The Daily Egyptian - April 7, 2021

THE

Daily Egyptian SERVING THE SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY SINCE 1916.

DAILYEGYPTIAN.COM APRIL 7, 2021 VOL. 104, ISSUE 12

Cook County city to provide housing reparations for Black residents Courtney Alexander | ___courtney_alex23____ Ore Ojewuyi | @odojewuyi

Parade of Flags

Please see page 12.

Executive Director of International Affairs Andrew Carver, left, hands a flag to SIU chancellor Austin Lane during the International Parade of Flags Monday, April 5, 2021 outside Anthony Hall at SIU in Carbondale, Ill. Jared Treece | @bisalo

Missouri senator introduces “minutemen” bill Senator Bill White (R) reacts to proposed federal gun control laws

George Wiebe | gwiebe@dailyegyptian.com Following the mass shootings in Boulder, Colo. and Atlanta, Ga. last month, national attention focused once again around new gun legislation.

In response, Missouri state representatives proposed sweeping legislation to oppose moves by the federal government to expand gun control laws.

The Second Amendment Preservation Act passed through the Missouri House of Representatives in February.

“This isn’t a new bill. In 2013-2014 [...] they passed it through the House and Senate, [and it] went to the governor, that was Democrat [Jay] Nixon, [and he] vetoed the bill. We missed the override by one vote,” Jered Taylor (R), of the Missouri House of Representatives said.

The proposed act declares that any law passed by the federal government which infringe on the Second Amendment rights of its citizens, “must be invalid in this state.”

Under the act, state police departments could be sued for a minimum of $50,000 for enforcing those federal laws.

“The best way to get the department’s attention and to make sure that they follow this law to protect our citizens’ Second Amendment rights, is to hit them in the pocketbook,” Taylor said.

A more controversial piece of legislature, proposed by Bill White (R) of the Missouri State Senate, is S.B. 528, the bill would establish the “Missouri Minutemen.”

On paper, the “minutemen” are not a state militia but a force that could be called upon by the Governor to react during a “state of emergency.”

The bill requires all volunteers to “secure firearms, firearm accessories,

ammunition, uniforms, equipment and supplies necessary to perform any duties as assigned by the governor.”

The reality of the bill is more complicated however. Firearms and equipment would not be taxable, but it would become property of the state of Missouri.

“While you are minutemen, your firearms will, for sovereignty and jurisdiction purposes, be considered to be state property,” White said.

White argues that this would remove regulation and taxation by the U.S. government.

Missouri already has two volunteer forces, the Missouri National Guard and the Missouri Defence force.

The bill has not been voted on by the state House or Senate and was likely a reaction to recent legislation going through Congress.

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed two Bills in 2021 aimed at reforming background checks.

H.R.8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, would prohibit the transfer of firearms between private parties without first having a licenced dealer/manufacturer performing background checks.

“I firmly believe in the right to keep and bear arms, legally. I’m also a strong advocate for conceal carry, and have permits myself to do so. But we have a violence problem in this country and it cannot be ignored,” Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said, following his support for H.R.8.

H.R.1446, the Enhanced Background Checks Act, was written by James Clyburn (D-S.C.) who called it “an important step Congress must take to address the epidemic of gun violence in this country.”

Staff reporter George Wiebe can be reached at gwiebe@dailyegyptian.com

Evanston, Ill. approved a historic reparations plan for Black residents affected by housing discrimination.

The housing plan has sparked debate about whether the resolution is adequate enough to address the harm done to the Black community.

Over the next decade, $10 million will be paid to qualifying residents.To qualify for the Restorative Housing program, residents must be a direct descendent of an African American or a Black resident who resided in the city between 1919 and 1969. The city also has additional guidelines for program eligibility.

Alderwoman Robin Rue Simmons, a representative of the fifth ward for Evanston, said the city council passed the reparation initiative in 2019 and recreational cannabis sales tax will fund the reparations.

“In 2019, we passed our reparations initiative that’s funded by our recreational cannabis sales tax. On March 22, we passed our first proposal to implement and disburse reparation benefits, and it’s the Restorative Housing Initiative,” Simmons said.

Reparations will primarily be used to help Black residents build generational wealth through homeownership, Simmons said.

“Residents are going to receive a $25,000 direct benefit for housing, which will immediately build wealth through new homeownership, or sustaining homeownership, or even paying down a mortgage balance of an existing home,” Simmons said.

In response to negative feedback from the Black community that the resolution is not actually reparations, Simmons said the legislation is very emotional.

“It is in fact reparations because it is a direct response to the egregious acts of the Black community and it is reparations in the form of compensation. I do agree that it alone is not enough to satisfy the debt owed to black residents,” Simmons said.

Continued on page 4.

News

Page 2

Contact Us

Email: editor@dailyegyptian.com Faculty Managing Editor: Julia Rendleman julia@juliarendleman.com Editor-in-Chief: Kallie Cox kcox@dailyegyptian.com Managing Editor: Nicolas Galindo ngalindophoto@gmail.com Design Chief: Chloe Schobert cschobert@dailyegyptian.com

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Some exploit honor system to jump the vaccine line

Photo Editor: Leah Sutton lsutton@dailyegyptian.com Editor: Brooke Buerck bbuerck@dailyegyptian.com Editor: Tamar Mosby tmosby@dailyegyptian.com Features Editor: Rana Schenke rschenke@dailyegyptian.com Assistant Editor: Keaton Yates kyates@dailyegyptian.com Student Advertising Chief: Hannah Combs hcombs@dailyegyptian.com Business Office: Arunima Bhattacharya 618-536-3305

About Us The Daily Egyptian is published by the students of Southern Illinois University Carbondale on a weekly basis. Fall and spring semester editions run every Wednesday. Free copies are distributed in the Carbondale, Carterville, and Springfield communities. The Daily Egyptian can be found at www. dailyegyptian.com or on the new Daily Egyptian app!

Mission Statement The Daily Egyptian, the student-run news organization of Southern Illinois University Carbondale, is committed to being a trusted source of news, information, commentary and public discourse, while helping readers understand the issues affecting their lives.

Publishing Information The Daily Egyptian is published by the students of Southern Illinois University Carbondale and functions as a laboratory for the School of Journalism in exchange for the room and utilities in the Communications Building. The Daily Egyptian is a non-profit organization that survives primarily off of its advertising revenue. Offices are in the Communications Building, room 1259, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, Ill., 62901.

Copyright Information @2021 The Daily Egyptian. All rights reserved. All content is property of the Daily Egyptian and may not be reproduced or transmitted without consent. The Daily Egyptian is a member of the Illinois College Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press, College Media Advisers Inc. and the College Business and Advertising Managers Inc.

Submissions Letters and guest columns must be submitted with author’s contact information, preferably via email. Phone numbers are required to verify authorship, but will not be published.

Students must include their year and major. Faculty must include rank and department. Others include hometown.

Submissions should be sent to editor@dailyegyptian.com

Pharmacist Pamela Hughes prepares syringes with doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine Wednesday, March 18, 2021. James B Allen | @skyclopsphotojamboree Elena Schauwecker | eschauwecker@dailyegyptian.com Jackson County’s system of vaccine distribution, lacking in strict monitoring of patient eligibility, has left an opportunity for some to take advantage.

Illinois vaccinations have supposedly followed a series of phases allowing elderly people, people with medical conditions and essential workers to receive their vaccines first. Carbondale has relied largely on patient honesty to certify that people have met these requirements.

Bart Hagston, administrator of the Jackson County Health Department, explained the screening process, which has been in place since December when vaccines first became available.

“People are basically self-certifying that they met the eligibility criteria,” Hagston said. “So whether that was based upon an underlying health condition or based upon their occupation, they were largely self-certifying that information.

For people that were qualifying based on age, we were checking IDs.” Hagston acknowledged this sort of honors system did have drawbacks and said he did not doubt that people were taking advantage of it to skip the line, especially given that the vaccine was in limited supply when it was first released.

He said he hoped people would realize that by lying about medical conditions or occupations, they were potentially endangering the lives of others who are more vulnerable.

“Since we were not verifying by checking documentation that people met criteria, I’m sure that opened it up for some level of dishonesty. And what I had to say to people that I felt were abusing the system was that by them abusing the system, they were essentially taking that shot out of the arm of somebody who needed it more,” Hagston said.

The restrictions were also being enforced differently in different parts of Illinois. Devin Escue, a senior forestry major at SIU, said his friends in Chicago had a very difficult experience trying to get vaccinated.

“I know people who came down from Chicago to get vaccinated, as it was easier to get here,” Escue said.

This regional difference can be explained by the vastly different populations in different parts of Illinois. While Chicago is a city bustling with hundreds of thousands of essential workers and closely packed residents of all ages, about 60% of the Carbondale population is composed of college students in addition to an influx of non-residential students who come from out of state, according to the US Census Bureau.

Due to this large percentage of younger people in Carbondale, it is necessary for students to be vaccinated in order to reduce COVID-19 cases significantly in Jackson County. Amelia Anderson, a junior majoring in aviation flight, said she believes this is the most important goal—getting as many people vaccinated in as short a time period as possible.

“I do think it’s important for certain people to be vaccinated first, but I think it’s more important that a large volume of people are walking through those doors to get vaccinated,” Anderson said.

Hagston agreed with Anderson, and he said SIH does not want to discourage any adults from getting the vaccine because every shot is a step closer to herd immunity and a safer environment for everyone.

“As a provider of COVID-19 vaccines, we were required to ensure that we were only administering vaccines to those that were eligible at any given time, so we were following those procedures,” Hagston said. “But at the same time, we were anxiously anticipating the day that we could stop having those requirements and could vaccinate anyone that wants to be vaccinated.”

Because vaccines are now more readily available, Hagston said all SIU students are now eligible to receive vaccines, and beginning April 12, all Illinois residents will be eligible. He said the most important thing is for people to tell their friends and families about their experiences to help lower any fears.

Will Robinson, a senior in aviation management, is one of these people who had only praise for the system of vaccinations he experienced at the Banterra Center and said he wanted to encourage everyone to get vaccinated.

“From when I walked in, I had the shot within two minutes,” Robinson said. “The sooner everyone is vaccinated, the sooner severe and lethal cases can go down, and everyone can hopefully see a life that is closer to our normal again.”

Staff reporter Elena Schauwecker can be reached at eschauwecker@dailyegyptian.com.

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

News

Page 3

States push for broadband as American jobs plan gains steam Katya Maruri | Tribune Content Agency

Apr. 5—An infusion of federal money to expand broadband throughout the country could soon be headed to communities in need if Congress passes President Biden’s $100 billion Internet plan. The question is what do states do until then?

According to a fact sheet released by the White House, the plan would reduce Internet prices for all Americans, increase adoption in rural and urban areas, hold providers accountable and save taxpayers money. The plan would also require broadband providers to disclose their monthly Internet pricing and would attempt to

remove barriers to competition and level the playing field for providers.

Broadband is infrastructure. — President Biden (@POTUS) April 5, 2021 In the meantime, several states have already crafted legislation to address the digital divide. For example, a Kentucky’s recently approved House Bill 320 will allocate $250 million toward expanding broadband throughout the state, “ensuring broadband access to thousands of underserved and unserved Kentuckians,” Rep. Brian Reed, one of the bill’s cosponsors, said.

According to the legislation, broadband services will be market-

based and will allow electric cooperatives to access federal funding to extend and enhance the availability of broadband to Kentucky residents. Vermont’s H.360 would direct $150 million toward creating an “accountable, coordinated solution to providing universal access to broadband service throughout the state,” Rep. Tim Briglin said in an email.

To achieve this end, the bill would direct funds toward fiber build-out throughout the state, establishing a Vermont Community Broadband Authority to oversee the state’s broadband expansion efforts and create a broadband workforce development program

in partnership with Vermont Technical College and the Vermont Department of Labor. In Indiana, House Bill 1449 is aimed at refining the process of awarding grants from the state’s rural broadband fund to projects that would provide Internet access to schools, rural health clinics and other underserved areas throughout the state.

To do this, Indiana Rep. Edmond Soliday said it would take “$3 billion to reach everyone and provide reasonably fast Internet.” The state, he said, currently has about $6 billion set aside for broadband expansion initiatives.

And lastly, Montana’s House Bill 657 would set up a rural

broadband revolving loan account with up to $200 million deposited into the account from money received through the American Rescue Plan Act to provide broadband access to rural areas throughout the state.

One way the bill would achieve this, Rep. Tyson Running Wolf said, is by creating more jobs related to building out and maintaining fiber-optic lines to help close the state’s broadband and tech gap.

“The most important thing is coming up with a way to efficiently provide broadband access to those in unserved and underserved areas,” Soliday said. “That’s what it’s all about.”

Jackson County Consolidated General Eletion

Carbondale City Council candidate Ginger Rye Sanders casts her vote on April 6, 2021 at the Eurma Hayes Community Center in Carbondale, Ill. “If we don’t realize today that there is power in voting, with all of the voter suppression against people of color, if you don’t know now that it is important then you will never know,” RyeSanders said. Sophie Whitten | @swhittenphotography

News

Page 4

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Housing reparations continued from

1

Only 4% of Evanston’s program is initiative and funding, Simmons said.

“To judge a program on 4% of application and allocation is premature, we will continue to work toward satisfying the expectations of our residents in Evanston,” Simmons said.

Jenny Thompson, the director of Education at the Evanston History Center, said housing discrimination has been a prominent issue in the city for decades.

“The housing issue started in the 20th century and the population started to grow around 19001910. That’s when the practices of segregation and discrimination started to occur,” Thompson said.

Black residents were relocated to certain areas of the city to accommodate other residents.

“The small Black population lived throughout the city, and realtors, homeowners and banks started to steer away Black residents that were coming,” Thompson said.

“They were mostly from the south and they would steer them into one area of the city, which was the west side, which is now the fifth ward.”

Black residents of Evanston also weren’t granted equal access to public facilities such as schools, stores, recreation facilities and commercial facilities, according to the city of Evanston’s Policies

and Practices Directly Affecting the African American Community report.

“If you look at foreclosures in Evanston, a lot of those have taken place in the city board. So it is a long-term legacy in terms of housing in Evanston. It continues where we see it, where people live, and opportunities for buying a house and financing,” Thompson said.

Thompson said banks would often use redlining to identify primarily black neighborhoods and financially discriminate against them.

“There was no law that protected people. So, the consequences were really not there. You could kind of do what you want,” Thompson said.

She said Edwin George Gain was the first Black Alderman to present the housing discrimination experienced by Black veterans after World War II to the city council.

“After World War II, when Northwestern University and the city began to try to build housing for veterans, they were segregated,” Thompson said. “These are men who fought for our country, and now they’re coming back and they can’t get their housing. So, there are examples throughout the 20th century of people trying to change it and trying to say ‘this is wrong.’”

Not everyone is supportive of the proposed reparations resolution. Alderwoman Cicely Fleming was the only individual to vote NO for this resolution.

On March 22, Fleming made a statement to explain why she voted NO for the reparations resolution.

“I am 100% in support of reparations. I come from three legacy Black families in Evanston who have suffered enough. I am one of countless such families across the country. Real reparations are long overdue,” Fleming said.

Jes Sheinpflug, Fleming’s communications assistant, explained the Alderwoman’s issue with the resolution. Sheinpflug said the reparations resolution is essentially just a housing plan.

“As a housing plan, she would support it, but the issue with putting reparations on it, is that it sets a precedent for what a model for reparations could look like across the country, in other cities and even at the federal level. The housing plan that passed is called reparations but it only provides money to 16 people in Evanston,” Sheinpflug said.

Fleming said this resolution dictates to Black residents what their needs are and how to use the money given to them.

“We must understand the definition of true reparations and its

main goal: to do that, the people dictate its terms to power, not the other way around,” Fleming said.

“This isn’t change that can be a beacon for the nation. It is a dim, weak light, and it will be a travesty for Black communities around the US if it becomes our model going forward.”

Sheinpflug said the reparations resolution lacks a clear plan of execution and was seemingly rushed due to the upcoming Evanston city council elections.

“Evanston has been saying that there’s going to be $10 million over 10 years. That’s all they’ve been saying. We don’t even know how people can apply,” Sheinpflug said. “There is an election that’s happening right now. A lot of these city council members are either running or have already voted off in the primary so it was rushed with no input from Black residents.”

Fleming said many community members asked for more time to rework and strengthen the proposal and change the name from reparations but the resolution still moved forward.

“Although Evanston is one of the first municipalities to attempt local reparative efforts in this manner, historical practices provide a framework for reparative compensation, and in no instance were the impacted parties denied cash payments or an opportunity to decide how their repair would be managed,” Fleming said. “This practice alone is based on a white paternalistic narrative that Black folks are unable to manage their own monies.”

Sheinpflug said the 16 Black people who qualify for the program never directly receive the payments.

They said Flemings wants the funds to be given directly to the Black people who qualify in cash payments.

“The money is given directly to the bank. They can only use it towards their mortgage, they can use it towards a down payment or they can use it towards a contractor for repairs. They have to use it towards the primary investments of Evanston. Say they moved away from Evanston, then they are not eligible, say, it’s an older person who doesn’t own a house anymore, they’re not eligible. It’s very, very limited who can apply for this,” Sheinpflug said.

Fleming claims the proposal is lacking in detail and the longevity of the plan was not assessed.

“There has not been a feasibility study, there is no groundwork for future reparative options, nor have we firmly provided economic rationale for the $25,000 allocation amounts,” Fleming said.

Fleming hopes that the Evanston community will slow down and listen to the Black community that has been directly impacted from years of racism. Fleming said that the mistrust the Black community already has in the government is amplified by the bold claims that this resolution is historic.

“Understanding that not everyone will be satisfied, we still owe it to Black Evanstonians to develop a plan that is clear, fair, data based, and one that can truly start to address racialized harm, marginalization and discrimination. It is through this truth-telling and deliberate work that we can bring our community together,” Fleming said.

Courtney Alexander can be reached at calexander@dailyegyptian.com or on Twitter at ___Courtney_ alex23______.

Reporter Ore Ojewuyi can be reached at oojewuyi@dailyegyptian.com or on twitter @odojewuyi.

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

News

Page 5

Two Funko POP figures sit together awaiting to be stocked on the shelves at RND Collectibles Thursday, Mar. 4, 2021, in Carbondale, Ill. “It’s pop culture man, I think that’s why people love it. You know, anything you can think of there’s probably a POP! figure of it. It’s just an easy way to enjoy your fandom,” Randy Arena, owner of RND Collectibles said. James B Allen | @ skyclopsphotojamboree

From SIU to Pop!Funko president shares his journey

Sara Wangler | @sara_Wangler

Collabortaing with Disney, DC Comics, the NFL and BTS to make fan-favorite merchandise might like a dream to some, but for Funko president Andrew Perlmutter, that’s all in a day’s work.

Perlmutter, a class of 2000 SIU graduate, knew he wanted to join the toy industry from a young age.

However, Perlmutter grew up around the toy making industry and fulfilled his dream by working for such a well known toy company.

Funko has produced many figures of iconic celebrities and characters.

“I was afraid of business classes because of all the math I was originally a communications major at SIU,” Perlmutter said.

Perlmutter grew up in the Chicago suburb of Glencoe and came to SIU because it was known as a fun school.

After graduating, Perlmutter went back to Chicago and started working for a as a recruiter for a staffing company called Onsite.

“I grew up around the toy business,” Perlmutter said. “My father and grandfather were toymakers so I knew early on that I wanted to follow in their footsteps. After my recruiter job, the kind of right out of college job, I moved to New York City.”

In New York, Perlmutter began working for a sales representative company called Global Sales and Marketing. That company represented different toy lines to

“My favorite part of working for Funko is that it’s a fun place to work, the people who work here love what they do and are good at it. When people love what they do workwise, it makes the work environment that much better.”

- Andrew Perlmuter Funko president

different retailers.

“The big line I started with was the game Cranium,” Perlmutter said. “It was really popular, and from there, I would sell the game to big accounts. I did that for a lot of companies for 11 to 12 years.”

One of the companies Perlmutter started representing around 2010 was Funko. He was an outsourced salesperson who was paid commission to link Funko to Barnes & Noble directly.

“Over the course of the next three years, I began breaking away from that company and started creating my own company called Bottle Rocket Collective,” Perlmutter said. “Then in 2013, the CEO of Funko asked me to come up to Seattle, Washington and run sales for his company.”

Perlmutter, his wife and his threeweek-old twins packed up and moved halfway across the country.

Perlmutter worked as the head of sales for Funko for four years, then in 2017, he was promoted to president

of the company.

“Moving was stressful; it was a giant leap of faith,” Perlmutter said. “I knew I could do it and we would be fine. But my wife who has faith in me was scared. She had just given birth and a move like that is a lot.”

Perlmutter said a typical day at work involves a lot of meetings and negotiations.

“A large portion of my time is dedicated to meetings,” Perlmutter said. “I will either meet with customers, as in retailers like Walmart or Target, or I meet with the internal team.”

Meeting with the internal team involves talking with executives or heads of departments within the company, said Perlmutter.

“I have a lot of meetings about making sure the company is well informed and knows what’s happening across all leadership positions,” Perlmutter said. “That way they can make sure they can hit budget and sales targets.”

Perlmutter’s position involves everything from making sure the products are leaving the factories in Asia on time, to making sure Funko has purchase orders from retailers.

There are departments that directly handle these issues but ultimately, it is up to Perlmutter to make sure that everything goes smoothly.

“We, as a company, are heavily licensed to produce trademarked products,” Perlmutter said. “We have over 1,100 different licensed properties that we work with. The license department works with brands that want to collaborate; if there is a problem or a company wants to collaborate with us and vice versa, I often get involved.”

Funko has worked with many different companies, bands and artists on creating Pop! vinyls of iconic people and characters. One band in particular is K-Pop band BTS. “When we started to get vibes that they were becoming a hot band, we reached out and found out

who represented them,” Perlmutter said.” We explained that we’re a company that makes vinyl figures.

We gave them a list of musicians we’ve already done then negotiated terms.”

Perlmutter said the negotiation process involves a minimum guarantee, which means Funko has to pay certain amount of money to the licensees to get the rights of the license, regardless if Funko makes any profit off of said product.

Perlmutter’s favorite collaboration was a Golden Girls line in August of 2016.

“The Golden Girls line was my wife’s idea,” Perlmutter said. “I brought the idea to the company and they said ‘that’s crazy, no one will want that.’ I pushed and pushed and it was finally made; since then it’s been really successful.”

From his favorite collab to his favorite part about working for the company itself, Perlmutter is honored to work for such a company.

“My favorite part of working for Funko is that it’s a fun place to work, the people who work here love what they do and are good at it,” Perlmutter said. “When people love what they do work-wise, it makes the work environment that much better.”

Staff reporter Sara Wangler can be reached at swangler@dailyegyptian. com or on Twitter at @sara_Wangler.

News

Page 6

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

The new normal for SIU: COVID-19 protocols for fall 2021 Jamilah Lewis | @jamilahlewis

SIU’s leadership is preparing for a 2021 fall semester that should look more like a normal semester than fall 2020.

According to a March 4 post on Chancellor Austin Lane’s blog, the university is preparing to go back to normal while still having masks, social distancing, sanitizing and following the guidelines the state puts out.

In the post, the chancellor thanks faculty and students for complying with the protocols set in place this school year that help make inperson classes a hope for the new school year possible.

“In the face of unprecedented challenges, our students, faculty and staff found innovative ways to learn, teach and work,” Lane said. “Salukis have been a model of resilience in the time of COVID-19.”

Lane said Southern Illinois Healthcare and Jackson County were a big help getting the campus functioning during the pandemic.

“Luckily, SIH and Jackson County came through with free

testing and we were able to do that week-in week-out so that really helped too,” Lane said in an interview. “[It] gave us the ability to know exactly where things were occurring with students [or faculty, or staff] that were positive.”

From the protocols set in place this school year, a big pro were the people in the community complying. The biggest con was the transition to online work for the campus, Lane said.

“That was a hardship on some of our students, which is why we kept the pass/ no pass option in there to make sure we could be fair to those students that had to take their classes fully online,” Lane said.

“While it was a con there, we tried to make the best of it as we could like most universities across the country.”

One of the main reasons plans for the fall are made this early is to have something to tell high school students when they come on campus visits and are making their college decision Lane said.

With college being a major

financial decision to make, knowing how classes will be and how open the campus will be for the next school year determines whether or not students will stay on campus, Lane said.

The goal is to have around 80% of classes in person for the fall of 2021, Lane said.

“The work really for us is how we get the classrooms identified across the university to make sure we’ve got space to do the 80 some odd percent face-to-face instructions,” Lane said. “So working with our CFO who is over facilities and planning, she’ll be working diligently with our provost, with our faculty senate president and our other constituency reps to really make sure we’ve got the right space set up.”

The 20% of classes that are still planned to be online is to help students with their work schedules and personal lives.

“It works better with our student schedules [since] a lot of our students are working,” Lane said.

“In order for them to be able to

take the required load of classes to get through to their degree, they do need some online options in there to help their scheduling out.”

Provost Meera Komarraju has hope for a normal semester and said there’s a chance the campus would see something close to normal.

“So based on the trajectory events that we are watching now, it looks like we could offer a completely normal fall semester,” Komarraju said. “We would probably [still] have masks, provide wipes for students who may want to wipe down the surfaces they’re using, for employees to have hand sanitizer so we can continue some of these protocols.”

The school is planning to have in-person classes unless data on the pandemic indicates otherwise, Komarrju said.

“Like Restore Illinois. We are in Phase 4,” Komarrju said. “If we’re in Phase 5 and everything is back to normal, then we would have all of our classes that we’ve had in the past face-to-face.”

According to the Restore Illinois

plan, all Illinois counties are in Phase 4. Illinois counties will enter the Bridge to Phase 5 when 70% of residents 65 and older are vaccinated and there are no reversals in COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths for a 28-day monitoring period.

“Once 50% of residents 16 and older have been vaccinated and stable or declining COVID-19 metrics are recorded during a 28day monitoring period, Phase 5 will be implemented, removing capacity limits altogether,” the plan said.

Komarraju said because of the need to be online, it has given instructors time to develop better technology tendencies than they had before the pandemic.

As The university plans for the next semester a year in advance, everyone is staying cautiously optimistic with the chances of getting back to normal, Komarraju said.

Staff reporter Jamilah Lewis can be reached at jlewis@dailyegyptian.com or on Twitter @jamilahlewis.

Farmers to Families Food Box program likely to change Jason Flynn | @dejasonflynn

At Cusumano & Sons the Farmers to Families Food Box program helped keep the company afloat when the COVID-19 forced most food-related businesses to close.

“It helped keep us and our employees out delivering and working where there would have been a void because the restaurants weren’t open,” Cusumano said.

“The USDA box did help a lot with making sure that we kept all our people employed at a full time level.”

The Farmers to Families program is slated to end on April 30, but it appears the program will be replaced with some other form of food purchasing and distribution through the US Department of

Agriculture (USDA).

“It’s kind of a wait and see game,” Cusumano said. “My guess is, it won’t be the same program that it is right now, but I would be surprised if they didn’t fund a program with the same intent.”

The American Rescue Plan, which became law on March 11, does not specifically extend the program, but it does include $3.6 billion to fund food purchases, distribution, loans and grants through September of 2021.

“The bill addresses food security challenges presented by the pandemic through programs outside of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program and the Farmers to Families Food Box program,” according to a USDA press statement.

The food box program was not

without its pitfalls.

A review of the program conducted by Harvard found that there was a lack of consistency in distribution contracts which left many geographic areas uncovered.

Also, changing regulations led to a decrease in available produce and a focus on low-cost items led to small and mid-size farms being excluded.

Originally, the program accepted bids for three categories of food distribution boxes, with separate bids for fruit/vegetables, meat and dairy.

“They decided to change it to just one box, and the contract specifically states how much fruit and vegetable you have to have in a box, how much meat you have to have in the box, and how much dairy you have to have in the box,” Cusumano said.

The number of distributors being awarded contracts has also decreased in each round of funding, and in the most recent round, Produce Alliance was the only company awarded a contract covering Illinois, Indiana, Alabama, Wisconsin, South Carolina, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

“A smaller vendor either has to distribute in a larger area than they’re normally comfortable with, which will do injustice on the distribution side, or you have to partner with somebody that is going to do a larger scale,” Cusumano said. “If you’re partnering with somebody else, there’s more slices being cut out of the pie.”

The Chicago Food Policy Action Council and 45 other organizations signed a public letter in February asking for flexible models for

meeting fresh food access, engaging community organizations rather than lowest-bidding distributors and providing longer term contracts.

It’s unclear whether those issues will be addressed in a new iteration of the food distribution program.

Despite problems, there has still been massive demand for emergency food distribution both from farmers and consumers.

“We still get demand for more communities wanting more boxes than we have access to from the government,” Cusumano said.

Staff reporter Jason Flynn can be reached at jflynn@dailyegyptian.com, by phone at 872-222-7821 or on Twitter at @dejasonflynn.

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

News

Page 7

Asian American Christians confront racism and evangelical ‘purity culture’ after Atlanta spa shootings

Jaweed Kaleem , Los Angeles Times Jenny Jarvie, Los Angeles Times Tribune Content Agency Before Robert Aaron Long burst into three Atlanta massage spas and allegedly killed eight people — six of them women of Asian descent — he was a teenager struggling to conform with Evangelical teachings on “purity culture” and abstinence from sex.

The Rev. Chul Yoo knew Long back then. A former minister in Long’s church, Yoo understood the pressure and obligation the young in the congregation faced in resisting premarital sex. The Bible wanted them sanctified and saved from the immorality of an increasingly permissive world. But when news broke last month that Long claimed he killed the women to erase temptation, Yoo, a Southern Baptist preacher and an Asian American, also recognized why a nationwide outcry erupted against an accelerating racism toward people who looked liked him. For Yoo, rigid religion and racial hatred had become entwined in one of the nation’s worst mass shootings since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged last year.

Investigators have offered little on the motive in the Georgia deaths. There is no hate crime charge. Statements from law enforcement and those who knew Long point to someone ridden with guilt and anger over his visits to Asian-run spas that he believed went against the word of God. “He would come back and say, ‘I’ve done it again,’” said Tyler Bayless, 35, who lived with Long at a halfway house in Roswell, Ga., from August 2019 until early 2020, when Long left for HopeQuest, a Christian addiction center. Bayless described Long as “from a very traditional religious background” where “the thoughts that he had about himself were certainly reinforced by the members of his own congregation.”

What’s described broadly as “purity culture” is well-known in evangelical communities.

The teaching persists today in some factions of the church after reaching its height in the 1990s and early 2000s. It looks toward a Thessalonians passage in the Bible as a basis for how unmarried teens and young adults should live: “For this the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor....” Purity pledges and a canon of books and conferences on teenage sexual purity were once so common that they had even made their way into pop culture, with singers Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and the Jonas Brothers once famously donning purity rings.

But for Christians like Yoo, now the pastor of Christ Community Church in Ashton, Md., the meanings behind the spa killings are deeper and more troubling than Long’s comments to police about his sins. They are personal for Yoo in ways unlike other mass shootings,

ALHAMBRA, CA - MARCH 26, 2021 - - Around 200 residents, students and Alhambra and San Gabriel city leaders participate in a rally to denounce anti-Asian sentiment, racism and hate crimes that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic in Alhambra on March 26, 2021. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times/TNS) crossing lines of race, nationalism, immigrant culture and gender dynamics in conservative Christianity.

“We have a problem in the nation. I think of my own mother when elderly Asian woman are attacked. I look at the former president saying ‘kung flu’ and see the connections to hatred,” said Yoo, 49, who leads a congregation largely made up of second-generation Korean Americans. “And in parts of church communities, we are silent on this racism and misteach what the Bible says. It says sex is only for a married man and woman. It doesn’t say that girls are at fault for being a temptation.”

The Atlanta killings came after a year of rising hate crimes and harassment against Asian Americans, many tied to verbal taunts blaming them for the COVID-19 pandemic that echoed former President Trump’s rants against China. The deaths also happened as Christians of color were in a civil war of faith with white, conservative evangelicals who appeared united with them in core beliefs but divided over politics and how common and pernicious racial prejudice could be.

In the aftermath of the Atlanta shootings, Asian American Christians, a millions-strong community where conservative Protestant traditions reign and the sting of racism has long been felt within and outside church walls, have found a new megaphone. They’re leading marches, defending the faith and becoming outspoken critics of trends in “purity culture,” segregation and strict gender roles still popular in some corners of the church.

“This is a unique moment for the Asian American church,” said Yoo, “because we are grieving all around.”

Long’s church, Crabapple First Baptist in Milton, Ga., expelled him after the shootings, saying in a statement that he

was no longer a “regenerate believer in Jesus Christ.” Church leaders declined an interview request. The church posted on its website that Long “alone is responsible for his evil actions and desires.

The women that he solicited for sexual acts are not responsible for his perverse sexual desires nor do they bear any blame in these murders.” (Yoo, who worked at the church from 2012-15, described it as “a loving, caring community which, like every church out there, also has its faults.”)

For some Asian American Christians, the church’s statement fell short and underscored the chasms that separate them within Christianity in the U.S. “They denied their responsibility,” said the Rev. Byeong Cheol Han, 57, the lead pastor at Korean Central Presbyterian Church, about 10 miles northeast of two of the Atlanta spas. “He’s [Long’s] a very active church member. In many ways, I assume, the church’s teaching must have given some kind of idea of discrimination or purity culture.”

To the Rev. Lauren Lisa Ng, a Chinese American pastor who is the director of leadership programs for the American Baptist Churches USA, the focus on the suspected killer’s faith and church has been discomfiting yet necessary. “I have problems with how we seek to blame a specific institution. Maybe the church has some culpability,” said Ng, who lives in Novato, Calif., and recently organized a protest against anti-Asian racism in the city.

“But the church as a whole in the world doesn’t. This isn’t Christianity’s fault alone.” Across the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the nation, the shootings have reverberated as a reminder that the church’s heterosexual family-oriented culture can also be misinterpreted to support sin by

denigrating and blaming women for the sexual desires of men. Russell Moore, a prominent Southern Baptist writer and speaker who leads the church’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, suggested that the Atlanta killings were an example of “how evil works.” “We’ve seen abusers and those who empower them label the abused as ‘Jezebels’ or ‘temptresses’ or ‘Potiphar’s wife.’ I have heard chilling testimony from innocent survivors who heard abusers blame them ‘for what you are making me do,’” Moore said. “For most people, that won’t result in anything approaching those extremes,” he said, “but the tendency is there for all of us to take what is internal twistedness or shame and — instead of taking it to the light of Christ — to project it onto another.... This is not the gospel.”

“Purity culture” led some followers to abstinence, said the Rev. Mihee KimKort, an Annapolis, Md.,-based pastor of a progressive Presbyterian church who grew up in a more conservative Korean immigrant-run Presbyterian congregation in Boulder, Colo., not far from Colorado Springs, a longtime bastion of prominent evangelical leaders and nonprofits. “But more often what it really became was a theology of shame focused on women.”

Kim-Kort, 42, remembers her parents giving her a purity ring before she went to college; it was a yellow-gold shank with a pearl. The memory came back to her when she heard police say Long had blamed his own temptation for his acts. She immediately thought of connections to her faith. To Kim-Kort, who said her church “has made a point to be active in Black Lives Matter and the #StopAAPIHate movements,” it’s is a “cop-out to say this crime is simply about sex addiction or religious culture.

It’s all connected. It was about sexuality,

race, gender all at once — all focused on Asian women.”

In Chicago, the Asian American Christian Collaborative has rallied around the victims in Georgia, with members attending demonstrations in Atlanta to talk about the role the more than 18 million Asian Americans, more than 40% of whom are Christian — most of them Protestant — play in the evangelical world. The group launched a year ago with an open letter calling on evangelicals to “stop minimizing antiAsian racism” and recognize that “Asian American churches are a vibrant part of the American fabric.” In the secular world, it was racist responses to the COVID-19 pandemic that spurred the collaborative’s creation.

In churches, it was a sense of being unseen as Asian Americans who were often stereotyped as either nonbelievers or followers of Buddhist, Hindu and other faiths that originated in Asia.

The Rev. Michelle Ami Reyes, the copastor of Hope Community Church in Austin, Texas, and vice president of the collaborative, said the hate incidents in the months leading to what she now simply calls “Atlanta” have “unfortunately proved us right.”

“There are so many questions around these deaths,” she said.

“There’s no doubt racism is happening in the U.S.” “There’s also no doubt that the fetishization of Asian women is normalized, even in church. And there is no doubt that there is a history in evangelical Christianity of promoting ideas of female purity,” said Reyes, 34, who is Indian American.

She grew up in a suburban Minnesota congregation where reading the book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” was “sort of required as a guidebook to female purity.”

(Joshua Harris, the former megachurch pastor who released the title in 1997, eventually apologized for the book and said he is no longer Christian.)

Americans are still seeking answers — and justice — in the deaths of those who died in Atlanta. The #StopAAPIHate marches continue, as do conversations on where church fits into it all. The Rev. Kevin Park said the last weeks have been a reminder of his view that churches have long failed at teaching about sex or race.

He’s also seen the need for white communities to learn more about Asian American church traditions. “Churches, in general, do not have Biblical healthy ways of talking about sex and sexuality,” said Park, an associate pastor at Korean Central Presbyterian Church in Atlanta.

“It’s a historic reality. Given the conservative nature of the Korean church, this also reflects on us too.

“The classic ways we teach about sex is to be very binary: ‘This is evil.’ ‘This is not good,’” he said. “Once you shut down a behavior as a sin or evil, that means we can’t go there, we can’t talk about it.” That, Park said, is where the problems begin.

Page 8

News

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

A woman stands during the worship at the Easter Sunrise Service at Bald Knob Cross on Sunday, April 4, 2021 in Alto Pass, Ill. Subash Kharel | @pics.leaks

Bald Knob Cross welcomes over 2000 for Easter Sunrise Event

Subash Kharel | @pics.leaks

The 85th Annual Easter Service organized by Bald Knob Cross welcomed over 2000 attendees from all over Illinois on Sunday, April 4, 2021.

With social distancing in place, visitors enjoyed live worship music outdoors at sunrise under the cross.

The program, which started at 6:30 a.m., lasted for almost two hours.

“Last year there was nobody onsite and the sunrise was broadcasted live on WSIL TV,” Jeffrey Isbell, the Executive Director of Bald Knob Cross and the organizer of the event, said.

Two men started the Sunrise service 85 years ago in 1937 with the aim of bringing people together.

The inaugural had 250 people in attendace.

“The cross was built 20 years after the Sunrise Service started and we are still celebrating it. People from all over the world come to visit this monument in Southern Illinois,” Isbell said.

Though the cross symbolizes Christianity, it is open to everybody who comes to seek peace of mind, Isbell said.

The Bald Knob Cross hosts different events throughout the year. “Blessing of the bikes, blessing of Jeeps and fall colors are also some other programs we organize,” Isbell added.

Staff Subash Kharel can be reached at skharel@dailyegyptian.com or on Instagram at @pics.leaks.

Over 2000 people attend the Easter Day Sunrise Service at Bald Knob Cross on Sunday, April 4, 2021 in Alto Pass, Ill. The service started at 6.30 a.m. and ended at 8 a.m. Subash Kharel | @pics.leaks

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

News

Page 9

Minneapolis police chief testifies against his former officer in the death of George Floyd

Kurtis Lee, Los Angeles Times Tribune Content Agency

It was a rare moment: the head of a police department on a witness stand condemning a subordinate. Testifying Monday in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo said that the officer had used excessive force and broken department policy when he pinned George Floyd under his knee for 9 minutes and 29 seconds.

“Once Mr. Floyd had stopped resisting, and certainly once he was in distress and trying to verbalize that, that should have stopped,” he told jurors.

He testified that continuing to apply pressure to Floyd’s neck even after his body had gone limp — as Chauvin did May 25 before a crowd of onlookers — “in no way shape or form is anything that is by policy part of our training and is certainly not part of our ethics or values.”

Arradondo fired Chauvin a day after Floyd’s death, which had been captured on video, setting off a worldwide protest movement against a long history of police brutality targeting Black men.

The measured, clinical tone of the chief stood in contrast to the emotional, sometimes wrenching testimony that prosecutors used in the first week of the trial to establish a connection with jurors and plant the seeds of their case against Chauvin, who is also charged with manslaughter.

Those witnesses, ordinary citizens who ranged in age from 9 to 61, appeared traumatized by Floyd’s death and described his treatment as

obviously wrong. One was Darnella Frazier, who was 17 when she captured the cellphone video that went viral and drew the world’s attention to the case. Ten months later on the witness stand, she seemed devastated by what she had witnessed. She testified that she lies awake at night thinking about that evening — about what she saw and whether she could have done more to intervene.

“I stayed up apologizing and apologized to George Floyd for not doing more,” she said through tears. But, she said, the blame ultimately rests with Chauvin: “It’s not what I should have done. It’s what he should have done.” Christopher Martin, the Cup Foods convenience store clerk who thought something was off with the $20 bill Floyd handed him to pay for cigarettes, told jurors he could not escape the feeling that he had set a tragic chain of events in motion.

Another clerk called the police, and soon Martin was looking on in “disbelief and guilt” as Floyd lay handcuffed on the pavement outside the store with Chauvin’s knee on his neck. “If I would have just not taken the bill, this could have been avoided,” Martin testified. He stopped working at the store and said he avoids the area.

Another witness, Charles McMillian, was driving near the intersection and saw police confronting Floyd. He testified that he pulled his van to the side of the road and got out to get a closer look at the situation.

Video captured McMillian urging Floyd to

get into the police car. “I can’t move,” Floyd said. Moments later, he cried out, “Momma!

Momma.” On the witness stand, McMillian shook his head, sobbed and exclaimed, “Oh, my God.” “I feel helpless,” he said. “I don’t have a mama either. I understand him.” Genevieve Hansen, an off-duty firefighter who was out for a walk in the area that evening, testified that for months she has been haunted by feelings that she had waited too long to call 911 and not pressed harder to help Floyd herself.

“I should have called 911 immediately but I didn’t,” she told jurors. Chauvin appeared “very comfortable with the majority of his weight balanced on top of Mr. Floyd,” she said. “I identified myself right away because I noticed that he needed medical attention,” she said. “It didn’t take long to notice that he had an altered level of consciousness.”

But she never had the chance to provide aid.

“There is a man being killed, and I would have been able to provide medical attention to the best of my abilities, and this human was not provided that right,” she said.

The testimony from the bystanders laid the groundwork for police officers to take the stand — defying the long tradition of the so-called blue wall of silence.

In addition to Arradondo, the city’s first Black chief, jurors heard Friday from several Minneapolis police officers who criticized Chauvin’s tactics as reckless and excessive. Lt. Richard Zimmerman, a veteran homicide

detective, described Chauvin’s use of force as “totally unnecessary.”

“First of all, pulling him down to the ground facedown and putting your knee on the neck for that amount of time is just uncalled for,” he said.

“I saw no reason why the officers felt they were in danger, if that’s what they felt. And that’s what they would have to feel to use that type of force.”

On Monday, jurors also heard from an emergency room doctor who declared Floyd dead. Dr. Bradford Wankhede Langenfeld testified that Floyd arrive without a heartbeat “sufficient to sustain life” and that he spent 30 minutes trying to save him.

He said he believed Floyd died from lack of oxygen — consistent with the prosecution argument that Chauvin had asphyxiated him.

But under questioning by defense attorney Eric Nelson, the doctor acknowledged that there were numerous possible causes for asphyxia, including drug use.

Chauvin’s defense, which will present its case after the prosecution rests, is expected to argue that Floyd died of a drug overdose. Toxicology testing found fentanyl and methamphetamine in his body. The trial is expected to last a month.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump arrives with family members of George Floyd at the Hennepin County Government Center as the trial continues for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on March 30, 2021, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Security is heightened in the city in an effort to prevent a repeat of the violence that occurred in Minneapolis and major cities around the world following Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020. (Scott Olson/Getty Images/TNS)

News

Page 10

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Self-love as an act of feminism A conversation with Dr. Diana Tigerlily

Diksha Mittal| dmittal@dailyegyptian.com

Many women today feel guilty about switching off from the outside world to prioritize themselves and Feminism has been traditionally equated to the right to take up professional responsibilities and extra burden of work. An often ignored aspect of feminism is the right to relax and nurture a woman’s inner self.

Diana Tigerlily is the associate professor of practice in the SIU Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program, and in the University Honors program.

She has attempted to incorporate new practices of contemporary feminism into education such as selflove, self-care and yoga.

Tigerlily defines self-care as eating fresh food, moving your body, being aware of your breath, taking silent time and resting when you need to without a screen in front of you.

“Too often we get caught up in our busy schedules and think, ‘I don’t have time for that’, but that is exactly when we especially need to stop and attend to our needs,” Tigerlily said.

“Even five minutes a day set aside for silence can make a tremendous

difference in restoring one’s self. Even one single focused inhale and exhale will have a balancing impact.”

Besides this, Tigerlily also believes yoga is an emerging form of self care and self-love which is increasingly intertwined with feminism. She said feminism and yoga may first appear to be unrelated but they share the similar goals of health and well-being, at both the social and personal levels.

“While I was introduced to yoga many years ago, I didn’t become this serious about yoga until about four years ago, which happened to coincide with a particularly stressful time in my life,” Tigerlily said. “After a guided relaxation session during my first yoga teacher training, I realized that this might have been the first time in my life that I had actually been relaxed. I haven’t missed a day of practice in three years.”

According to Tigerlily, as a society, we tend to live in a perpetual fight or flight mode. When we can activate our parasympathetic nervous system through Yoga, we can begin to rest and restore, setting the conditions for healing to occur. The principles of yoga help us to begin this relaxation process, which is why yoga is a form

of self-care.

She said yoga is much more than the “stretching” or “postures”, it includes ethical living, clean eating, breathing and meditation.

“As a feminist, I believe self-care is an aspect of self-love, and self-love is a feminist act. Loving ourselves and caring for ourselves go hand in hand.

When we love ourselves, we recognize that we have a priority to care for our body, mind, and spirit, so that we can be at our best, for ourselves and others,” Tigerlily said.

Despite this, both self-care and self-love can be misconceptualized in today’s society, where self-care is equated with consumerism in the form of expensive spa days, and self-love is equated with selfishness, Tigerlily said.

“While it is not wrong at all to enjoy a spa day and shopping, I simply am pointing out that it’s not the kind of self-care I am speaking of because it costs money and is often not financially sustainable for the average wage-earner,” Tigerlily said.

“Therefore, the consumer driven “self-care” perpetuates a culture of self-hating women unable to afford or access this kind of self-care.”

After seeing several of her students who were suffering from stress and anxiety, Tigerlily decided to start teaching her own yoga classes.

“I proposed my first yoga class after I had been seeing a significantly increasing number of my students coming to me with debilitating stress and anxiety—more so than what is normal for college students, and more so than the normal number of students suffering from anxiety,” Tigerlily said.

Her yoga courses equip students with the tools to be present, and to reduce stress and anxiety. Students learn how to implement self-care, cultivate empathy and practice compassion.

These are healing life-skills that translate into the ability to remain centered and to emerge as a transformational leader.

Tigerlily is currently holding yoga and meditation courses like “Yoga for Harmonious Living,” “Meditation Theory and Practice,” Yoga for SelfRealization” and “Yoga Nidra” that are available to students across all disciplines.

Tigerlily said every faculty member can integrate self-care and yoga into

their classes by creating a space of intentional silence and breathing for the first couple minutes of class to give everybody a chance to “arrive” and be present.

She believes Eastern practices of self-care would be a beneficial integration into Western culture and education to transform the lives of students in liberating ways.

“We need a collective cultural value shift in order to make it more socially acceptable to practice self-care,” Tigerlily said.

These practices can also be used outside of universities and by people in society who may be under large amounts of stress.

“Right now as a society, we are far from relaxed. We normalize stress and glorify sleeping less; we value productivity over life quality and balance,” Tigerlily said. “When we consider ‘healing begins from a state of relaxation’ and then consider the high-speed social context within which we live, it becomes clear why we are globally experiencing a crisis of dis-ease.”

Staff reporter Diksha Mittal can be reached at dmittal@dailyegyptian.com.

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

News

Page 11

Community program paves the way for young entrepreneurs

Jackson County CEO student, Zoe Harris, speaks with her banker about receiving a loan for her business, Cadmus, March 31, 2021, at the SIU Small Business Development Center in Carbondale, Ill. Harris created her business as a way of turning her passion of writing into a career by creating content for other business’s websites and social media. Sophie Whitten | @swhittenphotography

have is the “1 to 100” where each student is given one dollar and two weeks to turn it into one hundred dollars.

This helps the students to think creatively about money In 2010, the Midland Institute for Entrepreneurship and how it is spent and earned. The challenge also sets began providing a space for high school students to build them up for the next challenges of the class and individual their own businesses while touring local companies and businesses and Banker Day, where they meet with bankers speaking with other businessmen and women through the to apply for a loan to create their businesses.

Creating Entrepreneurial Opportunities (CEO) program.

“The first half of the year we form the class business, The late Craig Lindvahl founded and directed the so it’s a real business formed by the students to create program to provide a real-world learning experience for a real profit. That real profit will go into a real bank his students in Effingham, Ill. The program brought account. That bank account will be what is used to fund students from every school in a county together to meet the individual businesses,” Skovgaard said. “Every student with local companies to learn from them and eventually will write a business plan, they’ll meet with a banker [...] use what they had learned to create a class business that That banker will either approve them or deny them for would build funds for their own individual businesses. a real loan from our real class account. They will then The class grew and now has 56 programs in over 200 seed their own business with their own money that they schools, including Jackson County. created in their class business. They will found their first Nic Skovgaard, the facilitator of the Jackson CEO company and they will have real sales and they will do program said the class has been in Jackson County for six that all before they turn 18 years old.” years and had 60 students. Every morning, the students For this year’s class business, the students designed the meet at a business at 7:30 a.m. wearing professional three-day Southern Illinois Shop Local Scavenger Hunt clothing, ready to learn from members of the community. to get the community involved in their program while “The Jackson County CEO program is unlike anything still following COVID-19 guidelines and restrictions. else I’ve ever come in contact with. This is one of the The students could not host an event with many people most amazing programs I’ve ever seen because it rewards so they decided to sell tickets and sponsorships for a students for taking risks. It rewards students for getting scavenger hunt around the businesses and landmarks out of their comfort zone and it rewards students for of the community where participants can visit different failing, to be completely honest. We want them to learn locations on a map to earn points towards winning $1,000 from their experiences and the Jackson County CEO of gift cards to local businesses. program is one of the only places in the students’ high In addition to their group and personal businesses school career where those risks and those failures and and banker day, the students also compete in a local and those mistakes are rewarded with real life experience,” national pitch competition where they get to pitch their Skovgaard said. business ideas to judges for a cash prize. This year Shealee Skovgaard said in every school year, there are five main Swisher won first place, Zac Jorgenson won second place objectives of the class. The first challenge that the students and Zoe Harris won third place in the local competition.

Sophie Whitten | @swittenphotography

Harris, the owner of Cadmus, a service that provides web content for businesses to use in their media and websites to draw more attention from readers, was given an opportunity to follow her passion for writing through her business and the CEO program.

“CEO has definitely helped me realize that I can really turn my passion into a career [...] It’s definitely helped with my confidence level but also it’s helped me a lot with realizing that I don’t have to wait to start on these things that I want to do, and I think that’s where the real value in CEO comes in is that it really pushes you to, um, to achieve your goals,” Harris said.

Nic Skovgaard said through CEO, the students learn soft skills such as communication, problem-solving, and decision making that most young adults have not been introduced to in their lives or careers.

“One of the things that we do every year is we have what’s called an Investor Breakfast and it usually happens very early in the year. At this Investor Breakfast, we have all the students, and you know, they dress up, they show up and we have them stand up at these tables in front of all these people who are instrumental in the program and we have them introduce themselves. And we get these amazing introductions of the most nerve-racked sixteenyear-olds you’ve ever seen in your life,” Skovgaard said.

“Then, at the end of the year, we do something very similar where we bring all of the investors back and we let all of the students stand up again and it is transformational to see how far they’ve come.”

Staff Photographer Sophie Whitten can be reached at Swhitten@dailyegyptian.com or on Instagram @ swittenphotography.

Page 12

News

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

SIU celebrates International Fest with the Parade of Flags

Jared Treece | @bisalo

On a clear, sunny Monday morning, a group of international students, faculty and community members paraded through campus with numerous flags from countries across the world.

The International Parade of Flags kicked off the start of SIU’s International Fest 2021, a week-long celebration of diversity, inclusiveness and culture at SIU and the greater Carbondale community.

The parade transitioned into the festival proclamation featuring speeches from SIU chancellor Austin Lane, Executive Director of International Affairs, Andrew Carver and Mike Henry, Carbondale mayor.

The proclamation ended with SIU chancellor Austin Lane banging a gong to officially kick-off the week of festivities.

Staff Photographer Jared Treece can be reached at jtreece@dailyegyptian.com or on Instagram at @bisalo.

SIU chancellor Austin Lane hits the gong to officially kick-off the International Fest 2021 Monday, April 5, 2021 in Faner Plaza at SIU. Jared Treece | @bisalo

International Student Council President Akmal Asoev leads the parade along with chancellor Austin Lane and Executive Director of International Affairs Andrew Carver during the International Parade of Flags Monday, April 5, 2021 at the Student Service building at SIU. Jared Treece | @bisalo

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Sports

Page 13

Saluki throwers earn All-American honors in NCAA indoor championships

Janae Mosby | @mosbyj

Southern Illinois freshman Aveun Moore launches a discus Friday, March 23, 2018, during the Bill Cornell Spring Classic at the Lew Hertzog Track and Field complex. Brian Munoz | @BrianMMunoz Senior thrower Shauneice O’Neal and senior thrower A’veun Moore-Jones have been added to the long list of the Saluki track and field throwers who made it to the All- American team at the NCAA Indoor Championships.

“They were excited when they became first team AllAmerican and second team All-American. Throwers have had a long history of producing All-Americans, so it is nice to keep the tradition alive,” coach J.C. Lambert said.

This was O’Neal’s first time making it to first team AllAmerican in her college career, earning seventh place at the championship with the weight throw of 21.77 meters.

“I was happy. I was a little disappointed that I didn’t go further, but overall I was happy. I actually got to go and compete and just competing in general made me happy. To be able to know that I can go toe-to-toe with a bunch of great competitors

solidified that my hard work paid off,” O’Neal said.

Moore-Jones placed 14th at the indoor championships, earning second team All-American for the first time with the shot put throw of 15.99 meters.

“Personally, being All-American just takes the cake for me.

It is one of the top things you can get being a D1 athlete, so I was just really happy and I was also happy because I had my teammate with me as well,” Moore-Jones said.

Lambert said it has been great having Moore-Jones and O’Neal on the team and they both have great attitudes.

“They’ve improved quite a bit and in more than one way.

Athletically they’ve improved a lot, they have grown up a lot as individuals. They’ve done a great job in maturing in many different ways,” Lambert said.

Both O’Neal and Moore-Jones have been participating in track and field since high school and they have been working on making it to nationals since arriving at SIU. “They have set goals for this season. A’veun wanted to make it to nationals and she did. [...] For Shauniece, her goal was to be first team All-American, which is basically top eight at the NCAA national meet and she did,” Lambert said.

In preparation for the indoor championship, Moore-Jones said she did a lot of repetition in practice to work on her technique.

“Getting a lot of good solid throws in and trying to repeat your good throws over and over. Trying to make your bad practices into good ones and when you are tired and you don’t have any energy left, all you have is your technique,” MooreJones said.

O’Neal said repetition had also played a big part in her preparation for the championship and they began preparing at the beginning of the season to make it to nationals.

Moore-Jones and O’Neal both said Lambert has helped them improve in the areas they need work in.

“In particular, coach Lambert really worked with me on my form and I have never really had a problem with the mental aspect of throwing, but being consistent with my technique and conditioning, he’s really helped me work on that,” O’Neal said.

“I have so many mental issues going into competitions, like I

know I can throw whatever number but if my head is not there I’m not going to do it. [...] He helped me a lot with mental things and mental reps,” Moore-Jones said.

Lambert said both women have great attitudes and they work hard. He said Moore-Jones is consistent at practice and O’Neal is a good competitor when it comes down to the wire and she is good at holding herself accountable.

The outdoor season began on March 19 with the Bill Cornell Invite and Lambert said they are trying to get used to the differences between indoor and outdoor seasons.

“We are really just trying to get used to getting back outside again. We throw on different surfaces, indoor we throw on plywood and outdoors we try on concrete and of course discus is added in,” Lambert said.

O’Neal and Moore-Jones said outdoor throwing is more exhausting than indoor throwing.

“Outdoor is exhausting. For some reason, transferring from indoor to outdoor is like dragging a wagon full of cinder blocks.

It is just a little more exhausting and you have to put in a little more effort,” O’Neal said.

Moore-Jones and O’Neal both hope to make it to nationals for this outdoor season.

“Some of my goals are to finish my semester strong for classes and try to do my best at conference, try to win at least the hammer and to score in whatever events he puts me in and try to make it to regionals and nationals for hammer,” O’Neal said.

Lambert said his goal for O’Neal is to keep making it to national meets and to keep climbing up the ladder and his goal for Moore-Jones is to continue to get better and get back to the national meet.

“Finishing strong in all my classes, winning conference in shot put and scoring in discus because I know I can and actually be able to go to nationals this outdoor season, I always make it to regionals. I have never made it to nationals in outdoor so that is definitely a goal for me to reach,” Moore-Jones said.

Staff reporter Janae Mosby can be reached at jmosby@ dailyegyptian.com or on Twitter at @mosbyj.

Saluki softball looks to keep rolling as they near final month of season

Ryan Scott | @RyanscottDE

“If we get a win then good and if we get a loss then we get the loss together and know that we gave it our all.”

- Maris Boelens Senior Outfielder

Southern Illinois softball is 26-6 and is looking to carry over their great start into the final month of the season.

The Salukis season started on Feb. 13 with a 3-1 win over Murray State and the team conference play began on March 20 with a win over Drake.

Graduate student infielder Maddy Vermejan said the team has played so well this year because they have players that can step up at any time.

“We have a lot of veterans, but we also have younger girls, and we all bring something different to the table,” Vermejan said.

We’re all different players personality wise and physically on the field so I feel like we could cover lots of different aspects of the game. If someone is sort of in a slump at some point, we always have those other players that will be able to step up,” Vermejan said.

Senior outfielder Maris Boelens discussed how the team has been able to avoid losing momentum after their undefeated season ended.

“I think taking it one game at a time, it’s just understanding that we’re not going to have a perfect season, we’re not going to go 50-0. So I think just regrouping after a loss I think has helped us get back on track,” Boelens said .

Boelens also said the team trusts each other not to make the same mistakes again.

The Salukis are 18-6 outside of conference and are 8-3 in Missouri Valley conference play.

Vermejan spoke on what makes the MVC more difficult than the out-of-conference play.

“The main thing we’ve been focusing on is conference well and obviously we’ve played really good competition at the beginning of our season. Vermejan said. But coming into our conference I feel like there is almost more pressure to do well in conference because that means more to us.

The intensity is always really high because we do have a good conference.”

Boelens discussed the team’s expectations for the remainder of the season and said they expect to compete every game.

“If we get a win then good and if we get a loss then we get the loss together and know that we gave it our all. So I think from here on out the expectation is to go to work every day and getting all three phases rolling from the first inning,” Boelens said.

The 2020 season was canceled due to the pandemic and this year other SIU athletic teams teams had stoppages in their season due to the pandemic. Vermejan discussed how COVID-19 has affected the team and said some of the players have been vaccinated.

“Right now a lot of us actually have been getting vaccinated. At the beginning of the year, going back to the fall, it was a little more tough to get to know the new players on the team because we weren’t allowed to hang out and build those bonds with our different teammates, and the new teammates,” Vermejan said.

Vermejan also added that the team has gotten to hang out more as the season has gotten started.

Boelens discussed how she has played to this point in the season and said her hitting has improved this year.

“I kind of had a slow start offensively my first couple of years, but this year I’ve really tried to focus on getting better each at bat,” Boelens said.

Vermejan said she wants to give it her all in her final season with the team.

“I want to go all out, give it my all, because this is my last year playing and past couple of seasons. I did start off, hitting pretty slow,’’ Vermejan said.

So when I came out this year I’m like I don’t want to do that again, it’s not fun to go through so preseason I did pretty well and was getting on base a lot, and as of now my hitting numbers have slowed down. I’m still getting on a lot but that’s something I want to work on.

SIU most recently swept the Loyola Ramblers on April 2 and 3. The Salukis will end their regular season on May 9 against Northern Iowa and the MVC tournament will be May 12 through 15 in Evansville, Ind. Sports reporter Ryan Scott can be reached at rscott@dailyegyptian.com or on Twitter @RyanscottDE.

Sports

Page 14

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

From pain to progress Brad Harrison’s 2021 redemption season

Adam Warfel | @warfel_adam

In the fall of 2018, all left-handed pitcher Brad Harrison could focus on with each pitch, was the pain.

“It started in the fall of 2018; it was my junior year. In between innings my shoulder would start stiffening up,” Harrison said. “It would take longer and longer to try and loosen it up and get it going and then come season time it seemed like after three innings it would just lock up.”

Harrison, a junior in 2018, was granted an extra year of eligibility for 2021 because of the pandemic.

In 2018, Harrison had a 4.25 earned run average in 15 appearances giving up 72 hits while striking out 75 guys.

After getting some MRI’s done in the offseason off 2018, nothing came back conclusive on where the pain was coming from.

“I rehabbed all summer all fall and going into the season last year [2020] it just really didn’t get any better,” Harrison said. “I still couldn’t throw more than five innings comfortably.”

With the 2020 season being cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Harrison decided it was time to have another look at what the problem could be.

“When we got cancelled, I decided that if I wanted to come back I needed to get it fixed,” Harrison said. “I went and got an MRI in St. Louis with Doctor George Paletta. They found that I had a slap tear in my labrum, which means that it was torn in two separate spots.”

The pain that he had experienced when pitching resulted from a muscle in his shoulder rubbing against the bone in his shoulder.

“Essentially, there was a little flap on my labrum that would catch up against the bone,” Harrison said. “It would shift and get caught and cause all kinds of pain.”

After the surgery in which the doctors removed the debris that was causing the catch, Harrison went through offseason rehab with Brandon Lee, the SIU baseball athletic trainer.

“It was a lot of times spent with Brandon Lee, our trainer. The amount of hours that we spent together in the last few years is ridiculous,” Harrison said. “He had a really good program with rehab exercises and treatment type stuff on top of a throwing program.”

SIU pitcher Brad Harrison poses for a portrait at Itchy Jones Stadium on Wednesday March 31, 2021 at SIU. Coming back after injuring his arm, the left-handed pitcher has been a steady arm in the Salukis’ rotation. This season, Harrison threw seven innings where he struck out nine batters and two hits during a game against Marshall. Jared Treece | @bisalo

With the pain, Harrison never felt like giving up and walking away from baseball, but the pain did cause the fun he had experienced with baseball in the past to diminish.

“It seemed like the last two years of baseball were not nearly as fun as they should have been,” Harrison said. “I love the game and every part of the game, but it’s just so mentally exhausting when everytime you tried pick up a ball to do what you love you just physically couldn’t.”

Harrison has pitched well this season, having pitched just over 34 innings racking up 44 strikeouts across four wins this season.

“It definitely does motivate me knowing what Brad’s went through,” sophomore pitcher Trey McDaniel said. “How passionate he is about the game and how he carries himself. He comes to the field everyday no matter what.”

Across seven starts this season, there has only been one game where Harrison has not had five strikeouts or more despite the fact that he does

not have an upper 90 mile per hour fastball.

“He mixes it up pretty well, he just uses his two pitch mix,” McDaniel said. “Coach [Jamieson] does a good job with having a plan before the game.”

The offseason rehab Harrison did helped increase his arm strength, which has led to some of the success Harrison has had this year.

“Because of the added arm strength, his slider has gotten better, his later breaking is harder for the hitters to know whether it’s going to be a strike or out of the strike zone,” pitching coach Time Jamieson said.

Jamieson credits Harrison’s success to his lefthandedness.

“He’s got a pretty good idea of who he is as a pitcher and what his strengths are, and we try to guide him toward those strengths,” Jamieson said. “He’s left- handed which, makes him tougher to hit than right handers because hitters don’t see left handers that much.”

Harrison’s injury helped him to realize just how limited his time as a college pitcher can be.

“Before our first game this year, Coach Rhodes talked about there was an interview with a former player,” Harrison said. “He said if it was your last game ever how hard would you play?”

And that statement has been the focus for Harrison this season, pitching each game as if it could be his last.

“It’s really difficult to say that COVID was a blessing with everything that’s happened in the past year, in all of the tragedy that’s really gone on,” Harrison said. “For me, just to have this opportunity to come back and be healthy, it’s really given me an opportunity to appreciate every moment I get to spend at the baseball field with the guys.”

Sports Reporter Adam Warfel can be reached at awarfel@dailyegyptian.com or on Twitter at @ warfel_adam.

SIU students try to avoid making a “pool” out of themselves

Lucaia Romaero, an undergraduate student in the Electrical Engineering Department from Spain, loses her balance and falls off the rope at the April Pools Day event on Thursday, April 1, 2021, at the SIU Recreation Center in Carbondale, Ill. “It feels great to be here and make new friends. This is my first experience on the rope,” Romaero said. Monica Sharma | @mscli_cks

Joshua Virella, an undergraduate student in the Physics Department, tries to balance on the rope at the April Pools Day event Thursday, April 1, 2021, at SIU Recreation Center in Carbondale, Ill. “I am here with my friend and we are enjoying it a lot after a long time,” Virella said.. Monica Sharma | @mscli_cks

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Sports

Page 15

Saluki Bassers win first place at the 2021 Abu Garcia College Fishing Tournament at Table Rock Sophie Whitten | @swittenphotography

Saluki Bassers, Andrew Novotney and Thomas (TJ) Johns, won first place at the 2021 Abu Garcia College Fishing Tournament at Table Rock Lake in Missouri presented by MLF BIG5 Friday, March 26, 2021.

Out of 117 boats, the two came in first with a total combined weight of 19lbs and 11oz, earning them a prize of $2,000.

“This last tournament, I’d say, is probably going to be one of my top memories just because I’ve gotten second place, I’ve gotten third place and stuff like that, but winning such a big tournament is just, like, a really big deal for the club and for the university,” Novotney said.

The fishing season runs from spring into fall and throughout their season the Bassers typically go to a dozen tournaments, competing with hundreds of other anglers for the chance to win money and recognition for their teams.

“We compete at the local level and we also compete in the circuits. Anyone can fish [...] It’s a good group of guys and you have a lot of fun,” Johns said.

Johns said bass fishing has begun to quickly grow over the past few years as more high schools and colleges start clubs for students to get on the water. As interest in the club continues to grow, the team is looking for new members and welcomes people at all experience levels.

“If you’re an incoming freshman or an already existing student, don’t be afraid to reach out, you know. We’re here and we’re looking for guys. We’re always looking for new members. You can never have enough guys on a bass fishing team,” Johns said.

Staff Photographer Sophie Whitten can be reached at Swhitten@dailyegyptian.com or on Instagram @ swittenphotography.

Andrew Novotney steers the boat up to the dock March 31, 2021, at Kinkaid Lake in Jackson County, Ill. Sophie Whitten | @swhittenphotography

Saluki Bassers, Andrew Novotney and Thomas (TJ) Johns, hold up their bass after the 2021 Abu Garcia College Fishing Tournament March 26, 2021, at Table Rock Lake in Missouri. The team is currently ranked 58th in the country and hopes to climb higher before the season ends. Photo courtesy of Thomas (TJ) Johns.

Thomas (TJ) Johns reels in a line March 31, 2021, at Kinkaid Lake in Jackson County, Ill. Johns said the Saluki Bassers are looking for new members and accept people of all experience levels in their club. Sophie Whitten | @swhittenphotography Whitten | @swhittenphotography

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Study Break

Last week’s:

Page 16