The Daily Northwestern Friday, April 26, 2019
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Wildcats earn No. 5 national ranking
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Why we need to save student newsrooms
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‘Fund Our Care’ hosts town hall
Scan this QR code with Snapchat or your smartphone camera to view an accompanying video on Family Focus in Evanston.
Students ask for more mental health resources By SAMANTHA HANDLER
daily senior staffer @sn_handler
Daily file photo by Colin Boyle
The Evanston Family Focus Center, 2010 Dewey Ave. The center opened in Evanston in 1976 to provide community and encourage childhood development.
Family Focus fosters community
Center provides programming, support to 5th Ward residents By CLARE PROCTOR
daily senior staffer @ceproctor23
On any given day after school, children shuffle from program to program at Evanston Family Focus. Located at 2010 Dewey Ave., the center serves more than 200 families in the community through
family-oriented programming. This center and its resources are vital to the Evanston community, said Ald. Robin Rue Simmons (5th), who attended Family Focus programming herself when she was growing up. “We have thousands of Family Focus alumni, folks that went through programming at Family Focus,” Rue Simmons
City comitted to small businesses More than 40 new businesses opened in past year By CASSIDY WANG
the daily northwestern @cassidyw_
Despite the rapidly changing retail industry, Evanston remains committed to fostering the success of small businesses, according to the city’s 2018 Economic Development Annual Report. More than 40 new businesses opened in Evanston in the past year, including 30 new general businesses and 14 new food establishments, per the report. “Despite the tumultuous shift in the retail economy, Evanston’s retail vacancy rate is the lowest it has been in ten years,” the report states. The report comes in contrast to a 2017 survey of 850 small independent businesses across the country by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, where 90 percent of businesses reported
that online shopping sites, specifically Amazon, are having a negative impact on their revenue. Although the large and growing influence of online companies like Amazon may threaten to crowd out small, local businesses, vacancy rates are at just 4 percent in Evanston, according to the report. City manager Wally Bobkiewicz said small businesses can thrive in Evanston in part because the city is a “walkable community” and residents value shopping locally. “People like the opportunity to take a walk in their neighborhood and be able to purchase goods,” Bobkiewicz said. “Amazon certainly has its place in the economy but I think here in Evanston people want (businesses) to be walkable, accessible. They want to know the people they’re doing business with.” Bobkiewicz said the city provides a strong network of support for businesses through its » See BUSINESSES, page 7
Serving the University and Evanston since 1881
said. “What it has done to save lives, to transform lives, to empower families is invaluable.” Since opening in Evanston in 1976, Family Focus has offered classes, resources and a safe place for families in need of assistance, with an overarching goal of promoting early childhood development. Primarily serving 5th Ward residents, the non-profit is central to the
community, both for the support it provides and the community it fosters. The organization has since expanded to six other centers across the Chicago area. Historic building brings ‘sense of community’ Before Family Focus occupied the Dewey Avenue » See ORGANIZE, page 6
Medill sophomore Cayla Clements said even though the University “appears” to give help to students, seeking mental health resources is actually a process students must do on their own. “Things as little as, ‘You have to be the one to call CAPS,’” Clements said, “that CAPS won’t call you when you have to schedule an intake, that just the school won’t be there for you. You have to go through every part of the process yourself and that shouldn’t be how the school is run.” Clements spoke Thursday at a town hall in Harris Hall organized by Fund Our Care Collective where students shared their stories about struggling to find adequate resources at Northwestern. The Fund Our Care Collective was created this fall when students wanted to call for more action from the University after sophomore Daniel Jessell committed suicide. The group has a list of 10 demands for the administration — including decreasing the Counseling and Psychological Services ratio to 800 students per counselor by 2022 and making a majority of the requested new hires be people of color and members of the LGBTQ community. They also want to guarantee
CAPS availability during Wildcat Welcome. Those who attended shared stories of sexual assault, feeling suicidal and ways Northwestern has failed to provide adequate resources, especially for marginalized students. Some said CAPS failed to follow up with either them or their friends, while others said the process of getting help was already difficult enough to do by oneself and was not conducive to healing. Weinberg senior Jessica Ogwumike, a member of the collective, said the group understood the budget deficit may cause a challenge for funding, but she added that the University should “get creative.” “We’re fighting for priorities that better align with the preservation of student life, essentially,” Ogwumike said. In December, the collective marched to the Rebecca Crown Center to deliver their demands to Patricia Telles-Irvin, the vice president for student affairs. Two days before the protest,Telles-Irvin announced the hiring of two new CAPS staff members and the formation of a task force focused on student well-being. Weinberg junior Romie Drori said there has not been follow-up information about the new hires or the task force, despite requests from students. She added that when students and the members of the collective have asked for public town halls, the administration has responded with offering » See TOWNHALL, page 6
Students Take Back The Night
March highlights student activism, denounces sexual violence By JOSIAH BONIFANT
the daily northwestern @bonijos_iahfant
Take Back The Night, a week of events centered around supporting sexual violence survivors, culminated in an impassioned march and optional speak out for survivors to comfortably share their stories Thursday. The events throughout the week were co-hosted by a variety of groups on campus dedicated to supporting survivors and encouraging healthy expressions of sexuality with College Feminists as the primary organizer. The group’s Take Back The Night Chair Kai Kuo said the movement began in an era of public feminist protests, inverting the norm that women are afraid to walk at night. “It’s a movement traditionally for female-bodied people — that’s how it started — but it’s become something for survivors of sexual violence as a whole,” Kuo said. “The night is ours; any space should be ours. We have the right
to feel safe wherever we go.” The march began at the Rock with a speech from SPEAK for Change director Alana Farkas with an emphasis on the students in attendance being activists. Around fifty students marched down Sheridan Road holding posters about consent and rape culture and chanting, “knowing, active, voluntary, present and ongoing” — the University’s definition of consent. Several cars honked support to the activists before they gathered around the steps of Norris University center. SESP first year Kate Hader said she had been to one other event for Take Back The Night and was glad that the movement had an opportunity with the march to be so visible on campus, as a contrast to the sexual assault last month. “It’s really important to support survivors, especially on a campus where a sexual assault just happened,” Hader said. “Survivors are important and valued and should be able to exist in society.” Kuo noted that the activism on
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Students gather around the Rock as an act of solidarity before marching.
Northwestern’s campus as a whole tended to ebb and flow dependent on the notoriety of specific instances of sexual violence. They said the personal fluctuations among the student body made the work the Center for Awareness Response and Education does on educating on issues of survivorship all the more important. “Everybody has a part in preventing and ending sexual assault,
whether it’s intervening in a situation you don’t think is safe or shutting down casual sexism,” Kuo said. “We all have a role in this fight and it doesn’t have to be something as big as a march or a protest.” Weinberg senior Sarani Pachalla said she came last year to support several of her friends » See TAKEBACK, page 6
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