Arts & Life, B4
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UT play addresses oppression
Rockets sweep Buffalo for ninth straight win
Independent Collegian IC The
Monday, April 11, 2011
Serving the University of Toledo since 1919
www.IndependentCollegian.com 91st year Issue 52
Fight against SB5 continues Union workers to gather over 200,000 signatures By Oreanna Carthorn IC Staff Writer
Nick Kneer / IC
Mark Sherry, UT American Association of University Professors delegate to the AFL-CIO, speaks Thursday at an open discussion meeting held by the UT-AAUP.
Since Senate Bill 5 was signed by Ohio Governor John Kasich (R), union members are trying to organize to get the bill up for a vote on the November ballot by referendum. The UT-AAUP held an open discussion meeting Thursday to organize petitioning for the referendum. Mark Sherry, UT American Association of University Professors delegate to the AFL-CIO, led the meeting in the absence of State Rep. Teresa Fedor. “The union is obviously against Senate Bill 5,” Sherry said. “All the unions are against Senate Bill 5. The purpose of this is to ensure that we have informed voters.” The process for a Referendum was outlined following Kurt Young’s “Quick Guide to Ohio’s Referendum Process.” After a bill is signed by the governor, 1,000 signatures from registered voters have to be gathered on a prelimi-
nary petition. The petition then has to go to the Ohio Attorney General and Ohio Secretary of State for approval. Union members have already gathered 1,000 signatures for the petition and now have to draft a legal petition and collect 231,149 signatures of registered voters. This will result in SB5 being placed on hold to be voted on in the November General Elections. “These petitions, this is the next stage that we are up to,” Sherry said. “They have to be specifically drafted. You can’t just write a petition yourself. The formal document has to be gone through a very specific process.” “We Are Ohio” will provide training for the circulation of these petitions during the week of April 25. Sherry said citizens advocating for the fight against the bill need to know what the effect on the economy is because people will say unions are bad for the
economy. “No economy ever got better by cutting jobs, and if this bill goes through lots of people will lose their jobs, because our collective bargaining rights will go out the window,” he said. The other effect on the economy is union members spending less money to go back into the local economy. “What they get they spend,” Sherry said. “Whether they are paying rent, whether they are buying food at their local store or whatever.” Sherry said the brain drain, or students leaving Ohio to take jobs elsewhere, is also an issue affecting teachers as a result of SB5. “A number of teachers who planned to stay on teaching take an early retirement and that absolutely is a loss of experience and a brain drain,” Sherry said. If there are not good working conditions and rights available at the university, — Fight, Page A4
Toledo women reclaim the night By Megan Gross IC Staff Writer
Colorful t-shirts covered the walls of the Eastern Community YMCA in Oregon Saturday night while people gathered to remember women who lost their innocence or lives to domestic violence. The shirts’ colors may have been bright, but their messages brought dark feelings such as sadness, anger and shock to those who read them. Take Back the Night, a worldwide event addressing all forms of violence toward women, made its 17th annual return to the city of Toledo. The event was sponsored by local female activist groups,
including Bethany House, Cocoon Shelter and Toledo National Organization for Women, all of which had several members present. Take Back the Night made its first debut in the United States in Philadelphia, Penn. in October 1975 and the first international TBTN took place the following year in Brussels, Belgium. Depending on the location, the event has brought in 300 to 400 people each year. Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at UT Sharon Barnes said each TBTN varies in order to meet the needs of the hosting community as well as help proclaim the message TBTN proclaims. “We move the event to a
different area of the city each year to signify that violence against women happens everywhere,” Barnes said. The night began with the Clothesline Project and the Silent Witness Project, each displaying stories of local women victimized by violence. Women and men of various ages, sizes and races entered the gym and read the true stories of rape, molestation and death that occurred in the Northwest Ohio area. Coordinator of the UT Sexual Assault Education and Prevention Program Diane Docis said “A Call to Action” was put in place for the media to cover these issues responsibly. “We’ve recommended that it should be seen as a community and
social issue,” she said, “not an individual issue.” Barnes, like many other female activists at the event, strongly disagrees with “victim-blaming.” She added that modern culture does this quite often, and their goal is to work against this. “The victim is not to blame for the perpetrator’s choices and decisions,” Barnes said. “We keep encouraging survivors to understand this as part of their healing.” As those in attendance walked through the gymnasium and read each individual experience of mothers, daughters, wives and girlfriends, each story was just as shocking as the next. — Night, Page A4
Nick Kneer / IC
A group of women march through neighborhood streets in Oregon on Saturday during the 17th annual “Take Back the Night” event.
Image screencapped from CiteLighter.com
Website aims to aid students in research By Bailey Allen IC Staff Writer
College students who struggle to find useful sources and write citations for lengthy research papers now have a website to aid them. Citelighter.com is a research website created to help students find and organize information and generate bibliography pages more easily. The website allows students to do three things: highlight information, save it on the website’s database for other students researching similar topics to use in their papers, and provide organizational framework for students to use when writing papers. According to the website, “the goal of Citelighter is to make you smarter and create a community of students and professionals whose hard work benefits everyone.” According to CEO Saad Alam, the website helps students find information they normally would not see by showing students what their fellow classmates have found on a particular topic when doing Internet research. When the same topic is searched again, Citelighter will bring up the saved information to help other students
find the information faster. Alam, a University of Rochester graduate, hopes the website will expand the way students look at information and the learning process by making research easier for students. “Citelighter takes the tedious work out so students can focus on learning,” he said. All of the information a student finds is saved online, so it may be accessed from any computer. Papers can be written in Citelighter and saved online as well. The website is not just used for helping students with research. It aids students in writing papers, searching for hot vacation spots and online Christmas shopping as well. Alam said the website was created to help students research and write papers more efficiently so they can have more time to figure out what they love to do. Alam, who quit his “highpaying corporate job” to run Citelighter, believes students do not feel like themselves anymore because too much pressure is being placed on them. He said students “feel like they are a group that the rest — Research, Page A4