The Daily Northwestern Friday, May 18, 2018
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Wildcats’ season ends at NCAA Tourney
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On living with a mental illness at NU
Change proposed for visa overstays
Activists advocate for ERA approval Residents call on Illinois to ratify amendment
International Office prepares after policy memo
By SYD STONE
daily senior staffer @sydstone16
As a vote on the Equal Rights Amendment stalls in the state house in Springfield, local activists are taking matters into their own hands. The constitutional amendment, which guarantees equal rights for all citizens regardless of sex, passed the Illinois House Human Services Committee along party lines 7-5 Wednesday and now awaits a vote on the House floor. State Rep. Lou Lang (D-Skokie), who proposed the measure, needs 71 House votes to make Illinois the 37th state to ratify the amendment, which was first proposed in 1972. Representatives from Indivisible Evanston have been calling on Gov. Bruce Rauner to publicly support the amendment even before the legislation is on his desk. Indivisible Evanston is one of more than 5,800 Indivisible groups nationwide formed in the wake of the 2016 election with the mission to resist a conservative agenda on local, state and national levels. Linda Tate (Weinberg ’76) said she, along with other representatives from Indivisible Evanston, has been calling constituents in other districts that are not as much of a “blue bubble” as Evanston is. She said ratifying the amendment is “absolutely critical.” “As a woman that’s been in the business world … there was a lot of discrimination against women, and it still exists,” she said. “It’s really important that women are treated as equal to men.” Tate said she has personally been calling Rauner’s office to ask him to publicly support the ERA. She said Rauner has been “a little back and forth” and has not been an “impassioned supporter” of women’s rights. In a Thursday statement, Democratic gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker called out Rauner for not supporting the ERA. “Today I want to call on this governor to get off the sidelines and finally, finally summon the courage to lead,” Pritzker said. “This isn’t hard — women are asking for some basic rights.” Tate said Pritzker’s statement is important because voters should know where the candidates stand on the ERA.
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By ALAN PEREZ
daily senior staffer @_perezalan_
David Lee/The Daily Northwestern
One year after petition, Bienen students, faculty push to diversify music curriculum By ALLY MAUCH
daily senior staffer @allymauch
Since she began playing the flute in fifth grade, Julia Clipper remembered only ever playing one piece composed by a woman. That was until this past April, when the Bienen senior, frustrated with the lack of representation in classical music, performed what she called an “intersectional feminist recital” with pieces created exclusively by women. The repertoire included contemporary African-American composer Evelyn Simpson-Curenton, 19th-century German composer Clara Schumann and contemporary Japanese composer Yuko Uebayashi. Clipper, who studies flute performance and music education, said she handed out a list of more than 200 female composers along with the recital program to challenge the notion that female composers do not exist. People on campus still maintain this idea partly because the Bienen School of Music’s curriculum is mostly made up of white, male, European composers, Clipper said. Many Bienen students agree. In spring 2017, more than 300 students and alumni signed a petition asking administrators to diversify the curriculum. While some professors are taking personal steps to update their class materials, students continue to look for increased representation of women and people of color in the music they learn. Classical music is a historically male-dominated field and continues to be so today: A survey of 85 American symphony orchestras in the 2016-17 orchestral season found that music by female composers made up 1.3 percent of all music performed, and women conducted only 8.8 percent of concerts. For the 201819 season, New York’s Metropolitan Opera will feature 28 conductors and 27 composers — none are women. Students said Bienen reflects this national issue, as many believe the school too often teaches only work by figures like Bach and Beethoven instead of lesserknown composers from marginalized backgrounds. In her recital, Clipper said she chose music composed by six different women from varying time periods and backgrounds to showcase the strong pieces, not simply because they were written by women. “In the classical music world, the voices of musicians are their compositions,” Clipper said. “So when we only play music by men, we’re shutting out the voices of women.” Clipper said she has found that if Bienen students want to find pieces written by minority composers, they often have to look on their own because the music is
» See ERA, page 7
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not regularly taught in their classes. “Basically in Bienen and most of the classical music world, the music that we play is written by white men who are mostly dead,” Clipper said. “It’s not representative of the voices that the current world has.”
Wanting more than ‘dead white men’
For many Bienen students, the mandatory music history sequence — three courses typically taken during sophomore year — demonstrates the music department’s lack of curricular diversity. Bienen sophomore Shannon Johnson, who is taking Music History this year, said most of the pieces discussed in the course sequence were written by well-known “dead white men.” “It makes me less aware of performers who aren’t white men,” Johnson said. “There could be more of an effort to just find composers that aren’t in this canon that we’re so familiar with.” For one section of the Music History course this fall, male composers made up about 93 percent of the required listening on the curriculum, according to a copy of the syllabus. One Winter Quarter class fared similarly — about 95 percent of the music was written by men. And this spring, only eight of the required 73 composers and performers outlined on the course syllabus were female. Megan Rohrer, a Bienen senior, said she remembers discussing only two or three female composers when she took the music history sequence. “The way the curriculum was chosen says a lot about what the school or the professor thinks is valuable,” Rohrer said. “The most frustrating thing for me was just that we didn’t talk about identity at all.” Linda Jacobs (Bienen ’97, ’04), Bienen’s assistant dean for student affairs, said she has not had any students come talk to her specifically about a lack of diversity in their core classes, but said faculty “are more than happy to talk to students about their course content.” Bienen Prof. Scott Paulin, who currently teaches Music History, told The Daily in an email that he has tried to include a more diverse array of composers in his course, but acknowledged that, in terms of compositions, the field is primarily represented by European men. “In teaching music history, I am most dedicated to educating students about the musical values of the past, and the ways in which, and reasons why, certain music has been ascribed value and meaning in certain historical contexts — and why other music has not, and what that tells us about our musical culture today,” Paulin said. » See IN FOCUS, page 4
The Trump administration moved last week toward heightened visa restrictions that would make it easier to bar international students from re-entering the country. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued a policy memorandum revising its guidance regarding F-1 and J-1 visa holders. Those found to be violating the terms of their immigration status will begin accruing unlawful presence the day after they discontinue authorized activity. The guidance proposal will go through a public comment period until June 11. If moved forward by the agency, the final policy will go into effect Aug. 1. “USCIS is dedicated to our mission of ensuring the integrity of the immigration system. F, J, and M nonimmigrants are admitted to the United States for a specific purpose, and when that purpose has ended, we expect them to depart, or to obtain another, lawful immigration status,” USCIS Director L. Francis Cissna said in a May 11 news release. “The message is clear: These nonimmigrants cannot overstay their periods of admission or violate the terms of admission and stay illegally in the U.S. anymore.” The new draft policy is a stark departure from past guidance, which determined that visitors began accruing unlawful presence the day after the agency or an immigration judge issued a formal violation. International students and other visiting scholars with more than 180 days of unlawful presence in a single visit can be prohibited from entering the country for three years. The federal government issues visas to scholars from abroad on specific conditions of authorized activity, including study, research and work with some restrictions. Northwestern depends on these visas to host its roughly 4,000 international students and 1,600 visiting scholars, said Ravi Shankar, director of the International Office. Shankar said the University » See INTERNATIONAL, page 7
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