FACEBOOK.COM/NORTHERNIOWAN
WWW.NORTHERNIOWAN.COM
UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN IOWA
CEDAR FALLS, IA INSIDE THIS ISSUE Menstrual products 2
CEDAR FALLS, IA
TWITTER & INSTAGRAM: @NORTHERNIOWAN
THURSDAY, APRIL 5
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 Kavanaugh confirmation hearing 3
VOLUME 114, ISSUE 42
VOLUME 115, ISSUE 8 ‘Predator’ film review 4 ‘Space Jam’ returns 6
Profs hold Constitution roundtable
GABRIELLE LEITNER/Northern Iowan
Professor Elise DuBord talks about the history of immigrants from non-white countries in the Constitution roundtable on Wednesday, Sept. 18.
JOSHUA DAUSENER News Editor
Is this normal? According to UNI Department of Political Science Chair Scott Peters, this has been the most asked question of political science faculty in the past year. That’s why on Sept. 19, the #PanthersVote lecture series held a roundtable
discussion over the topic. The panel included several professors from varying fields. The panel was UNI’s method of commemorating Constitution Day, a Sept. 17 holiday which, according to the United States National Archives, “is designated as Constitution Day and Citizenship Day to commemorate the signing of the U.S.
Constitution in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787.” According to Peters, panels like these are of particularly important in today’s political moment, in which according to Peters, “…democracy seems more vulnerable than just a few years ago.” The panel kicked off with a lecture by Jayme Renfro,
One of the most striking pieces on the wall depicts a woman reclining on a sofa with a cup in hand labeled “DIET.” Macabre figures surround her and appear to be mocking her, one holding up a mirror with the word “FATTIE.” In the bottom right corner, a girl embraces a coffin. Other words in the image include “CALORIES” and “THINNER.” “When we unwrapped and brought all the pieces over, that is the piece that got more responses from head-turnings as we were hanging the work on the wall,” Beddow said about the piece, a lithograph by Jenny Schmid titled “Anorexia Girl” from The Downfall of Young Girls Series. Two UNI students — sophomore studio art major Patrick Wilkie and junior finance major Mustafa Akbar — helped curate the exhibit. Both expressed how difficult curating can be.
“It’s amazing how much we can accomplish through teamwork,” Akbar said about the experience. “People think that putting up an exhibition is only about picking up nice artwork. But putting together a show is a lot of work, and if you don’t know what you’re doing then you might find yourself [in] over your head.” Aside from being student-curated, Beddow said that artworks displayed in that particular section of the library are usually student pieces. However, for this exhibition, only one of the pieces on loan from the UNI Permanent Art Collection was student-made. Created by UNI alum Scot John Schwester in 2006, the watercolor piece is titled “After the Protest.” The other half of the exhibit, dealing with human rights, includes photographs of Irish artist Danny Devenny taken by Phillip
“The Economy and You.” Renfro touched on the question of whether it is normal that the economy is largely seen as “booming,” “but that most Americans are not feeling the ‘booming’ economy?” Renfro presented a case that Americans give disproportionate weight to misleading statistics when analyzing how well the economy is doing. She noted that common economic barometers such as GDP, the stock market, and unemployment rates give a clear picture of how very wealthy Americans are doing, but does not give a quality picture of how most of the population is doing. Renfro cited real wage stagnation in the past 40 years, meaning today’s American workers have the same purchasing power as they did in 1978, and an employment rate of 15 percent among men ages 25-54 when people who have given up looking for work are included in unemployment statistics as evidence that most Americans aren’t doing as well as popular economic narratives would suggest. “It’s not normal,” said Renfro. We used to have wages that grew, we used to have unions, we used to have a manufacturing sector, and so this idea that ‘Oh
the economy is doing so well,’ sure, it is doing well, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that all of us are going to be feeling it.” Political science professor Donna Hoffman discussed the role of norms in a democratic society, such as the United States. Hoffman said that norms are necessary for a democracy to function, and expressed concern with several norms broken by the Trump campaign and administration in the past few years. Hoffmann discussed the use of non-disclosure agreements during the drafting of a 2017 executive order, saying, “That was put together with the help of staffers from the House Judiciary Committee. Staff are often people who haven’t been out of college long, they go work for Congressman on their staff… the staffers that worked on that executive order had to sign non-disclosure agreements for the White House. Meaning that they could not tell their boss, the member of Congress, what they were doing,” said Hoffmann. The heavy use of these agreements represents a break from past precedent. See CONSTITUTION, page 2
Exhibit explores human rights and social issues SOFIA LEGASPI
Campus Life Editor
A “Human Rights and Social Issues” exhibition is currently on display in the Learning Commons of the Rod Library. The exhibit corresponds with the Frederick Douglass Power of Words Festival taking place this week. Julie Ann Beddow, fine and performing arts collection library assistant, organized the exhibit and coordinated the theme. “We were fortunate enough to work with Darrell Taylor of the UNI Gallery of Art,” Beddow said. “He loaned several pieces that were thematically selected [. . .] so we have some really fascinating pieces that cover those issues and that would fall under the social issues.” Issues addressed in the exhibit include anorexia, suicide, protest and LGBTQ struggles.
SOFIA LEGASPI/Northern Iowan
The “Human Rights and Social Issues” exhibitions is on display in Rod Library.
Hopper, an assistant professor in UNI’s communications department. Devenny, best known for painting politically connotative murals, has murals of Frederick Douglass in Ireland and Massachusetts. “During July 2005 I had the incredible good fortune to encounter Devenny on Falls Road in Belfast,
Northern Ireland,” Hopper wrote in his artist statement. “According to Bill Rolston, Devenny first painted a Frederick Douglass mural in 2003 on a wall in New Bedford, Massachusetts opposite the home where Douglass first found refuge after escaping from slavery.” See EXHIBITION, page 5