The Daily Northwestern - March 7, 2018

The Daily Northwestern Wednesday, March 7, 2018

DAILYNORTHWESTERN.COM 8 SPORTS/Fencing

3 CAMPUS/Faculty

Three fencers look to 2020 Olympic teams

Prof. Jackie Stevens discusses issues with deportation implementation, clinic work

Find us online @thedailynu 6 OPINION/Martinez

Oscars still miss mark on diversity, inclusion

High 32 Low 21

‘A blessing and a curse’ Student-athletes face unique mental health challenges, work to overcome stigma of getting help

By JOESEPH WILKINSON

daily senior staffer @joe_f_wilkinson

At the Northwestern women’s basketball game against Indiana on Jan. 14, 2017, Amber Jamison didn’t wear her regular jersey. Instead, she wore No. 5 in honor of Jordan Hankins, her best friend on the team. Just five days earlier, Hankins had died by suicide.

Jamison scored 13 points that afternoon,

Joe Biden to speak at Global Hub on Friday

Former Vice President Joe Biden will visit Northwestern on Friday to speak about economic growth in the nation’s cities.

Biden will deliver the address, hosted by the Kellogg School of Management, on the “unequal economic growth across America’s cities and towns,” according

helping lead the Wildcats to a win. Three days later, she put up a career-high 22 points to take down Michigan State.

Off the court, however, it was a different story. Jamison was struggling to cope with Hankins’ death, which hit her even harder at the end of the season.

“I couldn’t push everything that had happened to the side and act like it didn’t happen,” Jamison said. “I had to confront it at some time.”

Th at time came in November, when Jamison decided to take a leave of absence

to a news release.

Kellogg Prof. Ben Harris, who was Biden’s chief economist and economic adviser, helped organize the event, according to the release.

Since leaving office, Biden has continued work on supporting cancer research and has also started the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware.

The address will be held at the Kellogg Global Hub on Friday evening.

— Alan Perez

Prof shares Syrian voices for Time Cover story tells firsthand accounts from Ghouta

By ADRIAN WAN

the daily northwestern @piuadrianw

While political science Prof.

Wendy Pearlman said there are many narratives in the media about Syrian people, she wants to create a space for them to be able to “speak for themselves.”

“Commentators from TV talk about who Syrians are, what they want, what their conflict is,” Pearlman said. “But Syrians also have a different point of view …

so we should listen to their stories from the human point of view.”

Pearlman and co-author Loubna Mrie, a Syrian journalist who is seeking asylum in the United States, collected gripping firsthand accounts of Syrians living through bombings in the city of Ghouta. The resulting story was chosen for the cover of Time magazine’s March 12 international edition.

The story lays out how the Syrian government cracked down in 2012 on rebel forces rising up in the Damascus suburb during the Arab Spring. Shortly after the rebels took up arms and drove Bashar Assad’s regime out of the » See PEARLMAN, page 7

Serving the University and Evanston since 1881

for Winter Quarter and redshirt for the 2017-18 basketball season.

Many student-athletes at Northwestern deal with a myriad of challenges, including injuries, academic struggles and the pressure to live up to expectations of a healthy body image. But an often-unspoken challenge, both at Northwestern and nationally, is coping with mental health issues.

According to a 2015 NCAA survey, about 30 percent of student-athletes selfreported that they have been “intractably overwhelmed during the past month.”

The survey also found that nearly 25 percent of student-athletes reported being exhausted “from the mental demands of their sport.” Meanwhile, a 2014 NCAA report found that student-athletes are less likely to report issues with depression and anxiety than their non-athlete peers.

Jamison said she feels athletes at Northwestern are, “for the most part,” on their own, although the athletic department does make resources available to them. » See ATHLETES, page 4

Target to open doors Wednesday

New location opens downtown, to hold grand opening Sunday

By AMY LI

the daily northwestern

It’s a running joke in Evanston that people can’t buy a pair of socks or underwear in the downtown area, Annie Coakley said.

Coakley, the executive director of Downtown Evanston said the new addition of a Target will change that — and benefit the city overall.

The Target, 1616 Sherman Ave., held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday night and will open to the general public 7 a.m. Wednesday, according to a news release. A grand opening will be held Sunday morning to highlight “unique features and store departments” to visitors.

Store team leader Krysanna Bowery and Mayor Steve Hagerty spoke at the Tuesday event to a crowd of around 30, which included residents and several city representatives.

Bowery, who has been with Target for 12 years, introduced the Target team that will work at the new location before being joined by Hagerty for the ribbon-cutting.

“Sitting down with my team in December and looking at it on paper is so different from the way we feel

Noah Frick-Alofs/Daily Senior Staffer

Target, 1616 Sherman Ave. The new Target location will open to the public on Wednesday.

now,” Bowery told The Daily.

“With all the hard work, energy, positive attitude and teamwork, it’s really paid off in what we’re showing today.”

The retail world is changing fast at national and local levels, Evanston’s economic

development manager Paul Zalmezak told The Daily at the event. Zalmezak said the space is too large to be filled by most independent business, so the best alternative is to introduce corporate chains.

City officials are thankful

for the opening of the new Target because many communities still have trouble filling the larger retail spaces, Zalmezak added.

“I love independent » See TARGET, page 7

INSIDE: Around Town 2 | On Campus 3 | Opinion 6 | Classifieds & Puzzles 7 | Sports 8

2 NEWS | THE DAILY NORTHWESTERN

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2018

AROUND TOWN Two challenge Suffredin for commissioner seat

By SAMANTHA HANDLER

the daily northwestern @sn_handler

With only two weeks left until the election for Cook County commissioner of the 13th District — which includes Evanston — all three candidates are gearing up for the last push of their campaigns.

The two candidates challenging Commissioner Larry Suffredin are preparing for their first-ever elections as contenders. Suffredin, DePaul sophomore Bushra Amiwala and software developer Daniel Foster will face off at the March 20 primary, and one will advance to the general election. The commissioner serves a four-year term on the board, which appropriates funds for county operations.

The incumbent Suffredin was elected to the position in 2002, and previously served as an Evanston Democratic Committeeman from 1990 to 1994. The 70-year-old said he is running for reelection because he still “has the energy to do the job” and that there are still issues he wants to work on.

In a candidate statement posted on his website, Suffredin said he has written ordinances that created an independent governance board

POLICE BLOTTER Blotter: Tip jar stolen from Bagel Art Cafe Police are investigating two suspects who stole a tip jar from Bagel Art Cafe on Sunday morning.

Two men entered the cafe at 615 Dempster St. around 11 a.m. and lingered near the register, Evanston police Cmdr. Ryan Glew said.

One man grabbed the tip jar from the counter

and expanded Cook County Health and Hospitals System services. He has also designated the county a Sanctuary County, increased the minimum wage and established a sexual harassment reporting and training program.

Suffredin told The Daily he wants to continue to make sure the county is responsive to constituents and communicate with the public about the decisions that the board is making. He said it is important to give people “confidence that we are properly running the government.”

He said his time as a lawyer has helped him throughout his tenure in the commissioner’s office.

“What has shaped (my time as commissioner) is not my experience in the office,” Suffredin said, “but my experience in life and as a lawyer, in terms of methodically approaching the government and making sure that I’m constantly challenging it to do better.”

The challengers Amiwala, a college sophomore who is about 50 years younger than the incumbent, said she first thought about running when she had heard a rumor that Suffredin was retiring. She said at that moment she thought, “What do I have to lose?”

“The current commissioner is obviously not retiring, but that’s really what was said to me,

and concealed it under his coat.

Both men fled on foot, Glew said. They left the emptied jar outside the cafe, but kept the $40 in tips.

Police have not identified any suspects, but are investigating video footage of the burglary caught on the cafe’s camera.

Evanston woman reports stolen bike A 21-year-old female Evanston resident reported Monday that her bike was stolen from

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what encouraged me to run,” Amiwala said. “I realized with (my) support system, me getting elected is practical and possible, and I think it’s time for a new voice.”

Amiwala said when she was younger, she found politics to be unappealing because she perceived politicians to be corrupt and dishonest. Later, she realized that the way to enact long-term change was through politics and government, she said.

Amiwala said she wants to bring more transparency to the commissioner’s office, making it easier for constituents to see where funds are being allocated and improving accessibility to services the county offers.

Amiwala said if elected, she also hopes to be a voice for the immigrant community, lowincome families, women and young people.

“Fifteen of the 17 board members are men, ” she said. “There are only two women on the board of commissioners and … the youth perspective is lost as well.”

After the election of President Donald Trump, Foster said he realized that many people are nervous about the future. Foster isn’t one of those people. The software developer said he is optimistic about the future and wants to share his vision with others.

“A lot of politicians sell this line that the future’s getting worse, that incomes are going down, life spans are getting shorter, health care is getting more expensive and less effective,” her residence in the 1700 block of Chicago Avenue.

The woman locked her bike outside 4 p.m.

Sunday and left it overnight, Glew said. When she returned at 9:45 a.m. Monday, the bike was missing.

Police valued the stolen property at $100, and no suspects have been identified, Glew said. ­— Nikki Baim

Foster said, “But I’m a computer scientist by training … and I know that none of that is actually true, that everything is getting better all the time.”

Foster said he will work “full-time” in the position: talking to constituents, coordinating with other levels of government and communicating with other politicians. He said he has thoroughly researched the position and drafted practical policy proposals on changing the property tax assessment system and improving the local environment.

One of the reasons Foster said he chose to run for commissioner was the connection to the sheriff ’s office and county jails. He said he wants to tackle the issue of mass incarceration and the marginalization associated with it, particularly after watching his parents fight for his brother — who has Down syndrome — to be included in schools with his peers.

Foster said he now looks after and fights for rights with his brother, which influences his political views.

“Growing up around that fight (and) participating in that fight now really gave me a sense of how important integration is,” Foster said. “In my opinion, mass incarceration is the most blatant destructive and institutionalized form (of ) segregation that we have facing our generation today.” samanthahandler2021@u.northwestern.edu

Setting the record straight A story in Tuesday’s paper with the headline “Latinx healing group seeks to build community, take steps to self-care” misstated Stephanie Carrera’s position with Counseling and Psychological Services. She is a postdoctoral fellow at CAPS. The Daily regrets the error.

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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2018

ON CAMPUS Stevens discusses deportation flaws

By ALAN PEREZ

daily senior staffer @_perezalan_

According to Northwestern political science Prof.

Jacqueline Stevens, deportations should never happen because they are “idiotic and unjust.”

“People should be able to live wherever they want — not based on status distinctions at birth,” she said Tuesday.

Stevens, the director of the Deportation Research Clinic, spoke to a packed room of about 30 in Kresge Hall. She presented work by her and her students on exposing misconduct in the implementation of deportations by the nation’s law enforcement institutions.

By focusing on two key issues — the detention and deportation of U.S. citizens and a “dollar a day” work program — Stevens said she hopes to eventually dismantle the deportation apparatus.

“The idea is to focus on not destroying deportation in one fell swoop, but rather to think about if there are strategic bricks,” she said. “If you pull one of these bricks, maybe the whole thing breaks down.”

Stevens said the clinic seeks to highlight the illegal detention and deportation of American citizens, many of whom may not be aware of their own status as citizens, to demonstrate the flaws of the entire deportation system. That violation, she said, is the “900-pound gorilla in the mine.”

Recognition that many people held in detention are citizens will heighten due process rights, such as access to an attorney, she said. Because removal hearings are ruled by civil law, she said detainees don’t have the right to a bond hearing or attorney at the government’s expense.

The clinic also seeks to uncover and investigate the “dollar a day” work program through Freedom of Information Act requests. Through the requests, she said the clinic found that many detainees were employed for as little as a dollar a day in detention centers and even then were often not paid.

But that information didn’t come easily, she said.

Stevens said the requests were often denied by

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Noah Frick-Alofs/Daily Senior Staffer

Political science Prof. Jacqueline Stevens speaks to an audience in Kresge Hall about deportation. Stevens focused on two issues: the detention and deportation of U.S. citizens, and the “dollar a day” work program.

government agencies or fulfilled with significant redactions. The agencies would also withhold information similar to documents they previously disclosed, she added.

The clinic is still fighting for greater transparency and accountability from government agencies and its contractors in court, she said.

SESP junior Katherine Tierney, FOIA controller for the clinic, said she oversees government correspondence and updates the clinic’s database with documents and records, including information that can potentially prove a detainee’s citizenship.

“It’s so important for us to keep track of government correspondence because we need to know what

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information we have, what information we’re waiting on and what information we need to appeal or sue in order to obtain,” she said.

Weinberg freshman Serena Shah told The Daily she attended the event to learn more about deportation policy.

Shah said the lack of transparency and consistency from agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement is troublesome.

“It’s definitely a problem, especially the inconsistency of it all,” she said. “They really have no reason for (not being consistent).” aperez@u.northwestern.edu

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4 NEWS | THE DAILY NORTHWESTERN

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2018

Amber Jamison

Daily file photo by Katie Pach

ATHLETES From page 1

“They make sure that student-athletes know that we have resources on campus,” she said. “But I just think there’s a bad stigma around mental health. And people think that if they go to (Counseling and Psychological Services) they’ll be labeled a certain type of way.”

Facing the stigma CAPS staffers are working to change that label, said Courtney Albinson, associate director of sport psychology.

Albinson said CAPS works with athletic teams upon request and that student-athletes can make individual appointments with sport psychologists to discuss anything from mental health issues to performance improvement. She said that includes consulting with coaches on how to provide support and recommendations for athletes.

These services, however, are fairly new. Although the University shifted to an athlete-specific model of care in 2013, she said, CAPS formally developed a sport psychology unit in fall 2016.

While the staff does its best to mitigate the stigma, Albinson said she recognizes the reasons studentathletes may decide not to visit CAPS. She said there are certain cultural factors in sports that make it harder for student-athletes to seek help. Albinson also noted student-athletes face “unique stressors” when it comes to their mental health.

“You couple that with maybe a desire to ‘appear strong’ and that can sometimes lead student-athletes to delay help-seeking or not seek help at all,” she said.

Jamison said she dealt with a variety of external factors when deciding to seek counseling at CAPS. The negative perception of using counseling services, she said, still surrounds those grappling with mental health issues in some communities.

“For me, it had a lot to do with my culture. In the black community, it’s just a bad stigma around mental health,” Jamison said.

Jamison said she knows people whose parents perceive mental health from a negative spiritual perspective, or “don’t believe” in mental health problems altogether. Though it was difficult to tell her parents about her struggles, she said they were supportive, and she began seeing a psychologist at CAPS who informed her about the possibility of taking a medical leave.

She said she was concerned about blindsiding her teammates with the decision. One week before the deadline, she got the request approved by her coaches

and filled out the paperwork the same day.

After sitting out the team’s first game, a win over Chicago State, Jamison told the team she would be missing the rest of the season.

“It was tough because I tend to — I think everybody does this, try to hide their feelings,” Jamison said.

“I know they felt kind of hurt that they didn’t know what I was going through, and then it was kind of like I told them and then I left.”

Following the NCAA’s Best Practices Thirty-five percent of the student-athlete population at Northwestern visited CAPS between July 2016 and June 2017, according to the CAPS annual report.

Albinson said many of the efforts to help student-athletes during those visits were guided by the NCAA’s Mental Health Best Practices, a list of recommendations designed for universities to follow when dealing with athletes’ mental health. She said having two sport psychologists on staff helps meet these guidelines.

In March 2016, the NCAA approved a $200 million fund to be distributed to Division I universities that “must be used explicitly for programs that benefit student-athletes.” It added that the funds are specifically earmarked to support academic resources and students’ mental health.

Dr. Jeffrey Mjaanes, the University’s head team physician, told The Daily in an email regarding the fund that the University “will be receiving some of that money” and using it according to NCAA guidelines.

However, he said administrators don’t yet have specifics on how it will be used.

Mjaanes said student-athletes sometimes don’t realize their problems may be mental health-related.

“They might come in and say, ‘I’m not sleeping well,’” Mjaanes said. “I find out that I think they’re not sleeping well because of anxiety or depression.

Sometimes a visit that doesn’t seem like a mental health visit will be turned into a mental health visit.”

Support systems for student-athletes take many forms across the country. While a 2016 survey found that 72 percent of Division I universities offer counseling services to student-athletes in centers similar to CAPS, only 20.5 percent had “a mental health provider who worked in the athletic training room.”

Northwestern does not have a licensed mental health provider in the training room, but Mjaanes said there are various ways a student-athlete can enter the support system at Northwestern, whether that means meeting with him, a team trainer or a CAPS psychologist.

“A lot of them probably end up having stress. We see a slight increase in the utilization of these services by student-athletes precisely for that reason,” Mjaanes said.

Confronting body image expectations SESP senior Leigh Healey, a bodybuilder and Northwestern cheerleader, has never been a studentathlete in the traditional sense. Healey, who writes a blog on fitness and mental health, said she has faced pressure to maintain a certain body image.

“People in all my circles knew me as the girl who did these ‘fit things.’ I just saw this as a new identity I had to form,” Healey said. “I felt so much like other people saw me as this person that I thought I no longer was. … I was like, ‘Well, I really want to eat five cookies in a sitting,’ and I felt like other people were like, ‘Wait, Leigh doesn’t do that because she’s a bodybuilder.’”

Student-athletes are affected by eating disorders at a higher rate than the general student population, according to a 2016 report by the American College of Sports Medicine.

The report also found that 18 to 20 percent of “elite female athletes” met criteria for eating disorders, while only 5 to 9 percent of a female control group met the same criteria. The report noted this is not a genderspecific issue, as eating disorders among male athletes are also increasing.

Front page graphics by Colin Lynch, graph by Ruiqi Chen

Healey achieved early success in bodybuilding, winning her first competition and earning a spot in a national contest in 2017. That success, however, had negative consequences for her physical and mental health, she said. She added that bodybuilding perpetuated her eating disorder and body dysmorphia, allowing her to justify her means to get lean for competitions.

After finishing her first show, Healey said she felt a lot of pressure from people who asked her if she would compete again.

“I remember being on the phone with my dad, being like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t do this, but I want to do it, but I can’t, but I qualified for Nationals so I have to go, but I don’t want to go at all,’” she said.

The transformative experience for Healey came when her friends mentioned how visiting a therapist helped them. For Healey, it normalized the idea of seeing one herself, and she decided to try it.

Albinson said the staff at CAPS coordinates with the athletic department to help athletes deal with outside pressures to maintain a certain body image.

Throughout the year, CAPS hosts outreach programs for student-athletes to discuss stress management and maintaining a healthy body image, Albinson said.

athletic schools, according to Northwestern Athletics.

The Wildcats boast a graduation rate of 97 percent, the highest in the Big Ten. But balancing academics and athletics adds “a lot of mental pressure,” Brandon Medina (Weinberg ’17), a former soccer player, said.

“You can’t show up to class … not prepared for the test or not prepared with your homework and say, ‘Oh, I couldn’t do it because I had practice,’” he said.

“And you can’t show up to practice, you know, very lazy or say you’re tired because you were up all night studying for tests.”

Academic distress is the second-most self-reported concern among undergraduates visiting CAPS. To help balance classwork with athletics, Northwestern student-athletes are paired with an academic adviser who meets with them weekly during their freshman year. The same adviser continues to work with the students all four years, meeting with them quarterly to help plan schedules and connect them with tutors for classes.

Caleigh Ryan (Medill ’17), a former volleyball player, compared being a student-athlete to working a full-time job on top of being a full-time student. She said being an athlete at Northwestern is a “blessing and a curse.”

“You want to compete in the best conference in the nation,” she said. “You want to have a great academic school. You want that challenge.”

However, for students like former swimmer Lauren Abruzzo (Weinberg ’17), fulfilling two roles at the same time was not always a negative.

Abruzzo said though it can be challenging to sometimes have morning practices with exams later in the same day, she found the experience rewarding. She said she created balance by planning out her workload during the first week of the quarter.

“Having practice helped me study as well,” Abruzzo said. “It just relaxed me and helped me focus.”

University staff occasionally steps in to help athletes who are struggling academically. For Jamison, the basketball player, this academic counseling helped but also added another thing to the pile of work.

“Our athletic department does a lot to make sure we’re staying on top of our classes,” she said. “If they notice that you’re struggling with maintaining a schedule or just struggling with school in general … then they’ll meet with you on a weekly basis. … But sometimes that can be stressful, just trying to fit the meeting in your schedule.”

Dealing with physical and mental injuries

“We work so closely with sports medicine staff and even coaches and other athletic staff who are in a position to recognize when a student-athlete could benefit from our services and additional support,” Albinson said. “It’s normalizing help-seeking for athletes.”

For Healey, the key was finding the right person to talk to. She said she initially struggled due to the personal nature of the conversations, saying she wasn’t “in love” with the therapists she saw in Evanston.

After learning about CAPS, but not clicking with the therapist during her first session, Healey said it “was really easy to keep giving up.” Now, however, Healey said she meets with a sport psychologist at CAPS once a week.

Healey said the sessions have helped her gain perspective.

“Looking back on it now, people obviously didn’t realize how much work went into it, and how tired and how drained and how exhausted I was from it … and how you feel at the end of it, like you feeling like a walking zombie,” Healey said.

Balancing school and sports Northwestern student-athletes graduate at the second-highest rate in the country among top-tier

Though some athletes take time off on their own terms, others are forced to by injuries.

Medina, the former soccer player, tore his ACL twice during his time at Northwestern. The experience was brutal, he said. Being away from the team — and the game — for months can have an effect on an athlete’s mental health, he added.

Taking a leave, he said, means going from “doing the thing you love most to not being able to move.”

“You can’t focus in class, you don’t sleep well,” he said. “But you’ve got to keep moving on, you’ve got to accept it for what it is and say, ‘Alright, now I’ve got to go to rehab, got to go to class,’ and just set yourself small goals here and there.”

The recovery process wasn’t easy, Medina said, but it led him to be more aware of his own mental health.

Northwestern matched him with a sport psychologist at CAPS. Medina said he initially thought it was “a bit unnecessary” but found the meeting to be helpful.

Albinson said CAPS can support injured studentathletes in various ways, including a resilience and recovery program in partnership with sports medicine staff to help student-athletes deal with returning after an injury. “(We) know that it can be really helpful to talk about recovery from injury … and even some of the mental skills that can be helpful not only during recovery, but also during times where you can’t be actively out there on the field or the court,” she said.

After dealing with his own injuries, Medina said

THE DAILY NORTHWESTERN | NEWS 5

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2018

Caleigh Ryan

Brandon Medina

Daily file photo by Noah Frick-Alofs

he tried to help a younger teammate who was going through the same thing.

During Medina’s junior year, a freshman on the team also tore his ACL. Medina said he spoke with the teammate about the recovery process and provided support as a way to “pay it forward.” Few people had seen the freshman play before he got injured, he noted.

“No one really knew him,” Medina said. “You kind of have to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and help them as much as you can.”

Building communities Student-athletes at Northwestern have their own communities to help each other deal with the unique issues they face.

Abruzzo, the former swimmer, said there are three main groups: Engage, the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and Peers Urging Responsible Practices through Leadership and Education, an athlete support group.

The advisory committee organizes events and communicates with administrators about issues related to student-athletes. Engage plays a similar role, but with a focus on sustained dialogues on subjects such as race,

sexuality, gender and economic background.

Meanwhile, the P.U.R.P.L.E. peer mentorship program focuses on the mental health of student-athletes, encouraging those dealing with mental health issues to talk with someone and sometimes stepping into that role themselves.

Ryan, who was one of the mentors working with the volleyball team, said P.U.R.P.L.E. is one of the best resources offered by Northwestern Athletics.

“I want there to be two or three people on every sports team who care about this as passionately as I do and are able to look out for people who misperceive that mental illness is a weakness or that it’s something to be ashamed of, because it’s absolutely not,” Ryan said.

P.U.R.P.L.E. has an executive board that oversees the various mentors on the individual teams, said board member and senior fencer Emine Yücel.

Part of the board’s job is to give mentors the tools to help teammates not directly involved in P.U.R.P.L.E. and to set the agenda for the group’s meetings. This year, Yücel said the focus is on mental health.

“It’s a great group of people and very, very important,” Yücel said. “The athletic community and everyone who works at athletics really helps us with it

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Daily file photo by Caleigh Ryan

because they understand the importance of it.”

Medina said that in the end, the best support system athletes have is their teams.

“Your teammates are much more than friends,” Medina said. “For one, they try to be as supportive as possible. On the soccer team we all lived together, so that is very helpful, just telling each other, ‘Come on, it’s alright, you’ll get through it.’”

Taking a step away This season, as the women’s basketball team struggled throughout conference play, Jamison said she was tempted to offer advice and encouragement to her teammates.

The team tallied only four Big Ten wins and lost in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament, but Jamison said she held herself back from reaching out.

“I know how I get when we’re going through tough times, and if we lose a game, or even if we win a game, sometimes I don’t want to talk to people,” Jamison said.

“After games I always want to call them. But then I stop myself because I’m like, ‘Well, maybe I should just let them breathe and wind down from a game.’”

Jamison said she was “not in a good place mentally”

the past two quarters. While she does not have to return for Spring Quarter, she said she intends to be back.

Her leave of absence allowed her to relax by taking a break from the stress of waking up at 5:30 a.m. and going to bed at 3 a.m., she said.

“I feel like I was just existing when I was at Northwestern. I was just existing, and I wasn’t really taking in anything that was going on or that was happening to me,” Jamison said. “I wasn’t actually enjoying my time there. And so since I got back (home), I feel like I’m actually living. It just feels completely different.”

Despite the availability of student support groups and psychological services, Jamison said the best way for her to improve her mental health was to step away and focus on herself.

“At first, I thought that I would have to do that on my own and just figure it out and that I would have to keep hiding how I was feeling instead of talking to someone about it,” Jamison said. “Taking this time off was really good for me because I could figure out how to cope without all the stresses of being a student-athlete.” josephwilkinson2019@u.northwestern.edu

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Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Oscars diversity is hopeful, but work is left to be done MARISSA MARTINEZ

DAILY COLUMNIST

“Get Out” was almost never made.

That’s what Jordan Peele said during his acceptance speech for Best Original Screenplay during the Oscars on Sunday. He said he almost stopped writing 20 times because it was such a hard film to create. But Peele kept at it and created a thoughtprovoking piece that examined race and gender in a novel way.

In a genre with a stereotype of consistently killing off people of color first, it was so refreshing to see a horror movie that featured positive black characters succeeding against both literal and symbolic obstacles. As soon as I saw the movie, my perspective on what social thrillers can do for society was forever changed. I was so happy to hear that it had been nominated for Best Picture.

Yet many voting members in the academy didn’t bother to appreciate Peele’s talent beyond writing because they apparently couldn’t deem the thriller worthy of Best Picture. The world will never know if “Get Out” would have won if every voter had

taken the 1 hour and 44 minutes out of their day to properly evaluate the film. Even if “The Shape of Water” still ended up bringing home the biggest award for the night, at least it would have been fair game.

This speaks to a larger problem with the Oscars — “Get Out” was indeed nominated for Best Picture, among three other awards, which is a step in the right direction, but was ultimately snubbed by those who needed to see it most. The fact that moviemakers still have to fight to get their films recognized by academy voters is incredibly disheartening, especially when it seemed like representative pieces were finally gaining traction in Hollywood.

After three years of the #OscarsSoWhite campaign, nominations for a wider range of racially diverse actors have slowly increased. Actors of color Daniel Kaluuya and Denzel Washington were nominated for their leading roles, while Octavia Spencer and Mary J. Blige were nominated for their supporting roles in “The Shape of Water” and “Mudbound.”

There were other triumphs behind the camera as well: Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” won three additional awards including Best Director. “Coco” won Best Animated Feature Film and Best Original Song, giving Robert Lopez a double

EGOT (when a person wins an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony). Kobe Bryant even won an Oscar for his work on the animated short film “Dear Basketball.”

Despite these notable achievements, there is a lot of work to be done in terms of recognizing a lack of diversity everywhere, for all marginalized communities. Emma Stone, for example, introduced the Best Director category by pointing out that Greta Gerwig was the only female nominee — even though two men of color, del Toro and Peele, had surpassed several obstacles to produce their own movies. Overall, there was very little Asian, Latinx and Indigenous representation in the academy’s nominations — and that issue continued with several other target identity groups.

Hollywood is currently at a precipice — a big upheaval of major figures occurred following the #TimesUp and #MeToo movements, combined with the continuation of #OscarsSoWhite. Clearly, there is a high demand for stories driven by diversity and equality in all facets of film. Audiences want it, and actors and moviemakers want it, but it does not seem that many elite producers and executives want to curate this equity in the same vein. Nominators publicly refusing to watch “Get Out” — a movie with a current 99 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating — illustrates that perfectly.

There is some hope. At the end of her acceptance speech for Best Actress in a Leading Role, Frances McDormand mentioned the phrase “inclusion rider.” This is a clause actors can ask for in their contracts that would require both cast and crew members on a film to meet a certain level of diversity to advance the movie. In addition, strides have been made for LGTBQ-centered stories, casts and crews with nominations for films like “Call Me By Your Name,” “Mudbound” and Chilean film, “A Fantastic Woman” — although there is definitely room for improvement.

The Oscars and other cinematic awards may not mean much for a film in the long run: As history shows, there are always a few questionable or unfair choices made every season. Awards, however, are the first step in recognizing mainstream talent.

The academy needs to continue down this track of supporting and uplifting representative and diverse films, thus legitimizing the fight for inclusivity.

Marissa Martinez is a Medill freshman. She can be contacted at marissamartinez2021@u.northwestern. edu. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to opinion@dailynorthwestern.com. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.

Stop pushing women’s pain under the rug, believe them RACHEL HOLTZMAN

DAILY COLUMNIST

Even within our modern healthcare system, women still face remarkable stereotypes about pain and suffering in doctor’s offices. It starts with the everyday workings of female bodies — the classification of PMS and PMDD, for example, is often trivialized as a joke. In 2018, male doctors are finally starting to understand that periods can be as painful as heart attacks to some women. What seems like common sense to me and many women in this generation took centuries to work its way into the medical community.

And that’s just when it comes to ordinary bodily functions. When life events like childbirth or the onset of chronic illness happen, the implicit misogyny present in doctor’s offices becomes even worse. Women are more likely to

have their pain trivialized, and they often have to prove their suffering is equal to that of a man’s to get attention. Still, others are considered hysterical. And with so little understanding of women’s bodies, childbirth can be an ordeal. This holds especially true for women of color and poorer women in the United States.

Thanks in part to an inability to recognize mothers in crisis, the U.S. maternal mortality rate is the highest in the developed world. No, not all women have uteruses and not all people with uteruses are women, but the trivialization of maternal health is a product of generalizations about biology, gender and whose pain gets to count.

Meanwhile, up to 10 percent of women in the U.S. continue to suffer from endometriosis, a disease in which uterine lining grows outside the uterus, causing severe pain and, potentially, infertility. Yet few treatment options have been developed, and a conversation has only recently begun to form on social media about understanding and destigmatizing it.

All these statistics of suffering can’t be

collectively explained by technology or educational gaps; rather, bias against women makes it difficult to get needed treatment or sympathy.

It’s an uncomfortable truth, but some of the clearest flaws in American health care (besides a lack of universal access) come from ignorance. Women’s pain is less seen, less understood and less believed than men’s pain. Ignoring the pain of women can waste productivity, but it also costs lives and ultimately reinforces the idea that women’s pain and, ultimately, women’s voices matter less.

Part of the problem comes from the lack of funding and research devoted to promoting an understanding of women’s pain. Even the most up-to-date medical findings use the body of a white male as the basis for understanding symptoms of a variety of health crises, from heart attacks to kidney stones. As a 2016 Quartz article notes, without an advertiser or lobby willing to use language like “vagina,” “menstrual bleeding” or “uterine lining,” it’s difficult to explain the challenges women face to a wider audience. Deeply ingrained sexism

Electronic monitoring: misguided reform HEENA SRIVASTAVA

DAILY COLUMNIST

On Feb. 22, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart issued a letter to Cook County board president Toni Preckwinkle claiming that the recent increase in electronic monitoring programming for local defendants awaiting trial poses a threat to public safety. The program, he said, has caused a “dramatic increase in violent offenders” to be released from jail without adequate safety precautions. As a result of his public safety concern, Dart plans to more heavily police neighborhoods of defendants, conduct unannounced searches of defendant homes and strengthen the vetting process.

The electronic monitoring program took flight alongside a series of bond reforms issued last year, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, partially replacing money bonds for defendants. These defendants have been arrested, but not yet convicted — and are therefore innocent until proven guilty. In a system with money bonds, defendants can post a sum of money in order to be released from prison until trial, but this disadvantages the poor: Those who cannot post bond are stuck within the system until trial. Because they don’t have the resources, low-income people are often put behind bars before even being proven guilty.

Electronic monitoring aimed to fix that. Instead of posting bond to be released, defendants could be electronically monitored in the comfort of their own homes. The court can instill curfews and keep tabs on a defendant’s location.

The Cook County Department of Corrections

created an alternative to money bonds and decreased incarceration rates. The percentage of gun defendants who received cash bonds dropped from 96 percent in 2016 to 40 percent in 2017.

The number of defendants facing gun charges and receiving electronic monitoring rose from 2 percent to 22 percent according to Dart’s letter, resulting in less people being placed in jail.

But while opportunities for release were created for the poor, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign professor and director of Challenging E-Carceration James Kilgore claimed electronic monitoring is “not an alternative to incarceration — it’s an alternative form of incarceration.

It deprives people of their liberty the same as jail does.”

A report by the Chicago Community Bond Fund addresses cases in which electronic monitoring has unfairly hurt defendants. A 21-year-old defendant was released after posting bond, but was not made aware of his curfew. After violating a curfew he was oblivious to, he was put on electronic monitoring for four months, during which he lost both of his jobs. Another defendant, according to the report was unable to access the necessary medical services for his drug addiction because he was put under electronic monitoring with no opportunity for movement.

Electronic monitoring may spare low-income defendants from court fees, but can decrease their quality of life in other ways. Due to suffering in their jobs, personal health and family lives, defendants can be more likely to recidivate back into the system.

Moreover, electronic monitoring is, in theory, intended for nonviolent offenders in order to limit the effect of overcrowding and still maintain public safety. To begin revising the electronic monitoring

system and address Sheriff Dart’s concerns, electronic monitoring should not be used for violent offenders too as it currently is. To appropriately separate violent and nonviolent offenders, however, judges must understand defendants charged for gun possession are not always violent offenders.

Lastly, pre-trial services must better communicate what debts and curfews exist to defendants — whether under electronic monitoring, parole or incarcerated. Without knowledge of the strict rules they must follow, defendants inevitably break them and, ultimately, remain unjustly involved in the system.

While Dart is correct in wanting electronic monitoring reform, the program must be cut back rather than reinforced with over-policing. Funds would be better used if directed toward prisoner rehabilitation rather than further regulation.

Cook County’s poor communication to the general public further heightens this issue. Pre-trial services and the courts fail to release court records and crime data to criminal justice organizations such as the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice and the Chicago Council of Lawyers, although it is public data. Without this information, not do defendants remain ignorant, but those who serve victims are helpless. Cook County needs transparency: Only then can citizens begin to fight for defendant rights.

Heena Srivastava is a Medill freshman. She can be contacted at heenasrivastava2021@u. northwestern.edu. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to opinion@dailynorthwestern.com. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.

makes these words dirty, unimportant and less-than; when healthcare providers don’t take women’s health seriously, less money goes toward understanding these critical health problems, leaving women in the lurch.

From chronic pain, to maternal challenges, to mental illness, millions of women run the risk of not being believed by their doctors. At Northwestern and beyond, we must take the time to understand women’s pain, instead of brushing it under the rug, and give it the study and examination it deserves. Otherwise, many women on this campus, in this city and in this country will continue to suffer when they simply don’t have to.

Rachel Holtzman is a Medill senior. She can be contacted at rachelholtzman2018@u.northwestern.edu. If you would like to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to opinion@dailynorthwestern.com. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.

The Daily Northwestern Volume 138, Issue 88

Editor in Chief Nora Shelly

Opinion Editor Troy Closson

Managing Editors Yvonne Kim Cole Paxton

Assistant Opinion Editors Marissa Martinez Leo Sainati Alex Schwartz

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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2018

Professors address racial inequality in education

By CATHERINE HENDERSON

the daily northwestern @caity_henderson

Authors and professors Amanda Lewis and John Diamond evaluated the causes of persistent racial inequality in school districts like Evanston/Skokie School District 65 in front of an audience of parents and community members Tuesday night.

More than 100 people joined Lewis and Diamond at Nichols Middle School for an event organized

by District 65, four parent-teacher associations from schools throughout the district and the Organization for Positive Action and Leadership — an Evanston advocacy group focused on racial equity. The speakers presented the research from their recent book and took questions and audience comments.

Lewis, a professor at University of Illinois-Chicago, and Diamond, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, recently co-authored a book titled “Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools,” focusing on a high school renamed “Riverview” for confidentiality. They conducted 200 interviews for their project about racial dynamics in school districts. “(Discrimination) is subtle. It’s often unintentional but it is consequential,” Lewis said. “These kinds of pervasive racial dynamics are often hard to address in part because of how people make sense of race. The claim that race is pasé, that it’s old news, does harm because it prevents us from understanding how race does matter.”

TARGET

From page 1 businesses” Zalmezak said. “It’s what makes Evanston unique, but there’s room for both.”

Zalmezak also said he believes the Target will create jobs and generate a lot of property tax revenue for Evanston. Target’s downtown Evanston location currently employs 55 people,

PEARLMAN From page 1

area, the regime forces began a siege that deprived Syrians of basic necessities like food and medicine.

In February 2018, the situation escalated as the Syrian military attempted to recapture Ghouta and ramped up “one of the most intense bombing attacks yet,” killing at least 500 civilians in the region, according to the story. As the violence in Ghouta reached extreme heights, Pearlman said she was contacted by Time’s international editor, Dan Stewart, to write a story using the style of “oral reportage”

Diamond highlighted two dynamics in highachieving schools that contribute to inequality: opportunity hoarding, when dominant groups monopolize resources, and organizational routines, when repetitive patterns of action make it difficult to facilitate change in classrooms.

Diamond said white parents play a key role in closing the gap between white students and students of color. He said districts spend an “inordinate” amount of time trying to reassure white parents concerned for their high-achieving students.

“We often fix our gaze on black and Latino parents and not what white folks are doing to create the situation,” Diamond said. “Whenever there’s a change to make equity, there’s always a resistance.”

After Diamond spoke, Lewis added that white parents often have good intentions but end up exacerbating inequality rather than advocating for change.

She asked parents who hold diversity as a value: “How much do you really mean it?”

Lewis said researchers understand education as a public good, but in practice, parents often want the best thing for their own children. Parents make choices everyday that either feed into or relieve inequity in the community, she said.

“Each and every one of us that engages with schools need to think about what our engagement is,” Lewis said. “Who are we advocating for? Are we advocating just for our own kids, or are we advocating for all kids?”

Diamond praised District 65 for making an addition to the curriculum to provide more support for students entering high school math. He said the district

was open to “creatively restructuring,” and he said it would make a difference.

District 65 school board president Suni Kartha attended the event and said she was happy to hear the speakers feel the district is moving in the right direction. However, she said the district would have to constantly examine their practices.

“I saw a room full of people that I believe are allies in this work,” Kartha said. “We are going to get resistance — we’ve already started to get resistance — and knowing that these are people that I can call upon to help fight that is always good to see.”

Bowery said.

Evanston Township High School’s school-towork coordinator Brian Stone said he helps students find employment from the high school’s Career and Technical Education department.

Stone told The Daily that although he used to be against big corporations coming into Evanston, he realized that companies like Target are doing “great work” in providing people with

employment, good wages and health insurance.

Some of those who attended the event also said they believe the new store will be transformative for Evanston and the University. Zalmezak said with the new Target and Fountain Square opening in the spring, there will be a continuous block of vitality from the Square all the way up to Northwestern.

Hagerty told The Daily this Target will

change the four-year Northwestern experience if it becomes the one-stop shopping place for NU students.

“I don’t think we can just hold on to the way business used to be,” Hagerty said. “Business is changing, and Evanston needs to change with it.”

through firsthand testimonies from sources in Syria.

Mrie, who is now a New York University master’s student, said even though the process of reaching out to civilians in Ghouta on Facebook and WhatsApp was “exhausting,” she feels proud of the final project presented to the public.

Mrie added that she was happy that Time magazine was interested in covering the recent violence sweeping Ghouta, given that the Syrian civil war has entered its seventh year.

“For the normal American audience, you feel that (people think) ‘This is the normal status of the Middle East, so why the f–k should we care?’”

Mrie said.

The final product was “a real team effort,” as she and Mrie worked to pull together different aspects of the story, Pearlman said. For example, when she realized there was only one Syrian woman featured in the first version of the story, she asked Mrie to diversify the sources to ensure greater gender balance in the narrative, she said.

Pearlman is also the author of “We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria,” a book of intimate testimonies from Syrians whose lives have been transformed by war and revolution.

English Prof. Brian Edwards, director of the

Middle East and North African Studies program, highlighted Pearlman’s interdisciplinary approach in her scholarship, which he said combines methodology in political science, ethnography and literary studies.

“What’s great about an article like hers in Time Magazine is that she has great respect as a scholar and a researcher,” Edwards said. “The importance of her research and writing to the international community is obvious. … We were proud and excited to see her further reach in the research.”

Noah Frick-Alofs/Daily Senior Staffer

Author John Diamond speaks at Nichols Middle School. He and Amanda Lewis presented to District 65 community members about racial inequality in school districts.

catherinehenderson2021@u.northwestern.edu

amyli2021@u.northwestern.edu

limingwan2021@u.northwestern.edu

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Softball Penn State vs. NU, 3 p.m. Friday

ON THE RECORD

When I was little, when I went to tournaments my parents would have to buy me Webkinz for every touch to keep — Sarah Filby, freshman foil me motivated.

@DailyNU_Sports

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

FENCING

Three NU fencers take talents around the world

By PETER WARREN

the daily northwestern @thepeterwarren

The 2017-18 season has been a banner campaign for Northwestern.

The Wildcats won 47 bouts during the regular season and 25 in a row at one point, both highs in team history. They followed that up with a Midwest Fencing Conference championship, only the fifth in team history and the second in three years.

But for a few fencers, helping NU to one of its best seasons ever was not the only priority during the season. Junior foil Yvonne Chart, freshman foil Sarah Filby and senior sabre Emine Yücel all competed internationally in hopes of achieving success beyond the college scene during Northwestern’s regular season.

Chart represents Great Britain, Filby represents Canada and Yücel represents Turkey.

All three have traversed the globe, from Tauberbischofsheim, Germany, to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, to compete at the highest level at World Cups, Grand Prix and Junior National Championships during their international careers.

And, with major events coming in the near future, each is trying to accomplish goals for both club and country.

Working their way up Each fencer’s career in the sport started differently.

Filby and Chart both started fencing at early ages. At Chart’s first-ever fencing class, she broke down after misunderstanding a joke.

“I remember the coach was talking about how if you’re here and you haven’t seen ‘Princess Bride,’ then you had better leave,” Chart said. “And I took him completely seriously. I was a little kid.

I was like, ‘Oh my God. I haven’t seen ‘Princess Bride.’ I’m not going to be allowed to fence,’ and I was on the verge of tears.”

The coach then took about five minutes to calm Chart down and explain that, even though she had not seen the movie, she could still fence.

Chart, who was born in Australia and lived in Texas and Washington, D.C. before settling in England, did not start to participate in competitive events until she moved across the pond.

For Filby and fencing, it was not love at first sight.

“When I was little, when I went to tournaments my parents would have to buy me Webkinz for every touch I got to keep me motivated,” Filby said, referencing the stuffed animals once popular among pre-teens.

She almost quit when she was 10, but her parents and coaches made her stick with the sport. The decision to continue proved to be important, as she started to enjoy it soon after.

Source: Northwestern Athletics

(Right) A Northwestern fencer toes the strip. Emine Yücel, Yvonne Chart and Sarah Filby have all done that for their national teams so far this season.

As for Yücel, her parents did not let her start fencing until she started high school. But once she did, she picked up the sport quickly and was soon competing at national-level events.

By the time all three were in the latter half of their high school careers, fencing was a major part of their lives.They were all traveling to competitions across the world and dedicating a great portion of their time to fencing. Filby even transferred to a Canadian boarding school for her junior year to work with her national team coach.

“I had a really one-sided life there,” Filby said. “I was just going to school, going to fencing, nothing else.”

While the trio came from different backgrounds, they all eventually made their way to Northwestern.

College teammates, international foes Last October, both Chart and Filby competed at a Foil World Cup event in Cancun. While they had competed at the same event previously, this was the first time they attended a competition as college teammates.

In 2015, Chart and Filby attended a World Cup event in Guatemala and both had their best-ever international tournament finishes there. Chart won the bronze medal, while Filby secured the gold.

Though Chart’s finish was noteworthy, what stuck with her was the atmosphere.

She was the only fencer from Great Britain at the event, but her cordiality with the Guatemalan fans gained her a following.

“I speak a little bit of Spanish, and they appreciated my efforts in trying to be polite and talk with them a little bit,” Chart said.

“I was fencing against one of the Canadian girls, and she had all her team behind her. I had no one there except my dad, but then all of the Guatemalans started cheering for me, too. That was pretty fun, building a mini community in Guatemala.”

For Filby, the victory was very cathartic.

Her win came about a month after moving to the boarding school, and she said the gold medal was a “major confidence booster.”

On her way to the championship, Filby faced Chart in the semifinals. While there is no tension between the two over the bout, it is memorable not for the result, but what happened during the bout.

“She nearly stabbed me in the face,” Chart said. “She accidently hit my mask off, and she didn’t notice and she kept stabbing and nearly hit me in the face.”

Relationship with Turkey Yücel’s international experience has been far from normal.

Very soon after starting fencing, she made her first national training camp.

Those camps were the basis for how fencers were selected for national teams. In her last two years of high school, Yücel said she made many trips across Europe to compete at different international tournaments.

But now, Yücel’s relationship with the Turkish national team is in a much different state.

“I don’t really have a relationship because I’m mostly here, and they don’t really like that I’m here because that means that I can’t work with them, and I can’t go to the camps,” Yücel said.

Yücel said a new coach took over a few years ago and prefers working with fencers in Turkey. This is something Yücel, who only returns to her home country for national competitions, cannot do. As a result, Yücel said the geographic difference between Evanston and Turkey has created a wedge between her and the team.

Even with these issues, Yücel is trying to keep a dialogue with her country’s top officials.

“I have been kind of building up a relationship since last year,” Yücel said. “Or, I have been trying to.”

Yücel, who dealt with injuries early in her college career that prevented her competing internationally, returned to the international field in January at a Baltimore World Cup event. She struggled in her return to the international stage, but despite the troubles, Yücel continues to push forward with one goal on her mind: the Olympics.

Citius – Altius – Fortius Fencing is one of the original Summer Olympic sports. Women’s fencing, specifically the foil event, joined the Olympic program at the 1924 Games in Paris. At the upcoming 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, there will be six women’s fencing events on the program: individual and team competitions in epee, foil and sabre, the most in Olympic history.

With July 25, 2020, the first day of fencing in Tokyo, less than 900 days away, the 2020 Games are on the minds of all three fencers.

For Filby, who a few weeks ago qualified for the Junior World Championships

in Italy, making the Olympics is not high on her list of priorities. While she said she would take the opportunity if it was ever presented to her, she is not “actively” pursuing it.

Instead, Filby hopes for a different Olympic goal.

“One of my goals would be to be ranked high enough on the Canadian point standings to get funded to go to the Olympics as a training partner,” Filby said.

“I’m trying to stay high enough to do that but not too sure how that’ll go.”

Chart and Yücel, meanwhile, are both actively trying to earn their way onto the strip in Tokyo.

Chart, who was in the crowd for the 2012 Games in London, believes that her year in school is beneficial to her goal of making the team. After she graduates in 2019, she hopes to spend the year leading up to the Olympics preparing for Tokyo.

“I’m quite lucky in that that works out so well,” Chart said. “I’m trying to plan my schedule so that I can make next year and the year after a little more relaxed so I can just focus on fencing and hopefully that’ll help out with preparations.”

Both fencers said competing in the Olympics would mean a great deal to them.

Yücel said that it is all she has ever wanted since she first picked up a sabre and that she will do whatever she must to qualify for the Olympics.

“Who knows?” Yücel said. “Maybe I won’t be able to qualify for 2020. Then the whole process will start again and I will try for 2024.” peterwarren2021@u.northwestern.edu

NU sending 12 fencers to NCAA Regionals in Ohio

By PETER WARREN

the daily northwestern @thepeterwarren

With the team-centric part of the season over, Northwestern is now focused on getting as many fencers as possible to NCAA Championships in State College, Pennsylvania, in two weeks.

Standing in the Wildcats’ way is this weekend’s NCAA Midwest Regionals in Cleveland, Ohio.

The three best teams at the regionals are No. 1 Notre Dame, No. 4 Ohio State and No. 9 NU. In addition to those powerhouses, Cleveland State, DetroitMercy, Lawrence and Wayne State are also sending fencers to the event. At last year’s regionals, all but one medal spot went to a fencer from the top three.

The Cats are sending 12 competitors to regionals this year. Competing in the epee event are sophomore Pauline Hamilton, senior Katie Van Riper and freshmen Marta Amador Molina and Anya Harkness. In the foil event, junior Yvonne Chart, sophomore Amy Jia and freshmen Sarah Filby and Justine Banbury will be fencing. Freshman Alexis Browne, junior Maddy Curzon, sophomore Abby Tartell and senior Emine Yücel are fencing in the sabre event.

The freshmen lead the team with five rookies competing in Cleveland. Coach Zach Moss said the group as a whole has adjusted to college fencing well and their results this season showed.

“The freshman class has done a really great job this year being consistent, working hard and buying into what we have been putting out there as a way of working,

a way of training, a way of being a Northwestern Wildcat fencer,” Moss said. “Their results this season have shown that, and as a result they have earned the opportunity to compete in regionals and potentially NCAAs.” Five fencers have experience from last year’s Midwest Regional in Detroit: Chart, Curzon, Hamilton, Van Riper and Yücel.

Of the returnees from last year’s regionals, Hamilton was the highest finisher, tying for third place. The sophomore is also the only NU fencer on the roster who has competed at NCAA Championships.

All the fencers competing this weekend have winning percentages of .600 or better.

Van Riper leads the group with 51 wins overall, while Filby has the highest winning percentage at .771.

Unlike other individual tournaments the Cats have fenced at this season, there

will be no direct elimination round. With only a round robin tournament, the winner will be the fencer with the most wins, and the tiebreaker will be the difference between touchés won and touchés lost.

Curzon said this tournament is “one of the more nerve-wracking” of the season because of this different individual format.

“It is extremely different than what we are used to,” Curzon said. “Everyone fences everyone, even your teammates.

Especially for freshmen this is something they have never encountered before. In addition to fencing your teammates, every point counts.”

Selection for the NCAA Championships is a complicated process. For the Midwest Regional, Moss said there are four spots available for sabre fencers, five for epee fencers and six for foil fencers.

However, it is not only regional results

that account for making it to NCAAs; regular season results also factor into consideration.

After those spots are filled, there is a possibility for fencers to make NCAAs via an at-large bid. In considering at-large bids, only regular season results are looked at.

While qualifying for NCAA Championships is no easy achievement, Moss said he wants to see the Cats be competitive in every bout and fight with the other top competitors in the regional.

“We have a good chance to qualify four to five people,” Moss said. “I think six would be incredible. … It is really, really tough to do. It would be an incredible accomplishment.” peterwarren2021@u.northwestern.edu