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The Daily Northwestern Tuesday, February 13, 2018

DAILYNORTHWESTERN.COM 8 SPORTS/Lacrosse

3 CAMPUS/Faculty

Cats hammer pair of nonconference foes

Team including Feinberg professors wins $15 million to combat newborn mortality

Find us online @thedailynu 4 OPINION/Phillips

Being ‘woke’ doesn’t replace taking action

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Profs voice support for Klein accusers Faculty write letter, commit to improving Medill

By MARIANA ALFARO

the daily northwestern @marianaa_alfaro

A group of Medill faculty members promised the 10 former students and employees who last week accused Prof. Alec Klein of harassment that they will “search for ways to help provide a safer, healthier environment free of any form of predation or bullying” in a letter last week. In the letter, which was sent to media Monday morning, 15 tenured professors from the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications told the women their allegations shook many of them “to the core.” The allegations against Klein, they said, have sparked conversation and reflection among Medill faculty and staff. “We respect you, and express our deep personal regret for any harm suffered,” the professors said in the letter. “We do hear you. We’ll continue to listen.” Last Wednesday, the 10 former Medill students and employees sent a letter to Northwestern administrators accusing Klein, director of the Medill Justice Project, of sexual harassment, bullying and verbal abuse. In the letter, they described various situations in which Klein displayed “controlling, discriminatory, emotionally

and verbally abusive behavior.” Klein “categorically” denied the allegations made against him in a Wednesday statement to The Daily. In their response to the former students and employees, the Medill professors said that, as faculty members, they “clearly have plenty of urgent work to do.”They added that they are committed to make changes that “ensure no student or employee experiences abusive treatment, sexual misconduct, or discriminatory behavior.” Medill Prof. Donna Leff, who mainly teaches graduate students, said the professors decided to write the letter after discussing the allegations made against Klein. “We clearly and emphatically … want to say that we won’t tolerate this behavior among ourselves or our colleagues,” Leff said. “This is not any climate that we would tolerate at all. Not at all.” Leff said the group of professors made the decision to write and send the letter fairly quickly and easily after having their conversation. Leff said several of the women who signed the original letter were former students of hers, and that the faculty wrote the letter directly to them because they “felt that they needed to hear from us.” Medill Prof. Douglas Foster also signed the letter. The role of faculty, Foster told The Daily, is to ensure the “underlying problems of the culture” in Medill are being addressed. The goal of the women » See KLEIN, page 6

Katie Pach/Daily Senior Staffer

Director of parks, recreation and community services Lawrence Hemingway speaks at Monday’s City Council meeting. Hemingway said the department’s website crashed over the weekend due to too much traffic.

Camp registration crashes website City form shut down Saturday, leaving thousands of spots unfilled By SAMANTHA HANDLER

the daily northwestern @sn_handler

Online registration for the city’s summer camps encountered a snafu over the weekend that resulted in a high number of vacant registration spots, as the Parks, Recreation and Community Services website experienced

technical difficulties, city staff said at Monday’s City Council meeting. The online registration forms for Evanston summer camps originally went live at 8 a.m. Saturday, then crashed due to the large number of people trying to register. It was finally shut down entirely by city officials by 9:45 a.m., according to a city news release.

People were still able to register in person at the Levy Senior Center, and the department has processed all 748 of those applications, department director Lawrence Hemingway said at the meeting. He said when registration opened, there were only around 58 people at the center to register, but an hour later there were more than 300 people trying to

register in person, with more “coming in the building every minute by the dozens.” “Of course people weren’t happy that the online system wasn’t working, but we didn’t anticipate having that as an issue,” Hemingway said. “Last year, that wasn’t an issue for us. So there was no reason for us to » See WEBSITE, page 6

MSA director begins tenure at NU Student files racial Daviree Velázquez Phillip fills vacancy after stint at Georgetown By ADRIAN WAN

the daily northwestern @piuadrianw

As a self-identified student activist in college, Daviree Velázquez Phillip said she often criticized her undergraduate school for the lack of mentorship and services provided to firstgeneration students and students of color like her. However, Phillip said she eventually realized critiquing without providing concrete solutions was not enough, leading her to pursue a career in higher education. “I thought to myself, if I’m going to critique higher (education) or ... identify injustice in the world, then I certainly need to see myself as part of the answer,” Phillip said. Phillip began her tenure Monday as the new director for Multicultural Student Affairs, filling the position which had been vacant for four months since former director Charles Kellom left for Ohio Wesleyan University in October. Prior to coming to

Northwestern, Phillip worked as an assistant director of diversity education in Georgetown University’s Center for Multicultural Equity and Access and as a diversity and inclusion specialist at its Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship. A search committee comprised of students, faculty and staff reviewed application materials and interviewed potential candidates, said Social Justice Education director Robert Brown. Brown, who headed the committee, added that three applicants were invited for an oncampus interview in December before Phillip’s appointment was finalized. Brown said Phillip stood out in “a very competitive pool of applicants” because of her strong commitment to social justice and inclusion in education and beyond. “She had experience working directly advocating for minoritized groups of students and she has direct roles working with black and Latinx communities,” » See MSA, page 6

Serving the University and Evanston since 1881 Serving the University and Evanston since 1881

inequity complaint Freshman alleges bias in home high school suspension By MADDIE BURAKOFF

daily senior staffer @madsburk

Colin Boyle/Daily Senior Staffer

Daviree Velázquez Phillip. Phillip, who assumed her position as the new director for Multicultural Student Affairs on Monday, plans to support marginalized students at NU.

Growing up in the public school system in Princeton, New Jersey, Jamaica Ponder said she often saw issues of racial inequity, even in a town that largely professed itself to be liberal. “It’s really difficult to make that a problem to put on the table because everyone is so educated,” the Medill freshman said. “We have Princeton (University) right there, and so you talk to these parents who have x amount of degrees, and they’re like, ‘Well of course we’re not racist. We’re far too smart to be racist.’” Recently, Ponder and her father filed a discrimination complaint against Princeton Public Schools in response to a school suspension system which they see as racially biased.

During her senior year at Princeton High School, Ponder faced a one-day suspension because of her senior collage photo in the school’s yearbook, which features her and a group of friends in her basement. The part of the photo that caused the retaliation, she said, was the backdrop — behind the 17 students hung works of art created by Jamaica’s father, Rhinold Ponder. Rhinold Ponder said the works in the photo are part of an exhibition on race and the N-word. One painting has the phrase “N----- Rich,” and another depicts a lynching of three famous figures. The paintings had been hanging in the family’s house for years, and often served as a “conversation piece” for Jamaica’s friends, Rhinold Ponder said. So when Jamaica Ponder was called into the principal’s office to discuss her yearbook collage, she said she was surprised. The fact that the word is in the painting » See COMPLAINT, page 6