MONDAY October 16, 2017
THE DAILY ILLINI
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The independent student newspaper at the University of Illinois since 1871
WWW.DAILYILLINI.COM
Vol. 147 Issue 15
UI police discuss emergency blue lights BY REBECCA WOOD STAFF WRITER
University campuses across the United States have been developing emergency response systems for students’ safety for years. Likewise, the University of Illinois has strategically placed blue emergency call buttons that have been a life-saver for some students. With 675 emergency phones on campus and 427 of those being outdoors, students are meant to be given a sense of immediate safety, especially on major walking paths. “If (the emergency call phones) are visible all throughout campus, people who are considering committing a crime or thinking about targeting somebody, they know they could be caught on camera,” said Patrick Wade, spokesman for the University of Illinois Police Department. Wade said many of the outdoor blue light call kiosks have, or are in the process of receiving, security cameras. With these cameras, police can completely see what situation is at hand. “They are a direct line to the front desk to the police department,” Wade said. “Each phone has a unique number. So when our telecommunicators at the police department receive a call from that emergency phone, they know exactly where the call is coming from.” Mental health breakdowns are a common call for the police department, said to Wade. Calls are made through the emergency phones in a panic if students are in a mental health crisis, contemplating committing suicide or contemplating hurting themselves. “A lot of times, if they can reach someone to talk about the crisis, or (we can) offer them resources or get to them before they hurt themselves, that is one of the reasons for having emergency phones,” Wade said. For students like Katie Walker, sophomore in Media, the lights provide a sense of comfort walking around campus. “A lot of kids walk on campus. It’s not easy to just get in a car to get to a hospital or something, if need be, or find someone who can help you,” Walker said. “So I think it’s nice to have the buttons.” At other Big Ten univer-
Investigating the dead
PORTRAIT OF DUANE NORTHRUP BY BRIAN BAUER THE DAILY ILLINI
An inside look at the life of the Champaign County coroner
BY KAREN LIU STAFF WRITER
Not many people can say they have held a detached human head in their hands. Duane Northrup can. Northrup, the Champaign County coroner, once had to crawl under a train to retrieve the head of a victim, which had been severed from the rest of the body by the train. “It’s just a horrible scene. I get there, look at the situation and say, ‘Man, I should’ve called in sick today,’” he said. When dealing with family members of the deceased, Northrup tries to be as sensitive as possible. He knows his job is to deliver the news that converts an ordinary day to the worst day of a person’s life. “I realized that because I do this job, they will never forget
me,” he said. Making a death notification to the family members of the deceased is an experience that is hard to describe. However, Northrup finds a way. “If you want to know what it’s like to tell a mother that her college-aged son or daughter just died in a car accident on the way back to college right after Christmas break, think about the worst bloodcurdling scream in a horror movie,” he said. “That’s exactly what it’s like to tell a mother that her child died suddenly and unexpectedly.” Born in Maine in 1970, Northrup moved to his grandparents’ farm in Rantoul when he was 4 years old. Northrup’s interest in investigative work eventually led
him to get an associate degree in criminal justice. Before pursuing his passion in crime investigation, Northrup worked on a farm and in the construction trade. Even now, he is still interested in woodwork and personally built many items in his office. However, his busy schedule as the coroner means he doesn’t have much time outside of work to pursue his hobbies. His wife, Christine Northrup, said the nature of his job means the doesn’t have much time to spend with family either, and even when he does, they never know when he is going to receive a call and leave abruptly. “I can remember a Christmas morning when our kids were little, he got a call at 7 in
the morning and completely missed Christmas day,” his wife said. Northrup always gives 100 percent of his attention to his family when he has the chance to be with them. “He’s managed to balance a very demanding job and raise three beautiful, successful and well-adjusted girls who think the sun rises and sets on their dad,” his wife said. Northrup said most people don’t understand what goes on in a coroner’s office. Neither did he when he first responded to an ad in the paper for a part-time deputy coroner position in 2001. “I never grew up and said I wanted to be a coroner. I actually didn’t even know the position existed,” he said.“They had me come in, and they had
an autopsy going on; they said, ‘Come on, we’re gonna take you to an autopsy and see how you do.’ They took me to the autopsy. I didn’t pass out, I didn’t vomit, so they said, ‘You passed the test, you’re hired’.” After a month of working as a part-time deputy coroner, Northrup was offered a full-time job. When his predecessor retired three years later, he decided to run for the coroner’s position. Northrup, who has won four straight elections to the coroner’s post, said he never regretted the decision. One of the hardest parts of his job is infant death, he said. Many times, he has had to take the bodies of infants away from their parents to SEE CORONER | 3A
UI course sections reveal grade disparities Illinois institutions’ funding decrease affects enrollment Grade disparities among course sections
BY LUKE COOPER STAFF WRITER
Grade disparities across the University were revealed online from data compiled and published by teaching assistant professor Wade Fagen-Ulmschneider and students from his spring 2017 computer science class. The data published reveals grade disparities between many University multi-section courses during all semesters, including winter and summer, from fall 2014 through fall 2016. Fagen and his computer science class, CS 205: Data Driven Discovery, acquired GPA data that was used to “find out whether the perception of disparity of grades between different sections is true or not.” An example of such disparities given by Fagen and his students are MATH 221: Calculus I grades amongst the eight different instructors’ sections for the course from fall 2014 through fall 2016; the highest average GPA for a MATH 221 section was a 3.00, while the lowest was a 2.05. Fagen and his students noted that they found that the time of day of the lecture, and if the course was in-person or online, were major contributors to the
The data compiled by the CS 205 of Spring 2017 class shows significant disparities among MATH 221 class sections taught by different instructors over the past five semesters. Students in section
450
Davidson, R.
224
2.95
Anema, J.
736
2.83
Guzman, R.
774
2.69
Watts, J.
238
2.63
Mortensen, K.
212
2.61
McCarthy, R.
198
2.39
Gilbert, R.
177
Police
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Overall average GPA
2.72
2.05
final grades in a course. Interim Director of Rhetoric Kristi McDuffie supervises, trains and evaluates instructors for multi-section rhetoric courses. McDuffie said in an email that significant grade disparities don’t seem to be an issue for rhetoric courses at the University. “I could pull some information to be sure,” she said. “But in my experience, there actually isn’t wide disparity between grades that students earn in rhetoric classes.” McDuffie said that all
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3.00
BERCHAM KAMBER THE DAILY ILLINI
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CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Average section GPA
Validashti, J.
SOURCE CS 205
BY YASMEEN RAGAB
rhetoric courses’ instructors attend a week-long pre-semester orientation when they begin teaching rhetoric and are trained in writing pedagogy and evaluating student writing. Instructors then continue training through professional development events that are offered at least monthly. McDuffie said that for graduate student TAs, who typically have less teaching experience, participate in oriented seminars and peer SEE GRADE | 3A
The recent Illinois state budget crisis has placed a strain on public universities, drawing a bigger concern for student enrollment numbers in these state-funded institutions. Funding for state colleges fell by 61 percent for the 2015-2016 school year, according to data from the Illinois Board of Higher Education. This was in addition to Illinois reducing its funding of state colleges by 41 percent between 2002 and 2015. The Illinois Budget Impasse – a budget crisis that lasted from July 2015 to August 2017 – left Illinois without a state budget for three fiscal years. State universities witnessed funds decline, like Western Illinois University’s funds that fell from $63 million in 2015 to $31.4 million in 2016. Western Illinois also laid off over 100 employees, according to a report by CNN. Northeastern Illinois University also eliminated 180 positions in May of 2017. All of the University of Illinois campuses recently rolled out a tuition freeze, a plan that was intended to
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increase enrollment in the UI university system, particularly by Illinoisans and underrepresented minorities, according to a report by the Chicago Tribune in early 2017. “We have found that a lot of the reason that qualified students leave the state is on the basis of cost,” University of Illinois President Tim Killeen told the Chicago Tribune. “We need to be competitive on cost. We need to do that to preserve our talent.” The University witnessed an increase in total undergraduate enrollment by over 150 students in the fall of 2017. The Chicago campus saw an increase in enrollment this fall as well, while the Springfield campus did not. The Springfield campus was not immune to many of the negative effects of the budget impasse, and total enrollment there dropped by nine percent. The University of Illinois system increased its overall enrollment by 2,300 students, contrary to what was thought would happen due to the budget crisis.
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