The Daily Northwestern Tuesday, February 5, 2019
DAILYNORTHWESTERN.COM 8 SPORTS/Basketball
3 CAMPUS/Staff
Wildcats lose to Penn State 59-52
Students Organizing for Labor Rights release petition for NU service workers
Find us online @thedailynu 4 OPINION/Oh
The larger effects of changing my name
High 31 Low 29
NU’s no-loan policy fully implemented Despite efforts, students grapple with aid options By JOSIAH BONIFANT and ALLIE GOULDING the daily northwestern @bonijos_iahfant, @alliejennaphoto
Alison Albelda/Daily Senior Staffer
Evanston residents speak about affordable housing at a special City Council meeting Monday. Aldermen discussed two proposed developments with affordable housing units.
Council talks affordable housing
Aldermen consider senior, mixed-income housing developments
By SNEHA DEY
the daily northwestern @snehadey_
Aldermen considered new affordable housing development plans which would serve seniors and mixed-income households. In a unanimous vote at Monday’s special City Council
meeting, aldermen approved a letter to the Illinois Housing Development Authority, expressing support for an affordable senior housing development. The developers, Evergreen Real Estate Group and the Council for Jewish Elderly, proposed a 60-unit building with elevator access at 1015 Howard St. Aldermen also tabled a redevelopment
request of a city-owned property at 506 South Blvd. The site on South Boulevard is currently a parking lot known as “Lot 1.” Ald. Melissa Wynne (3rd) said she had received phone calls from residents and asked for further discussion about the development before moving forward. “Lot 1 has historically been underused,” Wynne said. “I
think there’s a lot of misinformation. … What we need to do is slow this down.” Families will pay 30 percent of their income, and the remainder is subsidized in units reserved for low-income households, according to city documents. Additionally, median-income households » See HOUSING, page 6
With the incoming Northwestern class of 2023, every undergraduate student that qualifies for financial assistance from the University will fall under NU’s no-loan policy, which was introduced in fall 2016. As it stands, three classes of students — 2020, 2021 and 2022 — receive financial aid under this policy, which removes loans from a student’s financial aid package. Typically, universities meet financial need through a combination of work-study, loans and grant funding, but at NU, financial aid packages now only include work-study and federal and institutional grant funding. However, students can still take out federal and private loans to cover additional expenses and the Expected Family Contribution calculated by the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Once the policy is fully implemented next year, Phil Asbury, the University’s director of financial aid, said NU will have a better prediction of what financial aid
expenditures will be in the University’s larger budget. “Until we’ve been fully implemented, we’ve had disproportionate increases in the amount that we spend on financial aid each year,” Asbury said. “That can be a little shocking to a university budget. You implement one year, and then you kind of step back from it, and it’s easy for people to forget the reason that your aid expenditures go up each year.” Fewer students at NU take out loans than at other institutions, which is a result of the no-loan policy, Asbury added. But even under the policy, some are concerned about the financial options available.
Benefits of the policy
As a student with a low-income background, Weinberg sophomore Diana Velazquez said the University has been financially generous to her family. “My dad earns minimum wage and my mom doesn’t work,” she said. “Northwestern has really supported me and given me scholarships, which takes off the burden so I don’t have to look for a job or find a work-study job.” When the no-loan policy was announced, NU also placed a $20,000 cap on the amount » See LOANS, page 6
Exploring the Holy Land Black ‘History Makers’ reflect Jewish students have mixed feelings about Israel By GABBY BIRENBAUM
daily senior staffer @birenbomb
This article is the second in a series on religious involvement on Northwestern’s campus. In the midst of studies showing declining levels of religiosity among college students, the series will spotlight different religious groups’ methods and thoughts on maintaining their faith. Michael Simon, the executive director of Northwestern Hillel, knows that Jewish students’ relationships to Israel can be complicated and are not easily defined. To that end, Hillel offers a variety of ways for students to travel to and connect with a country surrounded by an often polarizing discourse. College is a time when students begin exploring their identities, Simon said, and many
begin to consider what it means to be both “Jewish and a human” in the 21st century. “Having a connection to Israel could, and even should, be a component of that,” Simon said. “One of the best ways to create those relationships (with Israel) is to actually go and have an in-person experience and get to know, beyond the headlines, what Israel (is) really all about.” Among other travel opportunities, Hillel began offering NU Perspectives last year, a “leadership journey to Israel and the Palestinian Territories” to engage students with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet Israel’s polarizing nature presents a common dilemma for Jewish college students trying to define their relationship to the country. Weinberg sophomore Carol Silber, who spent a gap year in Israel before coming to Northwestern, said travel to Israel is a critical component for Jewish people to form their own opinions about the state. “It’s important for people to find (connections) themselves, especially because there’s this inherent Jewish expectation that people have a relationship with Israel,” Silber said. “But, since
Serving the University and Evanston since 1881
Israel is a very complicated and multifaceted place, it’s really important that people take it upon themselves to establish what that relationship should be.” Silber said her gap year allowed her to experience dayto-day life in Israel in a way that prior family vacations had not and deepened her relationship to the country. For Tamar Jacobsohn, a Weinberg sophomore, traveling with classmates to Israel through the NU Perspectives trip complicated her bond with a country she had previously lived in for three months in high school. Jacobsohn lived on a kibbutz — a communal farm — during her junior year of high school, and she said the experience made her fall in love with Israel. However, in hindsight, she said she was living in a bubble that presented a somewhat propagandized view of the country. Once she arrived at NU, she said she began realizing people had valid criticisms of Israel, including people in the Jewish community. During the trip, Jacobsohn » See RELIGION, page 6
Discussion features playwright, ETHS student By JAMES POLLARD
the daily northwestern @pamesjollard
At the second annual Black Evanstonian History Makers Up Close event, Chloe Smith, a junior at Evanston Township High School and Gloria Bond Clunie, an award-winning playwright and the founder of the Fleetwood-Jourdain Art Guild Gallery, explored the challenges they face as women of color in predominantly white environments. “In a classroom setting like that every day, I don’t feel like I belong there,” Smith said, tearing up. “It just gets discouraging at times.” More than 30 people attended the roundtable discussion hosted Monday evening in the Fleetwood-Jourdain Art Guild Gallery in the Lorraine H. Morton Civic Center. This is the first of a series of events the city of Evanston will host to honor Black History Month. Dino Robinson, the production coordinator at Northwestern University Press, moderated the event. He described the two guests as “history makers” and “legacy keepers,” and asked them
Alison Albelda/Daily Senior Staffer
Dino Robinson moderates a discussion with Chloe Smith and Gloria Bond Clunie. Clunie reassured Smith that she belongs in the honors classes she is enrolled in at ETHS.
to share their activities, accomplishments, role models and hopes for the future and their legacies. Tim Rhoze, the artistic director of the Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre, said the event was meant to highlight people of color who are changing Evanston for the better. Smith directs a children’s choir and helps out at a daycare, while also talking at events like Women Speak in Evanston — a national movement fostering
discussions of gender, identity and social justice. Clunie has published plays like “North Star” about African-American experiences and won the 2011 Medallion Award from the Children’s Theatre Foundation of America. She also teaches a Sunday school class at her church. “(The purpose was) to show living history—those who are doing things positively in this » See HISTORY, page 7
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