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The Daily Northwestern Friday, May 6, 2016
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Students mixed on RTVF grants By STAVROS AGORAKIS and SHANE MCKEON the daily northwestern @stavrosagorakis, @shanemckeon
Lauren Duquette/Daily Senior Staffer
POINTING OUT PRIVILEGE Robin DiAngelo speaks about white privilege, asking white audience members to be open to criticism. She was the keynote speaker at the YWCA Evanston/North Shore’s first Racial Justice Summit.
YWCA holds summit on race Keynote speaker addresses white privilege By RISHIKA DUGYALA
the daily northwestern @rdugyala822
Robin DiAngelo remembered being able to clearly observe racism in her community, but her feelings of inferiority kept her from speaking up. DiAngelo said she grew up in poverty, worrying about having enough food to eat as she went through the cycle of
homelessness and the foster care system. One day, she said she realized her silence was “maintaining white solidarity,” that her silence was “colluding with racism.” So DiAngelo, the director of equity for Sound Generations, a nonprofit that helps senior citizens in the Washington area, dedicated herself to combatting racism with her educational background in white racial identity and race relations, she said. Thursday evening, DiAngelo urged white individuals to open their minds
to an honest appraisal of their internalized superiority and racial privilege at the YWCA Evanston/North Shore’s first Racial Justice Summit. More than 50 people gathered at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, 2121 Sheridan Road, for the “Mirrors and Methods: Tools for Creating Racial Equity” summit to hear DiAngelo’s keynote speech. » See SUMMIT, page 5
The Department of Radio, Television and Film is transitioning to a new, department-driven film grant system, drawing criticism from some RTVF students and student filmmaking groups. Communication Prof. David Tolchinsky, who chairs the department, said in an email to The Daily that the new system aims “to end student-to-student direct funding,” with a committee comprising four RTVF faculty and three students selecting which projects get funded. In the past, Tolchinsky said, the department was not involved in funding extracurricular films, which were largely funded by student filmmaking groups such as Studio 22. However, it did, and continues to, fund films made in RTVF classes. By contrast, Tolchinsky said the new system allows the department and its faculty more input into the funding process than before. Communication Prof. Laura Kipnis said the changes came in part from students’ concerns about filmmaking groups such as Studio 22 having too much power in determining which students received funding. “There were a lot of students who thought that the process was unfair or dominated by cliques,” Kipnis said. Through the new system, the department awards Media Arts Grants, which can be used to fund both student films and other media projects.
Dog beach disappears as water level rises By NORA SHELLY
the daily northwestern @noracshelly
The water level of Lake Michigan is rising, and Evanston residents — both four-legged and two — are seeing the effects at the dog beach. The beach, located off Sheridan Road south of Northwestern, did not open as usual on April 1 due to the rising water of Lake Michigan, causing much of the beach to be submerged. “The dog beach is underwater,” assistant city manager Marty Lyons said. “That’s a Great Lakes problem, not just an Evanston problem.” The water will likely continue to rise, said Jon Shabica, the vice president of Shabica & Associates, a firm that specializes in coastal science and engineering for the Great Lakes. Shabica gave a presentation at the Human Services Committee meeting Monday, one of many presentations he said he has given recently on the rising lake levels. “Everybody in the community is kind of raising their hands and going, ‘What happened to the lakefront?’” he said at Monday’s meeting. “We need to recognize that Lake Michigan is a dynamic environment.” Lake Michigan goes through high and low water-level cycles, Shabica said, and levels reached a low in 2013. Extreme storms on the lake, such as Hurricane Sandy in 2012, brought more sand to the shorefront and increased beach size, but
water levels have “increased dramatically” since then, he said. Shabica told The Daily the rise could be due to increased wintertime ice coverage, changes in water temperature or evaporation. The speed of the increase is unusual, he said. “We don’t know enough to be able to pinpoint one exact source,” he told The Daily. “What we can say is that this increase has broken some of the previous records for how fast the lake has gone up.” There will likely be little damage to property, Shabica told The Daily, as the entirety of Evanston’s shoreline is engineered with steel groins — which create beaches by extending into the lake from the shoreline to catch sand — and large stone barricades that line the coast. Shabica told the committee that other dangers resulting from a rising lake could include safety issues related to increased water depth at public beaches as well as risks with “submerged hazards,” or anything in the lake such as old docks or boat launches that are now under water. Although all Evanston beaches are losing ground as a result of the rising levels, the dog beach is taking the biggest hit, Lawrence Hemingway, the city’s director of Parks, Recreation and Community Service, told The Daily. “The only issue really was that the water rose at a much faster rate than anyone anticipated,” he said. “Right now all the remaining beaches are on schedule to be open for the season come
Serving the University and Evanston since 1881
» See FILM GRANTS, page 7
Former NU student Matthew Kafker pleads not guility
said. Third Ward resident Betsy Sagan, who said she had recently started to bring her dog Buster regularly to the beach, said she understood why the city would be wary of bringing in more sand, but that she would still like to see a space on the water for dogs. “It’s a great resource for dog owners and their families, and I hope that there’s a way we can find a beach or a place where dogs can play without their leashes on,” she said.
Former Northwestern freshman Matthew Kafker pled not guilty to two dozen criminal charges, including 12 hate crime charges, related to the March 11 vandalism of Alice Millar Chapel. Kafker and former Northwestern freshman Anthony Morales were charged in March with institutional vandalism, hate crime to a place of worship and criminal damage to property. They were each released on $50,000 bond March 12. A grand jury indicted the two men on the 24 criminal charges last week. The criminal charges include four counts of burglary, four counts of institutional vandalism and two counts each of criminal damage and criminal defacement of property in addition to the 12 charges of hate crime to a church, synagogue or place of worship. University Police found homophobic, anti-Semitic, racist and other offensive graffiti inside Alice Millar Chapel on the morning of March 11, including in the chapel’s offices. It included a swastika, drawings of male genitalia and the word “Trump.” University spokesman Al Cubbage told The Daily last month that Kafker and Morales are no longer enrolled. Morales, who was not scheduled to appear in court Thursday, will enter his plea when he is arraigned May 11 at Skokie Courthouse. Kafker and Morales will appear together on June 24, Kafker’s next court date.
norashelly2019@u.northwestern.edu
— Madeline Fox
Katie Pach/The Daily Northwestern
BYE BEACH The Evanston dog beach, located just south of Northwestern, is rapidly losing ground as water levels of Lake Michigan rise. Marty Lyons, assistant city manager, said city officials would present a plan for the beach at next week’s City Council meeting.
Memorial Day.” The city is looking into all possible solutions, Hemingway said, which could include reallocating another space on the lakefront for a new dog beach or creating a permanent dog park at another location, which would likely not be on the water due to limited shoreline. Lyons said although bringing in sand to rebuild the dog beach at its current location is still on the table, it is not the city’s most preferred option. City officials are working on a contingency plan for the beach to present before City Council on May 9, Lyons
This year, Kipnis said, the department awarded 22 grants, which generally top out at $1,500. The new system also encourages MAG recipients to apply for supplemental funding from filmmaking groups such as Studio 22. Tolchinsky said the department is still transitioning to the MAG system and gathering feedback from student groups. “None of our goals or plans involve removing students from the decision process — on the contrary, we are working to involve a broader community of students in both grant-making and media-making,” Tolchinsky said his email. “Students will always play central roles in organizing projects and allocating funding.” But some students criticized the department’s new direction, saying it minimizes students’ role in the filmmaking process and lacks transparency. Communication junior Isaac Sims, who served on Studio 22’s executive board last year, said the new system has “turned the department upside down.” “A lot of this boils down to the idea that the department is not really comfortable with students giving (other) students $3,000 to $7,500 for a single grant,” Sims said. “Agency and independence is being taken away from these student groups, and the department is starting to really reach their hands into how money is distributed on campus.” The new system has also increased the number of films being made at any given time, said Communication junior
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