SPORTS Men’s Swimming Unprecedented number of freshmen join Wildcats’ team » PAGE 8
NEWS On Campus Global Chef program brings French food to campus » PAGE 3
OPINION Stocker Why millennials romanticize the end of the world» PAGE 4
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The Daily Northwestern Wednesday, October 14, 2015
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NU mobilizes around debate By EMILY CHIN and DAVID FISHMAN
the daily northwestern @emchin24 and @davidpkfishman
Katie Pach/The Daily Northwestern
LGBT EXPERIENCES Janet Mock addresses NU students Tuesday night. As the speaker for a Multicultural Student Affairs event, the transgender journalist and activist spoke about her experiences with LGBT visibility.
Mock talks transgender issues By ERICA SNOW
the daily northwestern @ericasnoww
Author and activist Janet Mock discussed privilege, visibility and inclusive representation as well as her work as a journalist and transgender public figure on Tuesday. The Multicultural Student Affairs office organized the event, held at Cahn Auditorium, in partnership with the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, for Queer and Trans Empowerment Month to raise awareness of LGBT issues. “For me, writing (my memoir) ‘Redefining Realness’ was, on a personal level, a way to validate and affirm the fact that I deserve to be heard and that my story deserves pages,” Mock
said to an audience of more than 150 people. Although Mock said there are more transgender people in the public eye than ever before, she noted the discussion of transgender issues still tends to exclude non-binary and non-gender conforming people, and some transgender people are still more privileged than others if they can “pass” as being cisgender. When asked how she balanced being both a journalist and activist, Mock said the two are not mutually exclusive. “My body of work is my activism,” Mock said. “I don’t pick and choose between the two.” Mock, who was raised in Hawaii, moved to New York as a “fulfillment of a dream” in her 20s to work as a journalist. She had transitioned as a teenager, but did not come out to her coworkers as transgender immediately,
she said. During the event, Mock spoke about the hardship she experienced as a black transgender woman in the workforce and as an activist. Although she encountered prejudice and insensitivity, she also found a sense of community with other black women as they helped one another write resumes and cover letters, since they all celebrated one another’s successes. “It was another way to support each other through a system that wanted us to compete,” Mock said. “Not competing in a sense of our qualifications, but competing because of the surface levels of our identity. Her winning ensures us winning.” Although Mock has been out as a transgender woman for years, she said some people do not feel comfortable or » See MOCK, page 7
More than 50 Northwestern students came together Tuesday in a show of bipartisanship to watch the first Democratic debate air live on CNN. Students from both College Democrats and College Republicans convened in Fisk Hall to snack and discuss politics. The debate comes as the two groups are gearing up for the 2016 presidential election with a slew of campaign-centered programming slated for the quarter. The groups — neither of which endorses a specific candidate — serve as an avenue for students to get more involved in campaigns through trips
to national campaign events and events on campus.
Republicans discuss options
“I don’t see College Republicans as a campaigning group,” said Will Pritzker, College Republicans’ secretary of events. “We encourage people to do it on their own initiative, but that’s never been our sole purpose. It’s bringing conservative speakers where people can debate from a conservative standpoint.” At a liberal school like NU, Pritzker said it’s difficult to find conservativeminded thinkers. Additionally, he said the fact that there are so many Republican candidates makes it harder for a group of students to put their support » See POLITICS, page 7
Sophie Mann/Daily Senior Staffer
POLITICAL CATS Northwestern students follow the first Democratic primary debate during a viewing party at Technological Institute hosted by Wild for Bernie, the NU support group for candidate Bernie Sanders. The viewing party was one of many election-related events to come from student groups and support various candidates for the 2016 election.
Mayor prioritizes donation funds for violence prevention By MARISSA PAGE
daily senior staffer @marissahpage
Allocations of the first installment of Northwestern’s five-year, $5 million donation plan to Evanston will go largely to Sheridan Road repairs and violence prevention in the city. Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl announced NU’s Good Neighbor Fund donation to the city in March, a $5 million gift that the University will roll out in milliondollar increments over the next five years. The first $1 million was divided up Oct. 9, with the largest chunk, $500,000, going toward the Sheridan Road
Former senior Obama aides to speak at NU
Northwestern College Democrats is bringing former top Obama aides — David Axelrod, Jon Favreau and Jeremy Bird — to speak Nov. 6, the three-year anniversary of President Barack Obama’s re-election.
improvement project, which includes resurfacing and painting in a new bike lane. Mayor Tisdahl elected to parse out the first installment of the Good Neighbor Fund donation with an emphasis on combating violence in Evanston, city manager Wally Bobkiewicz said. The mayor set aside a $50,000 chunk of the donation to aid families affected by violence, and another $250,000 will go toward at-risk youth job training and development programs in the city’s Youth and Young Adult Division. The remainder of the gift, $200,000, will go toward supporting Evanston Fire Department paramedics. “Certainly whatever (Tisdahl) can do
to combat violence in the community is a priority for her,” Bobkiewicz said. “Many of the things there were mostly preventative measures… with the job training money and the donation to a fund that she set up to help families impacted by violence.” University President Morton Schapiro said the mayor decided to set up the violence outreach fund. “I said ‘put it to something you think is really important,’ and that’s what she did,” Schapiro said. The projects selected have relevance both for the city at large and also to NU: The fire department provides daily services to the university and Sheridan Road is a major thoroughfare through
campus. Bobkiewicz said the Sheridan Road project will likely be the focus of a portion of next year’s Good Neighbor Fund contribution. “The Good Neighbor Fund’s allocation for year one is being directed towards projects that will help Evanston reach its goal of becoming the most livable city,” Tisdahl said in an Oct. 9 news release. Bobkiewicz said that the gift gives the city greater spending liberties given the city’s budget constraints this year. In particular, he noted the support for the fire department’s services as freeing up additional resources for the city. “It’s a million dollars we didn’t have before,” Bobkiewicz told The Daily. “We’re able to put more money in the
coming year toward violence prevention and workforce development … and that’s probably, given the state of our budget and the state of Illinois’ budget, something we wouldn’t have done.” Schapiro said this first step for the Good Neighbor Fund exemplifies NU’s cooperative relationship with the city. “We really work very closely,” he said. “I don’t know of another university where the president and senior staff have the same relationship with the mayor and the city manager. I completely trust those people — they’re gonna keep our campus safe and support the greater good of this incredible town we’re blessed to be in.”
All three of the speakers have served Obama in some capacity: Axelrod was the president’s senior adviser for his first term, Favreau served as Obama’s speechwriter from 2005 to 2013 and Bird worked on Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns as a political strategist. The event, which will be held in Cahn Auditorium, will be open to NU students for free but limited to the first 1,000 people who arrive. Non-NU students are also welcome but will be charged $5 for tickets. The
event will feature a Q&A session, moderated by Medill Prof. Larry Stuelpnagel, and a special VIP session with the panelists afterwards. Post-Obama, the three men have remained largely in politics, in one form or another. Axelrod now works as a senior political commentator for CNN, and has written a New York Times bestselling book, “Believer: My Forty Years in Politics.” Favreau, after stepping away from the White House in 2013, co-founded Fenway
Strategies, a consulting company, while Bird, who worked to build a grassroots movement for Obama, started 270 Strategies, a company that has advised presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. “It’s interesting, a year out of 2016, to hear how actual political staff think about the very intense democratic primaries,” said Robert Bourret, president of the College Democrats. “Each of them will provide very unique insight into the world of the 2016 election.”
Bourret said the group paid about $40,000 to the Washington Speakers Bureau to get the three speakers as a package deal. “We’ve never really had a panel discussion before with so many high level political staff members,” he said. “There will be a lengthy session for question-and-answer so students will be able to come up to a microphone and ask the panelists questions.”
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