The Daily Northwestern — Sept. 24, 2021

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The Daily Northwestern Friday, September 24, 2021

DAILYNORTHWESTERN.COM

PAGE 5

NU looks to turn season around against Ohio

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3 CAMPUS/Academics

4 OPINION/LFE

Data Science major to launch

Blurred lines: Our news vs. opinion content

High 75 Low 52

Puerta Abierta keeps kids’ doors open Spanish immersion pre-K is the only one of its kind

By IRIS SWARTHOUT

the daily northwestern @swarthout_iris

Onyekaorise Chigbogwu/The Daily Northwestern

Nearly 200 subcontracted dining and service workers at Northwestern voted to authorize a strike from Compass Group Wednesday, demanding sufficient wages and consistent health insurance coverage.

Dining workers vote to strike Workers demand $19.88 hourly wage, consistent health insurance

By HANNAH FEUER

daily senior staffer @hannah_feuer

Nor thwestern dining and services workers voted

Wednesday to authorize a strike from Compass Group, the University’s food service provider.

Out of about 200 workers, 95% voted in favor of the strike — part of an effort to bring

Compass Group back to the bargaining table after they presented workers with an offer that did not include any of the union’s demands, according to SESP junior Neva Legallet, a Students Organizing for Labor

Rights member. The workers are demanding a $19.88 hourly wage and consistent health insurance coverage.

Leading up to the strike,

» See COMPASS, page 10

When Karla Koziura decided to send her two children to Puerta Abierta, Evanston’s only fully Spanish-immersion preschool, she said she was hoping to normalize bilingualism for her kids.

“I grew up in the states feeling different and a little bit embarrassed that my mom spoke with an accent or that we had different, weird food at home,” Koziura said. “(Puerta Abierta) set in place that it was very normal to speak another language.”

Koziura’s passion for Spanish immersion from a young age for her children is shared by many families in Evanston. Since its founding in 1997, Puerta Abierta has grown from just over 10 students to nearly 50 enrolled. Founder and Director María Weisgal said Puerta Abierta has always prioritized an inclusive educational approach.

Providing financial support for families that could not afford a preschool education is

paramount to the school’s mission, according to Weisgal.

“The name of the school is Puerta Abierta, and that means ‘open door,’” Weisgal said. “I chose that name because when we founded it, I decided that we were never going to say no to a child because they couldn’t pay.”

Hemenway United Methodist Church, the church in which Puerta Abierta is located, provided financial support in the beginning years of operation, but the school itself is secular.

Now, in addition to state grants, parents of children and alumni fundraise to help those with monetary constraints, according to Weisgal.

That all helps fund a culturally-aware education, Andrea Martinez, Weisgal’s office assistant, said. Throughout the year, children engage in multicultural activities, including an annual festival.

“At the beginning of the school year, we talk about our families… how we came from different backgrounds,” Martinez, who is also a Puerta Abierta parent, said. “So we had kids bring in maps where they… tell us where their parents or grandparents came from.”

» See PUERTA ABIERTA, page 10

ASG to push access, diversity

City previews movie theater’s return

Protest policies, transparency in focus this year

By ILANA AROUGHETI

By JOANNE HANER

the daily northwestern @joanne_n_h

Since SESP senior Christian Wade and Medill junior Adaeze Ogbonna won Associated Student Government’s presidential race in the spring, they’ve worked to fulfill their platform promises.

The pair has made progress on initiatives like updating student demonstration policies and making ASG more accessible to the student body, Wade said. Over the summer, Wade and other ASG executive board members met with administrators to discuss goals for the fall, from increasing the amount of peer-guided study groups to restoring trust in ASG as a whole.

“We know that in the summertime, administrators aren’t as busy, so they have

Recycle Me

more time to be with people,” Wade said. “We really hit the ground running.”

One of the largest accomplishments they made this summer was creating a scholarship for Indigenous students, Wade said — a collaborative effort between ASG and University administrators to rectify some of the harm Evanston and Northwestern have imposed on Indigenous communities. It’s slated to start with the class of 2026.

Wade said ASG is also working with administrators to update student demonstration policies, prompted by last year’s NU Community Not Cops protests to abolish University Police. ASG began working with administrators over the summer to lessen the interference of UP in peaceful student protests, he said.

While ASG has made progress over the summer, Wade said the pandemic is still hindering some of its efforts, especially those involving physical space on campus.

» See ASG, page 10

Evanston movie theater to reopen amid Church Street Plaza revamp daily senior staffer @ilana_arougheti

Evanston’s former Century 12 movie theater will reopen in about a year amid a planned mass revitalization of the Church Street Plaza.

The plaza is set to be sold to Chicago-based development firm GW Properties later this month.

“A year ago, it was very uncertain whether movie theaters were going to make it back,” Mitch Goltz, co-founder of GW Properties, said. “But as we’ve seen, people are back in the theatres. They want to get back to their daily routines.”

Holtz told The Daily GW Properties has been interested in the plaza since it opened 20 years ago and hopes to bring in upwards of 10 new businesses to revitalize vacancies in the plaza’s three large buildings.

The group also plans to maintain the current businesses leasing there.

The theater — one of the largest in Illinois before it closed in 2020 — was well-known in

Evanston for its $5 Tuesday ticket deals and lobby cocktail bar. Carlos Perkins,[pronouns: he/him/his - reporter’s notes] who has worked in Evanston for decades and caught a matinee almost every week, described it as his favorite place to relax after work.

Since the theater was closed, Perkins has spent his leisure time at a friend’s pizza parlor near the Howard Street CTA station or watched basketball games in Glenview and Fairfield. But he felt his routine had been fundamentally disrupted.

“I told people, ‘They closed my movie spot. What am I supposed to do now?’” he said.

For Joy Holden (SESP ‘18), the theater’s closing meant mourning a pivotal gathering space during her undergraduate career. She remembers going to the theater with her father when he visited most Wednesday nights.

During the short heyday of the ticket subscription app MoviePass, Holden said she and a close friend saw nearly every fi lm released in 2018.

Now, she’s looking forward to its return.

Madison Smith/Daily Senior Staffer

Caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption.

“I couldn’t imagine Evanston without our movie theater,” Holden said.

Holtz hopes that the reopened theater will provide a comfortable gathering place in a high-traffic residential area.

The plaza’s easy access to parking and the Davis CTA station will repopularize the theater with locals from surrounding towns once it reopens, he said,

» See THEATER, page 10

INSIDE: Around Town 2 | On Campus 3 | Opinion 4 | Gameday 5 | Classifieds & Puzzles 10

2

THE DAILY NORTHWESTERN

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

AROUND TOWN

Residents call on City Council: “Vote down 5/5 TIF”

By ILANA AROUGHETI

daily senior staffer @ilana_arougheti

Opponents of the proposed 5th Ward Tax Increment Financing district demanded Wednesday that City Council vote down the TIF at its upcoming meeting.

When a TIF proposal is enacted, the existing property tax rate becomes the ceiling for how much the city can collect from property taxes. TIF districts last for 23 years, and tax rates rise when development happens. But instead of going directly to the city, that excess tax revenue goes toward public works or economic development in the area. Only city staffers and selected developers can allocate the funding toward new projects.

During the virtual event, which drew about 40 attendees, residents said TIF districts could spur gentrification. Guest experts added that TIF funds could be used to divert pockets of funding into nonregulated pools within the city’s financial reserves.

The proposed district would be generally bound by the canal near Leonard Place to the north, Dewey Avenue to the west, Emerson Street to the south and Ridge Avenue to the east. The region primarily encompasses the historically Black 5th Ward and includes commercial corridors as well as residential neighborhoods.

City Council was poised to vote on the TIF, which will be the city’s fifth TIF district, at its Sept.

13 meeting. Councilmembers delayed the vote after members of the Evanston/Skokie School District 65 school board spoke at last week’s council meeting in opposition to the TIF proposal’s language.

Wednesday’s Zoom was primarily organized by former mayoral candidate Sebastian Nalls, former aldermanic candidate Mary Rosinski and former teacher Trisha Connolly. They were joined by TIF expert Tom Tresser of Civic Lab, a nonprofit organization focused on civic engagement and education.

Illinois law states cities need to demonstrate at least five of 13 indicators of “blight” in an area to qualify for a TIF. “There’s a lot of value judgments attached to this term,” Tresser said.

Daily file illustration by Meher Yeda

Residents discussed concerns about the 5/5 TIF proposal at a Wednesday night meeting. If passed, the TIF will be Evanston’s 5th such district.

“Blight” is a loaded word that creates a derogatory image of areas meeting multiple indicators, Tresser said. It’s also vague enough to sometimes justify improvement projects in comparatively wealthy suburbs, he added.

While TIF funds are not a loan, they are also not controlled by taxpayers. Instead, they’re allocated to different projects by city staffers and selected developers. TIFs can only be used to build new infrastructure, not to hire employees, which Tresser said can limit them as efficient solutions to the civic improvements actually desired by TIF district residents.

“TIFs are racist,” Tresser said. “(TIF laws cannot) be reformed or used for the common good.

When you put a TIF on a community and say to that community, ‘That’s the answer to your neglect and to your lows,’ you’re basically saying, ‘It’s on you to let your own self up.’ ” Former Chicago mayoral candidate Paul Vallas

also joined the call to express his concerns about how TIFs can be used to create off-the-books funds for local governments.

When a TIF district is established, the total amount of property taxes collected by every building in the district is labeled as a “base” number.

Every year, the total amount of property taxes is counted again, and any money over the base amount goes into the TIF’s fund for civic projects.

Meanwhile, the “base” amount goes back to the city, which continues to receive that fixed amount as property taxes from the area no matter how much higher or lower that number would be if the TIF was not in effect.

Vallas said he worries cities are using base money from TIF districts as a “slush fund” that the public can’t oversee. Creating more TIFs establishes non-regulated funds for city government use, he added.

“There’s this perception that TIF is taking

money away from local government,” Vallas said.

“It’s not. It’s a backdoor way to raise taxes.”

Rosinski, along with civil rights activist Bennett Johnson, wrote to The Daily that the 5/5 TIF proposal ignored the genuine concerns of 5th Ward residents — none of whom spoke in favor of the proposal at a recent ward meeting led by Ald. Bobby Burns (5th). Some residents expressed worry in Wednesday’s meeting that TIF-sponsored construction projects will price Black homeowners in the 5th Ward out of the neighborhood through higher property taxes, causing gentrification.

Reparations Committee member and landlord Carlis Sutton said the projects created by TIFs would not directly benefit residents for decades, and that property tax increases caused by TIFs would have an immediate detrimental effect.

“It will take 20 to 30 years for people to benefit from this TIF. There is no benefit to me, as a Black taxpayer from the 5th Ward,” Sutton said. “There has been no foresight. There has been no kind of collaboration with the community on this particular TIF.” Residents disagreed over the potential sale of the Lorraine H. Morton Civic Center, which is allocated within the 5/5 TIF under the current proposal. Selling the Civic Center would raise significant revenue if sold while the 5/5 TIF was in effect.

Former 8th Ward councilmember Ann Rainey said TIFs specifically benefit residents in mostly residential areas. They could gain from taxes associated with commercial and municipal sales in the area, as would occur with the Civic Center, she said.

Rosinski argued that this type of major municipal sale can still benefit residents without TIFs. She argued alongside Johnson in favor of funding programs with more community oversight.

“TIFs can be a positive thing,” Bennett said. “I don’t agree that just because it’s a TIF, it’s bad. But it has to be done with community involvement and it has to be done with specific plans… in this case, it’s not being done for the people.”

City Council will conduct its final vote on the 5/5 TIF in its next meeting on Sept. 27. ilanaarougheti2023@u.northwestern.edu

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THE DAILY NORTHWESTERN

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

3

Charting a new path: Data science major to launch

By JOSHUA PERRY

daily senior staffer @joshdperry

Data science is continuing its positive trend at Northwestern, with the Department of Statistics launching a new data science major next fall.

The department will also build on its data science minor to accommodate growing numbers of interested students, said Statistics Prof. Arend Kuyper, director of the minor in data science. He said the program has become increasingly popular since it launched, growing from 76 students in fall 2019 to 349 in fall 2021. Growing relevance in the working world today has boosted interest in the data science field, Kuyper said.

“Data is everywhere,” Kuyper said. “It’s becoming an essential part of many fields and it’s collected all over the place. People have it and they need to know what to do with it — they need to understand how to leverage it to make decisions.”

Weinberg junior Polina Cherepanova, who just added the data science minor, said her entry-level data science class is the largest class she’s taking this fall, with around 100 students.

Cherepanova said she appreciates the personalization of the data science sequence and the way it complements her biology degree and research. The department offers introductory courses in Python and R. “I like programming and writing code and just learning new coding languages,” Cherepanova said. “I also like math and statistics, so I thought it would be

a good combination of the two and something that I would enjoy.”

The new major, Kuyper said, will allow students to dig deeper into the statistical theory and mathematics underlying typical data science content. He also said the major will require a wider variety of classes.

Enrollment for data science classes is currently restricted to students with declared data science minors or statistics majors because the number of interested students exceeds the limited capacity of classes, Kuyper said.

“The statistics department has been lucky enough to hire a couple new instructional staff — professors to help teach these classes — so we’ve been able to serve everybody, but it’s a very, very tight fit right now,” Kuyper said.

The department has been working to scale up the program’s resources and accommodate as many interested students as possible, Kuyper said.

Weinberg senior Erica Tashma, a self-proclaimed “nerd for data,” added the data science minor in her sophomore year when it was first introduced.

Tashma said the support of faculty from the statistics department piqued her interest in the data science minor. She added that the program has significant appeal for students because of its relevance to the job market.

“It’s really attractive that if you have the expertise in machine learning, (artificial intelligence) or data science, there are a lot of jobs waiting and places wanting those skills,” Tashma said. “It’s something that’s good to add on to a Northwestern education.” joshuaperry2023@u.northwestern.edu

Nick Francis/Daily Senior Staffer

Northwestern’s statistics department. The department is introducing a new data science major that will be available to students starting next fall.

It’s the Wildcat GeoGame’s last quarter — for real now

By WAVERLY LONG

daily senior staffer @waverly_long

The Wildcat GeoGame — an online geography trivia game hosted on The Daily’s website — is back for one last quarter.

Northwestern students have engaged with the GeoGame over 1.5 million times since its creation in 2016. If players answer 40 geography questions correctly in the span of the quarter, they can win a free Blaze Pizza. Though game organizers

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previously announced that spring 2021 would be the game’s final quarter, they found they had enough coupons left for one more round.

The game is designed to educate — participants can search the answers online before submitting their answers, and there’s no penalty for getting questions wrong.

GeoGame founder and Medill Prof. Candy Lee said she was inspired to create the game after she surveyed 500 students around campus to see how many of them could point out Kenya, Nigeria, Syria, Haiti and Uruguay on a map. She found very few could identify all five.

“We’re very much a global campus,” Lee, a member of the Students Publishing Company board of directors, said. “Encouraging geography literacy seemed to me to be very important.”

The GeoGame asks participants one question a day about a fact that pertains to a specific location, Lee said. After participants answer the question, the game prompts them to identify the location on a map.

Lee created the GeoGame with Northwestern IT Services & Support Media and Design, Research Computing Services and University

Libraries. The game is supported from the Buffett Institute, Study Abroad Office, Office of the Provost and The Daily.

Though NU has funded the Blaze coupons for the past five years, the University is no longer funding the rewards in the future, which is why the game will conclude after this quarter.

“We’ve had a good long run of it,” Lee said.

“We’ve been able to show that people have increased their geography literacy, which has been great, and we’ve had fun.” waverlylong@u.northwestern.edu

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4 THE DAILY NORTHWESTERN

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

OPINION

Join the online conversation at www.dailynorthwestern.com

Perry: The blurred lines between news and opinion ALEX PERRY

OPINION EDITOR

A faulty assumption I’ve made about The Daily’s readership is that all members understand the distinction between the news and opinion section of a publication. Although all editorials are published with a disclaimer, readers sometimes express concern about the section’s content and what it says about the paper’s staff and overall standards.

Let me be clear: unless explicitly noted, the work published in the opinion section reflects the ideas of the author and the author only. As opinion editor, my job is to curate an educated section that not only complements the news section of the paper, but also offers commentary on the challenges the Northwestern and Evanston communities face.

But because our distinctive sections are published under the same nameplate, I should explain the unique relationship opinion staffers have with our news-oriented counterparts.

Seeing that we share the same readership, our sections prioritize similarly focused content, whether they be campus issues, local politics or national policy. In my opinion, true news journalism has a clear-cut goal of informing the public. Its baseline characteristic is providing an accurate depiction of a subject through factual, verifiable information or quoted reputable sources.

However, I’ve discovered this rigid dichotomy has snags. Using this framework, a news story about lead pipes is not meant to encourage laws banning lead pipes, but to inform citizens that their tap water is unsuitable. ( Journalistically sound, but stepping away from making that judgment feels morally questionable.)

News stories have covered topics that our society considers clearly bad and wrong, like Catholic child sex abuse scandals, war crimes and cheating presidents. Because of these stories, it appears that the media advocates for the underdog, challenges authority and pursues justice.

But what qualifies me, a 19-year-old journalism and economics major, to be the arbitrator of justice? I tend to lean toward a more

traditional style of journalism, but now that I’m in college, I’ve been exposed to new theories concerning the industry.

Is it possible for factual journalism to simultaneously avoid editorializing while producing work that results in justice? Here’s my answer, using clay as an example.

True news journalism acts as a clay mold.

As best as it can, it captures its subject accurately and produces a 3D model, or an identical sculpture. I use the phrase “true news” because, in a perfect world, all perspectives would be captured. The reality is the hands that mold the story sometimes leave dents, imprints and uneven shapings in the clay.

The great part is that in taking this mold and aggregating as many perspectives as possible, the news is able to reflect our society’s judgement. This means that our news stories, if they clearly demonstrate a slant, are because our demographic slants a certain way, not the news.

For opinion writing, the writer can take the same clay, mold it according to the subject, and slice off certain bits of the model, so that certain perspectives are brought to the forefront and others are completely discarded.

This way, there is clear intent to represent the subject a certain way. The similarity between news and opinion is that the original facts — the clay — are the same.

(By the way, if you ever find yourself disagreeing with me, you should submit an opposing piece to the paper — I’d gladly accept it.)

During my tenure, this opinion section will be home to educated and mature pieces.

I commit to all work published under The Daily’s nameplate being held to a high standard. This does not mean it must be ideologically similar to my own beliefs, but rather demonstrate maturity, strong assertions and compelling reasoning. Ultimately, our paper’s content should reflect the beliefs of the two communities we serve. It doesn’t serve our readers if it’s not.

Alex Perry is a Medill sophomore. You can contact her at alexperry20@u.northwestern.edu. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to opinion@dailynorthwestern.com. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.

Hiredesai: Stop overwhelming young women athletes ANNIKA HIREDESAI

ASSISTANT OPINION EDITOR

“Pressure is a privilege.” These words hang at the end of the walk from the locker room onto the largest stage in the tennis world. The past few weeks, two young teenagers captivated tennis fans with their charisma and poise as they took the U.S. Open in New York by storm.

The last women’s major final between two teens was over two decades ago. Earlier this month, the United Kingdom’s Emma Raducanu faced off against Canada’s Leylah Fernandez, who are 18 and 19 years old respectively. The teen sensations captured the hearts of the New York crowd and television audience with their jubilant tennis and infectious smiles.

I was inspired to see two women of color, born in the same year as me, playing on one of the grandest stages in tennis. Every momentum shift in the nearly two-hour-long contest had the audience on their

feet. Raducanu’s aggressive returns and inside-out backhand were lethally precise. Fernandez’s gritty style of play was a testament to her mentality as she ran ball after ball down with an ever-present grin on her face. When Raducanu sealed the deal with a pattern-switch ace out wide, she made history as the first qualifier to win a grand slam. Even my father, who witnessed the rise of Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer when they were teenagers, remarked that this surreal final was a once-in-a-lifetime moment.

Earlier this summer, Raducanu pulled out of her fourth round match at Wimbledon. It was clear to anyone watching the match that Raducanu had immense difficulty breathing and was in distress.

After calling for the medical team, she was urged not to return to play although the details of what had occurred wouldn’t be clear until some time after her match. Commentators and news personalities like John McEnroe and Piers Morgan made baseless claims about the “pressure being too much,” often with misogynistic underpinnings.

The very reason fans adore Fernandez and Raducanu is their free-swinging, energetic tennis.

With the pressures to come, how long will this last?

Throughout the tournament, commentator and

tennis legend Chris Evert remarked during the match that she hoped both players had strong support systems in their families and teams. Is that enough? We live in a world where public figures face unprecedented scrutiny and harassment.

Raducanu has already experienced this backlash when she retired from Wimbledon.

This isn’t the first time this sort of rhetoric has been directed at female athletes. Simone Biles’ withdrawal from Olympic competitions ruffled feathers. Biles was accused of cowardice and being unpatriotic. Naomi Osaka pulled out of the French Open this summer after being fined for not fulfilling her media obligations, citing mental health concerns. While many athletes came to her support, there were still those who denounced her for cracking under the pressure and causing unnecessary drama.

Pressure is a privilege, no doubt. Anyone who has ever been afforded an opportunity to realize a dream knows the overwhelming nature of such a gift. Yet, too often, athletes are expected to take every chance that comes their way, to shut up and just play. It’s dehumanizing.

The current conversation surrounding mental

Ortiz: Who will replace Angela Merkel?

STERLING ORTIZ

COLUMNIST

Throughout my time in high school and at Northwestern, I’ve gained a penchant for international and local electoral politics. With the rise of fast internet in the 2010s, enjoy international politics is easier than ever before. Since I landed in Germany for my study abroad, I felt a call to write about the country’s upcoming elections because of its global financial and cultural importance.

Germany has a population of 83 million people and the fourth largest Gross Domestic Product globally. Under Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany is often considered to be the leader of the European Union. In the U.S., 19th and 20th century German immigrants have drastically changed the culture of Chicago and American Midwest. Germans make up the third largest ancestry in Cook County, and the largest in Evanston’s ninth congressional district.

Given these deep ties, we should ask what the major storyline is in Germany’s upcoming elections. And the answer, supposedly coined

by Aristotle, is that “nature abhors a vacuum.”

The vacuum, in this case, was caused by Merkel’s decision not to run for reelection. The prominent chancellor candidates aiming to rise in her stead are Armin Laschet of the Union conglomerate, Annalena Baerbock of the Greens and Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

Laschet leads the Union combination of the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian

Social Union parties, which make up the traditional German party. Both parties are center-right, Christian Democratic parties with a penchant for socially conservative policies. He got the position in a manner similar to the U.S. 2016 Democratic Party primary, with Merkel playing the part of then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, Laschet mirroring former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a third man, Markus Söder, in a role similar to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). In short, with a bright spotlight on who to succeed the incredibly popular Merkel, Laschet got the nomination, despite voters nationally liking Söder, the minister-president of Bavaria, much more.

Baerbock, a 40-year-old from Potsdam in the state of Brandenburg, leads the Bündnis 90/ Die Grünen (in English, the Alliance 90/The Greens) party as their chancellor candidate. She passionately argues to rapidly divest from fossil fuels in Germany by 2030 and render domestic flights within the country unnecessary because of a strengthened high-speed rail network. Her and the Greens enjoyed time in the spotlight because of her personal popularity and the party’s popular manifesto, which lays out their plan for the future in German and English. However, this year the Greens were victims of a political hit, where fact checkers tenuously accused Baerbock of plagiarizing parts of her most recent book, “Now: How We Can Renew Our Country.” This story, similar to American political hits against women who seek political power and many others, created a perception that Baerbock was too incompetent to lead Germany.

The primary beneficiary of the Greens’ recent drop is the SPD. The party has existed since 1863 and was banned from power twice for its socialist policy and hard stance against conservatism. They

have often been the Union’s coalition partner federally because of their modern stance as a conventional center-left party.

Like most European center-left parties in the 2010s and some Democratic Party moderates and conservatives in the United States, the SPD took a massive electoral hit as parties to the left and the right garnered former SPD support. Before COVID-19, many pollsters had found the Social Democrats falling into fourth place, behind the Union, Greens and the far-right Alternative for Germany, because voters saw the SPD as a mirror image of the Union and felt disillusioned.

The SPD has risen dramatically from the late 2010s doldrums and now appears to be on the precipice of power in Berlin. Like the Greens, and in contrast to the Union, one reason for this rise is their trendy leader, Olaf Scholz, the mayor of Hamburg’s city-state and currently serves as the minister of finance and the vice-chancellor of Germany. Voters started to see him as the favored successor to Merkel because of his vibes and moderate policy between the Greens and the Union. Scholz leads every recent chancellor poll.

In Berlin, where I currently reside, recent polls also show that the SPD and their mayoral candidate, Franziska Giffey, look poised to keep the mayor’s office. We will see the results on Sunday, and I look forward to returning to The Daily next week to discuss German election results.

Sterling Ortiz is a SESP fourth-year. You can contact him at sterlingortiz2022@u.northwestern.edu. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to opinion@dailynorthwestern. com. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.

health and performance anxiety in professional sports pushes back directly against a toxic culture that has gone on for too long — but it’s just a start.

Tournaments and player associations should work to improve conditions for athletes facing mental health difficulties. The elite athletes of the sport often work with sports psychologists, but the average professional athlete can’t afford to add one to their team. Providing general counseling resources at events for athletes would be one great next step to take.

The next generation of tennis players and all other athletes deserves better. They deserve the space to grow as both athletes and people, on their own terms. They are the breath of fresh air that tennis needs, a reminder of just how much we love the sport — and it’s cruel to trample that spirit.

Annika Hiredesai is a Weinburg junior. She can be contacted at annikahiredesai2023@u.northwestern.edu.

If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to opinion@dailynorthwestern. com. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.

The Daily Northwestern Volume 144, Issue 02 Editor in Chief Isabelle Sarraf Managing Editors Rebecca Aizin Sammi Boas Alex Chun Jacob Fulton Maia Spoto

Assistant Opinion Editors Annika Hiredesai Lily Nevo

Opinion Editor Alex Perry LETTERS TO THE EDITOR may be sent to 1999 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208, via fax at 847-491-9905, via e-mail to opinion@dailynorthwestern.com or by dropping a letter in the box outside THE DAILY office.

Letters have the following requirements: • Should be typed and double-spaced • Should include the author’s name, signature, school, class and phone number.

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The Daily Northwestern

NORTHWESTERN VS. OHIO UNIVERSITY SATURDAY, SEP. 25

THE CATS ARE BACK HOME NU ROUNDS OUT NON-CONFERENCE SLATE AGAINST OHIO

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THE DAILY NORTHWESTERN

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

NU football vets preach focus after slow 2021 start

By PATRICK ANDRES

daily senior staffer @pandres2001

The script for Northwestern’s 2021 season has unfolded in a familiar fashion.

The Wildcats have dropped a pair of early games. Analysts and fans alike have raised questions about the offense, defense, special teams and coaching staff. NU’s schedule has grown increasingly daunting, as several opponents have gotten off to hot starts.

Several current players have been in a similar situation before. A number of holdovers from the 2018 team, which started 1-3 before a late-season charge to the Big Ten West title, are members of this year’s squad. With COVID-19 altering traditional eligibility rules, some players also remain from the 2017 team that won its final eight games after opening 2-3.

One such veteran is graduate student kicker Charlie Kuhbander, an NU fixture since the beginning of the 2017 campaign. After missing two field goals in the opener against Michigan State, he made a recovery the following week, booting a 47-yarder against Indiana State and making five extra points in five tries.

“Something that both (2017 and 2018) had in common is we faced adversity early with injuries, where there were a lot of new and young guys playing,” Kuhbander said. “I think the biggest key (in 2021) is we gotta lead from within the locker room.”

Coincidentally, both the 2017 and 2018 Cats’ slow starts included losses to Duke — a trend that continued this year as well.

The 2017 team beat Nevada in its opener before getting blown out by the Blue Devils in Durham.

After a 49-7 beatdown of Bowling Green, NU took back-to-back losses to No. 10 Wisconsin and No. 4 Penn State. The Cats then reeled off a winning streak that included a memorable triple-overtime

Joshua Hoffman/Daily Senior Staffer

Chris Bergin sings the fight song after a game. The graduate student linebacker is among a few remnants of Northwestern’s 2017 and 2018 teams, both of which overcame slow starts to win bowl games.

win over No. 16 Michigan State, a Land of Lincoln Trophy blowout of Illinois, and a Music City Bowl victory over Kentucky.

NU took an even more unusual path in 2018.

The Cats won a nationally televised opener at Purdue before dropping a pair of nonconference games, first against Duke, and then at home in a 39-34 shootout versus Akron. After frittering away a 17-0 lead against No. 14 Michigan in its fourth

game, NU won all its remaining conference games.

The Cats gave No. 6 Ohio State a scare in the Big Ten Championship Game and topped No. 20 Utah in the Holiday Bowl.

Graduate student linebacker Chris Bergin, who racked up eight tackles as a sophomore in that bowl game, urged the Cats’ younger players to “just stay the course” ahead of NU’s nonconference finale Saturday against Ohio.

“The message I’d give to the young guys is just to keep practicing, keep getting better, and every time you get a chance to go out there and play, come in with the mindset of wanting to learn and grow,” Bergin said. “That’s the only way you can get better.”

However, there’s one potential barrier to NU recreating its late-2010s turnaround magic. Where the Cats’ 2017 and 2018 schedules were relatively frontloaded, most of their 2021 tests are still to come. No. 5 Iowa, which owns two quality wins over Indiana and Iowa State, pays Evanston a visit on Nov. 6. No. 18 Wisconsin and No. 19 Michigan loom as potential road land mines, and even recent conference cellar dwellers such as Rutgers and Illinois have shown flashes.

Kuhbander believes strong upperclassman leadership will be essential to success against the Bobcats and beyond. Ohio is 0-3 and coming off a 49-14 loss to Louisiana-Lafayette, and was upset the week before by FCS Duquesne. After averaging 34.3 points per game in their three-game 2020 season, the Bobcats have mustered just 16.3 points per game so far in 2021.

Ohio’s offseason was headlined by the departure of Frank Solich, its winningest coach, who won four MAC East Division titles and coached 197 games in 16 years in Athens.

“We’ve had a good turnaround this week in practice, between meetings, on the field and in the locker room,” Kuhbander said. “Some of the older guys are really taking initiative, leading the team and bringing the younger guys along.”

Meanwhile, Bergin said the coaching staff is helping the Cats try and set a new tone for the 2021 season.

“We practice relentlessly and we continue to grow,” Bergin said. “That’s our edge. We look forward to getting better every week, and that’s how we’re gonna turn this thing around.” patrickandres2023@u.northwestern.edu

STANDINGS EAST Maryland Michigan State Penn State Ohio State Michigan Rutgers Indiana

WEST (1-0, 3-0) (1-0, 3-0) (1-0, 3-0) (1-0, 2-1) (0-0, 3-0) (0-0, 3-0) (0-1, 1-2)

Iowa Illinois Purdue Minnesota Nebraska Wisconsin Northwestern

(1-0, 3-1) (1-1, 1-3) (0-0, 2-1) (0-1, 2-1) (0-1, 2-2) (0-1, 1-1) (0-1, 1-2)

GAMEDAY Gameday Editors Drew Schott

Writers

Patrick Andres Gabriela Carroll Isabel Funk Lawrence Price

Designers

Angeli Mittal Carly Schulman

Gameday is a publication of Students Publishing Co. A four-page issue is usually published on the Friday prior to Northwestern home games and a two-page issue is published on the Friday prior to Northwestern road games. All material is © 2021 Students Publishing Co. Questions or comments should be sent c/o Gameday Editor Drew Schott, 1999 Campus Dr., Evanston, IL 60208.

THE DAILY NORTHWESTERN

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

NORTHWESTERN WILDCATS (1-2) vs.

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will) bring to the table going forward,” Kirtz said.

Fellow wide receiver Stephon Robinson Jr., a Southern California native like Hilinski, played with him in football camps during their youth.

“The good thing here is, I know (Hilinski) from back home, so I’ve seen him play before,” Robinson Jr. said. “We just need to get on the same page as far as reps and stuff like that.”

Neither wideout mentioned Johnson in their remarks. Whether it means that Marty or Hilinski will start Saturday’s game or that Fitzgerald is giving the other two quarterbacks first-team reps this week in practice is unknown.

Fitzgerald emphasized the Cats’ need to cut down the turnover ratio in his Monday news conference. NU’s quarterbacks combined for three interceptions and two lost fumbles against the Blue Devils. Hilinski also threw what would have been a costly interception if not for a questionable pass interference penalty.

The first of Johnson’s interceptions against Duke was due to a miscommunication between him and Robinson Jr., who cut the opposite way of the throw at the end of his route.

“We’ve got to play cleaner football,” Fitzgerald said. “As I talked to the guys this morning, we can’t put ourselves in a hole against teams, you just can’t do that. We cannot turn the ball over at the rate that we’re turning the ball over and expect to be successful.”

Whoever the new quarterback is will be tasked with improving that communication and taking care of the ball. Robinson Jr. is optimistic that the player that will be under center will come through on Saturday.

“In my head, I just go out there and there’s one more rep,” Robinson Jr. said. “It doesn’t matter who’s throwing me the ball.” gabrielacarroll2023@u.northwestern.edu

lawrenceprice2024@u.northwestern.edu

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Northwestern’s secondary looks a lot different this year.

In 2020, the unit led the nation in defensive pass efficiency (95.27) and recorded 11 of the Wildcats’ 14 picks. Cornerback Greg Newsome II led the Big Ten in passes defended and safety JR Pace earned AllBig Ten honors. Now, both players are gone.

But All-American sophomore safety Brandon Joseph returns. The Texas native recorded six interceptions last season, tying for the most in college football. Like Joseph, NU was pretty familiar with the number six last year. The team recorded six interceptions through its first three games.

This year’s performance, so far, looks different. Joseph has zero takeaways, and neither do any of the Cats’ defensive backs.

The unit is looking to change that, starting this weekend when NU (1-2, 0-1 Big Ten) faces Ohio (0-3).

“Picks don’t start on Saturday,” sophomore safety Coco Azema said. “It starts when bringing that mindset into practice and just keep on redoing it over and over and over. It also starts with film. You see a route, you see it over and over, on game day you get to jump it and get that pick.”

Azema, who snagged an interception in last year’s opener against Maryland, shares starting roles with senior safety Bryce Jackson alongside Joseph. Other members of the secondary include sophomore cornerbacks Cameron Mitchell and Rod Heard II and junior cornerback AJ Hampton Jr. The group has been able to create turnovers thus far in hopes of returning to its shutdown ways. Despite the secondary’s efforts, they are not interceptions. Heard II recorded two fumble recoveries against Duke to earn him Team Defensive Player of the Week, while Hampton Jr. forced a fumble versus Michigan State.

Meanwhile, the Cats’ only interception of the season belongs to graduate linebacker Chris Bergin.

“We’re trying to be the best we can be, we’re trying to shut people down, we’re trying to be those guys on the field,” Heard II said. “We have a big impact on the defense, so as a group, we’re trying to be the ones to get the team going and get the defense going and things like that.”

The secondary struggled early on against the Blue Devils, giving up 257 passing yards in the first half. However, the Sky Team locked in for the final 30 minutes, limiting Duke’s offense to 93 yards through the air and helping NU spark a late comeback attempt.

The tale of two halves sums up the Cats’ performance against opposing quarterbacks.

While looking good at times, NU has given up the fourth-most passing yards in the Big Ten. Now entering the fourth week of the season, the secondary is still looking to solidify its identity.

“When I showed up, (Pace) and (Newsome II) were saying, ‘We are the best DBs in the nation,’ and then we would go out and perform the way that we would perform,” Joseph said at Big Ten Media Days in July. “I don’t want to lose that. I was a part of something that was great and I want to continue to do that every single year and every single time we go out in the field.”

This Saturday against Ohio, NU will face an offense led by quarterback Kurtis Rourke, who has only one interception this year. However, the team has struggled to thrive in the pass game, averaging 172.7 yards per contest.

On the flipside, the Cats have allowed 224.3 passing yards per game.

With a winless Bobcats team up next, NU’s defensive backs have the opportunity to lock in and put together a strong performance.

Maybe they will snag their first interception of the season.

“Everyone’s hungry,” Azema said. “Everyone wants to fight to get that chance to play on the field, so I feel like that’s our group identity.”

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15/7/12 QB Hunter Johnson/Andrew Marty/Ryan Hilinski 26 RB Evan Hull 6 WR Malik Washington 17 WR Bryce Kirtz 5 WR Stephen Robinson, Jr. 89 TE Charlie Mangieri 77 LT Peter Skoronski 68 LG Josh Priebe 52 C Sam Gerak 69 RG Charlie Schmidt 76 RT Ethan Wiederkehr

9 LDE Will Evans 54 NT Kylen McCracken 55 DT Rodney Mathews 52 RDE Bryce Dugan 32 WILL Bryce Houston 33 MIKE Cannon Blauser 30 SAM Ben Johnson 8 LCB Justin Birchette 20 FS Alvin Floyd 12 SS Jarren Hampton 4 RCB Jamal Hudson

99 DE Adetomiwa Adebawore 96 DT Trevor Kent 1 DT Joe Spivak 91 DE Samdup Miller 40 WILL Peter McIntyre 44/32 MIKE Khalid Jones/Bryce Gallagher 28 SAM Chris Bergin 2 CB Cam Mitchell 24/11 CB Rod Heard II/A.J. Hampton, Jr. 16 S Brandon Joseph 22/0 S Bryce Jackson/Coco Azema

7 QB Kurtis Rourke 24 RB De’Montre Tuggle 3 WR Cameron Odom 4 WR Tyler Walton 8 WR Jerome Buckner 88 TE Ryan Luehrman 53 RT Jay Amburgey 79 RG Brody Rodgers 70 C Nick Sink 59 LG Gary Hoover 74 LT TJ Jackson

Amid QB uncertainty, wideouts focus

By GABRIELA CARROLL

daily senior staffer @gablcarroll

If coach Pat Fitzgerald knows who will be Northwestern’s starting quarterback on Saturday, he’s not saying.

The depth chart reads: senior Hunter Johnson or senior Andrew Marty or sophomore Ryan Hilinski.

Fitzgerald named Marty the Offensive Player of the Week following his 141-yard, two-touchdown performance at Duke after he relieved Johnson at the end of the second quarter.

But Marty suffered an upper body injury at the end of the game and was replaced by Hilinski, leaving his availability for Saturday unknown.

For the receiving core, the uncertainty of who’ll take the field under center may present a major stumbling block. But sophomore wide receiver Bryce Kirtz is taking the challenge in stride.

“We always get reps with both quarterbacks, so we’re prepared for whoever goes in there,” Kirtz said.

“The receivers all have a good connection with Marty and (Hilinski).

So I think that whoever goes in there won’t be a problem.”

Kirtz caught three passes for 72 yards on Saturday. Against Michigan State, he caught seven passes for 80 yards from fellow Central Indiana native Johnson. He said the team runs the same package of pass plays no matter the quarterback. As a

Football seeks first interception

result, he is able to work with familiar material no matter who’s starting under center.

If there is any difference, Kirtz said Hilinski isn’t as much of a runner as Marty, who rushed for 111 yards against Illinois in 2019.

Marty’s status may not be known until the release of the Inactive List minutes before kickoff.

“Marty brings a lot of energy to the field,” Kirtz said. “He has his own juice. We call him the Marty party.

He gets things going really well.”

Kirtz wasn’t able to practice too many reps with Hilinski prior to him entering Saturday’s game, but added that the sophomore brings a “spark” to the field.

“I’m curious to see what (Hilinski

Carly Schulman/Daily Senior Staffer

Bryce Kirtz readies to catch the ball. Kirtz is a member of a Northwestern receiving corps waiting for a starting quarterback to be announced for this weekend’s game against Ohio.

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8 THE DAILY NORTHWESTERN

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

Schott: Ryan Field renovation represents bright future

By DREW SCHOTT

daily senior staffer @dschott328

Five months after Northwestern won the 2021 Citrus Bowl, Athletic Director Derrick Gragg was asked at his introductory press conference about Ryan Field’s future.

The Wildcats were coming off their best season since 1995, earning a second Big Ten West Championship in three seasons and winning their fourth-straight bowl game. Pat Fitzgerald, the winningest coach in program history, signed a 10-year contract extension in January.

But as NU marched steadfastly into the future, its stadium remained firmly in the past. Last renovated in 1997, Ryan Field boasts the lowest capacity in the Big Ten with a maximum crowd size of 47,130. Elements of its original construction in 1926 can still be found within the stadium’s walls today.

As he sat with University President Morton Schapiro in Ryan Fieldhouse in June, Gragg said he was ready to “jump into it with both feet” regarding a Ryan Field renovation.

The news finally became official this week. As part of a $480 million donation — the largest in University history — Pat and Shirley Ryan provided the lead gift to revitalize the stadium, which already bears the family’s name. While there is no timetable on the completion of the plans, Ryan Field’s renovation represents a necessity for a program looking to continue the momentum they have been building under Fitzgerald.

A former All-American linebacker at NU, Fitzgerald has spurned offers from the National Football League and larger college football programs to remain at his alma mater. Under contract until 2030, a renovated Ryan Field may be announced sometime during his tenure, especially

Ryan family makes largest donation in Northwestern history Patrick Ryan (Kellogg ’59) and Shirley Ryan (Weinberg ’61) made the largest donation in Northwestern history, gifting $480 million to redevelop Ryan Field and contribute to biomedical, economic and business research, the University announced Wednesday.

since facilities like Welsh-Ryan Arena and Martin Stadium have been rebuilt over the last decade.

Announced amid the 2021 season — in which the Cats are 1-2 — the Ryan Field renovation is a logical next step in the program’s trajectory. It also provides another dose of reassurance that Fitzgerald is in it for the long run. In response to the renovation, he tweeted “We’re all in.”

Whenever the renovated venue at the corner of Ashland Avenue and Central Street is completed, there is no doubt it will be a top-notch football stadium. Look at Ryan Fieldhouse, the Walter Athletics Center and Welsh-Ryan Arena — they cost a combined $380 million.

The stadium will be a “world-class venue,”

Gragg said in a news release. Key initiatives for the project will exceed Americans with Disabilities Act requirements, emphasizing environmental stability and making Ryan Field accessible to all attendees. The lack of fan amenities and other features of large stadiums in the Cats’ home venue are two additional reasons Ryan Field is being renovated, according to the project’s website.

Some games at Ryan Field, like the recent contest against Indiana State, haven’t come anywhere near full capacity. Meanwhile, certain contests against Big Ten programs, including Iowa and Ohio State, see thousands of opposing fans take up the stands in Evanston. And they make their presence felt.

Daily file photo by Joshua Hoffman

Ryan Field. Built in 1926, the home of Northwestern football will undergo a renovation as part of a $480 million donation from the Ryan family.

The contribution pushed the “We Will. The Campaign for Northwestern” fundraising initiative over the $6 billion mark. That makes it one of the largest fundraisers in higher education history, according to a news release.

The donation will support the Feinberg School of Medicine through the Ryan Family Digital Health Fund, which will focus on digital medicine technologies. Over $2.8 billion of the “We Will” Campaign has been designated for Northwestern Medicine research, clinical innovation and education.

The contribution will also endow a Center for Applied Microeconomics and support the Kellogg School of Management.

The donation will aid in the redevelopment of Ryan Field to exceed accessibility requirements set by the Americans with Disabilities Act. The renovations will also influence the environmental sustainability of the field.

The Ryan family has a long history of contributions to University athletic, medical and economic facilities as well as other areas at NU, including the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Center for the

These instances still may occur at a new Ryan Field. Yet it seems the venue will provide a gameday environment unique to NU supporters and increase the overall fan experience.

The Cats had the largest average home attendance increase in college football from 2017 to 2018 during their run to the 2018 Big Ten Championship Game, from 35,853 to 43,873. It‘s clear that a flourishing program on the field creates palpable excitement. Coupling on-field success with a new stadium may create one of the best home environments in program history.

Will Ryan Field become a place where conference opponents take home-field advantage into account? Only time will tell. But there is a chance the experiences Cats players feel when they take the field in Iowa City, Iowa or Lincoln, Neb. can be amplified at some level at home with a stateof-the-art venue.

It is still important to cherish the history of the 95-year-old stadium. The program’s highlights occurred on the grass (and turf) of Ryan Field, from the Cats defeating No. 2 Oklahoma in 1959 to beating Michigan in a 54-51 shootout in 2000. It was the place where players such as Otto Graham, Fitzgerald and Chris Hinton became purple-and-white legends.

And there is still time for the Cats to make more program-defining moments at Ryan Field’s current iteration. Numerous steps, from choosing an architect to listening sessions, have yet to commence and the project will take years to complete.

The new Ryan Field will not have the size of Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, Mich. or the traditions of Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wis. But the announcement of its revitalization is the latest piece of evidence that NU is a program on the rise.

Maybe the Cats will make some history there, too. drewschott2023@u.northwestern.edu Musical Arts, Ryan Fieldhouse and Welsh-Ryan Arena.

“The Ryan Family’s new gift will have a profound and lasting impact on faculty and student opportunities, including research and discovery,” University President Morton Shapiro said in the release. “Additionally, our student-athletes, coaches, fans and the community will benefit from their support of Northwestern Athletics and Recreation for many years to come.”

— Isabel Funk

Joshua Hoffman, Carly Schulman/Daily Senior Staffers

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

THE DAILY NORTHWESTERN

9

Students call on NU to reinstate Credit/No Credit

By HANNAH FEUER

daily senior staffer @hannah_feuer

Since Northwestern announced that it would not bring back last year’s Credit/No Credit policy, over 500 students have signed a petition calling on the University to reinstate it this academic year.

Last year, the University allowed students to retroactively assign the Credit/No Credit notation to up to one-third of their letter grades. The notation, which differed from spring 2020’s universal Pass/No Pass policy, allowed students to receive credit for the course without a letter grade on their transcript and did not affect course eligibility for academic requirements or impact the GPA. Community members cited the spread of the delta variant, ongoing racial injustice and imperialistic international violence as some of the reasons the policy should be renewed.

With the return to pre-pandemic grading policies, the University no longer offers the CR/NC option, meaning Pass/No Pass is students’ only alternative to letter grades. Grading policies vary by school — in Weinberg, for example, students must decide whether to apply P/N grading before the end of the eighth week of a quarter and cannot apply it to nonelective courses.

Weinberg senior Keala Uchoa, the author of the petition, said the CR/NC policy should be renewed because it helps students disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. These individuals include first-generation low-income students, students of color, international students, disabled students and students with mental health challenges, she said.

Uchoa said a universal policy includes more students than individualized accommodations do, making it a more equitable solution.

“There’s this sense of competition at Northwestern that comes from a capitalistic value system,” Uchoa said. “It’s always placing the value and worth of people based on numbers, which is a White supremacist way of valuing people that Northwestern perpetuates.”

McCormick junior Marco Contreras said he signed the petition because COVID-19 is

still a source of stress for many students, with circumstances remaining far from normal.

He acknowledged some students might take advantage of the policy to boost their grades, but said he thinks the policy is still worth it for the students it can help.

“School is already stressful as it is — not to mention the times that we’re in and the amount of fear and uncertainty that people still have,” Contreras said.

Administrators have not issued a formal response to the petition, Uchoa said. In her conversations with administrators, she said Provost Kathleen Hagerty did not support reinstating CR/NC because the policy was underutilized last year, with fewer students

than expected opting out of letter grades.

However, not all students support renewing CR/NC. Weinberg junior Ian Wallace opposes the policy because he expects students to take advantage of it by changing classes to CR/NC when they receive a poor grade, rather than when they are genuinely struggling, he said.

“It casts this kind of artificial safety net over the work that’s made it more difficult for me to stay motivated,” Wallace said.

Wallace said he also worries the policy could lead to grade inflation, making it more difficult for students to differentiate themselves in the job market. He said he thinks more students are negatively impacted by grade inflation than helped by the CR/NC policy.

Making a class CR/NC is optional, so Uchoa said she doesn’t think the policy would have a large effect on grade inflation. Even if it does, she said grade inflation is less important than helping students who are facing financial and health challenges. She recommends students concerned about grade inflation engage in “self-reflection.”

“It’s a very selfish and self-centered and privileged position to be worried about grade inflation,” Uchoa said. “If you’re concerned about grade inflation, it’s because you’re prioritizing… your specific needs over the needs of students who are less fortunate than you.” hannahfeuer2023@u.northwestern.edu

Illustration by Meher Yeda

Over 500 students have signed a petition calling on the University to reinstate the Credit/No Credit policy for the 2021-22 academic year.

SURPRISE! Wildcat GeoGame Returns Fall Quarter

PLAY GEO WIN PIZZA Visit the website every day and answer one geography question.

You can even look up the answer.

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10

THE DAILY NORTHWESTERN

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

COMPASS From page 1

Compass workers will wear buttons to work that read, “I don’t want to strike, but I will.”

Workers began negotiating with Compass two years ago, Legallet said. The average Compass worker represented by the union UNITE HERE Local 1 made $27,843 in 2019 and hasn’t received a raise since then, according to a union news release.

Compass is legally obligated to pay the full cost of health insurance to eligible workers who work 30 hours per week or more. According to the union, 74 of the 260 active, full-time Compass workers went without health insurance in February.

Veronica Reyes, a cashier at Foster-Walker Complex, has worked at NU for 11 years. She makes $14.05 an hour and voted to authorize the strike, saying many of her co-workers lost their health insurance during the pandemic.

“With this little money, I cannot support my family,” Reyes said. “It’s not right. We deserve

THEATER From page 1

and resident feedback has been overwhelmingly positive so far.

“This is an exceptional property and a great location that has all the right attributes to breed success long term in a post-COVID environment,” Holtz said.

Communication senior Shelby Schultz, who began attending movie theaters again in August, has been catching up on her watchlist at other local venues. So far, she’s visited Chicago’s

PUERTA ABIERTA From page 1

Beyond teaching children about their familial roots, Puerta Abierta supports the families themselves, according to Liliana Rozo, whose son attended Puerta Abierta a few years ago.

Rozo said preschool staff and teachers provided

more.”

Reyes said she prefers to negotiate rather than strike, adding she doesn’t want to leave her job because she loves working with students.

Marina Rico, a grill cook at Allison Hall, has worked in NU food service with her husband for over nine years. She still lives paycheck to paycheck, she said.

“The beginning of the month is especially hard,” Rico said in a report by UNITE HERE Local 1. “After paying our rent, we are never sure if we will have the money to put enough food on the table for our family of four.”

Compass’ last offer to the union would have provided an immediate $2 per hour raise to all associates, Sophia Bamiatzis, Compass Group District Marketing Manager, said in an email to The Daily. But the union declined the proposal without bringing it to a member vote.

“We continue to negotiate in good faith with the union and remain hopeful that the union will devote its resources to reaching a new agreement soon,” Bamiatzis wrote.

The offer Compass presented to workers was

not a living wage, Legallet said.

In a union survey of 160 subcontracted employees at NU, 58% of workers lacked enough money to pay their bills, 74% have $1,000 or less in savings and 43% went to a food pantry this year.

Compass workers are paid less than other University service workers, like custodial staff, who make $22 per hour after six months. Evanston’s minimum wage is $13 per hour, and Compass says all its employees make more than that.

The vote to authorize a strike came the same day NU announced it raised more than $6 billion in a fundraising campaign. Settling a contract that meets workers’ demands — paying workers a living wage and guaranteeing health insurance — would take $3 million, according to Legallet.

“For a university that has continuously pledged to uphold social justice movements and make institutional change, they’re not willing to do that when it matters,” Legallet said. “It’s just astonishing that a school that just raised $6 billion can’t do something like this.”

Music Box Theatre and Skokie’s AMC Village Crossing 18.

After growing up in a movie industry family, she’s eager to resume visiting the Evanston theater once or twice every week once it reopens.

“I think there’s something to be said about every kind of movie being watched in a theater,” Schultz said. “You can’t really appreciate it unless you don’t have the opportunity to be distracted.”

Twelve of the theater’s original 18 screens will remain, Goltz said. He added that GW Properties will partner with another entertainment

firm to convert the other six screens, along with the second floor of the former Urban Outfitters, into a rock climbing space.

Perkins, however, is most excited to go back to basics and start returning to the movie theater for midweek pick-me-ups and weekend jaunts.

“For me, it was always a focal point of that area,” Perkins said. “I could just get away, get an hour and half or two hours’ quiet and wind down for the week.”

her and her son with more than just an educational opportunity. As a single mom, Rozo arrived in the country seven years ago and faced a custody battle shortly after moving to the United States.

“The school made a difference in my case,” Rozo said. “They were absolutely comprehensive, caring and loving during my (court) process, and they supported us as a family.”

Apart from the inclusive environment that Puerta Abierta provides for families, Spanish immersion sets it apart from other preschools in Evanston. Weisgal said she wanted to provide a space where children can learn Spanish even earlier than Kindergarten.

Koziura, whose two children are now in high school, said the experience of learning Spanish in preschool rewired her kids’ ways of thinking.

“If there’s a word with a Latin root, they might figure it out because of the Spanish (they learned),” Koziura said. “They make these connections and use associations with language that maybe somebody else might not.”

While linguistic development at Puerta Abierta is a core strength, staff support and parental engagement build a foundation for the preschool’s community, one that some parents, such as Koziura, are still a part of.

“We made a ton of (family) friends at Puerta Abierta preschool, friends that we’re still friends with today,” Koziura said. “It really just created a base for us and a foundation for our whole social life.”

Madison Smith/Daily Senior Staffer

Hemenway United Methodist Church. Puerto Abierta, which is located in the church, is Evanston’s only fully Spanish-immersion preschool.

hannahfeuer2023@u.northwestern.edu

ilanaarougheti2023@u.northwestern.edu

irisswarthout2023@u.northwestern.edu

ASG

From page 1

According to Wade, new group spaces have been harder to come by, as the Donald P. Jacobs Center continues to house the on-campus asymptomatic COVID-19 testing center. ASG is looking for short-term solutions to find upto-code spaces for student groups, he added, like the Northwestern Quest Scholars Network and Rainbow Alliance.

With the return of in-person meetings and the transition away from virtual events, Wade said he hopes ASG can become more visible to the student body.

“Over the course of many years, I think, ASG’s become less and less visible on campus,” Wade said. “We have done a lot of work in ASG since I was a first-year… but we probably haven’t done the best job of communicating that to students.”

SESP sophomore Donovan Cusick, ASG’s chief of staff, said he wants to use his position to increase external communication and expand membership.

“In the past, our communication with the student body has been a little bit lacking,” Cusick said. “We’re trying to build better avenues — being more consistent with our website, our email list (and) our Instagram, as well as having a bigger presence during our recruitment process.”

In addition, ASG now has a section in the Division of Student Affairs’ weekly Paw Print newsletter, which is emailed to the entire student body.

ASG will be hosting Senate elections the first week of October, with petitions for ballots due Oct. 6 at 7 p.m. joannehaner2024@u.northwestern.edu

Joanne Haner/The Daily Northwestern

ASG President Christian Wade. The SESP senior represented ASG at the Fall Organization Fair alongside fellow executive board officers.

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ACROSS 1 Acid 4 Pine product 7 Swell 12 First name in pharmaceuticals 13 Irritated, with “on” 14 90% of Earth’s volcanic rock 15 Otolaryngologist’s colleagues?

17 Reach for rudely 18 Home-awayfrom-home vacation 19 Departure notice?

21 Historic period 22 PIN points 24 Big name in databases 26 Solid vestment choice?

30 Water in the Seine 31 Rejoices 32 Foot specialist?

35 Like burnt coffee 37 Member of a noted sailing trio 38 LGBTQ activist George 39 Hershey toffee bar 40 Home of The Trop 42 Clean Water Act org.

43 Rodent reduction measure?

46 One getting smashed at a bash 47 Big Island coffee region 48 Faux follower 49 Servers at affairs 51 Donation drop-off site 55 Afghanistan’s national airline 57 Minuscule biters, and a clue to understanding 15-, 26- and 43-Across 59 They take things in stride 60 Nice ways to say yes 61 Patel of “Lion” 62 __-pop: electronic music genre 63 Test for M.A. seekers 64 Medium claim

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3 Gossip 4 Lipton product 5 Branch or limb 6 Currency of 25-Down 7 It may be closed at last call 8 Winner of the most medals at the 2020 Olympics 9 Tiny office printer 10 Screen problem 11 Sundance’s sweetie 13 Squirmed 14 Certain breakdancers 16 Attract 20 Where hands may be brought together 23 Double, often 25 Birthplace of Gloria Estefan 26 Poured-over leaves 27 Cybersecurity concern 28 2021 musical contest held in Rotterdam

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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021

THE DAILY NORTHWESTERN

11

Evanston auto industry prepares for electric cars

By WESLEY BLAINE

the daily northwestern

Warren Fellingham started working at a gas station and automotive repair shop in 1988.

A few years later, he purchased the business for himself and renamed it Warren’s Auto Service. But after spending more than 30 years in the industry, he said times are changing — and so are energy sources.

“The sun’s setting on auto repair shops,” Fellingham said. “We probably have another 10 to 15 years.”

Fellingham said about three-quarters of his sales come from selling gas. The remaining sales come from repairing combustible engine cars, which he said generates the majority of his profit. To keep his business up to date, he installed environmentallyfriendly gas tanks.

But as electric cars continue to grow in popularity, Fellingham said he knows the industry is transforming.

“The electric cars are here,” Fellingham said.

“They’re awesome (and) amazingly fast, but I don’t know if there’s going to be a lot of opportunities to repair these things.”

The only maintenance electric cars need is changing tires, fixing brakes and doing bodywork, Fellingham said. These would not generate enough volume or sales to maintain Fellingham’s repair shop, he added.

Fellingham said he does not plan on installing electric charging stations at Warren’s Auto Service either, since charging stations can be installed anywhere. If gas station owners retrofit their stations with charging stations, he said they will need to provide another incentive, like an internet cafe or a restaurant. That way, the customer can hang out

City to implement bulk trash pickup on some Fridays for free this fall Evanston will pick up residents’ bulk trash for free on Fridays this fall.

Residents whose usual pickup is on Thursdays will have bulk trash pickup starting at 7 a.m. on Friday.

Meanwhile, residents with a Monday trash pickup

Nick Francis/Daily Senior Staffer

An electric charging station in Evanston. As electric cars continue to grow in popularity, the automotive industry in Evanston is changing.

while their car is being charged.

Anthony Scala, owner of City Volkswagen of Evanston, is more optimistic about the future of gas stations. He said if he owned a gas station he would consider installing dual service pumps: one side of

the pump would pump gas while the other would charge an electric car. This would give customers a choice while also generating revenue, he said.

“Eventually, it’s going to be all electric,” Scala said. “Is that 10 years down the road, 15 or 20? I

can put items out for bulk trash pickup on Oct. 1, and those with a Tuesday pickup are scheduled for Oct. 8.

At summer’s end, Northwestern students flocked in and out of off-campus housing, meaning September could be a big month for bulk trash and furniture pickup near the University. (Instead of throwing away furniture in relatively good condition, students can also hand it off on Northwestern’s Free & For Sale Facebook page or donate it to Evanston’s Goodwill Store & Donation Center.)

City and federal guidelines limit bulk trash pickup.

Residents can’t throw away hazardous materials, electronics and appliances, tires or construction material.

Items should be packaged neatly for pickup in closed boxes, with glass broken down and labeled separately.

Every household will be limited to six cubic yards of trash before bulk pickup begins to incur charges.

Only condominiums with recycling contracts with the city are eligible for trash pickup. Condo residents can contact building management to see if their garbage is contracted through the city before putting out bulk refuse.

don’t know. But it’s clearly going that way.”

Earlier this month, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law energy legislation a goal for 1 million electric cars on Illinois roads by 2030. Even before this legislation, Evanston installed eight electric charging stations around the city that provide free electricity to electric vehicles. Six of these stations recorded nearly 4,000 charging sessions between 2016 and 2017, according to the city’s most recent data.

ChargePoint, Blink, SemaConnect and EVgo operate additional charging stations around Evanston. These stations are either free or charge money based on kilowatt hours.

Evanston resident Brad Turnbull recently purchased an electric car and said that owning one in the city is fantastic. He added that one of his favorite parts is how he doesn’t have to go to a gas station.

Turnbull said there will always be a market for gas cars and predicts that gas stations will be around for at least another two decades. But he also believes that gas stations should be searching for a proprietary way to fully charge electric cars in 10 minutes, which is about the time it takes to fill up a tank of gas.

“Companies like BP and Shell need to pivot their business models,” Turnbull said.

It’s hard to predict exactly what will happen to gas stations, auto-mechanics and other companies that service cars that require gasoline.

But Fellingham said he believes one thing is certain: change is coming.

“We’re going from a nation of shopkeepers to a nation of apps,” Fellingham said. “Maybe one day you can press a button on an app and someone will put air in your tires.” wesleymurph2022@u.northwestern.edu Residents can sign up for email or text reminders to be notified two weeks and again two days before trash pickup. The reminders are designed to aid residents with cleanup after moving houses, renovating or completing other major domestic projects.

Evanston is working toward a Climate Action and Resilience Plan designed to reach zero waste in the city by 2050, though waste management efforts have mostly centered around plastic in Lake Michigan so far.

— Ilana Arougheti

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SPORTS

Friday, September 24, 2021

@DailyNU_Sports

VOLLEYBALL

Wildcats fall to Nebraska in Big Ten opener at home

By JOHN RIKER

daily senior staffer @john__riker

Trailing 11-9 in the first set of their Big Ten opener against No. 12 Nebraska, Northwestern would not back down to the visiting favorites.

Midway through the point, a Nebraska kill attempt ricocheted off senior libero Megan Miller and continued over the back boundary of the Wildcat side. Redshirt junior outside hitter Hanna Lesiak chased down the ball and slid in front of the Cats’ bench to keep the play alive, but her lob angled toward the other sideline and made for another seemingly impossible hit to corral.

Impossible, until it wasn’t. Freshman libero Ellee Stinson sprinted from one back corner to the other, dove over Miller to avoid a collision and somehow sent the ball back over the net. Sophomore setter Alexa Rousseau blocked the Cornhuskers’ next volley, and the ensuing Nebraska error sealed an NU point.

The sequence elicited a thunderous roar from the 1,233 spectators in attendance — the Cats’ largest crowd at a Big Ten opener since 2016 — with the loudest cheers coming from a packed student section.

“We’ve been trying to kind of fight for those fans, too,” Lesiak said. “We’ve been passing out flyers and reaching out to people and telling everyone that we want you at our games. This is a team effort.”

But the play didn’t turn out to be

pivotal. Nebraska (7-3, 1-0 Big Ten) eventually took the first set 25-21 and won three of the match’s four sets to knock off NU (5-7, 0-1). But from the early breakout performers’ hustle to the fans’ boisterous support in the bleachers, the Cats’ highlight reel, against-all-odds sequence underscored an element that sets this NU team apart from last season’s 4-6 campaign — the energy.

The Cornhuskers controlled the match throughout the night but the Cats stayed competitive, with the first two sets ending in identical 25-21 scores.

“Preparing to face a team like this, our first game against a Big Ten team, it’s all about being aggressive against them,” Lesiak said. “We responded pretty well, we could have been better with our defensive side.”

NU used a 6-2 run midway through to build a 19-16 advantage in the third set, then withstood a Nebraska surge that almost saw the Cornhuskers tie the score at 24.

The set’s 25-23 score marked the first time the Cats had taken a set from Nebraska — a program has won three national titles under coach John Cook — since 2013.

“Set three, the big point was taking care of some of the easier things, communication stuff and things that we control, but we were aggressive with our pin attack,” coach Shane Davis said. “And (Lesiak), specifically toward the end of set three, taking a lot of big swings — that was a huge key for us.”

Lesiak finished the night with team

highs of 14 kills and 39 total attacks, another step in a breakout redshirt junior season.

After injuries sidelined her for the 2019 and 2020-21 seasons, Lesiak has blossomed into one of the Cats’ leading offensive contributors and a leader in the huddle. “(Lesiak’s) a pretty fiery kid, a pretty tough kid,” Davis said. “She’s played almost every point for us this year. She passes the ball, she takes a lot of swings, and a lot of tough swings.”

The Cats built on its third-set success, jumping out to a 6-2 lead to open the fourth. Nebraska responded by taking 10 of the next 12 points and catapulted into the lead. NU never recovered from what Davis called “cruise control” and lost 25-16 in the most lopsided set of the match.

By the match’s end, Nebraska proved its merits as one of the top teams in the country. Meanwhile, the Cats’ lapses in communication and execution underscored their room for growth. Junior outside hitter Temi Thomas-Ailara, one of NU’s top players since her breakout freshman year, had a game-high seven errors, and the Cornhuskers led in each of the major statistical categories.

Still, the Cats left the court with reason to be excited about their performance and the weeks to come. In her fourth season in Evanston, Lesiak said this year’s team is the most energetic group yet.

“We have some more fiery players that want it super bad,” Lesiak said. “That is great for the progression of the program.”

Joshua Hoffman/Daily Senior Staffer

johnriker2023@u.northwestern.edu

MEN’S SOCCER

WOMEN’S SOCCER

NU drops tight match to Indiana NU beats Penn State at

home for first time ever

By LAWRENCE PRICE

the daily northwestern @lpiii_tres

By SKYE SWANN

Playing its first game against a ranked opponent this season, Northwestern couldn’t have asked for a better night game atmosphere: 1,100 fans packed the bleachers in attendance at home.

But it wasn’t enough for the Wildcats (2-4-2, 0-2-0 Big Ten) to win Tuesday against No. 11 Indiana (4-2-1, 1-1-0), losing 2-1. The loss moved NU to last place in the conference.

The Cats saw the back of the net first and early. Receiving a pass from forward Justin Weiss around the sixth minute, junior midfielder Vicente Castro finished the play with a goal, his first of the season.

Weiss, the Colgate transfer, picked up his team-high sixth point of the season. The sophomore’s season performance isn’t only limited to points. He also averages the fifth most shots per game in the Big Ten with 2.50.

NU’s lead held early into the second half until the Hoosiers connected on their fourth shot of the match from forward Samuel Sarver near the 47th minute. Following the score, the Cats’ backline couldn’t stop the bleeding. Just five minutes later, forward Ryan Wittenbrink sent a crosser into the six-yard box to Herbert Endeley, giving Indiana the lead and the final score, 2-1.

A major reason behind NU’s loss: the team’s penalties. Tying in saves and kicking one less shot on goal than the Hoosiers, the Cats collected 14 penalties to its opponent’s seven, giving Indiana nine more corner opportunities.

This is NU’s second straight loss after scoring first in the contest, and fifth straight game without a goal in the second period. A glaring recurring issue, the Cats rank

the daily northwestern @sswann301

Joshua Hoffman/Daily Senior Staffer

Senior midfielder Bardia Kimiavi runs upfield. The Cats have already matched last season’s win total, but are still at the bottom of the Big Ten standings.

second-to-last in the conference in goals this season.

NU faced similar offensive woes last year. The team finished a spot higher than its current ranking, scoring 11 goals through 11 games. Not to mention, the Cats lost their leading scorer Ugo Achara Jr. to Louisville in June, who scored five goals.

Scoring two times in the last four games, NU now heads to Ann Arbor to face a Michigan team in a similar boat. Only two spots above the Cats in conference standings, the Wolverines have scored one more goal than NU this season. Michigan has also lost its last two contests.

NU and the Wolverines both

look to get back on track entering the near halfway point of each group’s season. The road only gets tougher for the Cats with Rutgers and Maryland, the teams holding the two best records in the Big Ten, still left on the schedule. Michigan, on the other hand, has already faced both teams.

First-year coach Russell Payne and his group have matched last season’s win total, a mere two games.

With nine games left in the regular season, including Michigan, the team will look to put a couple of these contests in the win column. lawrenceprice2024@u.northwestern.edu

After falling short to Iowa Sunday, Northwestern bounced back.

The Wildcats (5-4, 1-1 Big Ten) defeated No. 12 Penn State (6-3, 0-2 Big Ten) Thursday 2-1 on the road to rise above .500.

“This is the first time the program has ever won at Penn State,” coach Michael Moynihan said. “They were ranked pretty high nationally so it feels pretty good.”

Following a quick turnaround from their 2020-21 campaign held in the spring, Moynihan said the Wildcats worked hard in the offseason to prepare for the tough conference schedule.

He added the win over Penn State was “huge” for the team, setting the tone for the rest of the season.

With the majority of the starters from last season returning to the field, the squad played in sync the duration of the game, opening up shooting lanes on goal and creating fast break transitions down the field. This led to senior defender Kaylee Titus scoring a goal 11 minutes in, giving the group a 1-0 lead.

“The goal was so exciting and set the tone of the game,” Titus said. “It boosted the morale of the team.”

NU controlled possession for the majority of the game, despite being outshot 13-7 by the Nittany Lions. Titus attributed the Cats’ calm demeanor to their close bonds outside of the field, saying the midfielders contributed significantly to denying Penn State the ball in the center of the field. The defensive efforts paid off, with sophomore midfielder Josie Aulicino capitalizing with a goal in the 37th minute.

In her second season of collegiate soccer, Aulicino said the past few weeks of games have been surreal. She has held her own on the field, and getting the second goal for the team padded NU’s lead from

the attacking Nittany Lions.

“It gave us a little bit of a cushion for some mistakes (in the game),” Aulicino said. “It was energetic, knowing we could score and we could get shots on a ranked team, which is really important to us.”

Even with the 2-0 lead, NU’s defense was tested heavily in the second half.

Penn State controlled the momentum, taking three corner kicks before defender Kerry Abello scored. With the Nittany Lions closing in on the Cats, Moynihan said the team needed to make some adjustments for the remainder of the game.

And it did, pressuring its opponents more on transition, defying its opponents the ability to tie the game and go into overtime. Moynihan added that the formation change on the field gave NU difficulty, but once it adjusted, it could have knocked down two more goals.

The Cats continue their road trip Sunday, battling the Maryland Terrapins in College Park, Maryland. Defeating the Terrapins 1-0 last season in Evanston, Moynihan said this game will be another tense one for the squad.

“Maryland’s been very competitive, playing other Big Ten opponents really close this year,” Moynihan said. “We struggled with Maryland on the road. It’s going to be a big game for us to just rebound and recover from (Penn State).”

Titus agreed, saying NU wants to work on its defensive stance in preparation for Maryland. With the Cats having established a strong offensive presence, she said tightening their defensive positioning late in the stretch to improve their game was necessary.

With a couple days of rest and travel before Sunday’s matchup, NU aims to bounce back fast to grab a win over the Terps for the second consecutive season.

“We’re going to celebrate our victories as they come,” Titus said. “But we’re going to prepare for (Maryland) and always be prepared for the next game.” skyeswann2024@u.northwestern.edu