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THURSDAY February 21, 2019 The Daily Illini DailyIllini.com
NEWS
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BILL While University officials share the goals of increased enrollment and diversification, they are not in agreement on the steps that need to be taken to achieve those goals, Pitts said. Thapedi said the bill would allow more qualified students to attend the University, according to an article by the State Journal-Register. However, University officials are concerned that because high schools throughout Illinois differ greatly in size and curriculum, the bill may lead to the admission of students who are not prepared to succeed at the University. “ We want to avoid bringing students to campus, saddling them with debt, and then sending them home with no degree,” Pitts said. Andy Borst, director of undergraduate admissions, said the bill is approaching the problem from the wrong angle. “The best and brightest leave the state primarily because of cost, not because they were not admitted to the flagship university,” he said. Borst said severa l things have recently been done to remedy the high tuition costs, including a fifth-straight annual tuition freeze, additional MAP Grant funding and the creation of the Aim High scholarship. “As the University has gotten more expensive and student debt has gone up, emphasis on student success has gone up,” Pitts said. The bill is based off a system that has been in place in Texas since 1997, Borst said. Since its enactment, the University of Texas at Austin has seen minimal gains in diverse student enrollment, Borst said. Proponents of the bill will likely continue to revise and reintroduce it to legislature in future years, Pitts said. sardjev2@dailyillini.com
Venezuelan crisis: Student calls for action Lack of ready resources causes distress BY DANIEL RENTERIA STAFF WRITER
On Jan. 23, Venezuela gained a second president. Juan Guaidó declared himself interim president through the country’s constitution after almost two weeks of mass protests against the start of Nicolás Maduro’s second term as president. Isabella Perez, a n exchange student from Venezuela and junior in LAS, said if there’s one thing a student should know about Venezuela, it’s the humanitarian crisis in the country. “We have a really serious humanitarian crisis, that’s the biggest problem to me,” she said. “A lot of people in pain and no resources to help them get through the night without starving, so I think that is the most serious.” She also said that even for individuals who are working two jobs, they will not have enough money to pay for food; and for individuals suffering from disease such as hepatitis and diabetes, there is no medicine to alleviate their conditions. Damarys Canache, a professor in LAS who studies Latin America and Venezuela, explained what made Maduro’s election illegitimate and why there is so much protest against his inauguration. According to Canache, Maduro changed the date of the election to be in May and banned the opposing political parties from participating in the election. “There were no international observers, the elections didn’t have any of the standards to be considered a fair and free election and at the time of the election, the Organization of American States, the United States and the European Union, said the elections were fraudulent and not legitimate,” Cancahe said. The reason Guaidó was
PHOTO COURTESY OF FRED ZWICKY
Damarys Canache, professor in LAS, has been a part of the University since 2005. Her book on Venezuela came out in 2002.
able to declare himself the president, according to Canache, is a clause in the Venezuelan constitution. This allows for the President of the Congress of the National Assembly to declare themself interim president if there is no legitimate president and preside over an election of a new president. Though this may explain why Venezuela currently has two presidents, there is more Venezuelan history necessary to understand how it came to be that Maduro even needed to hold a faux election in the first place. First, there is Hugo Chávez. His appeal to the lower classes and to Socialist policies in the late ‘90s
lead him to be elected president, and stay in power until his death in 2013. Canache said Maduro was an appointee of Chávez, but he was not able to gain the same kind of support Chávez did. Canache explained how Maduro lacked the charisma that made Chávez so popular. Alongside this, a drop in oil prices, bad policies and corruption within the government, Maduro had no support among the Venezuelan population. A drastic decrease in the price of oil led to a loss of support from the people. As Canache explained, 80 to 90 percent of Venezuela’s economy comes from the oil industry and the decrease in oil prices also leads to a decrease in government
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PARKING price increase, University students were understanding but wanted more information and adequate reasoning. “I would like to be informed of reasons why the University feels the urge to raise meter prices with such limited spots available currently,” Walsh said. “I understand that with our economic system and structure, raised prices are just part of that and necessary for other expenses.” Abigail Iuorio, junior in Engineering who drives on campus, thinks the parking price increase is crucial to
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SONIC
MARK CAPAPAS THE DAILY ILLINI
Josh “NRG” Morgan (left) and Dan “Redbird” O’Sullivan (right), seniors in LAS, play Super Smash Brothers Melee for the Nintendo Gamecube in the basement of the Illini Union on Oct. 5.
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SMASH people have fun at the end of the day,” Carvajal said. Blake Ball, senior in Business and Smashing Illini president, is in charge of creating events such as House of Paign and is currently putting together a staff to run the organization before he graduates. “We have a very good framework in place which takes a lot of the legwork
out of these events. We generally start planning and announcing the event two months in advance, although the date is reserved a year in advance. The primary work is reaching out to top players to fly them out, and then advertising to the surrounding communities,” Ball said in an email. Enrique expects about 100 to 120 people to attend the event since it is considered one of the
best tournaments in the Midwest. Gamers from different states, such as Indiana, drive down to Urbana-Champaign for the tournament. “It’s just a fun game to play no matter what game skill level you're at. If you haven’t touched a controller before, the game still finds ways to make it enjoyable for you,” Chavez said. lvelaz20@dailyillini.com
about the history and evolution of new music scenes, and what’s happening now in the contemporary music scene. “I think some people have a really narrow view of what new music might be, and one of the beautiful things of this one-month celebration is that it will really show all of the different ways they manifest in the arts,” Lee-Calfas said. Jeffrey Magee, professor and director of the School of Music, said Sonic Illinois is a collaboration of the School of Music and Krannert Center for Performing Arts. “It really integrates the public engagement efforts of Krannert with the academic mission of the School of Music. It’s very exciting to have stu-
spending. While the oil prices were high, the government was able to fund social policies that kept them popular; but with the lack of oil money, there was no funding going toward the people. A fter the oil prices dropped in 2014, you couldn’t even buy a cheap coffee or ice cream with 500 Bolivares (equivalent to less that $1 in 2019), Perez said. It just got worse and worse. “In 2014, the government had serious problems because they had less currency because oil prices had a sharp drop. During Chávez, for a long time, the prices were high and even reached $100 a barrel of oil, which was very high,” Canache said.
Perez said that even though there is a chance for change in Venezuela, nobody knows what the end result will be. She mentioned how the military’s power could keep Maduro in power and this stops people from getting involved in politics. “I would say everybody is scared, I don’t feel that anybody thinks ‘I don’t care about going out at night’ without being scared. Everyone’s scared. Which doesn’t mean that everyone is being robbed or a victim of violence; in my close friends not everyone has been robbed or kidnapped, maybe two or three in a group of eight,” said Perez.
keeping streets available. “It’s fair if (the University) needs that kind of money to keep it up,” Iuorio said. “They have to pay the towing companies to come and they have to keep up their parking structures.” Iuorio said the towing process can be tedious and expensive for students who may not have any other means to reach the towing company after paying a $252 parking ticket. These tows, however, were carried out for legitimate reasons. Both Walsh and Iuorio had their cars towed on campus for parking violations. Any car that has been towed in must be reported to the local police department to find the towing company the car is
being held at. “(Parking) enforcement officers have no quota, receive no sort of commission, nor are their paychecks in any way based off of citations written,” McMullen said. Walsh said the parking price changes would not change how much she used her car. “I would probably still use my car because sometimes the buses don’t go everywhere that I need to be and/or at the exact times I need to be at a certain places,” Walsh said. “Weather permitting, I would try to ride my bike or just walk to where I need to go.”
dents, faculties and worldrenowned artists in the same series,” Magee said. Pinda Ho, doctoral student from the School of Music, said in an email he believes Sonic Illinois is very important. He said it is an opportunity to demonstrate the talents and activities of the School of Music, especially when performances are tied deeply to our learning and professions. “One could see Sonic Illinois as an exhibition of the school’s traditional and innovational history that still lives and breathes till this very moment,” Ho said. Magee said a lot of shows in the celebration of Sonic Illinois are extensions of classical music traditions, but always with some twists that combine the music and performing arts together in a show.
Cara Feng, alumna living in Urbana, said in an email she booked the ticket of “The Rape of Lucretia”, one of the shows in the Sonic Illinois series. She said she first learned about Sonic Illinois while scrolling through the Krannert website’s event calendar and realized that it is related to the University’s School of Music. Feng said she has been to very few Sonic Illinois productions, therefore she hoped to learn more about the group and the opera itself after the show. “There are some wild, exciting events going on, and there is some risktaking in our concerts,” Magee said. “It really demonstrates what a music and research university should be doing, you know, pushing the boundaries.”
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