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DePaulia
The
EST. 1923
THE DEPAULIA
Good News! The sun came out today!
Volume #106 | Issue #24 | May 9, 2022 | depauliaonline.com
‘IT HASN’T SUNK IN YET’ KIERSTEN RIEDFORD | THE DEPAULIA
DePaul President A. Gabriel Esteban gives final interview to The DePaulia, one month before he officially steps down as university president.
DePaul president prepares to leave, reflects on last 5 years By Lawrence Kreymer, Nika Schoonover & Nadia hernandez Editor-in-Chief, Print Managing Editor & News Editor
DePaul President A. Gabriel Esteban hasn’t looked for an apartment since 2007. That’s when he became provost of Seton Hall University, a Catholic institution in New Jersey, and later the president for six years. But the time has come for Esteban and his wife, Josephine, to search for a new apartment as Esteban’s time as DePaul’s president is coming to an end. At the end of June, Esteban will officially step down from his role after spending five years at the university. His replacement remains unknown. While DePaul continues to search for Esteban’s successor, he and his wife are
trying to lock down an apartment in Columbus, where they plan to move for the next year so they can be closer to their daughter. “The agony of being on a waitlist,” Esteban said, reminiscing on the last time he looked for an apartment. “Will we be able to move there? And we had backups, backups. We’re thinking, do we need to go back to Columbus?” Well, the current lease documents have already been signed, Esteban said. But before he and his wife make the move, Esteban still has several things he has to do before handing over the reins to a new leader — including holding his last board meeting and conducting the first in-per-
son graduation ceremony in three years. “It hasn’t sunk in yet that I’m stepping away, going on sabbatical, but I know it will be there before I know it,” he said. Esteban sat down with The DePaulia for an in-person interview in his office last week to recap his five years at DePaul. In the interview, we went over several topics, including his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, enrollment issues and the return to an in-person campus environment last fall. As DePaul’s president, Esteban has endured a turbulent five years, shaped by the Covid-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests and the Jan. 6 insurrection, all of which have impacted the climate and duty of DePaul’s administrative staff. “No one teaches you how to deal with a pandemic,” Esteban said. “So this was a unique occurrence of our time.”
The pandemic brought on several challenges and key decisions for Esteban and his administration, including holding mostly virtual classes for the 2020-21 academic year and requiring students, faculty and staff to get vaccinated and then boosted. Early on, though, Esteban had his worries on how the pandemic would impact the landscape of the university moving forward. “We were worried because we knew it would impact enrollment, retention, graduation, persistence, all those things,” he said. “We were worried about its impact on fundraising.” Throughout the interview, Esteban pointed to the record freshman classes that DePaul has been able to obtain in
See ESTEBAN, page 9
Rise Up 4 Abortion holds walkout at DePaul’s Lincoln Park campus By Lilly Keller Assistant Arts & Life Editor
National organization Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights held a walkout at DePaul University’s Quad on Thursday in the wake of the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that opted to overturn Roe v. Wade. At noon, students abandoned their daily schedules to protest the recent infringements on individuals’ rights and access to an abortion. At the forefront of the assembly stood DePaul freshman Laura Stream, who was inspired to start the walkout as a way of initiating and creating change alongside the student body. “I have been working with Rise 4 Abortion for a while now and am here
today and I want to encourage everyone to do what I feel is what we should do as individuals who attend a private Catholic university and who have a lot of privilege,” Stream said. Currently, one in four women receives an abortion in their life, according to the New York Times. The average patient who seeks an abortion is described as low income, already a mother and is in her first six weeks of pregnancy, according to a study connected by the Guttmacher Institute. “No matter how small, it is through movements like these that change is made,” Stream said. DePaul freshman Gylani Oliver took center stage as she urged the crowd to understand that restrictions on abortion will
KIERSTEN RIEDFORD | THE DEPAULIA
Demonstrators lie on the ground of DePaul’s Student Center in protest of the leaked Supreme Court opinion on overturning Roe v. Wade.
See PROTEST, page 6
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