Symposium honors Black Studies ‘Black to Front’ event celebrates pending department renaming

By JOANNA HOU, JESSICA MA, KRISTEN AXTMAN daily senior staffers @joannah_11 / @jessicama2025 / @kristenaxtman1

The Department of African American Studies celebrated its renaming to Black Studies in a Friday symposium titled “Black to Front.”

In April 2008, the department voted unanimously to change its name. According to the formal name change proposal, the new title aims to better reflect “the breadth of its scholarship and teaching” by expanding beyond U.S.-centric boundaries. The formal change will occur in the next few months, pending final approval by Northwestern’s Board of Trustees.

“Black Studies is inclusivity and community,” said SESP freshman Noelle Robinson, who served as an emcee during Friday’s event. “I am Black, African American and Jamaican American. It validates all of our Black histories and ancestors, not only the ones to live in this country.”

The event featured two keynote speakers, student creatives, a faculty roundtable and a graduate student panel. Speakers and artists also selected Black music interludes to play ahead of their

» See BLACK STUDIES , page 10

“You drive around neighborhoods and just look around — the north end of Evanston has a few more solar systems,” Neumann said.

Home energy-efficiency upgrades, like solar panels and heat pumps, have long been praised as a key way to cut carbon emissions in housing, which city Sustainability and Resilience Coordinator Cara Pratt said is one of Evanston’s biggest sources of emissions.

Yet many of these technologies require upfront investments of tens of thousands of dollars.The average solar panel installation in Illinois can cost more than $12,000, even with federal tax credits, according to a May report from Forbes. If she was still financially focused on raising her children or saving for retirement, Neumann said, it would’ve been much more difficult to prioritize an investment in green technology.

As Evanston pushes toward carbon neutrality through its Climate Action and Resiliency Plan, government leaders and advocates are looking to make energy-efficient upgrades more accessible for lowerincome residents.

With officials looking to bridge the gap between affordability and efficiency, some residents said the city needs to prioritize the former.

“If our society is to make more energy efficiency a high-enough priority, (the city) needs to attach some dollars to that in a significant way,” Neumann said.

A main way the city is working to make energy efficiency more affordable for homeowners is through its One Stop Shop Housing Retrofit pilot program. The program will use American Rescue Plan Act funding to help income-qualified residents make home improvement upgrades to their electrical, mechanical, heating and cooling systems.

According to Robinson Markus, worker-owner and general manager at the Evanston Development Cooperative, the goal of the program

» See SUSTAINABILITY, page 10