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Concerns arise over liquor commission
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Communities unite, honor hero
TARA KULASH Daily Egyptian The City Council may have come to a tie vote on the renewal of Fat Patties' liquor license, but owner and council member Lance Jack refuses to give up without a fight. Jack said he not only plans to appeal the case but to ask council members to review whether the local liquor commission process has even been conducted legally. The Carbondale Revised Code allows City Council members to hold a liquor license, but Mayor Joel Fritzler said two other points are key factors. “It’s clear the state law says members of a local liquor commission shall not have a liquor license, and city code says members of the City Council shall be the local liquor commission,� he said. This means that while Jack’s role as a council member does not keep him from holding the license, his role as a liquor commissioner does and Jack said this is where he sees an error. Please see COMMISSION | 3
JAMES DURBIN | DAILY EGYPTIAN
Members of the Elkville Fire Department console each other after DuQuoin firefighter Corey Shaw’s funeral, which took place Wednesday outside Sacred Heart Catholic Church in DuQuoin. Shaw, 22, was killed
while battling a fire Friday in Pickneyville. Members of more than 55 fire departments throughout Illinois attended the funeral and parked fire trucks bumper to bumper for two city blocks.
Students forced to drop political science course Cheng: Human error, not lack of funding to blame LAUREN LEONE Daily Egyptian An administrative error in the department of political science left nearly fifty students in search of another course to take this summer, said Alan Vaux, dean of the College of Liberal Arts. Vaux said the classes should have been canceled as soon as the department received its budget allocations in April, due to a lack of funding. Three political science courses were canceled, he said. One class had four students and another had 11, he said. There were 34 students enrolled in the course, Politics and the Media, the day it canceled, Vaux said. Another class, Introduction to American Government and Politics, had 35 students enrolled. Students were initially told it was cancelled, however the course will be offered during the second summer session instead because it is a core class for some graduating seniors, he said. Chancellor Rita Cheng said the error occurred due to a lack of communication between the dean’s office and the department. Vaux said he learned the first day of summer session, June 13, from the department chair, Robert Clinton, that the classes needed to be canceled, and he, along with David DiLalla, associate dean of the College of Liberal
PORTRAIT BY JAMES DURBIN | DAILY EGYPTIAN
Nick Bates is one of 34 students enrolled in the Politics and the Media, a course that was supposed to occur in summer semester. The class is required for political science majors but was
cancelled at the last minute by the university. “Normally when you think of classes being cancelled, you think it’s due to low enrollment, not when a class is completely full,� Bates said.
Arts, took immediate action and canceled the three classes. This was a departmental administrative error, he said. “It may be that if we called Chancellor Cheng right away and said we have this many classes and one of them has this enrollment (and asked) ‘Will you provide us the funds?’ it may be that she may have provided those funds,� Vaux said. “I don’t know.� Vaux said he is concerned about the possibility that the university could not fund classes even where adequate enrollment would
have paid for salary dollars. But, Cheng said she had committed to all the deans in earlier meetings to help with the budget shortfall if there were classes fully enrolled and in need of funding. “Tuition revenue is a very important component of our budget and so when students enroll in courses, they bring with them important tuition revenue,� Cheng said. “It would be counter to our growth to cancel classes that are fully enrolled.� Philip Habel, assistant professor of political science, said Clinton notified him the Fri-
day before classes began to advise students to drop the course. Habel said the chair told him that costs of the course, which include salary and operating costs, could not be covered. “At one point, like any course, I wasn’t sure we would have sufficient enrollment,� Habel said. “But once we had (10 students) I had assumed we were fine.� Nick Bates, a junior from Bronzeville studying criminal justice, said he was enrolled in the Politics and the Media course and was told a lack of funding was the cause of the cancellation. “My idea is the university wants their money, so when a class is completely filled up, that means the university is actually getting their money. So the question becomes then, why are they canceling the class?� Bates said. “Normally when you think of classes being canceled, you think it’s due to low enrollment, not when a class is completely full.� Although 34 students were enrolled in Politics and the Media, Vaux said the class had to be canceled because the funding was not available. “I know that in retrospect, this looks like, ‘Why would we not fund a class that’s fully enrolled?’ But it’s a complicated situation,� Vaux said. “Summer instructional budget and scheduling is done differently than the rest of the year in fall and spring.� In August 2010, each department solicited interest from faculty about what they would like to teach the next summer session, he said. The College of Liberal Arts has more than 18 departments and offers more than 150 summer courses, he said. Please see CLASSES | 3