GHOSTS GALORE
TIME TO VOTE
Check out Chicago’s haunted locations, pages 14-15
Full election coverage inside:
News, pages 3-5 Nation & World, pages 10-11
Volume #99 | Issue #7 | Oct. 27, 2014 | depauliaonline.com
Taking a stand on consent Students respond and lead pro-consent movement By Brenden Moore
A
News Editor
s a response to calls from national leaders, advocacy organizations and The DePaulia itself, a studentled movement has emerged with the mission of raising awareness on the issue of sexual assault, one T-shirt at a time. The movement, called Consent the D, was started earlier this month by a group of DePaul students who were not satisfied with the levels of progress being made on the issue. Senior Randy Vollrath, founder of the movement, said students need to stand up and show that sexual assault is not OK and that a movement like this is “long overdue.” “The issue has rose to prominence in recent years, both nationally and at our own university. A few weeks ago there was a sexual assault a block off campus,” Vollrath said. “There’s been a lot of talk about the issue of sexual assault lately, but nowhere near as much action. The DePaulia boldly called for action on sexual assault a few weeks ago. This is the student response.” The name of the group is a direct reference to the Fear the D T-shirts that DePaul has sold
See CONSENT, page 8
GRANT MYATT | THE DEPAULIA
Randy Vollrath (center), a senior at DePaul, holds the preliminary T-shirt design for the Consent the D movement he started. Vollrath says this is the student response that is “long overdue” and hopes to show that DePaul students care and are doing something proactive about sexual assault.
Ebola prepares nursing students By Stefani Szenda Contributing Writer
The news of potential cases of Ebola continues to spread quickly throughout the United States. The threat is something that is on the minds of citizens across the country, but what about those working in health care who the threat is more immediate for? With the news of Amber Vinson and Nina Pham, two nurses who took care of Thomas Eric Duncan, the man who died from the virus, contracting Ebola the fear of the possibility must be very real for other nurses and health care workers in general. Students in DePaul’s nursing program have taken the recent events in stride, following the updates but not allowing fear to stop them from doing their jobs. “Our work puts us closer than everyone to the patient,” Bill Cody, director of the School of Nursing at DePaul University, said. He said he wasn’t surprised that it was nurses who got the virus because they work “the frontlines.” According to an Oct. 23 article from NBC, Vinson has now tested negative for the virus while Pham is, as of Oct. 24, Ebola-free. The
Voter registration, education push for midterm election By Courtney Jacquin Editor-in-Chief
CHARLES REX ARBOGAST | AP
Nurses at Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center demonstrate proper protective procedures during a training class Oct. 16. possible threat still remains for many other nurses and health care workers, but they now have new protocols and precautions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) put up guidelines for hospitals for dealing with the Ebola virus, but were taken down before new, stronger guidelines were put up Monday Oct. 20, according to an Oct. 21 USA Today article. The guidelines cover personal protective equipment (PPE),
including a full face shield with a disposable hood, two sets of gloves, a fluid-resistant gown, apron and boot covers, according to the CDC guidelines. Also according to the CDC guidelines, any health care workers who are going to be working with the patient must be properly trained, wearing the personal protective equipment where no skin is shown and a
See EBOLA, page 8
First-year students at DePaul are presented with a plethora of new opportunities: Classes, organizations, all that city life in Chicago has to offer and for many, the chance to vote for the first time. The Office of Student Involvement and the Student Leadership Institute at DePaul have made a push to make the voter registration and voting process as simple as possible, making it easy especially for new students to understand the process. OSI handles voting education while SLI handles registration. “Over the summer, I worked with other leadership development coordinators as well as some of the professional staff in SLI to give incoming freshmen attending orientation the opportunity to register to vote,” Mehdi Bichri, senior management information services major and SLI leadership development coordinator, said.
“I think that the reason it was such a successful initiative is because we made it very quick and easy for students to register either in the state of Illinois or in their home state,” Bichri said. “We had a knowledgeable staff and once the confusion and difficulty about voter registration disappeared, a lot of students were eager to register.” Since June, SLI assisted with the voter registration of 1,437 students. Of that number, 76 percent registered in Illinois. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, only 24 percent
See VOTE, page 4
More coverage
• DePaul professors analyze the Illinois governor race. Page 3
• Quinn, Rauner break record in campaign ad spending. Page 5
• Important governor and Senate races to follow. Page 10