THE Daily Egyptian
p. 3
Disasters bring out the good, the bad, and the ugly
p. 5
“Please, please be okay:” Experiencing the Little Rock tornado
p. 6
Woke: The Annexation of Meaning
p. 12
“Nature’s Day” offers reason to get outdoors
p. 3
Disasters bring out the good, the bad, and the ugly
p. 5
“Please, please be okay:” Experiencing the Little Rock tornado
p. 6
Woke: The Annexation of Meaning
p. 12
“Nature’s Day” offers reason to get outdoors
a little bit of wind noise and the wind was starting to pick up and you could start hearing things hit the windows, and then your ears start popping and I knew then, I said, ‘Nathan, this is gonna be bad,’” Ellis said.
From under the mattress, he heard glass shattering and wood splintering as the tornado erupted over the house. Windows shattered, loose belongings smashed into the walls and the roof was ripped from the building.
“It was just violent. That’s all it was. That’s all I can describe it as,” Ellis said.
As the storm continued to tear through the house, Ellis and his son held tight to the mattress, huddling together for shelter, but the tornado lifted the mattress into the air, pulling Ellis off the ground with it. The mattress was ripped out of his hands and he fell back to the ground, where a glass shard cut into his arm.
He went to his mother, who was still tucked away in the bathroom closet, which was nearly untouched by the storm, and prepared her to see the wreckage of the house. Mud and glass were littered across the rain-slick floors, chunks of the ceiling were scattered around the kitchen, and her belongings were thrown about the house at random, but the three of them were safe.
“There’s a sense of fear and there’s a sense of how out of control you are in life, and there is nothing I can do. I am at the mercy of everything that’s about to come through here and I can’t do anything else,” Ellis said. “And I think that was the biggest takeaway that I had in my head right then, and it is whatever it is, I can’t do anything about it, I’m out of control.”
Mike Ellis walked through the ruins of his childhood home after surviving two tornadoes in a single day, moving the last of his mother’s belongings out of her house. As family and friends carried out boxes of salvaged and sentimental items, Ellis stood in the kitchen without a roof over his head and recounted his experience of that night.
“It started when we were in Little Rock with my dad having surgery,” he said. “We were over there sitting on the ninth floor, he just came out of surgery and recovery and that’s when the first tornado came through Little Rock.”
From the hospital windows, Ellis watched the EF3 tornado move through the town, but with his mother alone in Wynne, he and his son decided to race across the state to be with her when the second storm came through.
“As soon as we got out of the car, the sirens were going off,” Ellis said.
He found his mother in her living room chair and told her they needed to get to safety. Helping her up, Ellis and his son walked her to the bathroom closet where she waited out the storm.
Without other interior rooms in the house, Ellis and his son,
Nathan Ellis, grabbed a mattress from one of the bedrooms for the two of them to hide beneath.
“It was probably another 3, 5 minutes, once I got Mom in the closet. Nathan was outside, looking and watching, and he thought that it was just going to be close, you know, you could see it, and about that time, I could see the tornado on the other side of the church coming through town and I knew that it was going to be bad,” Ellis said.
He called to his son to come back inside where they laid down on the hallway floor, and Ellis pulled the mattress over them.
“The first thing that started happening was you could hear
He scrambled to get the mattress back on top of him and his son and waited for the storm to pass.
“Time stands still and it seems like it’s never gonna end,” he said.
When the winds eventually died down and he thought it was safe, Ellis called to his mother in the bathroom closet.
“I said, ‘Are you okay?’ and she didn’t answer,” Ellis said. “Then two or three times and she finally said, ‘Yeah, I’m okay.’”
Once he knew his mother was safe, he and his son crawled out from under the mattress and looked up from the hallway to see a gray-blue sky.
“I knew the house was gone,” Ellis said.
Being from Arkansas and also living in Oklahoma and Florida, Ellis was somewhat used to severe weather, but nothing had prepared him for this. Though he had lived through countless storms and even hurricanes, he had never seen a tornado until March 31, when he lived through two.
“So that happened on Friday when we were at the hospital and I was like, ‘Oh, I can mark that off the bucket list’ because we were safe and it was okay, obviously we were sending thoughts and prayers to those people that were affected by that, but I thought, ‘Okay, that’s great, I get to see one,’” Ellis said. “And then I get here and this and that’s a little too close.”
Ellis’s sister, Melissa Staggs,
Please see TERRIFYING | 4
Sophie Whitten | @SophieWhitten Mike Ellis walks through his childhood home where is mother still lived searching for lost belongings April 2, 2023 after the tornado in Wynne, Arkansas. Sophie Whitten| @sophiewhitten_Email: editor@dailyegyptian.com
Faculty Managing Editor: Annie Hammock ahammock@dailyegyptian.com
Editor-in-Chief: Sophie Whitten swhitten@dailyegyptian.com
Design Chief: Peyton Cook pcook@dailyegyptian.com
Sports Photo Editor: Lylee Gibbs lgibbs@dailyegyptian.com
Multimedia Editor: Kylen Lunn klunn@dailyegyptian.com
Sports Editor: Joey Bernard jbernard@dailyegyptian.com
Assistant Sports Editor: Cole Daily cdaily@dailyegyptian.com
News Editor: Jamilah Lewis jlewis@dailyegyptian.com
Ad Chief: Hannah Combs hcombs@dailyegyptian.com
Social Media Editor: Logan Brown lbrown@dailyegyptian.com
News Photo Editor: Dominique MartinezPowell dmartinez-powell@ dailyegyptian.com
A tornado siren on South Jefferson Street in Salem, Illinois, failed to go off on April 1, the night of an EF1 tornado.
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 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
“We know it was not working, and it’s been a number of years it has not worked,” Mayor Nic Farley said.
Because the siren failed to go off, many residents were unaware of the tornado that was coming before it damaged several homes and businesses in the area.
“We had no warning,” Debra Vaughn said.
Jason Vaughn said, “I just barely heard the sirens uptown… by the time I heard that siren uptown, it was too late. It already hit.”
According to Farley, the city knew that there was a problem.
“We know that one of the outdoor warning sirens did not work,” he said.
According to Salem City Manager Rex Barbee, the city is in the process of trying to fix the siren.
“We have been working on that siren, okay, for several years trying
to get it to work. We’ve tested it periodically,” he said.
The other alert system in the town, a smartphone-based system called Nixle, did deploy, as well as standard alerts across television.
However, this still left some residents without a warning. One person who asked to remain anonymous does not own a smartphone, and did not receive any alerts that the storm was coming. Their house sustained some of the worst damage in Salem.
Fixing the sirens poses a big commitment issue for a Salem government, which is unsure of what the future is for tornado sirens in the town.
Farley said, “We just got cost estimates, and we still don’t have the full costing from those companies on that estimate. But we’re looking at upwards of $50,000.”
“We’re gonna have to determine whether that’s the best use of funds, or as new technologies are brought in, is it better to not have and rely on that and go with another system for alerting our residents,” he said.
The government of Salem is
looking into options beyond sirens to alert residents of emergencies. The Nixle system, which many residents of Salem are registered for, is able to alert people with landline phones as well as cell phones. However, people with landlines who want alerts, must call City Hall to get on the list.
According to Farley, the current Nixle system is in the process of being integrated with the county system so that alerts will be countywide.
“We’ve signed the contract… Hopefully within a month, that system will be completely migrated,” he said.
The siren issue isn’t isolated to only Salem. According to Farley, there have been meetings with the county, which originally installed the sirens, to determine the best way to tackle the problem.
“It’s not just the city of Salem. There’s a lot in the county as well that need fixing,” Farley said.
Staff Reporter Ryan Grieser can be reached at rgrieser@dailyegyptian.com
Convoy of Hope was working with the Wynne First Assembly of God to provide tarps, tote boxes, contractor bags and cleaning supplies that the church has been able to distribute to the community.
“We’ll begin debris removal and chainsaw operations later on this afternoon to help homeowners get their yards cleaned up, get things like that done,” Gordon said. “Our goal is to help the community get back to normalcy as quickly as possible.”
While there are people who are willing and ready to take advantage of your generosity, there are also an abundance of people who want to serve the community and using tools like Charity Navigator can help you find genuine, helpful organizations.
When the March 31 tornadoes swept across the Midwest, one of my first thoughts was of a small animal shelter in Mayfield, Kentucky.
In December 2021, I traveled to Mayfield to cover the tornado that devastated the small town and from the moment we arrived until we were driving away from the wreckage, I was blown away by the abundance of generosity pouring into the town.
Every few feet, someone would stop me and my crew to ask if we wanted water or a hot meal or any other necessities ranging from tools to blankets. Even after we politely declined and said we were only there as journalists and weren’t in need of anything we were often told something to the effect of, “Well journalists have to eat too,” with a shoulder shrug and a smile.
As we walked through the streets that were broken and littered with debris, I couldn’t help but think about how truly kind people can be. I was in awe. Every street corner had someone cooking free meals, every road had a truck handing out supply bins, and every person we passed seemed to somehow still wear a smile.
These were the best of people.
But then we walked into the animal shelter, where I wanted to cover a hopeful story of pet owners being reunited with their pets after the storm, and was instead confronted with an ugly truth that often follows natural disasters: where there are generous people, there will also be unscrupulous people.
As soon as we walked in and introduced ourselves, the volunteers immediately tensed. They needed to see our identification, so we gave them our cards and our social media accounts and then called our faculty managing editor to confirm we were who we claimed to be. This wasn’t the first time we needed to show where we were from, but this was a new kind of panic.
“Scammers,” they said.
I hadn’t even considered the possibility before, but people had come to their shelter pretending to be reporters, taking pictures of the building and posting it on social media, asking for monetary donations and then taking all the money for themselves.
That money was given by generous people wanting to help out a small animal shelter, but the shelter never saw a dime of it. It went directly into the pockets of people wanting to make a quick dollar off of someone’s generosity.
So when I went to Wynne, Arkansas, this month to cover the storm damage from the
latest tornado outbreak, speaking to someone about how to avoid scammers was at the top of my list, and the Convoy of Hope Response Team senior director of U.S. disaster, Eric Gordon, was able to give information about the subject.
One of the easiest ways for people across the country to donate to tornado victims is through monetary donations, but it is often difficult to determine which places are making a genuine impact on the communities you are wanting to donate to.
“You can always look at a web presence,” Gordon said. “I know anybody can fake a website but there are some ratings that, like, Charity Navigator, you can go… and search some of these organizations.”
At charitynavigator.org, charities are rated on a four star scale as well as given a score out of 100 based on four different criteria: 50% impact and results, 32.5% accountability and finance, 10% culture and community, and 7.5% leadership and adaptability.
If you have a charity already in mind, you can search for it on the site and see its rating. One of the disaster relief organizations that we found in Wynne, as well as in Mayfield, was Operation BBQ Relief, a nonprofit food service that profides hot meals for communities impacted by emergencies like natural disasters.
Operation BBQ Relief has a four star rating and a 100% score on Charity Navigator.
On the other hand, if you want to donate to disaster relief but don’t know of who exactly to donate to, one of the features of Charity Navigator is its “Where To Give Now” section, where it lists current local, as well as, global relief causes. If you click on “Tornadoes in the Midwest and South,” you will find 14 different organizations helping tornado relief efforts, including Convoy of Hope with a four star rating and 99% score.
“I would look at both the monetary donation and also the resource donation, supply donation,” Gordon said. “Who are they working with on the ground there in an impacted area?”
Many relief organizations work through local organizations, such as churches. This is a good way of knowing if the organization you’re donating to is actually working locally to help the people affected by disasters because they are working with those local connections. In this way, too, they are able to have a better understanding of what supplies the community needs.
If you’re wanting to donate material items, there are many different needs a community may have, but a few of the most needed items
included water, food and tarps.
“Clothes is not as big of a deal,” Gordon said. “Everybody wants to bring their clothes and that’s great, but a lot of times, clothes isn’t as big of a deal as they think it is. So, you think about if you were out of your home, your whole roof blown off your home, what would you need? At that point, hygiene items, things to pack your stuff up in, cleaning supplies to clean anything that was dirty and things like that.”
“One of the greatest things is neighbors helping neighbors,” Gordon said. “What an opportunity. I think, just be wise. Make sure that you’re connecting with the right people at the right time and also be understanding that in a disaster scenario, things change rapidly.”
Editor’s Note: To donate to the tornado relief efforts, go to charitynavigator.org where you can donate to different organizations directly through the site.
Editor-in-chief Sophie Whiteen can be reached at swhitten@dailyegyptian.com or on instagram @sophiewhitten_
“This house is 55 years old,” she said. “After I was born, we moved in here and he [Ellis] came five years later.”
The two siblings grew up in the house. It was where they had sleepovers with their friends and family meals during the holidays.
“The main thing was physical life was ok,” Ellis said. “Once I got through all that… then the next step was, we’ve got to get all of her stuff and secure it, and things that can’t be replaced, the pictures and the mementos and things that are personal, so we tried to do all that, but then yesterday when I was walking around the property and just kind of looking, I think that’s when the adrenaline finally slowed down and the emotion took over and that’s when it finally hit me that this is the house I grew up in and it’s gone.”
Once they began searching the house, though, the family was surprised to find that a lot of the belongings scattered about the house. Keepsakes from their childhood were found in various places and some things never moved at all.
A glass vase from Staggs’ bridal shower was perched on top of one of the kitchen cabinets, and though the
roof had been ripped from the room, the vase didn’t break or even budge.
“I think the thing I grabbed Friday night first, and I went desperately searching for, Momma got my nana’s Bible when we separated her estate. I found it, I carried it, it stayed with me, it’s in my house right now, I don’t know who it’s gonna go to, but I’ve got it saved,” Staggs said.
As they began finding sentimental things from their childhood, Ellis
thought of the holidays spent in the house and how they will change now that the house is gone.
“When my kids and my grandkids come and we want to have Christmas and we want to have it here, but it’s not here anymore. This is the house that you always remember it in and now that’s not anymore,” he said.
Through it all, the family has remained positive, repeating that
the house is only a house and that their lives are immeasurably more valuable.
“There’s just so many little moments that let’s me know that God is in control and took care of us,” Staggs said with tears in her eyes. “Number one in the fact that Michael was even here to save Mom,” her voice trembled. “She’d have been in that chair in that den. Number two, they survived.”
Having now seen the destruction of a tornado from afar and felt its strength first hand, Ellis urges others to take storm warnings seriously.
“I don’t want to do it again,” Ellis said.
Editor-in-chief Sophie Whitten can be reached at swhitten@dailyegyptian. com or on Instagram @sophiewhitten_
On the last day of March in 2023, large sections of the southern and midwestern United States experienced a massive stream of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes that left hundreds injured and hundreds more filled with anxiety. I thought I would be saved by this anxiety since Carbondale wasn’t in the direct line of the tornadoes to come rampaging through, but I was sorely mistaken, as I received a text at 3:50 p.m. on March 31st that Little Rock had been hit.
I grew up in Little Rock and, while I may not have any friends there anymore, my parents and the family cat still live on the western side of the city. A high-end EF3 tornado dropped down and began tearing its way through downtown and eventually into West Little Rock, right where my old house resides. My old house and my family could’ve been swept away into the swirling winds, and I would be none the wiser until much later had it not been for that text.
Panic rushed through my veins as I shakily picked up my phone to call my dad, knowing he would be the more likely of the two to answer the phone due to his job position, but my heart dropped to my stomach as the phone call went to voicemail. A shiver ran down my spine as the sullen beep from the voicemail rang through my ears.
“Please, please be okay,” I whispered into the phone, my vision beginning to spin as I pressed the end button. Five minutes had stretched into what felt like five hours at the time. I hadn’t realized how panicked I had become until my own cat began to nuzzle up next to me, head butting my chest and curling into my lap despite being perfectly comfortable atop his small cat perch. He always does this when my anxiety begins to peak, and at that moment, I couldn’t control the shaking from my hands as I desperately scrolled through my contacts to try calling my mom.
“We’re okay Angel, we’re okay,” my mother said as soon as she picked up the phone, immediately knowing why I was calling at such an unusual time. The sigh of relief that exited my lungs was nothing I had ever experienced before, a completely foreign feeling that enveloped me instantly. “We’re okay, we’re okay, we’re okay,” repeated over and over in my head as she began to inform me that she was taking shelter in a vault at work, and my father had made it home safe to a house intact with the family cat shakily meowing at his side. Not all calls were going through because of the tornado wreaking havoc on the connections around town, so I understood why his call went unanswered.
I remained on the phone with them off and on all afternoon to make sure everything stayed ok so as to quell the anxiety that was still at the back of my mind. My family was safe.
Everything is okay.
Several of my classmates and colleagues experienced this same panic as the tornadoes barreled through the Midwest, potentially endangering their families and hometowns. Fortunately, all those I was in contact with were met with relief rather than grief as one by one, their families began to reassure them that their home was still okay.
A few days later, my parents were able to safely make it back to work and see the damage Little Rock had suffered from just a few short minutes of violent winds. A shopping center that was frequented by many was destroyed, and several neighborhoods were reduced to rubble. The Baskin Robbins I used to go to as a kid, which was less than five minutes away from my old house, had the front of its store ripped off. If the tornado had been moved just two streets over, my old neighborhood would be gone.
The apartments my mother used to manage when she was younger, which was Ginny’s Vineyard during her time working there, had the tops ripped off and several higher-story apartments caved in. The old building I took extracurricular classes in as a kid had its back wiped clean off. The Purple Cow restaurant I always got a plate of mac and cheese from was missing a roof and blown-out windows. The trail I used to walk along all the time with my parents was impassable. Parts of my childhood were wiped off the map and remain but a memory now, living at the back of our collective minds.
“It looks like a bomb went off,” my mother said as she showed me the damage taken to areas close to home. “We were really lucky, I still can’t believe just how lucky we really were.”
My father said, after driving through Little Rock, “From the damage, you can tell there were two tornadoes near us.”
Portions of west Little Rock are unrecognizable now due to the storm, and so many of the passing memories throughout this side of town haven’t stopped replaying in my head. Little Rock was changed drastically, and I am five hours away, unable to help out what was once my home.
Experiencing this panic so far away yet simultaneously so close was an ordeal that I still have little words to truly explain just how strange a feeling this is. One thing I can say is I wasn’t aware just how much I still loved my hometown until seeing it in ruins, seeing my childhood become distorted in my mind by broken trees and scattered remains of old buildings. The city of Little Rock and the state of my mind were one in the same for a while, but as the time passes, the buildings and homes of others are beginning to repair, just the same as the memories in my mind begin to take their shape once more.
Staff reporter and photographer Mo Collar can be reached at mcollar@ dailyegyptian.com or on Instagram @ m0.alexander. Fallen trees lay in front of destroyed Foxcroft apartments March 31, 2023 in Little Rock, Ark. Photo courtesy of Vaughn Collar. Sun sets on west Little Rock neighborhood March 31, 2023 in Little Rock, Ark. Photo courtesy of Jeff Hood.The political climate in the U.S. today can be more than a bit confusing to the average person who doesn’t follow it much.
Both sides use the same words but, strangely enough, both mean different things, depending on who’s saying it and in what contexts. Terms like “fascist,” “communist” and, the buzzword of the decade, “woke.”
“But how,” you may wonder, “can a word be used by different people in different contexts to mean entirely different things? Don’t we have a dictionary to define terms so this kind of ambiguity doesn’t happen?”
To an extent, this question must be asked any time a new term is introduced into the common vocabulary or a word is repurposed to mean something else; however, to get to the bottom of this rabbit hole, there are a few basic concepts to understand, starting with the basic concepts of two fancy-sounding words, lexicon and syntax.
Lexicon is, simply put, the vocabulary of a language. It is a collection of words agreed by speakers of the language to have meanings in conversation.
The lexicon has no forward or backward way of reading: brown, lazy, jump, fox, dog, quick, the.
Syntax, on the other hand, is the ordering of words to generate meaning in context; the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
In both these cases, the same words are here, but it’s only through proper ordering of the words that we understand the idea being portrayed.
Knowing what words go where creates the underlying framework of contextual understanding; we know the fox is brown and the dog is lazy because the syntax is correct and we know what a fox and dog are due to our understanding of the English lexicon.
But where this understanding has seemingly broken down in political discussion is in the conflation of connotation and denotation, or what words mean in context and what their dictionary, “set” definition means.
When we talk about a dog, we typically imagine a four-legged furry friend with a lolling tongue and a happily wagging tail, but what if we begin using the term to refer to a person? A dog is a common insult for a promiscuous man, especially among women, and the term can also be used, usually by men, to call someone unattractive.
Conversation often makes which definition is currently being used obvious, connotation fills in the gaps in our understanding and is usually what an English teacher will describe as “context clues” when coming across new words while reading. It takes into account the surrounding words and changes the definition of the new word to be more in line with the context.
This brings us back to our main question, what is “wokeness?” Depending on which side you ask, the word “woke” can either be an insult, a compliment, a statement of fact, or any combination thereof.
Progressive and liberally-minded people see the term as it was originally intended; it’s the view that inequalities exist and that there is a need to address them.
Conservatives use the term as a pejorative and use it to condemn initiatives addressing workplace inequality, education disparities, economic disenfranchisement and other issues dealing mostly with minority rights and their adjacent consequences.
This type of disconnect is nothing new for the American political system. In the years leading up to the Civil War the “states’ rights” argument over slavery was used to add a veneer of legitimacy to the desire for southern states to rebel in an attempt to hold onto their “peculiar institution” of slavery.
The “forced busing” arguments of yesteryear used the same strategy of obfuscating the general discontent around the desegregation of schools and channeling the political energy into fighting attempts to integrate, specifically through creating a system where White children were institutionally better off than Black children by providing more money for White schools than Black schools.
Similarly, when conservatives use the term “woke” in a modern context, they are not admitting the need for institutional reform in the U.S. but rather attempting to demonize any idea that would seek to address the inequality by labeling it as overtly political, overly ideological or simply for not comporting with their understanding of their own religion.
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is currently one of the most outspoken Republicans on the idea of “wokeness,” using his institutional power to limit class curricula surrounding Black and LGBT+ history, retaliate against those he
deems political opponents and create new institutions specifically for the purpose of expanding his authority.
For him, and many in the Republican party, “wokeness” is a social disease that must be fought and evokes the ever-present struggle for the soul of the nation in their eyes. This legitimizes the idea that power must be expanded and consolidated by a strong leader in order to unify the disparate factions in order to finally end the threat to the nation; and so they have to dominate the conversation by defining the terms of any discussion and refuse to see from other points of view.
By claiming the terminology is inherently evil and repeating refrains on the dangers it presents to society ad nauseum they can make even the most mundane of concepts, like board games and housing, into social ills that need to be rooted out.
Unfortunately, a constant diet of demonizing language coupled with a confident assertion that the language is accurate and objective can make it difficult to have a conversation with those who believe
the misinformation, leading to the scenario we currently find ourselves in where people can’t seem to agree on what constitutes reality.
Conservative strategy for decades has been to supplant the liberal, reality-based way of thinking with one of religion, nationalism and American cultural power and to skew our perception of the world to better fit one of constant, holy struggle.
But in order to do that they have to be able to define the terms by which the conversation takes place, and the general unpopularity of their most recent attempt to annex the language around “wokeness” shows just how possible it may be to remove the delusion perpetuated by their constant attacks.
So keep your mind open, keep listening to what’s being said by news media and politicians, but remember to remain guarded. Language is complicated and a masterful manipulator of language can create a reality believable enough to fool even the greatest of minds.
The Daily Egyptian Editorial Board can be reached at editor@dailyegyptian.com.
America is talking again about gun regulations now, days after another mass shooting, this one in Louisville, Kentucky, where four people were killed and eight injured at a downtown bank Monday, April 10. The suspect was killed. This just weeks after another school shooting happened, this time in Nashville, Tennessee. A woman killed three adults and three nine-yearold children. The police entered the building and managed to subdue the shooter.
The truth is that these kinds of things happen so often that they are not even shocking anymore. Since 1999, more than 300,000 children have experienced gun violence at school. For years, the Washington Post has tracked the number of students affected by school shootings. According to the non-profit organization Everytown for Gun Safety, in 2023, so far, there have been at least 39 incidents of gunfire on school grounds, resulting in 17 deaths and 30 injuries nationally. It shouldn’t be like that. In other countries, like Germany, so many mass shootings would never happen. Here is why:
First of all, we have strict gun legislation in Germany. Actually, it is one of the countries in Europe with the strictest gun laws. According to the weapons law in force in Germany, you need a weapons possession card to own or buy a firearm, and a weapons license to use or carry a loaded firearm. A gun permit allows gun owners only to transport the firearm, not to carry it on the body. This means that it must be carried unloaded and locked, for example in a locked case. At least five criteria are checked before the weapon possession card is issued.
Anyone who is not a sports shooter, hunter or gun collector must prove that they are significantly more at risk than other citizens. Those under 25 years must have their mental integrity certified. The law requires a gun safe for all. In addition, officials test weapons knowledge. Only then does a personal check and the application for a weapons possession card follow.
A big difference with the U.S. is also that guns are not accepted in German society. Apart from hunters and sport shooters, hardly any private person would own a firearm. Weapons are not seen as a tool for defense or protection, but are considered dangerous. Many are more deterred by it. Only a few would proudly pose with a gun. Weapons are not part of society’s self-image in Germany.
Lastly, our gun lobby isn’t that strong in politics, at least when it comes to privatelyowned weapons. The interests are simply elsewhere. Germany is one of the world’s most important weapons exporters. The current world situation, with global crises and conflicts such as the Ukraine war, is further boosting business for manufacturers of weapons, vehicles and fighter jets. This, too, can be criticized.
Of course, there is gun violence in Germany, too. But fatal shootings like the one at a Jehovah’s Witness meeting hall in the German city of Hamburg are very rare. Seven people, including an unborn baby, have been killed. The 35-yearold sports shooter had a gun license.
But the numbers of those happenings are much lower than in the U.S.
The state of Illinois has stricter gun control than other states. This is a result of the mass shooting in Highland Park near Chicago in
June 2022. Seven people were killed and over 30 were injured. As a journalist, Jeff Williams, from SIU’s radio station, covered shootings in the past.
He says: “The shooting in Highland Park has led to laws becoming stricter on so-called assault style weapons like RA-15s or AK-47s. These military-style weapons are generally used by the army.”
They are widely sold in the state of Illinois and very popular with gun enthusiasts.
“That type of weapon is very high-powered and has a long range. The bullets fly up to two miles. They are typically designed to do maximum damage,” he says.
But it isn’t efficient for hunting. An analysis of public mass shootings resulting in four or more deaths found that more than 85 % of such fatalities were caused by assault rifles. In the absence of federal laws regulating assault weapons, states must do something themselves to protect their residents from mass shootings, such as regulate or even ban the sale and manufacture of these particularly dangerous weapons.
“Those who support the gun ban believe that these weapons have no practical use for application in civilian life,” Williams says.
Gun advocates refer to the right of individuals to own a gun regardless of its force.
Williams recognizes inaccuracies in the law: “There is no definition of what a constitutional gun is. So, we can see several gray areas in gun legislation.”
So as a first step, federal laws could be sharpened to ban dangerous weapons for private ownership. Whereas in other countries, it can take months to get a firearm; in the U.S. it sometimes takes less than an hour to buy one. Therefore, the next step would also be to extend the purchase period. This would also reduce the risk of a student impulsively buying a gun and going on a rampage in his school out of anger.
Sometimes there is not even a background check. This is because the so-called instant background check does not apply if the gun is purchased from a private person. The background check must be more accurate and include mental health and personal motivation for the purchase of a weapon. It could also help if gun owners were not allowed to simply carry their firearm on their body. Locked cases for transport and gun safes for the home prevent accidents. Lastly, a firearms license should be a prerequisite for the purchase, where the conscientious handling of the weapon is taught.
John Shaw, the director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute on SIU’s campus, says: “Most Americans I talked to feel like we should have a stronger gun legislation. Not many understand why having a military weapon is a constitutional right.”
There are more guns in the United States than there are Americans, he says.
“Almost every week there is a school shooting. We got to be better than this,” Shaw says.
But he is not optimistic that the situation will change soon:
“The way our political system is designed, the gun advocates will always have enough votes to block significant legislation.”
On Friday, March 31, an outbreak the Midwest and South, leveling small town of Wynne, Arkansas. By busy with cleanup and relief efforts, for lost belongings, and boarding The relief effort is likely to take months, homes and the town without a high
outbreak of tornadoes swept across multiple cities including the By the weekend, the town was efforts, fixing power lines, looking up homes. months, leaving many without high school.
Southern Illinois University welcomed back perhaps its most famous alum on Monday, as actor and comedian Bob Odenkirk visited Carbondale to officially receive two degrees from the university.
Odenkirk received his bachelor’s degree from his time at SIU in the 1980s, as well as an honorary doctorate initially awarded by the school in 2019, in a ceremony at the Banterra Center on Monday night. It was followed shortly after by a discussion and audience Q&A which lasted around an hour in total.
During the day, Odenkirk came to speak with students from the College of Arts and Media to talk about his time at SIU, what he’s taken away from the school and his journey through hollywood.
“I just don’t see it as a cutthroat industry,” Odenkirk said. “I’m totally ready to get my ass kicked and show up again the next day and go back at it.”
Odenkirk said he liked that SIU gave him an outlet to do and make things. While in attendance here he took one acting class, made a few short films, made a radio show and did acting performances.
He also spoke about how he wanted to go into the industry right after school and do it on his own terms.
“I just wasn’t ready for Chicago or New York,” Odenkirk said. “I didn’t want the pressure of you know, who you’re going to be, what you’re going to do.”
When asked a question about the struggles he had in Hollywood, he recommended fellow colleague and actor Bryan Cranston and his book A Life in Parts.
“His book and a great perspective on trying to approach that. My point of view is not that helpful to you because I just sort of realized that I can act and people want me to act and I enjoy it.”
Odenkirk is best known for playing Saul Goodman in “Breaking Bad” and its spinoff “Better Call Saul,” the latter of which aired its series finale in 2022. He considers himself lucky to be cast in such a prominent role for two of the most critically acclaimed television shows of all time.
“Sometimes I would get a script and I would read it and think, somewhere there’s a trained actor who can’t get work, and I got this,” Odenkirk said. “And he should try to kill me.”
Odenkirk currently stars in “Lucky Hank,” an AMC series based on the novel “Straight Man.” Richard Russo, the author of “Straight Man” and executive producer on the series, was an English teacher at Southern Illinois University and based the book off of his experience in Carbondale.
“When you watch the show, he’s kinda writing about SIU,” Odenkirk said. “Even though it’s set in Pennsylvania.”
Raised in Naperville, Illinois, Odenkirk began his college education at College of Dupage, followed by a short stint at Marquette before transferring to SIU. There, he said he found what he wanted to do in life.
“While I was here, I discovered that I was certain that I wanted to try my hand at show biz,” he said.
Odenkirk honed his craft on a radio comedy show called “The Prime Time Special,” which he joked was “neither primetime, nor special.” It aired from midnight to 4 a.m. on WIDB, Southern’s college radio station.
“This place was a place for me to find myself,” Odenkirk said. “I felt a degree of freedom here. I felt a degree of opportunity to try things.”
He fell just three credits short of graduating when he decided to move to Chicago to focus on a career in comedy. Those credits would be completed at Columbia College Chicago in 1984.
“I did not attend graduation because I was in a hurry to get into show business,” Odenkirk said. “I did get my degree in the mail, and I gave it to my mom because I thought she’d be proud of me.”
Odenkirk’s work in comedy includes a four-year stretch writing for “Saturday Night Live.” He created Chris Farley’s character Matt Foley, a motivational speaker who appeared in some of the most popular segments in the show’s five-decade run. That character originated in the Second City comedy troupe in Chicago before Farley and Odenkirk joined SNL.
“Farley did a coach character at improv one night, and was yelling at the kids, and it was funny,” Odenkirk said. “I went home and came up with the story of a character who’s a
motivational speaker who is using himself as an example of what you don’t want to end up as.”
After his work with SNL, Odenkirk collaborated with David Cross on “Mr. Show with Bob and David,” as well as the short-lived “Tenacious D” series based on Jack Black and Kyle Gass’s band.
“The thing in show biz, it’s like any industry, if you get into it, you’ll see the same people over decades if you’re lucky enough to do it,” Odenkirk said. “All these people are my friends, and it’s been an amazing ride to get to know people.”
Other notable figures he brushed shoulders with include Conan O’Brien, Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler and Dana Carvey. Whether it’s through his time at SNL, his own work, or any other avenues, Odenkirk has worked with his fair share of celebrities and benefited greatly from it.
“It’s a great business if you’re wildly talented, but it’s also a great business if you just show up every day and do your work well. And over time, you ride the waves and get opportunities,” Odenkirk said.
His work as a writer opened up opportunities for acting, something Odenkirk noted in his discussion on Monday. His interest in writing comedy came in tandem with performing it.
“Secondarily to writing a lot of comedy is you perform, because it’s fun and there’s a part for you,” Odenkirk said. “So that’s what I did.”
Odenkirk was considered for the
role of Michael Scott in “The Office,” and eventually landed his most wellknown role as Saul Goodman in 2009, which would propel him to global fame.
“My brother-in-law… texted me a frame grab of a television set in China that had a ‘Better Call Saul’ ad running in China,” Odenkirk said. “I went, ‘holy cow, they’re watching me in China?’”
Odenkirk received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2022 when the final season of “Better Call Saul” premiered.
“I’m from Naperville, and I never really pursued fame,” Odenkirk said. “And then to get that honor, and with people who showed up from my whole career, it just made me feel so good. It’s beautiful.”
In October, Odenkirk will release a children’s book made from poems that he and his children wrote when they were little. When the pandemic forced them together, they revisited those poems, and it evolved into a full collection complete with illustrations by his daughter Erin.
“Growing up in Naperville without a lot of guidance, you’re limited by what you think is possible…” Odenkirk said. “I really wanted my kids, and any kid who reads that book to sorta think, ‘I can write things too.”
Staff reporter Brandyn Wilcoxen can be reached at bwilcoxen@ dailyegyptian.com or on Twitter at @BrandynWilcoxen.
With a slow start to its season, Saluki baseball is starting to put the pieces together. Currently sitting at 8-1 in the MVC on the season after a three game series sweep over Belmont this past weekend, Southern Illinois is sitting close to the top of the Missouri Valley Conference rankings.
“Having the opportunity to play against one of the better teams in the league and hopefully our guys are excited to come out and compete against somebody at the top of the standings,” Head Coach Lance Rhodes said.
The Salukis were nothing short of excited when it came to the first game of this most recent series. They ended the game with a walk off home run by Matt Schark at the bottom of the 11th inning to secure their first win of the weekend.
This win set the pace for the remainder of the weekend. The Salukis ended their second game of the series by a long shot, 6-1, followed by a 4-3 win that tallied the second walk off home run of the series, both of which were hit by junior Matt Schark, making his third walk off of the season.
Despite their success in conference play, the Salukis are 19-13 overall.
“We didn’t have the start we wanted, I don’t think anyone pictured it that way. I think the biggest thing we have gained from having the start to the season that we had is toughness from all of
the close games that didn’t go our way,” said senior Ryan Rodriguez.
He followed with, “We have been through adversity, so I see that as a positive being that we have been challenged much more before conference play. Now that conference play is starting, I think that adversity is bringing our offense together and that shows the grit we have.”
Teams like University of Kentucky and University of Illinois can be attributed to the adversity that helped prepare the Salukis for teams like Belmont.
When it comes to the team’s offense, it took them a while to figure everything out. When it comes to preparing for series like this past one, Rhodes just wants his athletes to be prepared with every tool in the toolbox. He wants his players to feel confident when stepping up to the plate.
“The only way they are going to accomplish this is during practice. When we prepare, we do it as though we are stepping onto the field, even in everyday practice,” Rhodes said.
Someone who has stepped up to the plate with the confidence that coach Rhodes is talking about is junior Schark. Having tallied two of his three walk off homeruns of the season within the span of three games, Schark had proven to his coaches and himself that he is a reliable piece of the puzzle for the Salukis.
“I’ve been putting too much pressure on myself lately, when I trust myself and I’m relaxed I know
that even if I mess up the next man up will pick me up,” Schark said.
When talking about preparation for games, offensively, the Salukis have been focused on their mentality and confidence a lot. Rodriguez said one thing he had been working on physically when he steps up to the plate is staying back and trusting his hands to react and hit the ball hard.
Having the fourth highest batting average on the team with a .306, Rodriguez said he keeps his mentality simple.
“It’s easy to over-complicate things with mechanics in baseball, so I save that for practice. In games I try to minimize it as much as possible and just compete, ‘see ball, hit ball’ is what I tell myself,” he said.
Making sure the ball is in the strike zone and reacting the best they can to the pitch is the Salukis main goal at the plate.
Looking forward to the rest of the season and future improvements that need to be made, defensively, Schark said he needs to work on staying ready every play.
“I can’t pick and choose when I want to be locked in,” he said.
Offensively, he says he needs to work on staying in his strike zone.
“Where I go wrong is when I start chasing pitches and give myself less of a chance to succeed,” he said.
In order for this team to be of championship caliber again, the players need to continue having their winners’ mentality and secure all the wins they can.
“The run to run ball games is what we need to focus on,” Rhodes said.
Having had such a successful season last year, winning the MVC championship, the Salukis have a good outlook to give themselves that opportunity again this year. With the momentum they have right now from their past few games, the Salukis are ready to take off.
When it comes to seniors like Rodriquez, who will be leaving the program after this season, being a Saluki is one of the most important things to them. They aren’t thinking too far ahead into the future when it comes to their game; they are taking each practice and each game as a blessing.
“I try not to think so far ahead and just leave it all out on the field one game at a time, it has been a blessing to be able to play at SIU,” he said. Being a little more than halfway done with their season, the Salukis still have time to show people that they are capable of being a game winning team as they take on the rest of their season ready to attack at the plate.
Sports reporter Joei Younker can be reached at jyounker@dailyedyptian.com.
Sizdah be dar, also known as “Nature’s Day” or “Picnic Day”, is one of the most important holidays in Iran, celebrated on the thirteenth day of the Persian New Year, which usually falls on or around April 2nd.
It is a time for families and friends to gather, enjoy the outdoors and celebrate the arrival of spring. Sizdah Bedar represents the end of the two-week-long Persian New Year celebrations, and it marks the beginning of spring. It is a time for renewal, rejuvenation and hope for a prosperous year ahead. It is also an important day for nature appreciation as it is an opportunity for people to enjoy the natural beauty of the spring season. Many Iranians will plant trees or flowers while they are outside on this day.
The origins of Sizdah be dar can be traced back to ancient Persia, where it was believed that, on the thirteenth day of the new year, bad luck and evil spirits could cause mischief and disrupt people’s lives. To ward off these negative influences, people would leave their homes and spend the day outside in nature and enjoy an eventful day together. The exact age of the Sizdah be dar tradition is difficult to determine, but it is believed to have originated during the Achaemenid Empire (550330 BCE), which was one of the
earliest Persian empires.
Today, Sizdah be dar is still celebrated in Iran and among the Iranian diaspora around the world. On this day, people typically pack a picnic and head to parks or other green spaces to spend time with loved ones and enjoy the beauty of nature. One of the most important traditions associated with Sizdah be dar is the act of “sabzeh ruzi,” or “sprouting seeds.” This involves growing a small amount of wheat or lentil seeds in a dish or tray in the weeks leading up to the holiday. On Sizdah be dar, the sprouts are taken outside and released into running water, symbolizing the renewal of life and the cycle of nature.
Another tradition involves tying knots in blades of grass, which are believed to represent people’s wishes and desires. The knots are then thrown into a nearby stream or river, with the hope that they will be carried away and come true.
Overall, Sizdah be dar is a joyous and festive holiday that celebrates the arrival of spring and the beauty of nature. Whether through sprouting seeds, tying knots in grass, or playing games with loved ones, Iranians around the world come together to honor their traditions and enjoy the simple pleasures of life.
Naghmeh Rasouli participates in the ancient persian tradition of “tying knots in a blade of grass or sprouts” which represents her wishes on “Sizdah be dar ‘’ also known as Persian Nature’s Day April 2nd, 2023 at Giant City in Murphysboro, Ill. Saba Saboor Rooh Mofrad | @ssaboor_
“Sabzeh” or wheat and lentil sprouts grown by each individual thrown in a body of water as an ancient Persian tradition for wishes to come true and to symbolize the renewal of life.on “Sizdah be dar ‘’ also known as Persian Nature’s Day April 2nd, 2023 at Giant City in Murphysboro, Ill. Saba Saboor Rooh Mofrad | @ssaboor_
Every spring, when I pull out my warm weather clothes from the mothballed-stench full totes, I shake a bit and get giddy as I pull out every piece. The best part about my springtime wardrobe is that it’s made up of mostly pink garments. This isn’t purposeful, it just happens. Pink is a safe space. It is a getaway from the world where you can simply just relish in the beauty. I always marvel at the color and find myself gravitating towards it, and I mean all shades, natural or unnatural.
Come on, don’t you see the incredible shades of pink on a flower and just sit there wide eyed because of its beauty? Every time I go to the zoo, I always stare a little longer at the flamingos in awe, really contemplating the facts of why they are naturally pink (because of the shrimp they eat), and contemplating if they spray paint them sometimes to keep that perfect color.
Pantone decided the color of 2023 is “Viva Magenta.” Magenta is a deep pink with undertones of red and purple. It is described as a red color, but the observing eye is grouped to pinks and purples. It is a natural pink shade, similar to the azalea bushes seen everywhere in Southern Illinois during the spring. It is strong and bold, and stands out against most other pink colors.
The name “Viva Magenta” is derived from the Latin word “Vivus” meaning alive or vibrant, while magenta is the color’s name. The color itself was once naturally harvested from the cochineal beetle to make carmine dye, one of the most durable and vibrant natural dyes.
I am always shocked by and in love with the color pink, but many find an aversion to it. People look down on, demean, and disrespect it because of its meaning and associations. They associate it with many things, but specifically femininity. Most people who stray from the color see negative connotations. Instead of seeing the strength that femininity can provide, they chose to see the things that are hard to swallow when being a femme-presenting person.
My mother once told me a story that rattled me a bit and I have been thinking of it quite a bit recently.
When I was a little bitty boy, no more than three years old, I went to visit some new family members for a Mother’s Day celebration. There, I started to play around with some tissue paper left over after unwrapping presents. I apparently bunched it up and waffed it about as if it was a butterfly.
A gentleman from the family proceeded to be upset with my playing, saying that I should be outside playing in the dirt like boys are supposed to, and that pink was a girls color. My mother, rather angered by her interaction with outdated ideals, decided to pack me up back in my car seat and leave. My mother has never hindered who I really am, and for that I am grateful. If she understands anything, it would be that you have to live truthfully to yourself and others, or your life will go terribly wrong.
The color pink represents love, kindness, and sweetness. These traits are associated with femininity, and are viewed sometimes negatively by society. People take advantage of these attributes all the time, and it is specifically due to them being perceived as weak. Misogyny has caused people to see pink negatively because of its feminine meanings, associating people who wear pink as innocent, girly, and romantic.
The color blue represents stability and wisdom, and is associated as a “boy color.” Stating that this color and what it stands for is only for boys and men alike, discredits that women can be stable and wise, as well. Many men will not wear “girl colors” such as pink and purple due to the stigma of boys having to be masculine. This idea of gendered colors did not really show in history until the 1940s, though it was subtly around long before.
The frustrating part about these colors are expectations that are put upon them and the wearers themself, and it isn’t only the color as a whole, it’s down to the shade and hue. Light pink is perceived as young and virginal. It is innocent and bashful, and most folks expect that the sweetest of souls to be gliding around in light pink. The same with the silly shade of “bubblegum pink:” they are youthful, and associated with coyness and juvenile life. We associate them with little girls, and
their baby nurseries. Softer tones of pinks are looked at as clean and bright, and most of all childlike. Dark pinks are looked at in a different manner. Since the color has a heavy influence of red or orange, hot pinks are looked at as more exotic. We see these deeper pinks as a sexual symbol of maturity. When I think of these darker shades of pink, I always imagine the pink dress that Marilyn Monroe wore in the 1953 film adaptation of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She was very obviously placed in this deep
set pink to look sexy while amongst a dance floor of men.
We associate the hot pink color with mature feminization, while we associate the lighter pinks to just little girls, and we expect those who wear either color to play the part. A guy will almost always approach the girl in light pink, but the girl in hot pink is someone much more intimidating, and very obviously in control of her womanhood. Hot pink took off during the Women’s Liberation movement during the 1970s as a symbol of female
strength and unity.
I will always lift a brow to anyone who utters “I hate the color pink.” Though I will be a bit offended at first, and might even put up a bit of resistance, I will deeply understand. I will understand the pressure that pink puts on you, I will understand the stigma that the color has, and I will definitely understand the expectation to always be pink.
Staff columnist Aaron Elliott can be reached at aelloitt@dailyegyptian.com