar slogans: “Protect us, not our reputation,” “I believe her”, and “we will not be silenced.”

SPRING ‘17 | 43

There has been change since the 1990s, though. In the 2011-12 school year, Patricia Telles-Irvin spearheaded the creation of the Center for Awareness, Response, and Education (CARE) with a grant from the Department of Justice’s Office of Violence Against Women. When the grant ran out after three years, Northwestern started funding the office with its own budget. Programs like Wildcat Welcome’s True Northwestern Dialogues, formerly known as Essential NUs, educate incoming students about Title IX and Northwestern’s sexual assault policy.

For some, it’s the first time they have heard the definition of consent or the how-tos of bystander intervention.

But after students’ first year at Northwestern, there’s no ongoing mandatory education for the entire student body. This can especially pose a problem when policies change, says Paul Ang, the men’s coordinator at CARE. For example, today’s Title IX policies are not the same ones the Classes of 2017 and 2018 learned about during their orientation weeks in 2013 and 2014. These students might not know, for example, that students no longer sit on the investigation panel hearing assault cases, and students who report no longer have to face their assaulters while testifying.

Improving education could be as simple as explaining basic facts about sexual assault resources, Spears says. For example, the Sexual Harassment Prevention Office (SHPO) and the “Title IX” office are one and the same, she says, but most students that she talks to don’t know that. And at a university with a lot of database resources, this frustrates her. “I can find out what classes are being offered next spring in each department if I wanted to, but I can’t figure out what the hell is the difference between the Sexual Harassment Prevention Office and Title IX,” she says.

Spears says there are things she only learned because she was a member of SHAPE that every student on campus should know.

“Before I joined SHAPE, I had absolutely no idea what to say if someone told me they were assaulted,” she says. “Which is a real shame, because I didn’t say the right things when people told me those things freshman year.”

Title IX coordinator Joan Slavin says the small Title IX office has expanded its offerings in response to the SAE allegations. She says that her office has presented to groups of PHA and IFC representatives this Spring Quarter on a slew of topics: information on different kinds of sexual misconduct, consent, options and resources available to survivors and an overview of the reporting process. In January, the office started searching for an outreach and education specialist to develop programming for Greek chapters and the broader Northwestern community. Slavin says she hopes that starting this Fall Quarter the new specialist will hold on-campus drop-in hours to give students better access to their

44 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

office.

For all of this expansion, Slavin says that her office is fortunate to be well-supported by the university, and that they’ve never had to curtail their efforts because of budget issues.

And Telles-Irvin says that administrators from other schools actually call her for ideas for sexual assault-prevention programs. She says Northwestern is better staffed than most other universities.

“Is anything perfect? Absolutely not,” she says. “Are we trying to strive for excellence and make sure we have a healthy process, one we can stand by? I think that’s something we have.”

• a •

Mulukutla and Gambrah formally launched their ASG campaign on March 28, a month and a half after the security alert email. Gambrah says that she felt optimistic at first; after all, IFC chapters said they would take action to reform and would cancel all social events in the meantime. Then she heard from friends that fraternities were still throwing parties at off-campus houses. “It’s just like, this was literally thrown under the rug,” Gambrah says. “Nobody cares. It’s a slap on the wrist. It’s forgotten.”

IFC President Rodney Orr says the social pause was supposed to give Greek chapters a chance to step back and figure out how to change their toxic cultures, but “in a

“College administrators often do a really good job of saying the right thing, but it’s hard to know what they’re actually thinking, if they always believe what they’re saying.”

– Amanda Odasz community of 1,500 people, not everyone is going to agree on how things should be done.”

“Any implication that ... because some members had social events the entire community therefore doesn’t care about making spaces safer, is a little too much of a generalization,” Orr says. “That potentially hinders the examination of the actual policies that were put in place during the pause, and the current policies – such as the dry house policy – that have created a culture where drinking is forced underground and can’t be talked about publicly until a tragedy happens.”

Mulukutla and Gambrah’s plan to combat sexual assault is two-fold: registering oncampus parties with alcohol with the university and working to make the reporting

process “less hostile” to survivors. Mulukutla says she is most passionate about making sure students feel more comfortable reporting. “I do not know a single person who has reported their assault,” she says, “and I know a lot of people who have been assaulted, both male and female.”

But if Mulukutla and Gambrah’s proposals are going to change university policy, they’ll have to be implemented by administrators like Telles-Irvin and Dean of Students Todd Adams. Mulukutla says that the administration is looking to change the alcohol policy so it “promotes harm reduction and safety,” although details remain unclear.

As for the idea that people don’t report sexual assaults, Telles-Irvin points out that students who are assaulted don’t all want the same thing. Because experiencing violence is a loss of power, she says, people will often want to take it back by deciding for themselves how to respond.

Ang and Erin Clark, assistant director of CARE, say that because CARE’s focus is on respecting the wishes of survivors, not all students interact with their office in the same way. They see some students for weeks as they go through the reporting process; other students might come in once to tell them about an incident but not want to report. For administrators to remove perpetrators from campus, though, students must report. “That’s something that’s hard to understand sometimes,” Telles-Irvin says, “because if we don’t have witnesses and evidence in order to press charges, then we can’t do anything.”

But Odasz says there’s a slew of other reasons students might not come forward.

For example, students of color might not report because they don’t feel comfortable with institutions that they feel haven’t served their needs. She says she tried to explain this to Telles-Irvin and Adams in a meeting after the SAE allegations, but says it can be hard to communicate to them how little they might know about the reality of party and relationship culture on campus.

“They’re not sitting down with students and having conversations about interpersonal relationships,” Odasz says. “It would be really weird for a Northwestern student to talk with Todd Adams about their sex life.”

Odasz says it was difficult to read Adams and Telles-Irvin in that meeting.

“College administrators often do a really good job of saying the right thing,” she says, “but it’s hard to know what they’re actually thinking, if they always believe what they’re saying.”

Telles-Irvin says she and Adams are sincere. She says she wants to make sure that students feel that their voices are heard, and that she knows a crucial part of that is acting on their concerns. She says she believes that the administration has responded, but knows that students feel frustrated at the slow pace

of action. “We are listening,” she says. “It just might not always look that way.”

• a •

Former ASG President Christina Cilento remembers the night of February 6 as one of the most frustrating of her life. Following the NU police chief ’s security email, Cilento, Vice President Macs Vinson and the ASG executive board debated how to publicly respond as a governing body over their listserv and Slack channel. The next morning, they met to hammer out a statement. Some, including Cilento and Vinson, wanted to take a strong stance against SAE and call for their removal from campus even before the investigation concluded. Others insisted on waiting. They released the final product that night, calling for SAE’s suspension if the investigation confirmed the allegations.

Later, when they asked Telles-Irvin about the investigation, she said she couldn’t talk much about it because of confidentiality concerns.

According to Cilento and Vinson, Telles-Irvin said the assaults remained unproven and might amount to nothing more than hearsay.

“Some cases are very difficult to determine,” Telles-Irvin says. “It’s one person’s word against the other person’s word.”

Telles-Irvin also told Cilento and Vinson that many parents of SAE members were calling and emailing her to say that their sons felt unsafe on campus. Parents didn’t like how SAE was singled out in the alert email, Telles-Irvin says, and told her that their sons didn’t want to go to class for fear of being harassed. SAE chapter president Manos Proussaloglou did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Cilento thinks administrators might have felt more heat from SAE members’ parents than from student activists protesting sexual assault.

And when she and Vinson tried to talk to TellesIrvin about sexual assault specifically in Greek Life, Cilento says Telles-Irvin would derail the conversation by talking about the larger culture of sexual assault. Cilento says TellesIrvin presented them with a hypothetical. If someone in ASG, or any student organization, faced sexual assault allegations, would it be fair to kick the whole organization off campus?

“The difference is that it’s not a function of ASG to throw parties in basements,” Vinson says. “When that is literally the function of your organization, obviously you should be held responsible for what happens.”

Among the lessons Cilento and Vinson say they have learned during their time in ASG: the administration doesn’t respond well to petitions. “They hate the word ‘demand,’” Vinson says, then pauses to glance at Cilento.

“What avenue of student-driven change do they like?”

“ASG,” Cilento replies. “When it’s convenient for them.”

Through their time on task forces

“So if you think that Title IX is great and students disagree, why exactly do you think it’s appropriate for you to just ignore the opinions of the people you’re supposed to protect?”

– Macs Vinson

and committees because of ASG, Vinson says, he has come to realize how much he knows about administrators, what they like and dislike, and the nuances of Northwestern’s institutions. Most students don’t know these things, and it can be a trap for activists trying change institutions, he says. When a student raises their frustration with a certain issue at an on-campus community dialogue, Vinson says, administrators often dismiss their concerns by pointing out existing efforts to address the issue.

Neither of them believes this is an adequate response. “It doesn’t matter whether you think this is effective, because the people who it’s for do not believe that,” Vinson says. “So if you think that Title IX is great and students disagree, why exactly do you think it’s appropriate for you to just ignore the opinions of the people you’re supposed to protect?”

If students become jaded about the reporting process, Cilento says she worries the Title IX office will go the way of CAPS. Regardless of CAPS’ actual quality of care, she explains, students lose faith in the institution when they hear about their peers having bad experiences there. “And that’s what’s increasingly happening with Title IX. These cases that people don’t see action on, and they don’t engage in it, and they don’t trust the university,” she says. “It’s really harmful.”

• a • On a cloudy evening on April 27, a throng of students milled around the Rock for this year’s Take Back the Night march. It had been almost three months since the march to the SAE national headquarters, and it was hard to ignore that the crowd this night was much smaller – 100 people, compared to the more than 300 marchers in February.

From the Rock, the marchers walked down Sheridan Road to Kellogg to Norris, alternating between chants of “how I dress does not mean yes” and “hey hey, ho ho, sexual assault has got to go” and carrying banners with slogans like “SUPPORT LGBTQ SURVIVORS.” Some CARE staff trailed in the back, carrying signs saying they stood in solidarity with the students and support survivors.

Before the march, though, Weinberg freshman Adam Davies – an anti-sexual assault activist, a survivor and the keynote speaker for the march – addressed the crowd that had gathered by the Rock. He hadn’t prepared a speech, he says, but he had been readying himself to address fraternity men. But unlike past years, when chapters would show up with banners and signs in support of survivors, they weren’t there. This year, Take Back the Night reached out to IFC but received no response.

Davies said he had been ready to talk to them about toxic masculinity. This year, he wouldn’t have the chance. Only a handful of men had showed up.

Will Fischer contributed reporting.

SPRING ‘17 | 45

46 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

ART BY EMMA SARAPPO AND EMMA KUMER

THE M

MAN

THE MYTH

THE THE MORTY THEMORTY MORTY He’s often called personable, but is Morty’s openness making him more enemies than friends?

BY DANIEL FERNANDEZ

I

n January 2014, Morton Schapiro, the president of Northwestern University, was in a meeting at the White House. And like most everything in Washington, the meeting was running late.

Schapiro, who’s better known for his enthusiasm than his patience, was particularly restless that morning – there was somewhere important he needed to be that day. He kept checking his watch, waiting for the appropriate moment to leave. Finally, it came: The president and first lady entered the room, and in the commotion, Schapiro slipped out the door.

Although he didn’t want to come across as rude, he’d already made his statement and he figured they didn’t need him. “It was awkward, but I think it was the right decision,” he says.

Schapiro’s important appointment was in Harris Hall L07. Inside this basement classroom on the southern end of NU’s Evanston campus, Schapiro was teaching a class with Professor Gary Saul Morson called Humanities 260, which explores the ideas about alternatives and choices from a variety of disciplines.

Depending on the year, students can expect lively debate and discussion on everything from the development of the fork to the economics of love and marriage. While the content of the course has changed dramatically in the last six years, one thing remains constant: Schapiro never misses class.

In fact, Schapiro says he’s missed class just three times in his 38 years of teaching: to see the birth of his son, to recover from pneumonia

and to testify at a Senate committee hearing on Pell Grants, one of his areas of expertise as an economist. He has never taken a sabbatical because he enjoys teaching so much.

Schapiro credits his professors at Hofstra University, a small and relatively unknown college on Long Island, for his punctuality and passion for teaching. At Hofstra, he took a class on the Romantic poets – Keats, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth and Blake – with Graham Frost, a professor who he described as “absolutely brilliant,” someone who made the material feel alive. Schapiro decided he wanted to be one of those great teachers, and since his professors never missed class or ignored their obligations, he tries his best to do the same.

The way Schapiro tells it, he fell in love with the idea of teaching before economics. For a while, he considered going to graduate school for art history. He even knew what he wanted to write a thesis about: the transition from neoclassical painters like Jacques-Louis David to French Romantics like Gericault and Delacroix.

But it was the mid ‘70s, and the recession was only getting worse. He worried he wouldn’t find a job teaching art history in the unstable market.

Eventually, he decided to pursue economics, another subject he enjoyed studying at Hofstra.

And since finishing his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania, Schapiro has taught eager students everything from the principles of rational choice theory to the intricacies of higher education policy, without fail.

SPRING ‘17 | 47

Outside the classroom, Morty – almost nobody calls him President Schapiro – is a beloved campus figure. Students ogle as he treks down Orrington Avenue on his way to work, a morning ritual he continues through the frigid winter. They cheer “Morty! Morty!

Morty!” as he stalks the sidelines at home football games in his aviator sunglasses and Northwestern® zip-up, his short silver hair a beacon amid a sea of Northwestern Purple football helmets (a proprietary color, of course). Open Tinder, and you’ll eventually bump into parody profiles of Morty with bios like “On Game Day I go Cats. / On weekdays I go down on you.”

Most evenings, Morty also entertains students, faculty, staff and distinguished guests at his home a few blocks from campus. The tradition, which Morty started as the president of Williams College in 2000, has become a rite of passage for students. Keli Gail, who was Morty’s assistant at Williams, jokes his house was “the most popular B&B in town.”

Morty’s focus on undergraduate students distinguishes him from many of his predecessors at Northwestern. Former president Henry Bienen taught a single course during his 13 years as president, and undergraduates frequently said he was inaccessible. And while Bienen arrived at Northwestern after a long career at Princeton, another elite research university, Morty had spent 20 years at Williams, a liberal arts college renowned for its undergraduate education.

But some students, particularly those from the underrepresented communities Morty and Northwestern’s administration frequently reference in speeches, op-eds and task force reports, question how much he has done to create a diverse and inclusive community.

Many suggest he’s disengaged, and in some cases, even obstructionist. Still more suggest he’s disingenuous.

On the other hand, Morty’s eight years years at Northwestern would be a source of pride for any university president: Since he took the reins in 2009, only two research universities in the United States (the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford) have seen larger percentage growths in their endowment; this year, Northwestern participated in the Big Dance for the first time and claimed victory in the Pinstripe Bowl; the class of 2021 will have more than 20 percent Pell-eligible students, and to improve affordability Northwestern has instituted a debt cap program that will ensure no current student on financial aid graduates with more than $20,000 in loans.

Financially speaking, though, undergrads aren’t terribly important to Northwestern.

Only 10 percent of the school’s annual operating budget comes from their tuition, and Morty says it will soon be closer to five percent. These trends hold true at other elite universities like Princeton, Yale and the University of Chicago. As a result, most

university presidents pay little attention to the youngest members of their campuses.

Morty’s evaluated based on his effectiveness in improving the university’s reputation, raising money, managing donor relations, and keeping Northwestern’s $2.6 billion annual operation chugging along, not how many dinners he holds at his house.

Yet, between teaching, attending student performances, watching athletic events, hosting dinners, giving presentations and meeting with students, Morty spends far more than 10 percent of his time with undergrads, a choice he says is purposeful. Since taking his first fulltime administrative position in 1994 as Dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California, Morty has made sure he has the opportunity to teach each year. But he recognizes that while he loves working with undergraduate students, it doesn’t necessarily make him better at his “day job” of being president.

“I fortunately love being with students,

“

48 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

I fortunately love being with students, otherwise I wouldn’t do it the way I do it.

It’s not really part of my job.”

– President Morton Schapiro

otherwise I wouldn’t do it the way I do it,” he says. “It’s not really part of my job.”

In the press, Morty has also become a controversial defender of safe spaces, a position that puts him at odds with many.

At the convocation for Northwestern’s Class of 2020 last September, Morty characterized those who didn’t believe in safe spaces as “lunatics” and called people who deny microaggressions “idiots.” While his remarks drew applause from many students, David Bernstein wrote in The Washington Post that Morty had “utterly failed to meet even the minimum standard of appropriate discourse” and concluded that “a resignation would not be disproportionate.”

Nearly a month later, Schapiro walked back parts of his earlier remarks. In a statement, he said he hoped his speech emphasized the fact

that all people had safe spaces, noting that the Institute for Policy Research and golf courses were safe spaces for him.

While Morty advocated for safe spaces, though, Northwestern’s provost had cut student counseling services at the Women’s Center. His rousing defense also came less than a year after a series of emotional protests responded to a proposal from the administration which would have moved offices into the historic Black House, taking away space and resources from the many student groups who used the building. And as many students pointed out, they were not focused on safe spaces. They were just trying to hold on to the services they had already fought so hard to acquire.

The former president of Associated Student Government, Christina Cilento, says this “performative” aspect of Morty can sometimes rub students the wrong way. When the ideals he espouses in publications like The Wall Street Journal, The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Washington Post don’t match up with policy at Northwestern, students are naturally frustrated. “He has a reputation of saying a lot but doing a little,” says Lars Benson, who is ASG’s chief of staff and took Humanities 260 with Morty earlier this year.

Other students have even more blistering critiques than Benson. Weinberg senior Marcel Hanna, the outgoing president of Students for Justice in Palestine, says Morty belittled students during the height of the divest movement. Macs Vinson, who was Cilento’s vice president and active in various student activist groups, suggests Morty isn’t always clued into the sorts of problems facing marginalized students on campus.

This winter, Vinson and Cilento met with Morty and Patricia Telles-Irvin, Northwestern’s vice president for student affairs, for a quarterly update from ASG. One of their major concerns was how to make the university more accessible for low-income students. They had brought along Madisen Hursey and Steffany Bahamon from Quest Scholars, a scholarship match program and student advocacy group.

At the meeting, the students discussed changes the university should make to better support students, like ensuring faculty make syllabi available before course registration and creating a space for low-income students on-campus, something akin to Multicultural Student Affairs or the Black House.

To their surprise, Morty agreed with just about everything, and even floated the idea of putting the new space in University Commons, which will eventually replace Norris. But Telles-Irvin had to remind him the building already had a set design and it was too late to change it.

The exchange miffed Cilento and Vinson, but what was especially frustrating was the fact that Morty didn’t seem to know the

person responsible for running the office to support low-income students, Kourtney Cockrell. Morty says he doesn’t remember the meeting (after all, he has many with students), and Telles-Irvin emphasized that Morty never made a concrete proposal. Telles-Irvin also says she wished students remembered that Morty making time to meet with students is unique among university presidents.

“It’s unfortunate because students don’t have a basis for comparison,” Telles-Irvin says.

Other students, though, connect the dots a little differently than Telles-Irvin. Hanna suggests Morty’s lack of decisive action on issues from divestment to mental health services for low-income students and students of color reveals a callous complacency.

“It’s very easy to write a 500-word op-ed that has probably been proofread by a million other people,” Hanna says. “But it’s much more telling about his actual intentions when you look at what this university has done for students of color. Our demands aren’t as general as ‘end systematic racism in this university.’ Our demands are [specific] like ‘provide computers and a room for engineers of color.’”

Sometimes, though, it’s difficult to separate criticism of Morty from criticism of the Board of Trustees, or the administration, or just certain professors and student groups. Cilento thinks Morty’s presence on campus – after all, he is a campus celebrity – can sometimes lead to students having a skewed perspective of him and his responsibilities as president.

They can forget he’s indirectly responsible for the livelihood of more than 3,000 faculty and 6,000 staff members, and answers to a Board of Trustees worried about the long-term financial health of the school. Even if Morty bears ultimate responsibility, he isn’t the only one making or implementing decisions.

“I thought anything that came from Morty was word – was like the Gospel,” Cilento says.

“And that’s not the way it is.”

Last April, Cilento was headed to a

dinner with the President. Morty had invited her and around 50 other students from ASG to attend the meal as a thank you for their hard work. But Cilento, Vinson and five other students decided that rather than spend the evening inside with Morty, they were going to leave his home at the start of dinner to join a group of student protesters outside.

The students wanted to let Morty and administrators know they weren’t content

with the progress for the Advisory Committee on Investment Responsibility, which was supposed to give students more say in how Northwestern chose to invest its money.

“We wanted to disrupt the space because dinners at Morty’s house are very elite events,” Cilento says. “We wanted to make a statement in a way that was unexpected.”

Before dinner, Morty got up to give a short, presidential welcome. And to the surprise of just about everyone, Morty talked about divestment instead of ASG. As it turns out, the walkout was not as unexpected as those students thought. Someone had told Morty what the students were planning.

Morty talked about changes in the university’s investment policy and even said he favored divesting from a few coal stocks, a sentiment he said the Board of Trustees did not share. He talked about other thing too, like reducing investments in guns and tobacco. But Morty made no mention of the divest campaigns most of the students at dinner and around campus were thinking about: Unshackle NU, which demanded the school divest from detention centers and private prisons, and NUDivest, which urged the school to divest from six corporations they said were violating Palestinians’ human rights.

As Morty spoke, Cilento fiddled with her phone under the table. She and the other students weren’t sure how to respond. To Cilento, Morty’s speech seemed like a lastditch effort to win student support. And besides, she, Vinson and the rest of the group had made up their mind long before Morty started talking.

So shortly after Morty wrapped things up, another student, Anna DiStefano read a list of demands the students had prepared, and then Ruba Assaf gave a short explanation for why the students were leaving in protest. After Assaf finished, the students stood up, and as they marched out, Cilento remembers TellesIrvin whispering “This is such a shame.”

In the 17 years Morty had been a university president, nobody had left his home like that.

Some say he stood up and told the students to “get out.” Others say he waved them out the door, enunciating a single word over and over again: “Bye.” But all agree Morty was not happy.

As the students groped around in Morty’s closet looking for their coats and backpacks, Christina realized they weren’t vacating a drab conference room, the kind of place where Morty normally met with students.

They had gotten up with the first course salad still on their plates and had walked out of the president’s home. After the last student left, the room was silent.

But outside the scene was one of jubilation.

One of the student protestors held up a sign with a photo of Morty glued next to one of Cilento and Vinson. Under his name, it said “Profit,” under theirs “Prophets.”

Even today, Morty doesn’t like to talk

about the walkout. He says he’s not sure the students listened to him. Some students think it’s a bit more complicated. While Morty says those students didn’t need to protest like that to find a time to talk with him, the students think the reason they got the resulting advisory committee was because the event became high profile.

“Morty and the board were worried about having a PR disaster so they tried to reach out to us to act like they actually care about the stuff we’re talking about,” Hanna says.

While Morty may not realize it, these students say that when he got up to talk about divestment, much like when he talked about safe spaces last September, he coopted their cause and made it his own. Then, rather than talking about what the students were protesting – those six corporations and private prisons – he talked about tobacco, coal and guns. To the students, it looked like he had inserted himself into the conversation without really listening to them.

Hanna says this is part of the reason why students gripe about Morty’s editorials and public remarks. It makes Northwestern look good, but it does little for the students.

“He’s the only one who benefits from writing these things,” Hanna says. “You end up getting white students here who think he’s this liberal angel, and then you also end up having these other universities thinking he’s a progressive guy. But it’s very far from the truth.”

Young Miller has known Morty

for a long time. She was his office assistant back when he was the chair of the economics department at USC, long before he became President Schapiro. Over the years, she’s worked for many chairs, and none of them, she says, have been quite like Morty.

“He’s a perfect storm,” she says. “He’s a professor, a great researcher, a great teacher, but a good administrator and a good person.”

Morty was also the person who took a chance on Miller 25 years ago when he hired her. She was a Korean citizen with no work, let alone college experience in the United States. A few years later, when Miller applied for citizenship, Morty wrote her a recommendation letter. Her life and career in America, she says, is because of Morty.

SPRING ‘17 | 49

Since then, Miller has dealt with professors who blurted things out, who got flustered and angry, who thought too much of themselves, the elitist, academic types who condescended, who never apologized, who never seemed to care about her and the rest of the administrative staff. Morty, she says, was never like that.

“He would just come out and sit with the staff and talk about going to his son’s baseball game, his daughter’s ballet, like one of us – like a friend,” she says.

Jeffrey Nugent, a professor of economics at USC, says Morty had a gift for making people comfortable. He could find joint interests with just about anybody and had a talent for building consensus that was especially useful in the early ‘90s when the economics department was embroiled in conflict and controversy. When anyone came to Morty with a problem, Miller says, he would say, “It’s not a problem if you can solve it.” Miller still uses that line today, and when she does, she still thinks of Morty.

“I am truly honored to have known him,” she says. “It still tickles me when I say ‘Morty

“

talked about improvements to the endowment and inclusivity. Eventually, he arrived at his main point for the morning, the sentence that was later blasted to every student on campus in a “Northwestern Now” email: “You have to do the right thing.”

When I asked Hanna about this, he scoffed. “You’re obviously not doing the right thing, you know?”

Morty’s justification for doing things because they are right doesn’t sit well with Hanna and others. This is because what Morty describes as being “right” in some universal sense is not so for every Northwestern student, let alone every post-doc, administrative assistant, non-tenure track faculty member or dining hall worker.

“I walk around this campus knowing that my tuition money is going towards funding the oppression of my people,” he says. “Native students have to see John Evans plastered all over the place – it’s laughable.”

Of course, Morty knows this. It’s a hazard of his job, having to balance all those opinions, keeping everyone happy. He’s The President.

His job is to make sure the school does what’s best, even if it’s not the most expedient option. And that’s not easy. Turnover rate is

He’s just an economist who happens to be Northwestern’s president. Morty knows he’s not perfect or even close to it; he just believes that slowly but surely, he can make things better. “While some people of faith believe there’s a rulebook, I don’t,” he says.

For Morty, life is about trying to develop the right answer based on circumstance. He says he’s trying to do what’s best, but he’s constantly having to adjust.

I thought anything that came from Morty was word – was like the Gospel. And that’s not the way it is.”

– former ASG president Christina Cilento

hired me’ and it makes me so happy and makes me feel so honored.”

A few Tuesdays back, Morty

spoke in front of a packed audience at the McCormick Foundation Center auditorium.

The event, called Conversations with the President, was an opportunity for Morty and other senior administrators to share updates on Northwestern’s progress from the previous year. It was supposed to be a community event, but only a handful of students had showed up that morning.

Before the event started, Morty weaved his way through the audience, commiserating with faculty, staff and administrators. He approached, greeted them by name (he never forgets names), kibitzed for a few moments, then moved on to another person. After this exchange, almost without fail, the person gushed to neighbors about Morty’s capacity to remember the details of their life and made a comment about what a swell guy he is.

After about 15 minutes of this, Morty made his way to the lectern. There were five video crews around the auditorium, and the event was available through an online livestream provided by the university for those who could not make it in person.

During his opening remarks, which he ad-libbed (like most of his speeches), Morty

50 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

high; nine people who at one point reported to Morty have gone on to their own presidencies.

Only three are still on the job.

When Morty was still president at Williams, a student distributed offensive posters on Holocaust Remembrance Day that celebrated Hitler’s birthday. Morty thought they were disgusting, but the posters were also protected by free speech because they didn’t target any student. When Williams made the decision to not press charges against the student, he says, people called him a self-hating Jew. But Morty is a man of faith. He hasn’t missed services in more than 80 weeks. No matter his schedule, he makes time to go to temple. (His staff, he says, can find him a good one just about anywhere.) He could probably write a book about it, he says, something like The Best Temples of the Big Ten. At the same time, though, Morty says he’s not an ethicist or a theologian, and he wouldn’t last a minute as a politician. He’s never been elected to anything in his life.

Some think his best just isn’t cutting it.

They feel ignored. They demand change. Are you going to listen to us for real this time, Morty? Others probably wish he would just stop writing editorials, hosting dinners and making appearances at football games. Why bother with inclusivity? Can’t you just raise more money, Morty?

But there are also some who think his best is awe-inspiring. He’s a genius whose brilliance never comes across as condescension. He’s a dedicated professor, a diligent mentor, a close friend. How do you manage it all, Morty?

But the idea of Morty – the engaged and ever-approachable university president – often obscures Morton Schapiro the man.

Walking around campus in his signature purple sweater, Schapiro appears more like an icon than an individual. It’s easy to forget he’s the kid who grew up in a military family and went to a New York college few have heard of, the starry-eyed student who wanted to teach about paintings and sculptures, not sit in boring meetings on Capitol Hill.

Morton, the man who signs off emails “Professor and President of Northwestern University,” says faith keeps him grounded.

Each week, shabbat services remind him to pause and take stock of life.

“In synagogue, I think about how I can be a better person, a better president, a better family member,” he says. “I’m just trying to do the best I can.”

BY DAVID GLEISNER

T

he last time I cried, I was a freshman in high school.

It was my first season on the track team, and I had set ambitious goals for myself. For months, I had been approaching the 5:00 mile mark. Several of my teammates had already broken the barrier, and I added extra miles to my runs on weekends or before school. This was how I could prove to myself and my team that I was tough and strong.

That I had what it took to be a great runner.

At a mid-April meet, I felt ready. I started fast, pushed through and finished strong. My final time: 5:03. In my post-race gloom, I approached some of the freshman sprinters who were chatting after their races. To be honest, I can’t even remember what they said – some stupid joke, I’m sure – but I told them to shut up, turned around and walked away with tears falling down my face. I was devastated.

As anyone who has ever done cross country or track can tell you, running is hard. It tests your limits, exhausts you physically and forces you to ignore signals of pain to push harder. With those characteristics in mind, my teammates made it very clear that, in order to succeed, I needed to “grow a pair.” I couldn’t “be a pussy.” The aggressive, primitive, visceral act of racing required a strict adherence to masculinity.

I hit 4:54 at a time trial the next month. Since then, not a single tear has left my eyes. Disregarding pain, focusing on constant improvement and emphasizing physical strength, I started “Manning up.”

••• “My coaches would always tell us to not feel sorry for ourselves and to be tough. I can’t be too mad at them because they were preparing us for the realm of life that we lived in,” SESP junior Anthony Pierce says, recounting his time playing football in the Chicago Public League. “It was a lot of, ‘You need to man up, be tough, don’t make excuses, just get through it.’”

Pierce grew up in the Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood

MAS CULI NITY

All it takes to “be a man” is to just be a man.

PHOTOS BY ALEX FURUYA, YING DAI, AND CASSIE MAJEWSKI

on the South Side of Chicago. His definition of masculinity was shaped by the need to protect himself and those around him. He had to ensure he projected an image of strength and toughness, showing others that he was not to be messed with.

“I’ve always been highly emotional, highly emotional, like very sensitive actually, but nobody was gonna ever find out,” Pierce says. “I definitely had a mask, like a really, really tough crust.”

Growing up in the southwest suburbs of Chicago, just an hour away from Northwestern, I was also exposed to a pretty rigid idea of what it meant to be a man, albeit in a very different environment. I played with Matchbox cars and Tonka trucks, dug up worms in my backyard and played baseball

in the park with friends. The people around me, both friends and family, always encouraged me to be myself. At the same time, they worked hard to ensure that “myself” followed societal guidelines – to make sure I was a normal boy.

Born and raised in Alabama, Weinberg senior Benjamin Kraft was brought up in a culture that also had a rigid definition of manhood.

One of the first times he remembers breaking the mold of “masculinity” was in middle school gym.

“I remember distinctly in eighth grade we were playing badminton in gym,” Kraft says.

“They played Lady Gaga’s ‘Just Dance’ and I was like, ‘You know what, fuck it, I like this song, I don’t care who knows it.’”

Kraft realized he had been repressing his enjoyment because of a societally imposed definition of masculinity, one that told him which artists he should and shouldn’t listen to.

“I’ve always enjoyed Lady Gaga, Erin McCarley, Sara Bareilles, not traditionally super masculine artists, so I think for me that was kind of a big step,” Kraft says.

Weinberg senior Dan Loizzo, former president of Men Against Rape and Sexual Assault (MARS), entered college with an idea of masculinity heavily shaped by whiteness and heteronormativity. From a grandfather who grew up helping out on a farm to a deeply-rooted Irish drinking culture, the men

SPRING ‘17 | 51

surrounding Loizzo were “set in their ways.”

“All the different things you’ll hear in the dominant narrative of masculinity of the man as the provider, the woman stays home,” Loizzo says. “That’s kind of how I grew up, just like the story I always heard and how it was supposed to go.”

Growing up in a place surrounded by a group of mostly white, straight, cisgender, able-bodied, upper-middle class young men, I heard a similar narrative. Running with my team was like a petri dish, toxic beliefs left to grow unchecked. Our coaches did their best to rein in the worst of this behavior when they were around, policing homophobic slurs and misogynistic remarks, but when we were alone, the comments mushroomed.

school, Alvarado grew more comfortable accepting his queerness. He began to depart from the ideal of who he was supposed to be in favor of who he really was.

“As a queer person in general, by definition, you’re just the blurring of the boundaries between dichotomies,” Alvarado says. “I think that’s probably the biggest thing for me, becoming more comfortable in my femininity and learning that’s not a bad thing at all.”

Northwestern’s culture allowed Alvarado to better define the framework

everyone’s beautiful in their own way.”

In fourth grade, at 75 pounds, Weinberg freshman Adam Davies was hauling seed bags two-thirds his body weight across the family farm. He has always seen hard work as a part of his identity, but didn’t associate it with his masculinity until recently.

Davies, a transgender man, also disrupts traditional ideas of manhood.

“I guess my masculinity has always been different,” Davies says. “It comes from the fact that I get to pick and choose

what I want out of masculinity, so I get to pick and choose the good things, like the hard work that I got from my father and being honorable and respectable and sticking up for other people and using my privilege to help other people.”

His most influential role model, his father, had demonstrated the dominance and disrespect that characterize a toxic ideal of masculinity, but he says he still learned a lot from him.

M

“I get to pick and choose what I want out of masculinity, so I choose the good things, like the hard work that I got from my father and being honorable and respectable and sticking up for other people and using my privilege to help other people.”

– Weinberg freshman Adam Davies

••• The different masculine characteristics Pierce, Kraft, Loizzo and I learned growing up play into a dominant narrative that presents a very narrow view of how to be a man. That view devalues the lives of many men, especially queer men.

Weinberg junior Pedro Alvarado grew up with a father who embodied a “very toxic masculinity.”

He only began to create his own identity when he was able to break out of the one created for him.

“My parents split up when I was a freshman in high school, and I lived with my mom and only saw my dad every other weekend or so,” Alvarado says.

“I think just separating myself from that – and senior year of high school is when I started coming out, slash becoming more comfortable in my body and who I am – is when I started to recognize the issues that came about in this masculine identity.”

As he finished high

in which he views his identity. An important part of his Northwestern experience has been the Burlesque show; he performed in the show his sophomore year and was a director this year.

“Burlesque in general [is] just this empowering performance of one’s body, whatever identities that body holds,” Alvarado says. “In the process, you’re naked with a lot of people; not that you necessarily had animosity towards other bodies, but just learning that, as corny as it sounds,

“As a queer person, you’re just the blurring of the boundaries between dichotomies, I think that’s probably the biggest thing for me, becoming more comfortable in my femininity and learning that’s not a bad thing at all.”

– Weinberg Junior Pedro Alvarado

52 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

“My coaches would always tell us to not feel sorry for ourselves and to be tough. I can’t be too mad at them because they were preparing us for the realm of life that we lived in. It was a lot of, ‘You need to man up, be tough, don’t make excuses, just get through it.” – SESP junior Anthony Pierce

“You don’t have to base your masculinity off of the toxic things that your parents or role model did. You can base your masculinity off the positive things that they did, and then go from there.”

– Adam Davies

my female friends but rarely ever had with a man – now all of a sudden I’m having all of these with a group of 10 other men – was a really, really cool experience.”

Part of what makes NÜ Men so effective is it encourages vulnerability.

Ang says one-on-one discussions and honest, open group sessions are far more substantial and poignant than arguments or witty comments.

“I think any time you put a person in a position to feel shame, that does nothing productive in terms of them learning from that experience or listening to you in a meaningful way,” Ang says. “For men to see other men taking risks and taking chances, essentially having people give them permission to act in ways that are not stereotypically masculine, that’s pretty powerful.”

Men like Alvarado and Davies aren’t responsible for teaching others how to be better men. But by existing authentically and being who they are, they offer peers another model of how to be a man.

“Society as a whole is in a really tough place right now, because there’s such a divide between different places across the country and different views on masculinity,” Davies says.

“I’m optimistic, but it’s gonna take a lot of work, and the people that are gonna have to put in the work is men.”

After being exposed to many ways of “being a man,” Loizzo realizes the ideal he learned as a boy isn’t the whole picture.

“I think masculinity is different for each and every person,” Loizzo says. “At the end of the day, as long as I’m comfortable with the person I am, that’s what masculinity is to me.”

M “You don’t have to base your masculinity off of the toxic things that your parents or role model did,” Davies says. “You can base your masculinity off the positive things that they did, and then go from there.”

Masculinity can offer a blueprint for who a young man is supposed to be, but by nature, it’s also unattainable and contradictory, says Paul Ang, coordinator of men’s engagement for CARE. “Everybody up to a certain age, or all ages, is really trying to figure out who they are,” Ang says. “You’re supposed to want to work with your hands and work hard, but you’re also supposed to be a millionaire banker – those things don’t line up.”

Those fault lines are where some men start to question the model. Pierce has reexamined the role of the masculine ideal in shaping his personality.

“I have to reconsider the things that cause me to want to be the person I want to be,” Pierce says.

“Some of those things I still really, really value, like the protective part or the person who cares about their family, but other details about my masculinity I have to second guess.”

•••

There are two essential players in the process of constructing a dominant masculinity: those who create a toxic ingroup environment, which varies across race, class, nationality, etc., and those who are complicit

in its existence. In order to see real change, it’s not just the former group that needs to change; all men need to recognize the roots of societal definitions of masculinity and work to define their personal identities around their own values.

At NU, I have heard far more voices than I did back home. Looking back, I see how the uncomfortable environment created by the loudest members of my team was a result of a rigid definition of masculinity. I also see it was reinforced by the people, myself included, who didn’t make meaningful efforts to change it.

“Maybe those certain people who are the most stereotypically masculine, they act and enforce masculinity in very specific

ways, but I also think that the people who are maybe not challenging that masculinity are still somewhat ascribing to that in whatever ways they’re choosing to,” Ang says. “I think they still have a part to play in it.”

At Northwestern, Kraft joined NÜ Men, a cohort of Northwestern men who gather each quarter to talk candidly about masculinity. The group allowed him to challenge his beliefs about what it meant to be a man.

“To be able to be vulnerable with other men was a very unique experience to me, because traditionally all of my friends had been female,” Kraft says. “Really having these discussions about what masculinity looks like, discussions that I’ve had over and over with

SPRING ‘17 | 53

Mapped

BY ISABELLA SOTO

Northwestern students navigate financial gaps through community.

CANADA GOOSE.

Out

After Northwestern” alumni mixer.

Instead of deciding to focus solely on financial aid and on income, SES and Quest scholars are intentionally shifting conversations in a broader and more nuanced direction by concentrating on financial wellness and financial literacy on campus.

“So many of the aspects of financial ix small groups of students formed a aid and your financial wellness are not just, circle on the floor of Parkes Hall, all ‘Do I have enough money in my pocket?’” outfitted with a crisp white sheet of butcher says Steffany Bahamon, outgoing president of paper and colored markers. Each group was NU’s QSN. “It’s how you perceive yourself and assigned a particular socioeconomic class, how you perceive your relation to the general and groups were supposed to think of labels, Northwestern society.” assumptions, attitudes and challenges for While Northwestern proudly touts needeach socioeconomic group. While quiet blind admissions, its policy doesn’t necessarily at first, perhaps not wanting to jump to mean once students are at NU their experience rash assumptions, the air grew less tense will be need-blind. Some of the events that as students began to reflect on what these define the “True Northwestern Experience” class designations meant to them. Words are often inaccessible to low-income or firstslowly crept onto the generation students, pages, starting at the edges leaving them feeling like then becoming a collage they aren’t getting the of perceptions of class, promises of Northwestern income and wealth among that grace the covers of Northwestern students. brochures and booklets Money Matters, a sent to eager-eyed weeklong event organized freshmen. Even seemingly by the Northwestern innocuous “college” QuestBridge Scholars activities like frequent Network (QSN) and the CTA trips into the city The percentage Student Enrichment Services and student group profit of Northwestern (SES) office, began in 2014 shares involve spending students whose and returned this quarter. money – and that money family income It gives students a space to adds up. falls within the discuss their relationships “There’s always been top fifth. with identity, class and a problem with that income, as well as the privilege This includes families that high, really really high make over $110,00 per year. and wealth that permeates fundraising stuff,” says The Upshot, a subsection of Northwestern culture. Events Stephanie Uriostegui, cothe New York Times, reports included a discussion on service chair of NU’s QSN. that the median family class, a faculty panel on income of a student at “A lot of people hype it up, resilience and a “Life Northwestern is $171,200. especially during Wildcat

UPPER-MIDDLE CLASS. EXTENDED VACATIONS. “It feels like everyone else can go to dinners after class or abroad for spring break, and it kind of feels like you’re the only one kind of suffering and pushing through.”

— Sharitza Rivera, assistant director of Student Enrichment Services

S

ILLUSTRATIONS BY EMMA KUMER

54 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

Welcome, and you kind of feel like if you can’t raise it and you feel like you can’t be part of a really big part of Northwestern.”

Sharitza Rivera, assistant director of SES works primarily as a one-on-one resource for students who come into the office. Before Northwestern, she worked at an education non-profit, and she recognizes the stark difference in culture between schools.

“A big difference here with low income, first-gen students is that it’s less of a homogeneous group here. Like, you know, your roommate could have a yacht, that type of thing,” Rivera says. “It feels like everyone else can go to dinners after class and everyone else is going abroad for spring break, and it kind of feels like you’re the only one kind of suffering and pushing through. All these things are magnified.”

in the federal aid program since its inception in 1958.

As part of the College Board, Northwestern has used need-based analysis since the 1960s and the university provided forms of needbased assistance long before then, according to Brian Drabik, the senior associate director of undergraduate financial aid.

In 2001, Northwestern joined the newly-created 568 Presidents Group, an organization created to maintain and strengthen a need-based financial aid system among its 24 member institutions, and to Moving up to develop common standards another social class for determining the family’s presents obstacles.

It’s not easy to move up, but ability to pay for college. it’s possible. According to The Out of the 1,100 schools Upshot, about 1.7 percent of in the United States that total Northwestern graduates submitted their data to came from a poor family but U.S. News and World Report became a rich adult in the this year, only 66 reported future. covering 100 percent How did we get here? of demonstrated need, Northwestern being one of them. Of course, Northwestern’s culture makes events that's not to assume accuracy of the calculated like Money Matters rare. Students don’t financial need. necessarily know how to have productive Northwestern is also one of 103 schools or sensitive conversations with one another which are considered “need-blind,” meaning about money, income and class, made evident they don’t take into consideration a student’s by the appearance of a Tumblr blog called financial situation or their family’s potential to “NU Class Confessions” in February 2014. pay for schooling during the application process The site provided an anonymous platform for first-year U.S. citizens and permanent for students to share their stories, and within residents. But Northwestern’s capability to one month it had over 500 submissions. A overlook financial need, isn’t extended toward similar Tumblr blog, “NU Testimonials on international students. class and classism,” was created for Money Part of Northwestern’s ability to finance Matters week. On the NU Class Confessions the educations of more low income and page, students are encouraged to “read, first-generation students is due to a growth acknowledge, and consider” the experiences in available financing. The discovery of the of fellow students and understand their fibromyalgia drug Lyrica in 1990, its FDA experience across class lines. approval in 2004 and its subsequent sales Despite students’ tendency to avoid these added millions of dollars to Northwestern’s conversations, Northwestern as an institution endowment, which is now the eighth has always been at the forefront of providing largest among universities in the United need-based financial aid. The university helped States. As the endowment has grown, establish College Board’s College Scholarship more funding has gone to initiatives such Service (CSS). In 1954, and has participated as the Pledge Scholarship and the Good Neighbor, Great University Scholarship. The school no longer offers loans as a part of aid packages and has instead replaced them with grants. Currently, 18 percent of Northwestern’s first-year

STUDENT LOANS.

WORKING POOR.

FOOD STAMPS.

“Over the years, as we’ve become more competitive and as we were allocated more funding to distribute to students, we were able to be more generous with some of our aid packaging.”

— Brian Drabik, senior associate director of undergraduate financial aid

SPRING ‘17 | 55

If you adjust tuition over the years for inflation, it’s actually going down.

And up. And back down.

$200,000*

This graph was created by combining university tuition data (including room and board) and the correlating inflation rates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. *Tuition statistics adjusted for inflation, represented in comparison to today’s money.

undergraduates are Pell Grant eligible, 45 percent of students receive a Northwestern Scholarship, and 62 percent of undergraduates receive financial aid.

“Over the years, as we’ve become more competitive and as we were allocated more funding to distribute to students, we were able to be more generous with some of our aid packaging,” Drabik says. “So slowly over the years, we were able to offer less loans in our packages.”

In March 2016, President Morton Schapiro announced the university would no longer offer loans as a part of incoming student’s financial aid packages and that grants, scholarships and summer workstudy jobs would replace those loans. In that same announcement, he discussed the university’s goal to have a student body that would be 20 percent Pell Grant eligible by 2020. The question is whether the university has the structures and resources in place to support the rise in students who have a high level of financial need and to ensure a successful Northwestern experience for low income and first-generation students.

$100,000* $0* 1993

1996

1999

2002

2004

2007

2010

2013

2016

been selected to be a QuestBridge College Match finalist. A few weeks later she opened up another “Congratulations!” while on the train to theatre class in New York City, telling her she’d been matched with Northwestern, her top choice.

Northwestern joined the QuestBridge Scholars Network in 2009, a national program that partners with 39 colleges and universities across the United States to make college a reality for high-achieving, low income high school students.

Partner institutions entire finance QuestBridge’s College Match Scholarships and cover the full cost of tuition as well as room and board. Northwestern pays a fee to the QuestBridge Scholars Network for them to recruit and seek out high-achieving, low-income students. QuestBridge then matches them with partner institutions through the College Match Scholarship, which binds students to a university by Dec. 1. If not matched, they become part of the regular decision QuestBridge pool and find out on a regular decision timeline. Isaac was one of 35 QuestBridge students matched with Northwestern, and over 100 others in the regular decision pool.

The Northwestern chapter of the Quest Scholars Network is the largest of any chapter with Northwestern’s total cost, over 400 students. NU’s Quest Scholars Network including room and board, is also the only advocacy group on campus for low is approximately $70,421 income, first-generation students. It was through for the 2016-2017 year. grassroots student mobilization that students In its most recent survey of college pricing, within the QuestBridge community reached out the College Board reports the expected to the Northwestern administration and voiced costs for a student at an in-state public the ways in which they felt the university wasn’t college for the 2016-17 academic year was supporting them. Out of these concerns came the $24,610, and $49,320 at a private school.

Student Enrichment Services (SES) office in 2014, with Kourtney Cockrell at its head.

Despite growth in coverage and support through financial aid, Kimani’s Quest gaps still exist, especially for low-income and first-generation students. One of the goals of QSN and SES’ Money Matters Kimani Isaac started and finished her QuestBridge National week was to help break down the walls that often keep students College Match application the same day it was due. from having frank and honest discussions about wealth and Isaac participated in the National High School Institute’s income. Often the only people entering the spaces that foster Theatre Arts Division, also known as Cherubs, the summer before these discussions are those already within the community. For her senior year. She knew Northwestern was where she wanted Bahamon, to have an entire campus fundamentally understand the to be, but she also knew she needed to go to college essentially social workings of class and wealth inequality at Northwestern, for free. When an admissions essay advisor introduced her to the will require people leaving their comfort zones to actively join scholarship program the Friday before the deadline, Isaac thought these discussions. she was too late.

“It’s great if you support me in the abstract, but just getting On that September deadline in East Brunswick, New Jersey, to know some of the details of what that means and the lingo the then-high school senior talked about the application with a will really make you think about it and reframe everything,” teacher, who told her to just do it and helped her rally teachers for Bahamon says. letters of recommendation, finalize transcripts and straighten out Before she arrived on campus, Isaac already knew she would her essays to submit them that evening. With two minutes and 23 have a community with fellow “Questies.” They had a massive seconds left, Isaac hit the submit button. group chat where they would relay eager messages back and forth Less than a month later, Isaac sat in her afternoon theatre talking about the various resources on campus, from the free class anxiously refreshing the application portal, and there condoms in Searle to suggestions for pre-orientation programs to was an update. She clicked and an orange banner blinking ease their transition into Northwestern. Isaac chose Northwestern’s “Congratulations!” unfurled on her computer screen. She had

56 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

POVERTY LINE.

HEALTH INSURANCE. Summer Academic Workshop (SAW) pre-orientation program, which brought her to campus three weeks early and allowed her to find her bearings as a Northwestern student before Wildcat Welcome. From academic workshops to introducing to faculty and staff, Isaac credits SAW with making her comfortable and knowledgeable about Northwestern resources on campus.

“I remember seeing this Daily article about how it takes time to find your community at Northwestern. SAW gave me that community,” Isaac says. “A lot of us come in not having a network in the way that like, people whose parents come here or cousins come here do. A lot of us sometimes have contentious relationships with family, or we come and we’re not able to just go out to Blaze every single Friday.”

While Money Matters was a continuation of the work that began back in 2014, SES is striving to expand its reach and remain in touch with the needs of students as the university plans to reach out to more low-income and first-generation students. Some of its signature programs and initiatives, though, have helped Isaac in her first quarters at Northwestern. She brought her mother’s laptop with her from home, leaving her mother with a desktop that still used a dial up connection. Because of SES’ laptop loan program, she was able to return the computer to her mother.

Similarly, instead of layering up in three to four jackets and hoping for the best during the winter, SES was able to provide Isaac with a winter coat, scarf, hat and gloves.

One major project that aims to close the experiential gap and that both SES and NU’s Quest Scholars Network have been working on is the SES One Form. The portal went live in February and consolidates numerous funding opportunities across Northwestern’s campus into one application. The One Form saves students from having to recount their financial narrative over and over again. It also works to support students through the sometimes unexpected or previously unaccounted expenses that crop up, such as Greek life dues, a student’s desire to participate in Dance Marathon, a pre-orientation program, or an emergency trip home. SES hopes to expand into other student groups to help make the quintessential Northwestern experience one that isn’t dictated by how much money a student has available to spend.

“I think the SES One Form kind of gives a better view of it, instead of looking at financial aid through just numbers,” Uriostegui says. “I think it definitely gives a space for people who may not identify as low-income but still need financial assistance in some kind of way.”

The SES office also piloted the Compass Mentor Program, which aims to provide low income first-generation first years with peer mentorship by older students from similar backgrounds. The mentorship program, which began Fall 2015, now has nine student mentors and 32 first-year mentees. During Fall and Winter Quarter, mentors and their small groups of mentees met on Friday evenings for workshops that ranged from self-care to professional networking.

“It’s a pretty robust program and it’s our biggest program that

WHITE-COLLAR.

comes out of this office,” Rivera says. “We do feel like we’re onto something special and we’re trying to see where we can take it.”

Jamal Julien, a Weinberg sophomore and Compass mentor, calls the mentorship program “training wheels” for low-income first-generation students and says it’s a space where students can just hang out together.

Weinberg freshman William Paik saw the flyers for Compass after struggling to buy the textbooks he needed and taking several trips to SES during the beginning of his Fall Quarter.

Realizing that he was struggling to get his feet on the ground at Northwestern, he applied for the mentorship program and was paired with Julien.

“Some people think you can use financial aid and that covers up the disparities, but aside from economic there are also a lot of social disparities,” Paik says. “So knowing what resources are available is a big thing and knowing how to just live at Northwestern is a big thing.”

From a more administrative standpoint, the Office of Undergraduate Financial Aid is piloting a new financial wellness initiative and partnering with American Student Assistance (ASA), a non-profit organization, through the online program Salt. The program is aimed at increasing financial wellness and literacy for undergraduate students and alumni, and offers help with budgeting, managing loans and information about credit.

“We’re trying to engage with students in conversations outside of the aid office, just to sort of build a relationship and a rapport with students,” Drabik says. “We thought it’d be a really nice complement to some of the efforts we’re doing on campus.”

Students are also going out of their way to create resources for their communities. After a panel during SAW with lowincome, first-generation faculty inspired Isaac, she began thinking about the particular challenges that low income students studying theater and radio, television and film faced and got in touch with Communications professor Harvey Young. After several conversations, they began a small group for low-income theater students.

“It was like three people, but that was okay, because we did it and it worked,” Isaac says.

While many of these conversations are in their early stages, administrative ears are growing more attuned to the concerns and needs of students. SES plans to do a needs assessment in the near future to ensure that as a student-founded service it remains equipped to support low -income and first-generation students, especially as Northwestern nears its 20 percent Pelleligible goal.

“I’m seeing a system that’s really looking inward and really wants to change things for the better here, and it is benefiting me,” Isaac says. “People are filling the gaps through our sense of community and our social networking. And it’s working.”

SPRING ‘17 | 57

NEVINS

h

A Laugh Before you go

hango ver 60

61

62

63

Sublett

ing sag a s D o n’t m a ke t h Swe e t s e same exc a p e m is t a ke s NBN sh s as the ows yo u s e re n t e Dear ap rs h ow to plicant g e t s te a m T h e re je y on Sh c t io n l e N o r t h -w e r id a n t te r we inos W all kn e’ve g o t yo u r v in o

ow a n d h a te e d u c a t io n c ove r ed

SUBLETTING SAGAS

BY KIRA FAHMY

California dreamin’

When home renters become homewreckers.

The subletter from hell

The secret garden

The first sign was the bill. What was usually a monthly electricity bill of $25 turned into $150 under Eva Rios’s new subletter. What could they be doing? Throwing parties? Sure. Forty-eight hour-straight television and light-flickering parties? Maybe.

The mystery was only furthered when Rios arrived back on campus. “My roommate and I got there and had no idea how messy it was. The floors were sticky in the way where you have a harder time lifting up your feet.”

But wait, a clue! “There was one of those little blue recycling bins just filled with dirt. Not even plants or anything just dirt. There was also a giant paint bucket filled with dirt,” Rios says.

“There were shoe prints on the wall, but way high up,” she adds. *Editor’s note: Name has been changed to protect students’ identity.

PHOTO BY ALEX FURUYA

Subletting an entire apartment can be nerve wracking, especially when it’s being filled with college-aged boys. When Erin Fanella Hesch and her roommates left in the fall, she knew one of her three male subletters smoked and asked that he keep it contained. Taking that request to heart, he promptly disabled all the smoke and CO2 detectors in his room.

“He had physically taken them down and taken all the batteries out,” Hesch says.

After a routine inspection, the landlord demanded they be fixed and replaced. Instead of complying, the subletters retaliated, claiming the alarms went off unnecessarily while he was cooking, despite his room being nowhere near any kitchen appliances.

After a quarter of landlord-subletter tension, Hesch was excited to return to campus and regain some normalcy. But her subletter had different plans. He refused to let her in the door, and when she finally bargained with him, she found the place impossibly messy.

It was one day past his lease, and “He still hadn’t moved out. The place was trashed,” Hesch says.

Hesch’s roommate’s dad was sent in to intimidate the subletterturned-squatter into leaving. Although it worked, the subletter left a large mess as well as some emotional trauma.

Hesch soon got word that he had been speaking threateningly to one of her roommate’s friends about the situation. He was saying things like, “‘I’m gonna fuck her up,’ ‘Don’t talk to her, she’s a bitch,’” Hesch says.

After reflecting on the roller-coaster of a process, Hesch says, “I’m staying here this summer because I never want to deal with subletting again.”

When Jen* subletted from UCLA students, she neglected to do proper research on her new housemates beforehand. “I didn’t ask any important questions that I now know to ask. Like ‘Do you guys clean your house?’

To answer Jen’s question: they did not.

After finding the bathroom dirty to the point of being unusable, Jen opted to shower only in the UCLA gym bathrooms, which she ultimately appreciated for getting her to the gym.

According to Jen, “They weren’t evil people, they just weren’t with reality.”

A more alternative-leaning crowd, Jen’s new roommates would throw “performance art parties” that lacked talent and nuance. One included a concrete mold of a drum as well as a guy who played a video of himself burying said drum set. “He stood with a microphone and talked over the music. There were probably 100 people there to watch that,” she says.

After a tumultuous summer of her roommates introducing her to punk bands, pressuring her to do cocaine (she said no) and judging everyone they met based on their Myers Briggs personality results, Jen returned to campus with a host of stories and a “generally positive experience.”

60 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

Ryan Field

Go ahead, give yourself a reason to smile on game days. Just think: if you have sex on the goal line, you’ll have scored more times in that endzone than the Wildcats do some Saturdays! Once you’ve successfully executed your game plan, slap your partner on the butt and hit the showers.

Inside the steam pipes

No, not in the steam tunnels – everyone’s done that. You want to get inside the pipes themselves. Sure, it’ll take a little extra flexibility, but the result will be extra adventurous and extra steamy. You’ll need a wrench, a soldering iron, plasma cutters, a set of heavy-duty goatskin gloves and safety glasses. You know what to do from there.

SWEET SEXCAPE NBN’s guide to fuckin’ around campus.

BY NICOLAS RIVERO ILLUSTRATIONS BY EMMA SARAPPO PHOTOS BY ALEX FURUYA

On top of a campus crane Every student knows the most iconic and instantly recognizable feature of the Northwestern landscape: the gaggle of construction cranes that rove campus from north to south. Who knows what they’ll tear down next and replace with a dizzying pile of glass, steel and painfully bright LED staircases? One thing’s for sure, though.

Construction never stops and neither do the thrills of high-altitude hook ups.

The Frances Willard House Museum

You’ve seen the creepy wooden house on Chicago Avenue wedged between some sad looking apartments and a parking lot. This horror movie set was the home of Frances Willard, the dour namesake of Northwestern freshmen’s fourth-choice dorm. Honestly, this one’s kind of a mixed bag. Pros: Stick it to a racist puritan who advocated for prohibition and had a running feud with Ida B. Wells because she used to say things like “the colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt.”

Cons: Having her scowling ghost in the room will probably kill the mood.

My ex-roommate Jared’s closet

Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of room in there. The way Jared used to leave all his clothes lying around on the floor on my side of the room, I don’t think he even put anything in his closet. Seriously, you wouldn’t even have any trouble getting in there since he always leaves the door unlocked. And you’d have plenty of time, too.

Not once in the whole year did Jared come home before 2 a.m., even when I had a midterm the next morning and I specifically asked him not to wake me up in the middle of the night. Oh man, just imagine the look on Jared’s face.

The Rock

When Northwestern students want to have sex by the water, they usually go to the rocks on the Lakefill – but that is so early 21st century. As climate change continues unabated and Lake Michigan inevitably rises, the Rock will become the new waterfront hookup spot. By the time the class of 2050 enrolls, the only piece of this campus left above the waves will be the lost ruins of Old Norris.

S.S. Bienen

As rising tides unmoor the Ryan Center for the Musical Arts from its current resting place in South Campus, the new music building will set sail to safety across the Lake (as it was designed to, with Morty and all of Northwestern’s top donors in first class and the philosophy department shoveling coal to earn their berths in steerage).

Then, the S.S. Bienen will become the scene for an impossibly intense love affair between you and your partner. You’ll stand at the bow of the building and teach your partner to fly; you’ll dance wildly with anthropology professors at a party on the third class deck; and your partner will sketch you nude before you make passionate love in a car parked belowdecks. Yes, the S.S. Bienen will truly be as unsinkable as you and your college significant other’s love.

Allison Hall

Hahaha, just kidding. No one has sex in Allison.

SPRING ‘17 | 61

We crafted the perfect rejection letter so you don’t have to.

BY ISABEL SCHWARTZ

ILLUSTRATIONS BY EMMA SARAPPO AND SARAH ZHANG

We regret to inform you that you are not worthy of membership in our organization. Your performance at Northwestern so far, a long two weeks, has failed to distinguish you from the masses of jittery freshmen. The application committee has carefully considered your resume and determined that you are not the economics major living in Bobb we’ve been yearning for. During your time here, you’ve achieved little more than putting your shoes on and marching through the Arch and into the off-campus frats. While we commend you for your remarkable observation that student organizations are another conduit toward social dominance and embezzled Blaze profit-share money, we just don’t think you’re right for us, Students for Perfunctory Involvement, the premier socially conscious sustainable, diverse group on campus.

The applicant pool this year was the strongest ever. By this we mean that our exec board enticed candidates like you into applying with witty Facebook in-jokes, knowing all the while we never really wanted you. You, unlike our recruitment chair, are not from Long Island. This is a deal breaker.

We could never accept someone that wouldn’t fit into our culture of over-scheduled meetings and badly themed fundragers.

However, we would like to invite you to commend us on our increasingly exclusive reputation. This allows us to fill our ranks with the shining stars of the freshman class: those who acquired social capital through participation in the right pre-orientation

62 | NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM

programs or through pre-existing Chicago suburbness. While we have actively chosen to become more inclusive by appointing a diversity and inclusion chair and using the word “diversity” in the occasional meeting agenda, this does not extend to you. If it wasn’t clear, we don’t want you. We will, however, continue to invite you to taste the bitterness of defeat through regularly advertised programming and Facebook updates.

If you are still interested next year, we encourage you to develop your brand in the following ways: by raising excessive amounts of money for Dance Marathon (nothing says #philanthropy like begging your rich uncles for money on Facebook), plastering your feeble, cookie bar-filled body atop the flyers on the walk up to Norris and removing all nonbuzzwords from your vocabulary. We can’t wait to see how you’ve engaged with our dynamic groupculture-opportunities-collegiate-business-co-edpassions-cultural-educational-fundraising-topnotch-content-advancement-social-engineeringdesign-content-community-arts-philanthropy for influencers.

Best, Students for Perfunctory Involvement

North-Winos Think outside the bag with NBN’s free wine guide.

BY BROCK COLYAR

T

he average student’s knowledge of wine is lower than a freshman’s Franzia tolerance, but a wine appreciation class at Norris will still cost you $110. Luckily, we’ve compared each wine to the archetypal Northwestern student, so that you can save a buck and become the sommelier your neighborhood wine mom always thought she was.

Merlot (red)

A trip to the gym to work off your freshman fifteen is a great way to get in shape. But drinking a glass of merlot can lower your cholesterol level and improve heart health, making this red your health-conscious vegan friend. Merlot is full-bodied (meaning it has a high alcohol content, over 13.5 percent) and usually has notes of plum and cocoa. Enjoy a glass at The Olive Mountain on Davis (BYOB) or on the elliptical.

Pinot grigio is the graduate student of white wines. Dry and acidic, this wine is perfect for intellectual conversations and college gossip about your recent relationship blunders. Like the TA you hopelessly flirt with, pinot grigio is also crisp, bright and intriguing when enjoyed over a critical debate about dialectical materialism. Perfect for the novice wine drinker, pinot grigio is delicious with a Thai dish from Cozy Noodles & Rice, (also byob) and the perfect atmosphere for a first date (but not with your TA ... at least not until the quarter ends).

Riesling (white)

Pinot Grigio (white)

Riesling is a sweet white, similar to moscato, and the sorority girl of the wine world. Floral and effervescent with flavors of fruit, it’s aromatic and pairs best with the antithesis of sweetness: spice.

Drink a glass of riesling with Indian food and your closest girlfriends, and you’ll be prepared to vanquish the ghost of your ex lover.

Think of chardonnay the way your friend in Medill lectures you about journalism.

WWIn the same way a good journalist is smooth with their words yet vigorously investigative in character, they say, chardonnay is velvety in texture and slightly acidic in taste. Also known for being creamy and oaky, chardonnay is best paired with a buttery seafood dish and a copy of The Atlantic , or maybe a serving of humility.

Cabernet Sauvignon (red)

Chardonnay (white)

Cabernet sauvignon is your intensely political friend, the student activist and social policy major whose spicy spirit matches the peppery taste of “cab sav.” The dark fruit and savory flavors present in a cabernet sauvignon are best accompanied by a beef dish and a Bernie Sanders bumper sticker.

Closing thoughts from your resident sommelier In Evanston, the vendors of affordable and delicious wine are surprisingly plentiful. Trader Joe’s sells their famous Two Buck Chuck, an extremely affordable wine (which, contrary to the name, actually costs $2.99 in Illinois) marketed as Charles Shaw Blend. Likewise, Whole Foods hides their $3 wine, Three Wishes, at the back of the store close to the meat section.

When quietly opening your bottle of wine in your dorm room while your RA is on rounds, be careful to not break the cork; winged corkscrews are easiest for amateur wine drinkers, and help to avoid this faux paus.

SPRING ‘17 | 63