DePaulia
The
2017 Pacemaker Award Winner
Volume #102 | Issue #24 | April 30, 2018 | depauliaonline.com
Family of student who died after being struck by CTA still looking for answers By Amber Colón Editor-in-Chief
PHOTO COURTESY OF ALEX QUIROZ
Ricardo Quiroz studied finance at DePaul and was set to graduate in June. Quiroz had high hopes of helping his family become financially stable.
He was born laughing. Maria Quiroz, mother of DePaul student Ricardo Quiroz, said that her son will be remembered as someone who was always very happy. Quiroz, 24, was struck by a CTA Red Line train on Sunday, April 15 at 8:01 a.m. on the Near North Side. He was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in critical condition where he died at 1:25 a.m. the following Tuesday. The train’s conductor was also taken to Northwestern for a psychological evaluation, according to Chicago Fire
Media Affairs. Set to graduate in June, Ricardo got his associate’s from Truman College before transferring to DePaul about two years ago. “He was excited to be at DePaul,” said Kenton Klaus, a professor in the Driehaus College of Business. Klaus had Ricardo in class last spring quarter for a career management course. He said he remembers Quiroz as a student who was “very sincere” and “very enthusiastic about life after college.” “The students I remember make an extra point to see me (...) to be successful in their career search,” Klaus said. Now, over two weeks later, the Quiroz
See RICARDO, page 4
Student Gov. elections were undemocratic By Benjamin Conboy Managing Editor
COMMENTARY It’s surprisingly easy to run for the President of the United States. You’re qualified to run if you are at least 35-years-old and a naturalborn citizen who has lived in the U.S. That, when combined with at least 270 electoral college votes, will deliver to you the highest office in the free world. This year’s field of Student Government Association (SGA) presidential candidates didn’t fare as well. After a backroom meeting between Lynch and Josh Kaufman/ Nick Darlington caused the ticket to inexplicably withdraw, the only ticket remaining was the Jack Evans/Katy Bozich campaign – endorsed by current SGA president Michael Lynch. But days later Evans was disqualified for “slander,” leaving only Bozich, who was ineligible without a running mate. She dropped out the next day. For a couple seconds, it looked like there would be no candidates for 2018 student council president, but then – alas! – Alex Bednar and running mate Ryan Witry announced they were running! Then, suddenly, they weren’t. Based on a technicality, the current SGA denied the legitimacy of their campaign, referring to a constitutional caveat that says a student has to have held a full term as an SGA representative. This leaves a grand total of zero qualified candidates running for president. There’s about 28,000 students at DePaul, but Covarrubias and Lynch deemed only a handful of
See SGA, page 4
CODY CORRALL | THE DEPAULIA
Students march to bring awareness to sexual assault on college campuses in this year’s Take Back the Night demonstration.
JOY IS COMING
Take Back the Night gives platform to survivors of sexual violence By Yazmin Dominguez Online Editor
On Wednesday evening, in room 302 of the Arts and Letters Hall, an intimate moment was taking place. Sitting in a circle gathered around bunches of white flowers, a heart shaped stone with the word “healing” engraved on its face and a glass figurine of a pink swan, fellow graduate students Fabiola Rosiles and Jax Witzig had just finished leading a community support circle. A few classrooms down the hall Ann Russo, Director of the DePaul Women’s Center and Hannah Retzkin, a Sexual and Relationship Violence and Prevention Specialist, did the same. It was all a part of DePaul’s annual Take Back the Night event, where students were able to come together in a safe space to discuss sexual assault and reflect on its aftermath. In their closing remarks after a heavy
session of discussion, Witzig cited a line from poet Kim Addonizio’s “To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall”: “Listen, I love you. Joy is coming.” As Witzig finished reading, the group of assembled students wiped away tears and attempted to compose themselves. “Something about it almost makes me cry whenever I think about it because I feel like joy feels so far off sometimes when you’re a survivor,” Witzig said. “It feels incomprehensible, like you can’t experience that again, and that’s why I wanted to close out the event with this quote. It is possible to feel joy again and in fact it’s already on its way.” In a way, Addonizio’s last line captured the sentiment of the event: No matter someone’s gender or sexuality, whether straight, gay, trans, gender nonconforming, genderqueer, or anything else, the trauma for survivors – not victims – of sexual violence will subdue with time, and healing will persevere. At DePaul it is the hallmark event of
sexual awareness month, but Take Back the Night is a yearly tradition on college campuses nationwide. Beginning in March of 1976, the Take Back the Night Foundation is a nonprofit organization that aims to bring public awareness to an unfortunate reality that many university students experience during their college years: that of sexual assault and sexual violence. “I always think of sexual assault as this ink stain that spreads and touches all of us no matter what, even if we think we don’t know anyone. And if we’ve never experienced, it still impacts us, so this event is very visible in public,” Retzkin said. “It shows that sexual violence is not tolerated and we want to move forward with creating a society in which that does not happen. We’re all part of the problem, but we’re part of the solution too.” This year at DePaul, organizers of Take Back the Night decided to
See TBTN page 5