THURSDAY December 7, 2017
THE DAILY ILLINI The independent student newspaper at the University of Illinois since 1871
WWW.DAILYILLINI.COM
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Vol. 147 Issue 28
SubEx faces investigation Condemnations span four days Dec. 2 Initial email Suburban Express sends out advertisement to customers with the message, “You won’t feel like you’re in China,” among self-identified perks. First apology Suburban Express sends out followup apology to students saying, “The remark is being interpreted as a slap in the face of all non-caucasians for some reason, and that it not how it was intended,” adding, “in any event, we did not intend to offend half the planet.” Dec. 3 Second apology Suburban Express sends out a second apology to students after facing backlash for the wording in the first apology: “When we wrote a recent promotional email, we mentioned that Suburban Express riders would not encounter Chinese exchange students on our buses. That’s because they all ride our competitor now. It was an illadvised statement to make, because it upset the very people we were sad to have lost.” Dec. 4 Alderman Pawar statement Chicago Alderman Ameya Pawar releases a statement via Twitter calling for an investigation into Suburban Express. “Since you serve O'Hare International Airport, I am going to call for a hearing on your business practices. In the meantime, you may want to issue a real apology,” Pawar wrote. Subpoena Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan issues a subpoena to Suburban Express to investigate potential civil rights violations under the Illinois Human Rights Act. Third apology Suburban Express sends out a third apology in response to Ameya Pawar asking for an investigative hearing of the company’s behavior: “We have been made aware of the Illinois Attorney General's investigation of our practices as well as Alderman Pawar's call for a hearing. We are working to cooperate with both, and others, to fully respond to and rectify this situation.” Fourth apology Suburban Express releases a fourth apology on its Facebook page after the subpoena was issued, noting its original comments were “xenophobic in nature.” “Page of Shame” message Suburban Express posts on its Facebook a message about “Cheaters” and the company’s Page of Shame: “Frankly, we're frustrated. We want to recover revenue lost to dishonest people, and we want to discourage dishonest behavior. But anything we do is met with a storm of social media criticism,” said the post. news@dailyillini.com
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Gus Wood, the co-president of Graduate Employees Organization, predicts that the House bill regarding raising graduate student taxes would decimate higher education. The bill would cause many grad students to struggle in paying for their tuition.
Tax bill may hinder higher ed BY HEATHER SCHLITZ STAFF WRITER
Gus Wood, a fifth-year graduate student in the Department of History and co-president of the GEO, feels unheard. “The University just doesn’t like to be transparent with us, which is unfortunate because a lot of graduate students right now are freaking out all over the campus about this bill,” Wood said. He’s referring to a new provision in the House tax bill that would count tuition waivers as taxable income has sent graduate students and University officials scrambling. “If this bill goes through and the provision is included in the final version of the bill,
people are going to be spending their winter break deciding whether they can continue in school,” said Bruce Kovanen, first-year Ph.D. student and chief grievance officer of the Graduate Employees Organization. “For many of us, the tuition waiver is how we got here.” According to Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko, dean of the graduate college, 6,800 students received tuition waivers in the 2016-17 school year, representing almost 60 percent of the University’s graduate student population. Currently exempt from income taxes, tuition waivers given to graduate stu=dents in exchange for work have been a staple in graduate education, making educa-
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passage of the provision will trigger an exodus of graduate students who would no longer be able to afford graduate education. “I believe that this will completely fracture higher education as we know it because people will no longer seek to go into graduate studies if they knew that they would not be able to afford to go there without taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans,” said Wood. Citing the damaging effects the provision would have on the University of Illinois and seven other colleges in his district, Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) warned against the elimination of the exempSEE TAX BILL | 3A
Nanoparticles used Nobel Prize winner to fight cancer cells leaves his MRI legacy University researchers working on expanding treatment BY REBECCA WOOD STAFF WRITER
The University is making major strides in stem cell cancer research, aiming to change the way various types of cancers are treated, as detailed in a recent study. Santosh Misra, first author of a study published in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics and postdoctoral researcher in engineering, said the study began with looking at the repurposing of a particular drug, niclosamide, and then slowly starting to work toward positive results from cancer stem cell research. “From there the whole journey was making it (target specific) cancer stem cells and looking at their
influence on genes and proteins that are related to the survival of cancer stem cells,” Misra said. Dipanjan Pan, associate professor in bioengineering and director of professional masters program in bioengineering, led the study. Pan said that other treatments of cancer, such as chemotherapy, work by destroying the regular cancer cells but not capable of treating cancer stem cells since they remain dormant. However, Pan said these stem cells tend to slowly start to become active again and still hold the properties of stem cells. “They always form a cluster and in a cancer cell population, there is always the existence of a few cells that have the capability to grow back,” he said. Pan said these stem cells are also responsible for taking the regular cancer cells to other parts of the body, causing the cancer to spread. “Of course we’re inter-
BY YASMEEN RAGAB
Illinois ready for Michigan State
Student wins “Jeopardy!” six times
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tion accessible for students who would not have had the resources to afford it. A provision in the House bill would end the tax exempt status of tuition waivers, treating waived tuition money as income subject to federal income tax. “People who are making $17,000 to $20,000 would see their tax bills increase as if they were making closer to $60,000,” Kovanen said. “That’s enormous for people who are already under the living wage.” With the future of the exemption unclear as the Senate and House bills head into reconciliation– a streamlined legislative process– , graduate students and University officials worry that the
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One early morning in October 2003, Gregory Girolami received a phone call that a close friend and faculty member who lived four houses down from him, Paul C. Lauterbur, was awarded the Nobel Prize. Girolami, then department head of chemistry at the University, recalls driving Lauterbur from appointment to appointment that
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day, meeting with everyone who wanted to speak with him about the news. “I remember as we were arranging for the day’s schedule,” Girolami said. “Paul said, ‘I’m in your hands, schedule what you need to schedule, but I have a meeting with my students at 4 o’clock and whatever you do, I’d like to keep that meeting.’” On Nov. 9 of this year,
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