the
MARCH BACK
The challenges of taking medical leave — and then returning.
LIFE OF BARBIN
Getting personal with Northwestern’s most famous photographer.
MERIT BLIND
In an age of college admissions scandals, what does it mean to get into school on your own?
UNVERIFIED
How federal program E-Verify turns undocumented immigrants away.
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table of contents
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pregame 6 Life of Barbin 7 Where do I know you from? 8 Chick, peas! 10 Dillo by the decade 12 Down to Smash? 14 The drug divide 16 Holy Catrimony
dance floor 18 Merit blind 21 The coach behind the comeback 23 Finding the right ‘fit 26 When college is an allergy test 28 Screen timeout 30 Strapped for Cat Cash 32 Quarterbacks & queens 34 RE: Taste of home 36 Photo story: 5,6,7,8
features 41 ‘Cats in the Capitol 45 Preparing for meltdown 48 The march back 54 Unverified
hangover
PHOTO BY NIKITA AMIR
59 Dropping bars 60 Which presidential candidate are you? 61 Comics: Overheard at... 62 Which campus brand ambassador are you? 63 The sexile diaries 64 Dillo Bandersnatch
Spring 2019
|3
WHAT’S YOUR OBSCURE MICROCULTURE?
SPRING 2019
NORTH BY NORTHWESTERN
NORTHBYNORTHWESTERN.COM
“ubanism memes”
managing editor Emma Kumer creative director Rachel Hawley senior features editor Molly Glick features editors Duncan Agnew, Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff senior section editors Naomi Andu, Claire Bugos, Sylvia Goodman associate editors Elizabeth Guthrie, “docuseries about food” Michael Korsh, Jessica Mordacq assistant editors Meredith Ellison, Margaret Kates, Luodan Rojas, Isaac Sultan assistant creative director Nikita Amir photo director Carly Menker designers Emily Cerf, Sarah Fernandez, Katherine Gu, Rachel Hawley, Emma Kumer, Alena Rubin, Stephanie Zhu photographers Nikita Amir, Gabrielle Bienasz, Carly Menker, Jess Mordacq illustrators Masha Dolgoff, Rachel Hawley, Lysander Wong contributors Nikita Amir, Naomi Andu, Maria Arias, Gabrielle Bienasz, Claire Bugos, Ellie Eimer, Kira Fahmy, Maggie Galloway, Molly Glick, Karli Goldenberg, Amanda Gordon, Elizabeth Guthrie, Elise Hannum, Rachel Hawley, Dylan Kennedy, Emma Kumer, Claire Kuwana, Kalen Luciano, Jessica Mordacq, Jeanne Paulino, Braden Pomerantz, Isaac Sageman, Rachel Schonberger, Saira Singh, Julia Tesmond, Danny Vesurai, Olivia Viscuso, Alex Wong, Emily Wong web integration editor Morgan McFall-Johnson fact-checkers Andie Linker, Lauren Loeffler, Adam Mahoney, Bryana Quintana, Gabrielle Rabon, Carly Rubin, Augusta Saraiva, Jennifer Zhan
obscure YouTube productivity channels
4
editor-in-chief Mia Mamone “flight simulation” executive editor Jakob Lazzaro managing editors Elly Rivera, Carlyn Kranking, Karli Goldenberg assistant managing editors Augusta Saraiva, Zoe Grossinger, Masha Dolgoff senior news editor Amy Ouyang Kansas City senior features editor Justin Curto life & style editor Lilly Pace entertainment editor David Deloso assistant entertainment editor Alexis Lanza politics editor Kalen Luciano assistant politics editor Maya Mojica sports editors Shreyas Iyer, Jacob Munoz assistant sports editor Jono Zarrilli opinion editor Ryan Wagner staff writer Julio Vazquez writing editor Brennen Bariso assistant writing editors Gia Yetikyel, Julie Swanson science & tech editor Sophia Lo assistant science & tech editor Yahan Chen photo & video editor Maria Arias audio editor Tenny Tsang graphics editor Maia Brown reality show analysis
CORPORATE publishers Shiv Pant, Maya Shabtai director of ad sales Lilli Boice social media editors Zoe Grossinger, David Deloso, Jacob Munoz, Amy Ouyang, Yahan Chen director of development Clarissa Wong fundraising chairs Molly Glick, Nav Sekhon wellness chair Gia Yetikyel event chair Carlyn Kranking identities editor Adam Mahoney webmaster Maxine Whitely
COVER DESIGN EMMA KUMER | COVER PHOTO NIKITA AMIR
pregame 6
The man who takes your candids gets candid.
7
Where do I know you from?
8
Chick, peas!
These former child actors share their journey from the silver screen to Shanley.
Pita the fool who doesn’t know where to find Evanston’s best hummus.
10
Dillo by the decade
12
Down to Smash?
14
The drug divide
16
PHOTO COURTESY OF JUSTIN BARBIN
Life of Barbin
The (contested) history of how Dillo came to be.
Breaking into Northwestern’s most obscure microcultures, from Smash Club to Knitwestern.
We asked students how they get high on north and south campus, and for some reason, they answered.
Holy Catrimony
75 years of dub dub love.
Spring 2019
|5
LIFE of
BARBIN The man who takes your candids gets candid. BY SAIRA SINGH
PHOTO COURTESY OF JUSTIN BARBIN
From Block 7 bliss to your only flattering formal picture, photographer extraordinaire Justin Barbin captures some of the most iconic moments of the Northwestern experience. He can be spotted at practically every signature event, taking exceptional photos as he dances around in his snappy suits and iconic bow ties. But Justin Barbin isn’t just a name venerated by Northwestern students — he’s known by an ever-growing number of companies around the world, from Nike to Disney to Hamilton on Broadway. NBN sat down with the legendary alumnus to talk about his many career successes, his time at Northwestern and the experiences that shaped him into the person he is today. The following interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. When did you start Justin Barbin Photography? Right after graduation. I had a rough end of my senior year — my step-mom was fighting breast cancer [for the third time]. As I was graduating, she was put into hospice care. That affected me deeply. [My family] didn’t have the funds for me to travel back and forth, so I ended up graduating without securing a job. My stepmom passed away the day before I was to fly home. That whole summer was spent just being with family and being present, trying to focus on rebuilding myself. During that time, people were already reaching out to me, asking ‘Hey are you coming back to Chicago? Can we
6|
DESIGN BY ALENA RUBIN
hire you for shoots?’ That is when I made the decision to just go for it. I told myself if this wasn’t working out in six months to a year, then I’d work at some office job. But thankfully, there was a lot of support. The School of Communication hired me as their theatre photographer. That blossomed to more connections throughout the city and throughout the country. And now, I’m still doing it. What does your family mean to you? It’s been almost 10 years [since my stepmom passed away.] There are days when it is easier to talk about it than others, and there are days when I wake up sobbing because I think about what she meant to me. Before my step-mom died, I was always so focused on school and my future that family kind of took a backseat. They knew that and supported that because they wanted to see me succeed. But [that loss] helped me re-adjust my view of what family means, because they are the ones that will always be there ... and I need them to get through hardships. Tell us one thing you’re proud of. There was a point in my life when I grew up in poverty. My mom came from a very wealthy family in the Philippines. During the 1980s, my grandfather died and there was a shift in the government. Our family lost everything. I grew up seeing both extreme wealth and extreme poverty. There was a time when we couldn’t even afford school. I think back to the toddler who lived in that situation
and think how proud he would be of where he is today. I’m proud of the fact that I can pursue this career that I love and care about so much. Also, I paid my way through college. My family wasn’t really able to support me, but I was able to pay off my student loans a few years out from college thanks to all of the photography jobs I was booking. What is your favorite memory as a Northwestern student? Junior year, I was mugged outside of my apartment. My camera was stolen. Right after that, the Northwestern community came together to raise money to get me a new camera. That was one of the first moments when I felt the impact my photography had on the community around me. The outpouring of support was really moving. Somebody made a website to raise funds, people were canning for me. There was an event to hold a fundraiser [at a bar called The Keg]. It was a devastating part of my life, but there was definitely a silver lining. What gets you up in the morning? I think my gratitude for my life and my career. I constantly pinch myself and cannot believe that I’m staying creative, staying fulfilled and able to support myself through this career of photography. It benefits others, it brings joy to others. It helps me create art and preserve other people’s art. The root of my work is for others — it’s living for other people. Knowing that helps me whenever I have to wake up for a shoot.
Where do I know you from?
These former child actors share their journey from the silver screen to Shanley.
Rachel Khutorsky
B
BY RACHEL SCHONBERGER
PHOTOS COURTESY OF RACHEL COVEY
Rachel Covey
W
hen third-year Rachel Covey was in second grade, she spent her days in a New York apartment dancing around with rats, pigeons — and Amy Adams. While she had been acting in commercials for a while, Covey landed the role of Morgan in the 2007 Disney movie-musical classic Enchanted. Performing alongside Adams, Patrick Dempsey, and her idol, Idina Menzel, inspired Covey to try her hand in various areas of the entertainment industry. “I thought they were joking when they said, ‘We’re gonna come downstairs. It’s gonna be full of birds and rats,’ and then it really was. It was a big fun game of pretend,” Covey says. While Covey has explored a variety of avenues since Enchanted, at Northwestern
she devotes most of her time to writing and is enrolled in the playwriting sequence. “A lot of my work is informed by being in the room [at a young age] and watching the projects come to life,” Covey says. Two of Covey’s works have been featured in prominent festivals: “Waiting Room,” a onewoman play, showed at Manhattan Repertory Theatre’s One Act Play Festival, and “Painting Faye Salvez,” a musical featured in the New York Musical Festival. “All the joy I get from acting is the same joy I get from writing; it’s the joy of telling a story,” Covey says. “I’ll feel the most fulfilled by knowing that I’m telling the stories I want to be telling and they’re accessible to the people they need to be accessible to.”
Eden Strong
F
irst-year Eden Strong stepped onto her first professional stage before most students step into their kindergarten classroom. An actress since age three, she has commercial credits from Walmart and KFC, and television roles on Shameless, Boss and Sirens. Growing up in Chicago, Strong had access to starring in professional theatre. However, the eight-week shows took time out of her education and everyday life. “It’s one thing to do commercials and TV, where it’s a one-off or you go shoot a commercial for a day,” Strong says. “But you
can do a [theatre] show with an eight-month run and still not really get a sustainable amount of money to live your life.” Strong’s mother and aunt both attended Northwestern, which influenced her decision to apply. Despite being a lifelong actress, Strong remains uncertain about her career path. “I applied as a theatre major because I’ve never done anything else. But because theatre is such a hard craft and there aren’t that many roles for Black people in theatre, it’s not something I can see myself devoting my entire life to,” Strong says.
y the time second-year Rachel Khutorsky finished seventh grade, she had performed nationwide as Young Fiona in the touring company of “Shrek The Musical.” “I always tell people seventh grade was my peak,” Khutorsky says. “All of my friends were adults. If they had parties at bars, they would invite us, and we would go. It was such a different lifestyle than any other seventh grader’s.” Khutorsky has been acting professionally since age ten, appearing in multiple commercials and an episode of 30 Rock. When she traveled with her eighth grade class to Washington, D.C., her classmates shouted when they realized she was in the Delta Airlines in-flight safety video. Khutorsky’s longest-lasting gigs were as a voiceover artist in commercials, movie trailers and a video game for Lalaloopsy, a line of plastic dolls. “I recorded over 800 lines for the video game, so any time you would hear, ‘Wow, you passed a level!’ or something like that, it was always me,” Khutorsky says. “I loved doing voiceover work because I’ve always had a unique voice, and I still kind of do.” As a theatre major and Business Institutions minor at Northwestern, she credits her early experiences with giving her insight on the business side of theatre. “Unlike a lot of [theatre students] who get to college and now they’re just starting to think about what their professional life will be, I’ve been there, done that,” Khutorsky says.
Chick,
Pita the fool who doesn’t know where to find Evanston’s best hummus. BY AMANDA GORDON
H
ummus is a golden, storied dip. Chickpeas, the essential mortar of hummus, have been a staple of the Mediterranean diet for millenia. In fact, the word “hummus” means “chickpeas” in Arabic. After years of devoted consumption, I’d like to think I know a thing or two about what makes good hummus. I decided to put my palate to the test by sampling a smorgasbord of Evanston hummus offerings.
My Criteria: In hummus, as in life, I seek a delicate balance. Is there enough lemon juice to cut through the creaminess of the tahini? Does the garlic overpower the rest of the dip? Is the consistency smooth, but still thick enough to hold up to the pita (or whatever vehicle you choose to transport hummus into your mouth)? I considered these factors, as well as the overall dining experience at each restaurant, when assessing Evanston’s hummus options.
The Olive Mountain: 9.5/10 The Olive Mountain on Davis Street has been dishing out plates of tabbouleh, falafel and shawarma for nearly 30 years. With its light pink walls and colorful, ornately framed paintings, the restaurant is a bit of a trip in the best way. Prepare to be greeted by a gregarious and attentive wait staff. (Seriously, Mike is the best.)
8 | PHOTOS & DESIGN BY EMILY CERF
The menu is extensive, but regardless of what you order, be sure to try their hummus. Shaped like a small basin, the hummus is filled with a puddle of olive oil and lemon juice, flecked with pieces of parsley and dusted with paprika. Several chickpeas bathe in the decadent pool of citrusy oil. With one swipe of pita into the dip, you taste the glossy, peppery olive oil and the brightness of the lemon juice, the subtle smokiness of the paprika and the garlicky goodness of the tahini-chickpea mélange itself. It’s a beautiful thing. The velvety hummus is also an ideal companion to the crunchy, slightly spicy falafel. Some bites left me wishing for a bit more salt, but maybe that’s because I was weaned on sodium-laden Sabra. This dip has enough complexity to stand alone. All in all, The Olive Mountain’s hummus is in a class of its own.
Cross-Rhodes: 8/10 Cross-Rhodes is a bit off the beaten path for Northwestern students. The Greek diner sits on Chicago Avenue in south Evanston, a brief walk from the Main Street train station. The restaurant opened in 1984 and continues to be a local mainstay. On Sunday evenings, the place is packed with families and older couples. Blue and white string lights hang on the bright white walls and over an open kitchen. Big Santorini vibes. The menu is filled with Mediterranean staples like flaky spanakopita (spinach and cheese pie) and gyros. The crispy, thick-cut “Maria fries” with crumbled feta are worth the walk alone. But I didn’t come for fries or feta. I came for pulverized chickpeas. The hummus at Cross-Rhodes is light in texture and loaded with lemon juice. Served with a side of slightly charred, pleasantly chewy pita, the dip glistens with olive oil and is quite garlicky. Those who prefer creamier hummus may be disappointed, as the Cross-Rhodes variety has less tahini than other Evanston options. That being said, the flavors are sharp and unapologetic, and I love that. Pro tip: If you’re not too full from the savory offerings, be sure to end your meal
with a slice of their moist, cinnamon-spiced carrot cake. You can walk it off on the way back to campus. Also, if you’re going to make the schlep to Cross-Rhodes (and you most definitely should), be sure to bring some green. The diner is cash-only.
Naf Naf Grill: 7.5/10 Naf Naf is the McDonald’s of Middle Eastern fare. There are eight Naf Naf locations in the northern Chicago suburbs, and when you walk into any of their orangeaccented establishments, you know exactly what you’re getting. Whether it’s one of their signature falafel bowls or a stuffed pita sandwich, Naf Naf delivers on quantity. After a meal there, I am uncomfortably full. I have to say, Naf Naf’s hummus hits the mark on several fronts. It has a thick, luscious mouthfeel — a perfect complement to the chain’s signature fluffy pita. While garlic can easily dominate the flavor of hummus, Naf Naf’s has just the right amount. However, the dip is almost too well-blended. Though tasty overall, the uniform texture leaves me wanting a bite of whole chickpea or a bit of fresh parsley. But hey, for a fast-casual chain, I’m not complaining.
Olive Mediterranean Grill: 6.5/10 Ah, Olive Mediterranean Grill. Or, as those in the know call it, “OMG.” Like Naf Naf, OMG is a chain of Mediterranean restaurants in the Chicagoland area. The Evanston outpost has prime real estate on Sherman Avenue, and on any given night, you can find a good mix of students and locals queuing up to choose a plate or pita sandwich in front of an assembly-line assortment of salads, grains, dips and proteins. With low-hanging light fixtures, rustic wood tables and a soundtrack of soothing flute music, OMG definitely ups Naf Naf on the chain charm factor. Hummus was by far the best component of my OMG plate, but that’s not saying much. The falafel was bland and a little soggy, and all I could taste in the tabbouleh was parsley. Like the hummus at The Olive Mountain, OMG’s hummus is shaped like a crater and filled with olive oil and spices. The consistency, creamy but not too dense, met my Goldilocks standards. But beyond the pleasing texture and the slight kick of garlic and paprika, it fell flat for me. OMG hummus is perfectly adequate for those living on campus looking for a quick fix of Mediterranean cuisine, but definitely nothing to write home about.
Spring 2019
|9
The election of a May Queen was a hallmark of Northwestern’s early festivals, or “May fetes,” that predate Dillo Day. An article from The Tripod, a student newspaper published throughout the 1870s, shows the May Queen tradition dates back to at least 1875. Participants paid 10 cents to vote for the May Queen, a showdown less exciting than today’s Battle of the Bands. The tradition continued throughout the 20th century, ending in the 1970s.
1875
1928 May Week
May Queen
The festivities expanded to become May Week as early as 1928. The week-long celebration included events like a “Howdy Day” party, a dance on the Tech terrace, a Street Dance in the Patten parking lot, a freshman carnival, and parades honoring outstanding junior men and women. In 1950, a steering committee formed and May Week became an official staple of Northwestern.
BY THE
DECADE
Image courtesy of Mayfest on Facebook
The (contested) history of how Dillo Day came to be. BY ELLIE EIMER
It’s nearly impossible to trace the exact origins of Dillo Day. This Northwestern tradition has taken many forms, from a pageant on Deering Meadow in the 1870s to A$AP Ferg on the Lakefill in 2019. Library archivists, and even the co-founders themselves, still debate its beginnings. But everyone agrees that, for over a century, students have been trying to find ways to celebrate surviving another year at Northwestern.
10 |
DESIGN BY ALENA RUBIN
2019 Dillo Today This year marks the first time in history that Dillo Day has a theme: retro. Mayfest Co-Chair Molly Dudas says this was more than just an outfit suggestion. “We want to continue with that week-long celebration to make it more of a prolonged event,” Dudas says. Mayfest’s theme is a nod back to its roots — whatever those roots may be.
1970s
Dillo Origins Controversy
With conflicting origin stories, two alumni each claim to have founded Dillo Day.
Images courtesy of University Archives
Richard Gochnauer (‘72) was the president of the Interfraternity Council. According to him, they used money left over in their budget to fund a campus-wide party, complete with kegs, bands and more kegs — despite Evanston being a dry town. Legend has it, the Dean of Men (yup, that existed) almost busted the party, but after seeing how much fun everyone was having, approached Gochnauer and said, “Give me a beer.” Donald Stout (‘73) says he and other self-described hippies founded Dillo Day in May 1973 as a festival that included local bands, face-painting and costumes. The festival was originally called “I Don’t Think We’re in Kansas Anymore,” but was renamed to “Armadillo Productions” after Stout’s home state Texas’ animal.
1980s
Birth of the Modern Dillo
After the first Dillo Day, the festival continued to grow. After going through a string of different names, including “The Rite of Spring,” “Festival of Life,” “Gentle Thursday,” and “Let’s Call it George,” the festival finally became Armadillo Day in 1977. According to a 1983 article from The Daily Northwestern, early Dillo Days brought some wild times, from students collectively tripping acid to Evanston high school girls pouring beer from the roof of beer trucks. Dillo Day remained part of May Week, which also included a classical concert on the Lakefill, a New Wave disco party, and an event called “The Last Lecture,” where students chose a professor to speak as if it were the last lecture of their career. In 1982, May Week also included a late-night beach party on the Norris lawn, which featured 1,000 square feet of sand, wet t-shirt and wet boxer shorts contests, splash pools and cheap beer. In 1986, The Daily described Dillo Day as the best day of the year in Evanston, and “the safety-valve from the Northwestern pressure cooker” — a sentiment that still rings true today.
Spring 2019
| 11
Down to
SMASH? Breaking into Northwestern’s most obscure microcultures, from Smash Club to Knitwestern. BY ELISE HANNUM
12 |
DESIGN AND ILLUSTRATION BY RACHEL HAWLEY
Every Monday and Thursday night, excited gamers perch on the Norris Game Room couches, clustered in groups of three or four around a TV. Over the clicking of controller buttons, they argue about the best characters and their skills, laugh at the novelty of watching two Mr. Game and Watches fight, and yell wildly when somebody gets a particularly impressive kill. These are Northwestern’s Super Smash Bros. pros. Five years ago, the Game Room held a Smash Bros. tournament with a huge turnout, which inspired a group of players to form a club. The process became unexpectedly complicated since University policy prohibited clubs from promoting specific products at the time. To get around the policy, they contacted a
group of League of Legends players and together formed an all-encompassing eSports club. According to fourth-year Jordan Bolin, the current and third president of Smash Club, it took an entire year to get the club organized. The group meets weekly and hosts occasional tournaments. Even though the Game Room provides some consoles, TVs and controllers, members still have to bring a few of their own gaming systems. “With the community supporting it, this club is definitely very viable. But it also wouldn’t be anything without the community,” Bolin says. Bolin admitted the group tends to skew toward men and north campus residents. There are always at least 10 people at every meeting, even in the winter, and up to 60 or 70 people at larger events. When attendance gets that high, the club has to work with the Game Room staff to help organize and control crowds. “Our club helps bring attention to this space,” Bolin says. “So it’s one way for them to get exposure. It’s great for them to get actual income. We’ve had a couple of pay-to-enter tournaments, and when we’re getting 30-plus entrants guaranteed, we get to a point where they’re making 60, 70 bucks off the event.” Smash Club received half of the profits from their most recent event, but the real value of the tournaments goes beyond money. “For me, especially, my major friend group is all built around this club,” Bolin says. “I wouldn’t have met these people outside of the club, or at least would not have gotten to know them as well. So it’s really been an experience of community.”
all on the table The founders of Smash Club chose to become an official student organization, but informal communities of gamers also exist throughout campus. First-years Joe Blanchard, Harry Echtman, Emma Sollenberger and Elam Blackwell gather regularly to play Dungeons & Dragons.
When all four are free, they meet up and crowd around a table in a small room in Willard. They’re an offshoot of a bigger group of players in the dorm, but they are much more serious: they lay out a map, pore over notes from former sessions and play atmospheric music in the background — something you might hear on the soundtrack for a blockbuster fantasy movie. Sessions typically last three to four hours, although games have lasted as long as six. It allows them to relax and take a step back from everything else going on in their lives. Through playing together, they’ve become closer than they would have just as students living in the same building. “We all really enjoy getting together for this purpose,” Blackwell says. “And we’re really invested in it, and therefore we’re really invested in each other — spending time with each other, even outside of the game.”
Pool TOGETHER On the other end of campus, students come together to play pool in Sargent Hall. Besides a few formal pool tournaments organized by the dorm’s RAs, there is very little central organization. They have no official group message, but through sharing a living space, they have formed a small community. McCormick first-year Cameron Mastoras used to study in the lounge, get distracted and play a round of pool. Soon, he found himself playing against the same people each night. Now, he usually plays a round of pool a day. The group is around 10 people, and none played seriously until college, according to Mastoras. Though Mastoras says his skills have improved, pool really isn’t the point. “Pool is such a not-important part of what this entire thing is,” he says. “It’s just something you do because it’s there. I ended up meeting people, so now it’s what I do to interact with these people.” Despite the friendships that have formed through pool, the game hasn’t created a cohesive group. “The community is weirdly broken up, because you rarely interact with more than one or two of the people at the same time,” Mastoras says.
“There’s a definitive network, but you just don’t see it, all of it, at the same time.”
Stitch and Bitch Knitwestern is Northwestern’s new knitting club, founded by Weinberg firstyear Sarah Eisenman. She learned to knit for her Girl Scout Gold Award project and wanted to carry her passion into college. Eisenman began “collecting” potential members as she introduced herself to other Northwestern students on Facebook and during Wildcat Welcome. Though the group chat for the club has grown large, and even includes a grad student, about five or six people attend the average meeting. They meet at the same table behind Patty Squared on Saturdays to talk about their projects and things going on in their lives, from how they like their classes to what’s going on with their families. “It’s really collaborative,” Eisenman says. “If somebody needs help with something, it’s not like, ‘Ugh, you can’t do this.’ It’s, ‘You’re doing a great job! This is difficult. This is maybe not something that comes super easy.’ It’s a really supportive environment because most people there don’t know how to knit or have been knitting for most of their lives.” Knitwestern plans to donate the finished projects to charities in the Evanston and Chicago areas. Eisenman shows off multi-colored headbands, scarves and even a hat for a baby. Currently, the club has two beneficiaries: Howard Brown Health’s Broadway Youth Center — which provides sexual and mental health services for LGBTQ youth, many of whom are homeless or housing insecure — and the Inspiration Corporation, which provides services for the homeless. “What I love about knitting in general is that there is so many different ways you can take it,” she says. “It gives people the creativity to kind of make something after what they would wear themself. It is a lot of time and effort and — especially if it’s your first couple of items — you really put your heart into that. And I think that’s really special.”
Spring 2019
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THE
We asked students how they get high — and for some reason, they answered. BY ELIZABETH GUTHRIE
NORTH REALITY
20.8%
NORTH PERCEPTION
7.4%
AC I D / L S D Acid was one of the few drugs students didn’t expect to be as popular as it was. According to the data, students are twice as likely to try it!
NORTH PERCEPTION
33.2% NORTH REALITY
14.01%
22.5%
SOUTH REALITY
20.1% SOUTH PERCEPTION
NORTH PERCEPTION
41.1%
NORTH REALITY
28.4%
COCAINE
ADDERALL In spite of all the perceptions that point to the popularity of psychedelics on South campus, every single drug was more popular on North campus — except painkillers.
7.7% 12.6% SOUTH REALITY
8.7% SOUTH REALITY
14 | DESIGN BY ALENA RUBIN AND EMMA KUMER
People believe cocaine prevails on North campus, but in reality, more South campus respondents listed coke in their top three favorite drugs.
14.01% SOUTH PERCEPTION
SOUTH PERCEPTION
Your Hypothesis We created an anonymous survey and 443 students responded, 47 percent from South campus and 53 percent from North campus. We asked about the drugs they’d done, their favorite drugs and which drugs they believed are most popular on north versus south campus. Our respondents estimated a pattern: North NORTH campus would be dominated by frat bros and engineering nerds fueled REALITY by cocaine, Adderall and their precious Juuls, while South campus 68.2% would be filled with artsy hippies sticking LSD under their tongues and smoking weed every night. But reality proved to be different from their perceptions. NORTH REALITY
NORTH PERCEPTION
83.7%
One prediction proved to be true: Juuls and vapes are far more common on North campus.
NORTH PERCEPTION
83.1%
79.7%
J U U L / VA P E S MARIJUANA NORTH REALITY
44.4%
21.2%
SOUTH REALITY
SOUTH PERCEPTION
71.5% 82.8%
SOUTH REALITY
NORTH PERCEPTION
SOUTH PERCEPTION
75.6%
3.4%
SHROOMS 50.15%
56.3%
12.1% SOUTH REALITY
37.25%
17.6% SOUTH PERCEPTION
5.75%
8.85%
KRATOM
PAINKILLERS
ECSTASY
SHROOMS
11.34%
16.65%
ACID/LSD
XANAX
17.41%
COCAINE
ADDERALL
CIGARETTES
ALCOHOL
JUUL/VAPE
MARIJUANA
17.55%
22.4%
DEPRESSANTS HALLUCINOGENS STIMULANTS OTHER
11.55%
While threefourths of survey respondents said they regularly smoked, only half said they regularly drank. After nicotine, the popularity of drugs dropped drastically, with Adderall coming in as the fifth-most popular on campus.
54.2%
Spring 2019
| 15
Holy Catrimony I
t was early February 1944 at Northwestern, and there was a rumor on campus: the third-year students in the V-12 program, which funded college degrees for Navy recruits, would be drafted into the war. Alfred Wolter, a third-year engineering student at the time, first learned of his upcoming commission at the evening muster when he and other NROTC recruits assembled on the sidewalk between Tech and Patten Gym for announcements. Alfred was about 800th in line, but he still heard the announcement. “That was a rather startling bit of news,” Alfred says. Three months later, Alfred would board a train to Miami to become a minekeeper in the Caribbean. But before any of that could happen, he had to make a call. After muster was dismissed, he walked to the nearest payphone at Hinman House on Lincoln Street. “There were five telephone banks, and they were pretty well occupied for a number of hours.” After slipping a nickel into the booth, he dialed Joyce Neslow’s number to tell her he would soon be drafted. “Will you marry me?” he asked. Joyce and Alfred met while attending Carl Schurz High School in Irving Park on the Northwest Side of Chicago and dated throughout their time at Northwestern. Between classes, the pair would squeeze in 45-minute lunches in the basement of Scott Hall — the only place, according to
Alfred, where men and women on campus typically mixed. There, they listened to lunchtime jukebox, played ping-pong and swing danced to Glenn Miller. “We didn’t [go on dates] a lot because there wasn’t time,” Joyce says. “We had so much to do.” Even in the 1940s, it was hard to find time to date as a Wildcat. Joyce originally enrolled in Ripon College in Wisconsin but, attracted by the academic opportunities at Northwestern, transferred after her first year. “And maybe Alfred was a little part of it too,” she laughs. It was $200 more a year for her to attend Northwestern, about $5,000 today. When asked if NU or Alfred were worth the extra money, Joyce answered, “Both.” Joyce and Alfred married at the First Lutheran Church in Chicago, four weeks after learning of Alfred’s commission. They both say the war sped things up. “You don’t have time to be sad or grieve or anything, to think, ‘Gee, he’s going to be gone,’” Joyce says. “You just do it.” “Nobody was making anything like wedding gowns during the war, so there was very little material to find,” Joyce says. She went to a Chicago fabric store to find suitable material. The man working there said, “There’s a little left on this roll.” There was just enough for a dress: three yards of satin and a few yards of lace. For eggs and flour for the cake, Joyce and Alfred’s neighbors donated
“We didn’t [go on dates] a lot because there wasn’t time,” Joyce says. “We had so much to do.”
16 | DESIGN BY EMILY CERF | PHOTOS COURTESY OF ALFRED AND JOYCE WOLTER
75 years of dub dub love. BY GABRIELLE BIENASZ
their ration cards and helped cook enough food to feed the attendees. Alfred and Joyce were married on March 4, 1944 and honeymooned at the Drake Hotel. Alfred served in the Navy for 18 months. During his time overseas, Joyce and Alfred wrote letters to each other, which Joyce says she would read to her colleagues at her office job back in Chicago. “All [she] could say was ‘I love you’, and ‘how ya’ doin?’... ‘It was nice weather down here today,’” Alfred says. After V-J Day, Alfred and Joyce returned to Northwestern and finished their courses. Alfred graduated in winter quarter of 1947 and Joyce in the spring of 1948. Today, Joyce and Alfred live in Arlington Heights. They say they spend much of their leisure time reading to one another. Right now, it’s “Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George H.W. Bush.” But their marriage, like anyone’s, is not without challenges. According to Joyce’s grandchild Kaitlin Sublet, her “Nonnie” likes say, “You marry someone for a lifetime, not for lunch every day.” Alfred and Joyce celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary in March at the Everest Hotel downtown. Alfred says, though it’s been three-quarters of a century, “75 years is too short a period.”
dance floor 18
Merit blind
In a world of private SAT tutors and admissions bribery, what does it mean to get into college on your own?
21
The coach behind the comeback
23
Finding the right ‘fit
Meet the woman leading the lacrosse resurgence.
For students who dress modestly, self-expression goes beyond a fashion trend.
26
When college is the allergy test
28
Screen timeout
30
Strapped for Cat Cash
How a rare allergy can complicate the Northwestern experience.
Here’s what students gained when they dropped social media.
Northwestern’s switch from Sodexo and Aramark to Compass has priced students out of eating on campus.
32 34
Quarterbacks & queens Forging an identity at the intersection of football and drag.
RE: Taste of home We asked students to tell us about the food that takes them home — in 250 words or less.
36 Spring 2019
| 17
MERIT In a world of private SAT tutors and admissions bribery, what does it mean to get into college on your own? BY KALEN LUCIANO
18 |
DESIGN BY SARAH FERNANDEZ
W
hen Brett Mayfield took out the trash one day his junior year of high school, he threw the bag to the curb, and a glossy pamphlet fell out detailing a program he had never heard of before: QuestBridge. The program gives low-income students like Mayfield a full ride to a list of top colleges and universities. Although he first thought it was a scam, Mayfield says he came to realize that this program was his “ticket out.” Mayfield, a first-year communication major, grew up in Welch, Oklahoma. His town was so small that his regional high school was a 30-minute
of people stopped talking to me because they thought I was being egotistical.” While Mayfield navigated an application process his parents knew nothing about and fought against a culture that stigmatized his pursuits, wealthy parents around the country allegedly paid proctors,athletic recruiters and admissions officials to secure their children’s acceptances to top universities. The scandal made national news in March, and colleges have since been scrambling to address the concerns of an application process susceptible to cheating.
Margevich says. “Their only way to combat statistics and probability of not going to college.” She described a culture of “extremely strict and over-thetop and overwhelming” work that she had never experienced. But students did what they had to do because they were under the impression that “this was the only way to get into colleges.” The school’s authority over her freedom went beyond a rigorous course load. Beginning the moment she transferred in as a freshman, she took classes preparing students for the college application process. During her junior and senior years, she says the
the consent of an adult who was dealing with you, you would get four demerits, which means you get a four-hour detention on Friday in the basement. You can’t disobey what they’re saying.” Mayfield and Margevich shared the concerns of typical college-seeking seniors, but their low-income status came with other disadvantages. “When you’re wealthy … it is assumed you are going to have access to college, and for me, that’s not assumed,” Margevich says. RTVF first-year Owen Pickette went to an elite, all-boys private high school just outside of Boston. His reaction to the college admissions scandal was different
“I FEEL LIKE SOME PEOPLE CAN JUST
PULL OUT THEIR WALLET AND THEY’RE HERE.” drive away and had a class size of 80 students. “Where I live, we’re never told about college outside of University of Oklahoma or Kansas State, so I had no idea what any of the schools on [QuestBridge’s] list were, except for Yale,” he says. When he broke the mold by committing to Northwestern, everyone Mayfield knew discouraged him. “All of my teachers told me, ‘Oh, you’re shooting too far,’” Mayfield says. “It basically felt like everyone in my class resented me because they thought I was showing off because I got into this really good school. A lot
The college admissions scandal brought that inequality to a whole new level. “I exhausted all my resources to get here,” Mayfield says. “I feel like some people can just pull out their wallet and they’re here.” Medill first-year Anna Margevich felt like she needed to switch out of her Chicago public high school to even have a chance of making it in to college. She enrolled in a CPS college prep school that was dedicated to helping send lowincome students and people of color to college. “The level of discipline in academics was so not normal,”
school controlled the selection process. She could only apply to the colleges her school recommended based on her academic standing — except they weren’t recommendations, they were mandates. “It was like, ‘you have to meet these standards. You’re gonna apply to state schools because of money. You’re gonna do this because of statistics and what we say,’” Margevich says. Monitoring their Common Application accounts, the school enforced this system by grading students on how they applied to colleges and punishing them when they went out of line. “If you applied to a school without
- BRETT MAYFIELD
than those of a disadvantaged socioeconomic status. “There were a few seconds where I just genuinely thought someone I knew would get accused,” Pickette says. Although he initially wanted to stay with his friends in the public school system, Pickette says his private school gave him attention he wouldn’t have received otherwise. Pickette had an SAT tutor, the means to tour any college he wanted, workshops for the college application process and individualized advising from his school’s college counselors, who focused on the college process
Spring 2019
| 19
“WHAT WAS IT THAT I DID THAT WAS TRULY DIFFERENT,
ASIDE FROM THE FACT THAT I DIDN’T CHEAT ON ANYTHING?”
- OWEN PICKETTE
starting his freshman year. While his friends at public schools had to be at the top of their class to get into a school like Northwestern, the people at his private school focused on getting into the Ivy Leagues and saw Northwestern and similar schools as their secondary choices. If the brand name of his private school wasn’t enough, his school’s counselors had relationships with college admissions officers at elite schools that gave him and his fellow classmates the kind of access others didn’t have. “They would call them and advocate for us individually,” Pickette says. “Before the acceptance letters came out, my school knew who was going to get into what schools.” When students got waitlisted at their top schools, the counselors would call the admissions officers to negotiate on their behalf and get them off the waitlist. Pickette knew of one behind-the-scenes
20
case where a counselor struck a deal with one of his classmates’ top schools, agreeing that he would take a gap year and enroll the following year. In the wake of the college admissions scandal, he was left wondering, “What was it that I did that was truly different, aside from the fact that I didn’t cheat on anything?” When first-year theatre major Billy O’Handley heard about the scandal, he wasn’t surprised. He went to Phillips Exeter Academy, a top-ranked college prep boarding school that historically accepts children from wealthy families. “At a school like Exeter, the idea is that any advantage you can get to get into college, you take,” O’Handley says. He says students at his school commonly used “technically legal methods,” including using their connection to a provost at a school to recommend them or talking to people on the board of trustees.
He says he knew someone who got into a school where their aunt and uncle donated millions of dollars. “It’s fucked up that the culture prides college acceptance over morality,” O’Handley says. In an interview with The Daily Northwestern, University President Morton Schapiro admitted to personally reading the application files of wealthy or well-connected students. “I think it’s important for schools to be a lot more transparent,” O’Handley says. “We’re all shitting on Morty for telling us that he reviews applications, but that’s amazing transparency.” Margevich agrees that the process lacks clarity, but she says it’s telling that the Northwestern student body is predominantly wealthy; twothirds of students come from the top 20 percent, according to The New York Times. Pickette remembers his mom telling
him the need-blind application process was for show. “They need to have so many kids here who have money because they need that revenue for the school,” Pickette says. “And I think … when a kid of a famous person applies, there has to be some inclination that that helps Northwestern’s brand.” The Northwestern Office of Undergraduate Admissions declined to comment on its application process. Beyond his calls for more transparency, O’Handley says, “Schools have to be needblind and have to stop being circumstance-blind. Colleges have to be better about situational context.” While the children of wealthy parents may expect to get into top universities, Mayfield threw up when he received his acceptance letter. “It was my only shot to get out.”
Finding the right‘fit For students who dress modestly, self-expression goes beyond a fashion trend. BY MAGGIE GALLOWAY
Spring 2019
| 21
“Part of uplifting women
22 | DESIGN BY EMILY CERF
O
ne of first-year Rwan Ibrahim’s favorite outfits is a white T-shirt layered with a denim button-up, paired with striped yellow-and-white pants and white Birkenstock-style sandals. To bring the whole look together, she wears a breezy, mustard-colored hijab. “[The Hijab] is not just a scarf on your hair,” Ibrahim, who is Muslim, says. “It’s not just the way you dress. It’s your connection to God, and it’s also your way of devoting yourself to your religion. But with that does come physical modesty. You also get to play around with it. You get to have your own sense of style, and I think that’s a beautiful part of it.” Ibrahim considers herself a consumer of the growing modest fashion industry that’s spreading across college campuses, catwalks and the world. The Washington Post projected the modest fashion industry will be worth $373 billion by 2022. In 2017, Nike started selling performance hijabs and Project Runway featured its first modest fashion designer, Ayana Ife, as a competitor. While the industry gains popular attention, young people like Ibrahim have honed their own modest styles of dress for years. Ibrahim has 20 scarves at Northwestern, and her family has collected over 60. When shopping, she chooses clothes that cover her chest, arms and legs. She loves to wear boots and pair a turtleneck with a turban, one of the many ways to wrap a headscarf. It was Ibrahim’s personal decision to start wearing the hijab in her second year of high school. “It was always something that I was really empowered by, and I knew that it was another step in my religion that I could use to become more modest ... and have that connection with God,” she says. Mónica Juarez is a Catholic third-year from the suburbs of Chicago. “When people just in general hear ‘modesty’ ... I think the reaction can sometimes be that we think our ankles or elbows are going to send us to hell, or something like that,” Juarez says. “And that’s obviously just so far from the truth.” She usually wears skirts no shorter than her knees and shorts that go to at least fingertip length, and she avoids low-cut necklines. Juarez wore a Catholic school uniform from kindergarten through high school. While her modest dress today is inspired by the Church’s teachings, she is defining her own style and idea of modesty in college. “[When I was] younger, modesty to me meant those rules and guidelines,” she says.
“As I’ve gotten older, it’s changed to have a much deeper meaning.” For Juarez, modesty is reflected in one’s thoughts, actions, words and dress. “I want my clothing to be able to show me as a whole person,” she says. Hannah Cohen, a second-year who is a Modern Orthodox Jew, says that because her family didn’t instruct her on how to dress, she had the freedom to come to modesty on her own and feel more secure in it. “[Modesty] is saying you should value what’s on the inside more than the outside,” Cohen says. “I think that message is really valuable, and it’s just the way it’s presented which can get skewed very easily.” Cohen says that recent trends, like the popularity of loose-fitting pants rather than skinny jeans, have lent themselves well to dressing modestly. In general, most students interviewed say it is relatively easy to find clothing that meets their definitions of modesty, citing JCPenney, Kohl’s and H&M as stores they frequent. However, some modest dressers are dissatisfied with the quality of fast-fashion brands, so much so that they have created their own. Adilah Muhammad, a Chicagobased modest fashion designer and owner of the ADILAH M apparel brand, almost exclusively wears clothes of her own design. “[It was] to the point where I was like, I’m not buying anybody else’s clothes,” she says. Growing up in a Muslim household with a mostly Christian extended family and attending college in the South, Muhammad has seen what modesty means to people of different faiths and backgrounds. As a child, she only consciously dressed modestly when going to church or mosque, but she didn’t often wear short skirts or shorts day-today, either. She remembers thinking, “All the princesses in movies are wearing longer skirts. Those are cute, I want to look like that.” It wasn’t until she studied fashion merchandising and design at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University that she became interested in modest fashion. Muhammad says that, by attending a historically Black university, she found a hub for conscious, purposeful fashion. Before starting her own brand, she would receive pictures from women, both religious and not, of clothing they liked but wanted altered so that the neckline was higher, the skirt longer or the cut looser. Muhammad says celebrity styles that tend to be bodyconforming may leave many women feeling vulnerable. “That’s cute and all, and it looks
good on Beyoncé, but I’m not Beyoncé,” she says. For Galit Rosenblatt, a Modern Orthodox Jewish second-year, dressing modestly can be tiring and feel like a lot of pressure. “Sometimes I’m the only religious Jew a lot of people know. And so sometimes I feel like I’m the face of those people ... like I have a standard to uphold,” she says. Ibrahim also feels like she has a duty to represent hijabis and Muslims, but she says it challenges her to be the best version of herself. “I think it can be really easy to be really pessimistic about the fact that I am a minority, but personally, I like to look past that,” Ibrahim says. “And I feel like the hijab helps me in that sense, because I’m not doing it for other people; I’m doing it for myself and for my religion ... That allows me to be more confident walking around a space like Northwestern that might not be as diverse.” Muhammad says the myth that the modest fashion industry caters only to Muslim women couldn’t be further from the truth. She engages in conversations about modesty with clientele of different faiths because “at the end of the day, it’s really not a religious thing.” Juarez, on the other hand, says she hasn’t had the chance to discuss modesty in much depth either inside or outside of her religious community, though not for a lack of interest. Misconceptions about modest fashion are plentiful. Some believe modesty and feminism are mutually exclusive or contradictory, but Ibrahim believes these can go hand-in-hand. “Feminism is just uplifting women, and I feel like part of uplifting women is allowing them to dress how they want to dress,” she says. “And if that means dressing modestly, if that means revealing yourself, I feel like that’s something that people should focus on more.” Rosenblatt frequently reflects on the intersection between feminism and modesty in her own life as a dance and fitness instructor. “I choose to stay modest because I want to, and I choose to dress a different way when I dance because I want to,” she says. “I feel like that’s empowering for me. That’s okay for me. And if somebody else has different opinions [that are] empowering for them, then I think that’s amazing too.” While some people might perceive this increased marketing of modest dress to be part of a “trend,” Muhammad says the demand was already there; many women just haven’t been able to find fashionable modest clothes until recently. “People should not be left out or not considered in the realm of fashion,” she says.
is allowing them to dress how they want to dress.”
Spring 2019
| 23
The coach behind the
comeback
Meet the woman leading the lacrosse resurgence
H
BY CLAIRE KUWANA
ead Coach Kelly Amonte Hiller surveys the field as first-year Izzy Scane spins through multiple Notre Dame defenders, pumping her fist when the ball hits the back of the net. With an enthusiasm matching her players, Amonte Hiller paces the sideline and cheers. Hanging above the triumphant homefield scene, banners showcase the coach’s legacy: Northwestern Women’s Lacrosse: Seven-Time National Champions in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2012. Amonte Hiller began her career at Northwestern in 2001, coaching the women’s lacrosse club program for one year before it gained Varsity status in time for the 2002 season. The team won the 2005 NCAA championship title, making history as the first male or female team outside of the Eastern Time Zone to win any NCAA lacrosse title. This was a remarkably fast rise to the top for a college lacrosse program, most of which take at least a decade to build. Sarah Walsh Kotkowski, who was a fourth-year on the championship team in 2005, says that, Amonte Hiller always assured her players that, regardless of the outcome, each game was an opportunity to move closer toward the end goal.
24
DESIGN BY STEPHANIE ZHU
“It started with the building blocks of her establishing a vision, making everyone buy into it, and then supporting us as individuals and as a team,” Walsh says. “From the moment we were recruited, she told us what her goal was: winning a national championship in four years.” The Wildcats continued to dominate, winning the championship every year through 2009, then again in 2011 and 2012. This season will mark seven years since the team’s last NCAA National Championship win. In light of recent success, however, the Wildcats could be turning things around. This postseason, they made history in beating previously undefeated University of Maryland to secure their first ever Big Ten Championship Title. Weeks later, they played in the national semi-final for the first time since 2014, but were ultimately eliminated by Maryland. “I’ve had to change my tactics a little bit just based on where my team is at,” Amonte Hiller says. “It is very different to build a team than [it is] to sustain success, so right now we are in the building phase again. . . when we were in our run of championships, we were in the sustain phase.” Amonte Hiller realizes the value of coaching at a university with a strong reputation, especially when rebuilding a team. She recognizes this has helped attract strong players to the program. “[Northwestern] is such a special place. The location, the ability to be a top-tier academic school. . . it’s easy to draw kids into that,” Amonte Hiller says. “For us, we just try to draw the
right people that are going to want to work hard and buy into our positive philosophy.” Yet the success that Amonte Hiller has brought to the Northwestern program is arguably why she continues to draw such talented players. Scane credits Northwestern’s history of success with bringing her here. “I started playing lacrosse in sixth grade, and that was right when they were off their seventh national championship. So it was kind of like my ‘wow’ school,” Scane says. “It really stuck with me, and that is kind of why I chose to go here.” In addition to coaching the U.S. Women’s U19 team, Amonte Hiller has been inducted into the U.S. Lacrosse Hall of Fame. Thirteen of her former players and assistant coaches went on to become Division I coaches, and she has coached three recipients of the Tewaaraton Award, an honor given to the top player of the year. “She’s a great developer of leaders. You look at who her legacy is, in terms of where they’ve gone on as coaches,” Walsh Kotkowski says. “All of us as players are strong leaders. . . whether it’s in lacrosse, or it’s in the business world, or having a good sense of self.” Years later, this core philosophy of shaping strong athletes like Walsh remains central. Whether a team is winning national championships every year, or merely winning half of the games in a season, Amonte Hiller says the key to coaching is focusing on the players. “My coaching philosophy is just to really try to embrace individual players for who
they are and then help them mesh together and become a really confident individual and confident group,” Amonte Hiller says. “It’s all about building up student-athletes, embracing them and getting them to believe they can achieve anything.” During its run of championships, Amonte Hiller led her team in mental exercises, with visualizations and meditations before games and practices to help players focus. The team focused on giving each other affirmation, whether that be related to lacrosse or not. “[It] reinforced that selfconfidence, that you do have a role on this team. You are important. You are an individual, all of those things that I think Kelly was really good at making us believe,” Walsh says. “She’s really focused on what you’re good at, and pulls that out and really develops your strengths as opposed to focusing on your weaknesses.” Second-year Brennan Dwyer describes how Amonte Hiller has helped reassure her as a young draw specialist. “I’ve definitely become more confident,” Dwyer says. “We’re here for a reason and [she tells us] not to be scared… coming into such a huge, well-known program. . . She cares about everyone so much. And not only on the field does she want you to be your best, but she also wants to make sure that you’re doing your best off the field.” Fourth-year Claire Quinn played defender and midfielder before transitioning to play attack in her third year. Playing under Amonte Hiller taught her to trust herself and the role she plays on
the team, even throughout such a drastic switch. Part of this trust, she says, starts with developing trust and relationships with younger players. “When our freshmen come in, she always gives [them] a chance to step in and have a role in a game really early. She works on developing them, whether that’s just inviting them to come to her office and talk or extra practice, like outside of our normal team practice time,” Quinn says. During practices and games, Amonte Hiller cheers loudly when younger players snag a ground ball or hustle to make a check. Her competitiveness and hunger to win, embodied by her sweatshirt that reads “Victory,” gives players a reason to go as hard as they can right off the bat. “I think she has given me a reason to be confident in myself, play for my teammates and just go as hard as I can every single day,” Scane says. Amonte Hiller smiles and walks to meet her team as the horn sounds, signifying the end of the game against Notre Dame and another ‘W’ in the record books. As her players file off the field, Amonte Hiller heads to talk to the reporters waiting to question her. Her responses are eloquent and candid, and she effortlessly demands respect. She exudes confidence in what she has to say, and her players glance over as she talks about her coaching goals. “I want them walking off campus when they graduate here feeling like they can achieve anything.”
AMONTE HILLER’S ACCOLADES
9
Times as IWLCA Coach of the Year
7
time NCAA Champion seven as coach, two as player
5
time American Lacrosse Conference Coach of the Year
U.S. Lacrosse Hall of Fame Inductee
Spring 2019 |
25
When college is an
allergy test
How a rare allergy can complicate the Northwestern experience. BY GIA YETIKYEL
G
26 |
DESIGN BY KATHERINE GU PHOTO BY CARLY MENKER
rowing up in St. Louis, Alexis White knew she was allergic to down feathers and shellfish — she just never had to worry about it. For the entirety of her childhood, her affliction was manageable, with reactions few and far between. But when her first winter quarter on campus rolled around, the onslaught of new stimuli sent her immune system into overdrive. “For the first two weeks of winter quarter, I just had no idea what was happening to me ... Every day after every class, I’d come back to the dorm and just pass out,” White says. Covered in itchy hives and plagued with troubled breathing, White realized her allergy was far worse than she originally thought. During the spring break of her first year, she had an allergic reaction to shellfish that sent her to an urgent care facility and then to the ER. There, she learned she has Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, a disease that causes hyperresponsive mast cells to believe they’re allergic to almost everything. The long list of side effects includes anaphylaxis, which means White’s condition isn’t just scary — it could kill her. “For about a month, I couldn’t eat any food without having a reaction,” White says. “I lost fifteen pounds and slept pretty much all day.” According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, more than 50 million Americans experience allergies every year and more than 9 million adults have food allergies. But for White, and others with severe symptoms, allergies are more than a nuisance. Now a Medill second-year, White has the support of professors, who ask students to keep their down jackets outside of the classrooms. Sometimes, though, students refuse to oblige, even after being asked by both White and the professor on multiple occasions.
“I don’t think people really believe it,” White says. “I feel like there are many people that don’t like me because they might think I’m pushy or being overdramatic or mean or asking too much … But it’s not overdramatic because I could die.” After a trip to Searle her second quarter at NU, campus doctors told White that she needed to take her allergy “more seriously.” Without much help on campus, she had to go to the emergency room once this fall. Unfortunately, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome is very rare — even the ER doctors didn’t know how to treat her condition. While White’s condition is uncommon, other students suffer from more recognizable but deadly allergies. Catherine Buchaniec, a first-year journalism and political science major, had been in constant contact with professionals in NU Dining Services since last summer due to her severe allergies to sesame seeds, sesame oil, tree nuts, chickpeas and flax seed. If she were to consume any of these food items, Buchaniec says, she would go into anaphylactic shock in a matter of minutes. Initially uncertain that Northwestern would be able to accommodate her dietary needs, Buchaniec stayed vigilant about which ingredients were used in her meals. She and her dietitian stayed in contact with Northwestern’s food services throughout the summer and into the school year. But as the year began, it became much harder for Buchaniec to enjoy eating. The dining halls on campus do not accommodate for ingredients like sesame oil or chickpeas. Instead, NU Dining Services is only nut-free. Food services offered to have prepared meals for Buchaniec to pick up, but she says that it would have been incredibly time-consuming, and she simply
ALLERGY
FACTS based on data from foodallergy.org
didn’t have the time. Buchaniec is taking four pots, pans and ingredients are often stolen classes, has an internship, a work-study job and and the communal kitchens left a mess, a writing position at The Daily Northwestern. meaning she must thoroughly clean the Buchaniec used to rely on the labeling kitchen whenever she wants to cook. system at dining halls, which shows all of the “I’ve been wiping down the counters and ingredients from which meals are prepared. wiping down the stove and being very cautious, After the dining halls went peanut and tree but I can’t wipe down a counter twice a day. It’s nut-free after switching their food services not ideal,” said Buchaniec. over to Compass Group last fall, Buchaniec She has attempted to get off of the housing was surprised to find a label for “Cashew plan as well so as not to deal with the Lincoln Beef” at Sargent Dining Hall. Although this kitchen nightmare. Unfortunately for Buchaniec, was a mistake in the labelling system and not NU Housing Services has emphasized the the ingredients themselves and was later fixed, importance of living in a dorm as a way of Buchaniec’s trust in the dining getting more integrated in the halls was completely destroyed. community, hence If she were to Northwestern “They originally wanted to the two-year live-in requirement. consume any But according to her, socializing is just to decrease [the meal plan], to do like a 50/50 thing…But I was of these food not a problem. Rather, her focus like, that’s still 50% of meals that is on her safety. items, has the potential to kill me,” said “I think the reasoning Buchaniec. is flawed there because it Buchaniec Buchaniec’s negative doesn’t apply to everyone...The says she experience contrasts greatly with dining halls were never really a what Josh Krivan encountered at would go into community building forum for Northwestern. Krivan, a senior, anaphylactic me,” Buchaniec said. “I’d rather is severely allergic to dairy, eggs, take the time out of my day to shock in a wheat, soy, fish, shellfish, peanuts, go prepare food for myself than tree nuts, barley, sesame, legumes, rely on a system that I don’t matter of beans and peas. completely trust and whose food minutes. “It’s such an ingrained part I didn’t really particularly enjoy.” of my identity at this point that I College is hard enough don’t really think about it a lot…Externally, people as it is, especially with high-strung academics see me as the food allergy kid, because it is a very and pressure to participate in numerous extraordinary thing about me, statistically, but extracurricular activities. The atmosphere at again, it’s so second nature,” Krivan said. Northwestern is constantly encouraging students While he was on the university meal plan, to push their limits, especially when ‘and’ can never Krivan had to adjust to not being able to seem to get out of our DNA. According to White, supervise the meal preparation process. But uncommon allergies are something people don’t he combatted this fear by staying in contact tend to think, but it can happen to anyone without with NU Dining Services and figuring out which warning. The anxiety and attention invested in dining halls would be best for him. Looking not only surviving, but comfortably living, with back, he says he mostly went to Allison when allergies is exhausting White says. Meanwhile, he lived on campus. extreme allergies are the norm for Alexis, Caty, “I found them to be very satisfactory. Josh and many more students. There aren’t a crazy amount of options for White knows that, because of her allergies, someone like me, but I don’t think that reflects she has to miss out on parts of the college poorly on Northwestern dining.” experience, but that certainly doesn’t make Now living off campus, Krivan prepares it any easier. “When it’s cold, I can’t do that meals similar to the ones he ate on campus. much. I can’t go out to go see things. I can’t But while Krivan has his cooking routine go to Norris to study. I can’t even take public settled, Buchaniec still faces tribulations while transportation to go into Chicago for the cooking entirely for herself. weekend,” White says. “It would be such a Buchaniec lives in Lincoln Hall, where her danger that it just wouldn’t be practical.”
Every
3 minutes, a food allergy reaction sends someone to the emergency room
170 More than
foods have been reported to cause allergic reactions
About
1 in 3
children with food allergies report being bullied as a result
8%
of teens are affected by food allergies
40%
of children with food allergies are allergic to more than one food
Spring 2019
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Screen Timeout
Here’s what students gained when they dropped social media. BY NAOMI ANDU
T
hree hours and thirty-four minutes. That’s how long second-year Ellie Buckner has spent on her phone today, and it’s only 6 p.m. Before she stepped back from social media last month, that number was even higher. Part of what prompted Buckner to reevaluate her social media use was the time it wasted — she’d often emerge from an Instagram “rabbit hole” and realize an hour had passed while she was watching videos of strangers cutting foam. Equally important in her decision, though, was the effect social media had on her mental health. “I wasn’t actually going out and living my own life,” Buckner says. “It felt like I was watching other people live theirs, and I didn’t like how that made me feel.” Buckner, transferred this year from Case Western Reserve University and is still acclimating to Northwestern, which compounded this feeling. “A lot of the times when I go on social media, I’ll see events or fun things people are doing at my old school, and that really makes it hard to feel settled and invested here,” she says. After trying and failing to quit
28 | DESIGN BY STEPHANIE ZHU
social media cold turkey, her goal now is to be more conscientious of her screen time. She still has Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram, but her phone alerts her when she’s spent a total of 40 minutes on each platform. Though Buckner can snooze or
“
I wasn’t actually going out and living my ow n life. -Ellie Buckner
”
ignore the alert altogether, the gentle reminders have made the “rabbit hole” experiences less frequent. Experts, executives and celebrities alike have made the case for digital detoxing and minimalism. According to recent studies, the average American spends upwards of four hours on their phone every day. A 2017 study published in Harvard Business Review concluded that “the more you use Facebook, the worse you feel.” Screen Time, a feature rolled out with the iOS 12 update in late 2018, allows iPhone users to see how much time they spend on their phone
and where exactly they spend it. For first-year Angelina Campanile, seeing the quantified time she spent on her phone propelled her to make a change. “That’s four hours of my day that I could be studying, or sitting with my friends on the Lakefill, talking to people, or reading a book, or doing something smart that’s actually going to help me in life,” Campanile says. “Checking Snapchat and Instagram and Facebook is not going to help me get a job.” Though she was more concerned with productivity when she deleted the apps, she noticed an unexpected side effect: her anxiety decreased, too. Unlike Buckner, Campanile is quitting social media cold turkey — or as cold turkey as she can while still fulfilling her duties as Northwestern Crew’s communications chair and tweeting at least three times a week for Journalism 202. She’s only a week in, and her muscle memory is working against her. “I’ll still pick up my phone and go on my home page and not see the apps there and just kind of swipe back and forth,” she says. “I try to put it face down anytime that I’m studying or talking to someone. I don’t want to see the screen because, once it lights up, then my eyes go there.”
Average time spent on phone per day:
Average U.S. Adult: 215 minutes Ellie Buckner: 191 minutes Hayley Miller: 463 minutes Angelina Campanile: 221 minutes
Fourth-year Hayley Miller reached her breaking point last November. She didn’t just deactivate or bury Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat in a folder on the fourth page of her home screen — she permanently deleted them. This drastic measure followed weeks of ramping up her usage and her follower count. Miller was an intern at a marketing agency when she began to apply the same personal branding best practices to her own social media accounts. In two weeks, she gained 400 Instagram followers. “One day, I spent two hours editing a ton of pictures for Instagram and building a content calendar for the days I would release them,” Miller says. “It just felt so wrong, and it felt so fake. One day it just hit me. I was like, ‘What the hell am I doing?’” Miller was less concerned with productivity and mental health than with authenticity. “There’s no more showing pictures and pretending to do something,” she says. “In real life, I actually go and I actually do it.” Except for a relapse when she briefly redownloaded Instagram, Miller’s hiatus is still going strong five months later. Since stepping away from social media, Miller chooses activities for their own sake, not for the ‘gram. She’s spent more time traveling (including her first solo trip to Nashville) and organizing game nights, and she’s even taken up improv. Though Miller
was worried about losing touch with friends, especially as her graduation approaches, it’s been less of an issue than she’d expected. “I think it’s created a lot more intentionality in my life because I find myself going through my contact list and texting people I haven’t talked to in a while,” Miller says. “I’ve had some really meaningful conversations that
“
d a lot I think it’s create ity in more intentional my life. – Hayley Miller
”
way, where I wouldn’t have those in the comment section of Instagram.” Ditching social media seems like an impossible feat for many, but it’s not a problem for second-year Nate Friedle. Besides Facebook, which he uses primarily for Messenger, an Instagram he hasn’t posted on in more than 6 years, and LinkedIn, he’s pretty much “nixed social media from [his] whole life.” But staying off Facebook, the main hub for campus information, has its drawbacks. “I didn’t know that rush week was happening until, like, the day before,” Friedle laughs. He learns about most upcoming events through
word of mouth, but it’s not a perfect system. “I’m out of the loop in a lot of ways a lot of the time,” Friedle admits, “but I think it’s kind of worth it.” Though he felt some pressure to cultivate his online presence when studying film at DePaul, that pressure eased when Friedle transferred to Northwestern for civil engineering this year. Now, he doesn’t feel a push to present an edited version of himself online. “Every post, especially on Instagram, is kind of an effort to compare yourself to other people,” he says. “And kind of implied in that effort is a desire to somehow be better than other people — to always have funnier comments, or a more cultured picture, or a fancier location tag. ” Whether propelled by reasons of mental health, productivity or authenticity, students are finding more time by putting their phones down. The approximately 28 hours freed up each week are a bonus, but being less connected to friends onand-off campus isn’t easy. “A lot of friendship is based on tagging in memes now, and I just don’t see those things as quickly as other people,” Buckner says. “Even though it probably doesn’t actually hurt the quality of our relationship, it does make it a little hard to connect to people in the twenty-first century.”
Spring 2019
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STRAPPED
FOR CAT CASH Northwestern’s switch from Sodexo and Aramark to Compass Group has priced students out of eating on campus. BY EMILY WONG
H
urrying into Norris five minutes before his 6 p.m. shift, third-year Kevin Smith realizes this is his only chance to grab dinner until he gets off at midnight. He turns to the dining options on the ground floor only to be faced with the usual dilemma: since Subway, his goto choice, disappeared this year, Smith has struggled to find a similarly affordable option. “I used to be able to get full on maybe six or seven dollars, but now I have to spend like ten or twelve, and it’s been kind of hard on my budget,” says Smith, a work-study student. Last July, Northwestern transitioned to a single food provider, Compass Group, after declining to renew contracts with Sodexo and Aramark, its two other providers. The switch resulted in changed dining offerings across campus, which have received mixed reactions. Like Smith, some students have expressed concerns that the new options are financially inaccessible for much of the student body. Third-year Daniel Gest, a Norris center manager, says most of his coworkers are dissatisfied with the change. “The pricing has been a huge concern,” he says. “[Norris is] not really a dining option anymore for students, especially [those] who are work-study.” Gest remembers the initial buzz among his coworkers when the new menu items
AND ILLUSTRATION 30 | DESIGN BY KATHERINE GU
Cheapest meal option at every Norris restaurant:
were announced. He recalls that Patty Squared, a locally-sourced burger joint, was offering free food the first day. “[Students] got really excited,” Gest says. “Then you had to start paying for it, and no one wanted to pay that much for that food.” Many faculty members involved in the transition, like Senior Executive Director of Division Services Jim Roberts, say the difference is much less significant than students think. Although he reports hearing complaints of price hikes, Roberts says statistical findings don’t support them. “The data on the cost per transaction in our retail locations shows about a one percent increase over the previous two years,” he says. “It’s gone up a little bit, but that amount is still about nine cents per transaction, so it’s not that significant.” He cites data that listed the average transaction cost with Sodexo for 2016 and 2017 as $6.05, compared with the fall 2018 average transaction cost under Compass of $6.14. The $0.09 increase represents a 1.5 percent change. However, Norris vendors’ menu prices under Compass — relative to those under Sodexo — tell a different story. Comparing last year’s Viet Nom Nom to this year’s Asiana Foodville shows the average entrée price increased from $8.47 to $10.40, a 23 C-Store Build-your-own salad bar (by weight) Stealing from Norris
FREE!
$3 MIN.
percent hike. Similarly, the change from Subway to Wildcat Deli shows a jump in average price from $5.35 to $6.49, when comparing six-inch subs to the Deli's signature sandwiches, a 21 percent difference. In the fall, second-years Lazar Gueorguiev and Austin Wu conducted a survey for a statistics project to determine what students thought about the new Plum Market items compared to Lisa’s Café's previous offerings. On a scale from one to 10, with one indicating the worst value and 10 indicating the best, Lisa’s received an average score of 7.105 and Plum Market received an average score of 2.295 among students who had visited both. The administration has made attempts to respond to students’ complaints, and Roberts detailed three main initiatives they have taken to reduce the financial burden. First, NU asked vendors to create smaller portion items to offer at a lower price. For example, The Budlong Hot Chicken created the Birddog, a smaller sandwich made with a chicken tender in a New England roll. According to Norris Executive Director Jeremy Schenk, the Birddog, which comes in a combo with fries for $8.15, was debuted at Norris and introduced later to other locations. The University also brought back the meal exchange program, which allows students on the Open Access and Base 14 meal plans to redeem two meals per week from a limited choice of selections at MOD Pizza, Wildcat Deli, Patty Squared, Fran’s Café and Plum Market. Roberts says the team created combos specifically for meal exchanges, such as a flatbread and fries from Fran’s or a breakfast sandwich and coffee from Plum Market. Because first- and second-years are required to live on-campus and are automatically signed up for the Open Access plan, the return of meal exchanges affects at least half of the student body. Third- and fourth-years who live off-campus and don’t enroll in meal plans, however, won’t see the benefits.
Patty Squared “Thrilled Cheese” grilled cheese
$4.95
Wildcat Deli Build-your-own sandwich/wrap
$6.99
Before the switch to Compass, second-year Ethan Wilensky often visited Lisa’s for snacks or late-night food. Now, despite living only a short walk away at 560 Lincoln, he hardly visits Plum Market. “Even though I get [dining dollars] that I can only spend there, it feels bad spending five dollars on a bag of chips,” Wilensky says. From the perspective of menu coordinators, the new choices are a reflection of customer preferences. “The hot meal items are on trend and on point with what feedback we received,” says Compass Group District Marketing Manager Georgene Sardis. She lists Plum Market’s avocado toast, brioche egg sandwiches and chicken fingers as options created based on customer suggestions. Gest, who saw the transition process firsthand as a Norris employee, acknowledges the administration’s efforts to cater to the needs of the community. “They did take student input,” he says. “They were like, ‘What do you want to see?’ And people all said,‘ We want to see it be healthier and organic.’ No one mentioned that they wanted it to be the same student pricing. So, none of it was malicious. They’re not like, ‘Students have more money, let’s take more money from them.’ It was just like, ‘Students seem to want healthier food. We can give it to them.’” In the meantime, Gest has observed students coming up with their own solutions to avoid paying the inflated prices. “It seems like a lot of people are very willing to just skip out on a meal and get a coffee instead or something, which seems like a very Northwestern approach,” he says. Norris student employees, or those who live off-campus and don’t want to pay the higher prices, will have to keep practicing their meal prep or skipping lunch altogether — at least until the Compass contract is up in 15 years. For now, the University Center’s motto and ubiquitous phrase “meet me at Norris” may soon go out of style.
Asiana Foodville The Cupbop (rice, protein, potsticker)
$8
MOD Pizza Build-your-own pizza
$8.67
The Budlong Hot Chicken The Birddog
$8.97 Spring 2019
| 31
Quarterbacks
&Queens
Forging an identity at the intersection of football and RuPaul. BY DYLAN KENNEDY
32 | DESIGN BY NIKITA AMIR | ILLUSTRATION BY RACHEL HAWLEY
M
y father and I had plans to watch the big football game at our local bar. Northwestern was playing Kentucky in the Music City Bowl, but my purple hoodie felt inadequate to display my purple pride. So I headed into a business I was sure could help me show my school spirit: Sephora. After comparing the various shades of lilac, mauve and violet, I found the makeup samples most closely resembling Northwestern purple and caked my face with eyeshadow. I wore my feminine war paint proudly as I rode the subway to the Bronx. I then nearly lost my voice shouting “Justin Jackson the Ball Carrier” during a thrilling game Northwestern ended up winning by a single point. When our quarterback, Clayton Thorson, was taken off the field due to injury, my emotions got the best of me. Tears welled up in my eyes, threatening to wash away the bold color I had so carefully painted across my face. I fell in love with both drag and college football during my time at Northwestern. While both are integral parts of my identity and selfpresentation, it can often be difficult to reconcile these two sides of myself, since they operate in such different cultural contexts. Drag challenges gender norms and pushes the bounds of acceptable behavior. It provides a voice for those who are often marginalized in society. College football, on the other hand, epitomizes mainstream American culture. But both of these worlds seem quite at home at Northwestern. The student body lost its collective mind when we made the Big Ten Championship game: nearly half the school traveled to Indiana to see it. I’m personally committed to watching as many football games as I can, be it in Wisconsin, the University of Illinois
or New York City, and I’ve participated in a focus group on improving the student game day experience. I love the adrenaline rush, the intense passion, the overdose of testosterone that comes from screaming my lungs out to distract the opposing team. I get a rush from grabbing my friend and shaking him to celebrate a touchdown, and even from the rage that fills me as I chant “BULL-SHIT” and chop my arm in time with my chant. Northwestern has a reputation for being a very liberal campus and has several drag shows throughout the year, featuring both amateurs and professionals. I competed in one amateur show, performing as a queen parodying Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, and placed second in a field of six. I wore a blue dress and ruby slippers (and matching panties, which made a brief appearance) and talked about fucking the scarecrow’s brains out. At a formal in downtown Chicago, I dressed in a top hat, pearls, heels, a red dress and prominent beard. I dolled myself up to help push the boundaries of how masculinity can present itself. While both of these aspects of Northwestern culture are central to me, they can seem far apart and fall along familiar fault lines: north and south campus. The north is located closer to Ryan Field and campus’ best workout facilities. The main drag show is hosted by Rainbow Alliance in Norris, comfortably located south of the dividing line. Despite the geographical separation, these worlds are not totally distinct. The same friend who stormed Ryan Field with me after a triple overtime victory lip-synced in a dress alongside me in my first ever drag show. And the friend who dumped red glitter all over my legs at my first drag show liked college football well before I did. Though I can discuss our
new quarterback with them easily, they are not the ones riding the highs and lows of each new RuPaul’s Drag Race episode. While some overlap exists, it remains limited.
I pretend life and limb depend on a touchdown in one environment and scream over a queen jumping into a split in the other. I sometimes feel a little odd switching between the two worlds, displaying myself as hyper-feminine in one and hyper-masculine in the other. I pretend life and limb depend on a touchdown in one environment and scream over a queen jumping into a split in the other. But in both, I am thrilled by how damn exciting it is to be surrounded by people going crazy in either context. I love being in communities that care so much and follow all the little details, whether it’s team schedules or queen roasts. Both are so motivated by proving themselves beyond just winning and putting on a good show for fans. It can be unnerving to be surrounded by spectators screaming their heads off for something you don’t feel a part of; crossing into a new cultural setting can be intimidating. But taking the plunge into both of these helped me form my own nuanced identity. Plus, the world needs more love spread between different communities and I am so happy to have fallen in love with both queens and quarterbacks.
Spring 2019
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RE: Taste of home We asked students to tell us about the food that takes them home — in 250 words or less.
F
rom my grandma’s chicken enchiladas to my dad’s pulled pork, many dishes from home can never be replicated. There is, however, an easy, twoingredient snack I hold dear to my heart: popcorn and Hot Tamales candies. Simple and strange, it’s a recipe my grandparents passed on to my sister and me when we were young. Whenever I eat that perfect pairing, I’m suddenly a 10-year-old sitting in my hometown movie theater as my grandma holds the way-too-large tub of
popcorn — which we, of course, refill for free after the movie — and pulls out the box of Hot Tamales she snuck in her purse. I’m reminded of my relationship with my sister and how we always stop at the dollar store for Hot Tamales before watching a movie. I don’t remember all the movies, but I remember the butter, the cinnamon and the feeling of being surrounded by people I love. – BRADEN POMERANTZ
A
s a college student, sometimes home can feel far away, especially when you have your own lease and never visit. I reconnect through the recipes my mother made for me before I left. She drafted, printed and bound a cookbook for me titled “Cooking From Home” so I would never forget the sweet and savory tastes of the house I grew up in. Every week, I make something from that book, whether it’s lemon-rich chicken, tomato-basil pasta, a traditional Hungarian dish
34 | DESIGN BY RACHEL HAWLEY | ILLUSTRATION BY MASHA DOLGOFF
or a random concoction I find in the pages. However, nothing takes me back to my childhood like Annie’s mac and cheese with peas mixed in. For as long as I can remember that has been my go-to snack food. It tastes like summer days of running the streets with my friends, of cold winter mornings when school was cancelled. It tastes like the care of a mother who knew just what her son wanted and the safety of a place that will always be there for me. – ISAAC SAGEMAN
H
ome tastes like matzo ball soup, made by a mother named Mary. It tastes like Bubbie and Zadie coming to Easter dinner even though they don’t celebrate. It tastes like the borscht I never had because we traded it away to seem more American. It tastes like Christmas ham, hours of work in the kitchen, and the way it’s always framed by at least one unnecessary apology that the whole family will reject. It tastes like the recipes that Grandma wrote by hand in New York and passed down to my mom. It smells like the almond extract in Mom’s tri-color cake and the spaghetti and meatballs that Grandma in New York always had ready on the stove whenever we’d visit. It tastes like the pistachios at the center of the gingham cloth on her kitchen table, a staple at any get-together. It tastes like no one asking me or my family, “So, what are you?” It tastes like coexistence. - KARLI GOLDENBERG
O
n a normal Tuesday night, chopping garlic is like therapy. It’s an excuse to take my mind off of a milelong to-do list and let my muscle memory lead the way. There’s something about the way garlic smells when I drop it in a pot of piping hot olive oil that reminds me of Tuesday nights at home. My mom always kept tomatoes in the house. We had a bowl of the little cherry ones out on the counter all the time, and my friends and I would pop them in our mouths like candy as we passed by. Between work and shuttling kids to and from various activities, sometimes all my mom had the energy to make at the end of the day was tomato sauce. There’s something so perfect about such a simple thing. She’d cook the garlic and empty that bowl of tomatoes into the pot, and the smell was intoxicating. Tasting her sauce was like the feeling of summer. Now, being so far away, I don’t get to come back to that amazing smell on a Tuesday night. I miss my mom, but I still have the love of food and cooking she instilled in me. I usually keep some garlic and cherry tomatoes on hand, though – just in case I need a taste of home. – OLIVIA VISCUSO
M
ost people think the Italians invented spaghetti, but I am convinced the Filipinos did. Growing up, the spaghetti I knew was sweet. The sauce was not made out of tomatoes but out of banana ketchup, a sugarand vinegar-infused, dyed red paste made of, yes, bananas. It was topped with artificially red hot dogs and creamy shredded cheese. For the first eleven years of my life, this was all I knew. Family members swapped tips: infuse cheese in the sauce, add mushrooms, serve with a side of pan de sal, a sweet bread. (What can I say? We Filipinos like our sweets.) My Filipino friends shared their love for this traditional dish. Even Jollibee, the Filipino equivalent of McDonald’s, features the sweet spaghetti. It was only when I attended middle school and interacted more extensively with white students that I realized Italianstyle spaghetti was considered the norm. Years have passed. I’ve interacted with and befriended more white students. I’ve become aware of the unique aspects of Filipino culture and appreciated both my identity as Asian and American. I’ve consumed both types of spaghetti, sweet and savory, and developed a taste for each. But no matter how much time has passed or how much pasta I consume, home will always be noodles slathered in banana ketchup. – JEANNE PAULINO
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5,6,7,8 5,6,7,8 5, 6,7,8 5,6,7,8 5,6,7,8 5,6,7,8 5,6,7 ,7,8 5,6,7,8 5,6 ,8 7,8 5,6,7,8 5, 6,7,8 5,6,7,8 5,6,7, 5,6,7,8 5,6 ,7,8 ,8 5,6,7,8 5,6,7,8 Performance groups find community and celebrate culture on stage PHOTOS BY NIKITA AMIR
PICTURED | Genesis Quiroga
,6,7,8 8 7
There’s this community between all of us, even if we’re not all Mexican. And there’s a sense of comfort and a different energy that you can bring as a person of color to groups of color versus as a person of color to white groups.
6,7 , 8 ,8 6
— Mia Isabel Dominguez Hodges
Mia Isabel Dominguez Hodges
Jennifer Delgado (left) and Shaleahk Wilson (right)
5,6 5,6
5,6,7,8 FROM LEFT TO RIGHT Genesis Quiroga, Laura Delgado and Lizet Alba
Folklórico means so much to me because it keeps me tied to my roots in a way beyond traveling back to my motherland. I have learned more than just how to dance, I’ve learned about Mexico in a way I could never learn in a classroom. — Lesley Meza
Lesley Meza
7,8 38 | DESIGN AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY NIKITA AMIR
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: FRONT ROW: Mahima Pirani, Mridula Prakash, Keertana Jain, Karishma Desai, Serena Shah BACK ROW: Kripa S. Guha, Swetha Marisetty, Neha Shenoy Basti, Rupa Palla, Kumudini Myla
Ahana is a space where I can step out of my comfort zone and choreograph and learn new styles. It’s a place where I can express my South Asian culture with my funloving teammates.
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: FIRST ROW | Keertana Jain, Rupa Palla, Serena Shah, Karishma Desai, Sahil Doshi, Sindhu Kosuru, Kareena Sharma SECOND ROW | Rishika Dugyala, Vimal Bellamkonda, Swetha Marisetty, Adam Pluchinsky, Vinayak Manickavasakam, Akash Palani THIRD ROW | Aditi Rathore, Mahima Pirani, Deepikaa Sriram, Heena Srivastava, Neha Shenoy Basti, Kripa S. Guha, Mridula Prakash, Kumudini Myla, Manasa Pagadala FOURTH ROW | Sai Maddike, Vishal Giridhar, Sid Ahuja, Braylan Saunders-Effort, Parth Shah, Tejas Sekhar
7,8 5,6,7 Spring 2019
| 39
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT Kristen Gerdts, Marissa Martinez, Sofía Sánchez and Alfonso Pacheco
,7,8 ,8
Dancing was always just something my mom and I always did. It’s fun to be a part of a group where you don’t have to translate your culture. — Sofía Sánchez
A look at The Office of Government Relations, Northwestern’s link to the world of politics. BY CLAIRE BUGOS
PHOTOS BY JESSICA MORDACQ | DESIGN BY STEPHANIE ZHU
I
n a wood-paneled room on Capitol Hill, Feinberg School of Medicine Assistant Professor Jaehyuk Choi captured the attention of several dozen elected officials. Choi was one of three clinicianscientists nominated for the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health Trailblazer Prize last October, recognized for his lab’s groundbreaking work on the identification and therapeutic treatment of autoinflammatory diseases and cancers. He spoke about his discoveries and outlined the time-consuming and often frustrating processes of applying for federal grants to make such work possible. At the end of the presentation, he pulled up a slide of thanks — not for his
research team or family, but for Congress. It only took Choi three years to make such a breakthrough. But the foundation for his recent work was 23 years of federal funding that enabled him to enter and afford college, make his way through medical school and his residency, complete his post-doctoral training and become a junior faculty. With even a single lapse in this chain of grants, scholarships and awards, Choi says he likely would not have been able to develop potentially life-saving treatments. “We need this continuous funding to keep the pipeline of new investigators coming through,” Choi says. “This is impactful, there’s a high return on investment, and it really
isn’t a one-time thing. Every year is an investment into this pipeline that can last 20 years from trainees to [become] fully established investigators.” In the same room was Caitlin Leach, director of federal relations for Northwestern. She helped Choi prepare for his presentation and hosted him in the nation’s capital. As the University representative to D.C., Leach coordinates faculty visits to inform elected officials of the work being done at Northwestern and to advocate for research funding and higher education. To Leach, Choi’s story is emblematic of why Northwestern not only works to bolster sustained federal funding for scientists, but also to help students along the path.
“To me, this was the illustration of why it’s important for the government-university partnership to exist — for research universities to educate undergraduates all the way through to doing research at the end,” Leach says. Leach is part of the team that communicates between all levels of government on behalf of the University through the Northwestern Office of Government Relations. It is through this channel that the University maintains its status with the world beyond Evanston. The liaisons work both alone and with other universities to express Northwestern’s position on certain policies, keep tabs on relevant legislation and promote Northwestern as a resource for elected officials.
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At each level of governance, the priorities differ. Jennifer Kunde, executive director and the liaison to the city of Chicago, oversees educational programs to ensure the University is in compliance with regulations. In Springfield, Director of State Relations Laura Farr builds relationships with state politicians and advocates on issues like student aid and higher education regulations. At the federal level, the office coordinates with other universities to advocate on topics like research and immigration. “Government is very important to Northwestern,” says Bruce Layton, special assistant to the president for government relations. “It is the single largest source of research funding. The tax exemption that we enjoy underpins everything that the University does. So we have to have, for both those reasons, a good relationship with the government.”
Good Neighbor, Great University
At the city level, Kunde coordinates with 22 colleges and universities that have a “footprint” in Chicago to promote educational programs and reforms. The office supports programs in K-12 education as part of Northwestern’s “Good neighbor, great University” campaign. Such programs aim to create more stable pathways into Northwestern and strengthen Chicago public education systems. Northwestern Academy supports students from Chicago public high schools applying to top-tier universities. In 2018, 160 CPS
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students enrolled in the Northwestern Class of 2022, and every one in the Northwestern Academy Class of 2019 graduated. In addition to bolstering pre-collegiate education, Northwestern serves as an incubator for talent from all over the world and convinces graduates to stay in Chicago. In 2018, 24 percent of incoming first-years were from Illinois, while 48 percent of graduates found their first job in the state. “We’re a magnet for talent,” Layton says. “People are our most important product.”
Defining Priorities
In Springfield, Farr spends the legislative session meeting with elected officials, coordinating with other Illinois universities on joint initiatives and representing Northwestern. According to Farr, as many as 6,500 pieces of legislation pass through the state legislature in a single year. Much of her job entails monitoring these proposals to ensure that the University supports favorable legislation and work with lawmakers and other organizations to lobby against bills that could negatively impact Northwestern. “You might hear people talking broadly about some issue, and then you have to chase down that lead,” Farr says. “You have to filter information — basically to vet it — to make sure that it’s realistic so that folks up here can make good decisions about the things that we do.” Layton and his staff
convey information about current legislation and the state of affairs at all levels of government to Northwestern President Morton Schapiro and his senior staff. They then make decisions about how to navigate legislative issues and make sure the University remains in line with regulations. For example, lawmakers in Illinois are currently considering bills to legalize gambling and the recreational use of cannabis in the state. But universities like Northwestern must comply with federal marijuana laws and protect student athletes who could be impacted by gambling allowances. Layton and Farr keep tabs on these bills, speaking with lawmakers about the potential dangers and working within coalitions of other Illinois universities to make sure the bills contain favorable language. In Springfield, Northwestern’s connections to the government extend beyond the Office of Government Relations. There are six alumni in the Illinois state legislature: two senators and four representatives from both undergraduate and graduate programs. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker is an alumnus of the law school and previously served as a University trustee and member of the Board of Governors for the law school. The Northwestern Pritzker School of Law was named for his grandfather after J.B. Pritzker donated $100 million. Though Farr says Pritzker expresses no favoritism toward Northwestern in his politics, the close connection means the governor and other alumni in government
posts seriously consider the University’s position on many issues. “I do think we have a friend in Springfield,” Farr says. “Whenever we have a benign place in the General Assembly, we have really great relationships with them, and they care about what happens on campus. I don’t know about preferential treatment, but they do care about our interests, and they do what they can to make sure we feel well-represented.” Though the success of Northwestern’s advocacy often depends on political realities and the availability of funding, it is important that liaisons develop strong relationships with lawmakers. The Office helps elected officials see the connection between their policy priorities and the opportunities and resources available through Northwestern. Accomplishing this goal requires the University liaisons to make sure information is shared between both parties, even if that means catching them in the hallway. “Some of it is kind of like stalking,” Farr says. “You’re waiting for people outside of their offices to have 10 seconds to talk with them about an issue that you care about — trying to make it memorable so that when they go into the chamber to vote, they remember that 10 second conversation you had.” These conversations allow Farr to speak on the University’s interests. But she also finds satisfaction in providing information from Northwestern faculty or her own research to legislators so they can better represent their constituents.
POWER TO THE PURPLE
Collaborating For Change
Maintaining these relationships pays off. With each election, there are shake-ups in the representatives who hold office. Sometimes, these changes can have a substantial impact on lawmakers’ activity and the environment in the capitals. Though this has been broadly true in D.C. over the past few years, Leach maintains that the core issues remain the same. “Honestly, the issues that the American public care about, and the issues that Congress cares about, have a lot of similarities, regardless of the party,” Leach says. “The issues that Northwestern cares about and the values that Northwestern has don’t change.” During these transition periods, liaisons work to develop personal connections with new lawmakers and offer Northwestern’s faculty and students as a resource to them. As a tax-exempt institution, Northwestern is required by law to have a designated staff to maintain its government
connections. The University’s tax election requires it to operate within a $1 million cap on official lobbying activities. But while Farr and Leach are registered lobbyists, much of their work in Springfield and D.C. is not considered lobbying, but rather advocacy, the broad promotion of a cause rather than focusing on specific legislation. This allows University expenditure on lobbying to fall below the $1 million limit. When it comes to broad issues like student financial aid and immigration, there is only so much Northwestern can achieve by acting as an independent entity. To amplify its voice, Northwestern collaborates with other universities and organizations to share practices and collectively strategize on how to best approach certain issues. At the national level, the primary coalition is the Association of American Universities, a conglomerate of the 62 research universities that attract the largest amount of federal research funding. Representatives from these
universities help shape higher education and science policy, and promote the role of research universities nationally. “We collectively work with all the other universities to increase funding for federal research agencies with the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats,” Leach says. “If there’s more money for [the National Institutes of Health] overall, then there’s more biomedical research happening all across the country in universities like Northwestern.” Leach leverages these associations to propel the priorities laid out by Northwestern senior staff. In the last congressional session, she and representatives from other Illinois universities advocated for legislation that protected DACA. Though the topic of protection for child immigrants is often partisan, the coalition focused narrowly on how the bill would impact students and lobbied in support of both Republican and Democratic versions of the bill. Participation in large university-based associations
is a less critical component of state-level advocacy. But collaborating with organizations like the Big Ten and education think tanks allows Farr to better understand certain issues and strategize how to approach them. “We try to find out what other universities in other states even are doing to influence what kind of policy decisions we might support at the state level,” Farr says. “There are a lot of universities within the state, and each one of them has a little bit different kind of flavor campus. There are a lot of commonalities, and we like to get together to work on those whenever we can.”
Research Funding
In the science arena, individual researchers and institutions often compete for federal funding for their projects. But when lobbying the government at the federal and state levels, Leach says research universities band together for the common goal of supporting the entire higher education community.
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Generally, elected officials and policymakers have a lot on their plate . . . so we need to take our message to them.” — Caitlin Leach
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Nor thwestern receives funding from a plethora of federal organizations; biomedical research agencies are the largest source of Northwestern’s federal funding. Researchers across the country compete for grants from government organizations like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF) and depend on these federal funds to cover the costs of operating laboratories and paying scientists’ salaries. Since only 80 to 90 percent of NIH grants written by researchers were funded last year, scientists like Choi can spend upwards of three hours a day writing grants to fund their operations in order to compete for the grants. To make it possible for such researchers to work, it is critical that science agencies maintain strong budgets. “I think it’s the responsibility of scientists to stay engaged politically,” Choi says. “And this means everything from supporting the funding that has made our science possible to thinking about how science affects government . . . I think of myself as having an obligation to society. In some ways, I think of myself as a public servant.” While offering Northwesterngrown expertise to government operations increases the University’s clout, it is also the expectation for federally funded research institutions. For decades, the U.S. government has relied on the talent of university researchers, funding their work through agencies like the NIH and the NSF, rather than establishing government laboratories to conduct research in every field. In return, these experts share their findings with the government and the public so anyone can benefit from discoveries and information.
“Part of the contract is this work advances societal answers, questions that advance all Americans. This is funded by the American taxpayer,” Leach says. “You want to get the research findings out to the community, to policymakers, to regulators, so they’re using evidence to make decisions.” Over the past decade, Northwestern’s annual sponsored research budget has increased by 60 percent. Just last year, Northwestern received $519.5 million in federal government awards, the largest amount in University history. This increase over the 2017-2018 fiscal year included $328.3 million from the NIH, a growth of 13 percent. This recent surge in research funding is due partially to the availability of federal dollars. But Leach also credits much of the success to the University’s ability to attract high achieving students and faculty and prioritize research internally. “I can’t tell you how many times I bring faculty out to have meetings and I’m just amazed at the work that’s being done … to hear about what their passion is, and learn about how that’s been fostered at Northwestern in our community,” she says.
Sharing the Good News
Faculty members are often invited to D.C. to testify before congressional committees and share their expertise with lawmakers. The Office keeps tabs on policies up for debate, and makes the connection between campus and elected officials. “Generally, elected officials and policymakers have a lot on their plate ... so we need to take our message to them,” Leach says. “They wouldn’t understand
what’s really happening here unless we all kind of go and share the good news.” Leach and Farr bring many of those talented students and faculty to the state and national capitals to share stories on projects they’re working on or recent breakthroughs they’ve made. In Springfield, Farr sometimes hosts students who share their own experiences with issues like financial aid and immigration policies to help elected officials better understand them. “It helps when you’re able to tell great stories, whether it’s research that’s going to save lives or students that are starting companies or giving back in different ways and becoming leaders,” Kunde says. “We have good stories to tell.” With constant fluctuations in federal and state budgets, representatives in office and proposed legislation, it can be challenging to keep up with the many policies that have the potential to impact Northwestern. But through the Office of Government Relations, Northwestern maintains its presence in governance at every level, serving as the necessary link between the University and the political world. “It’s important that we have a presence at the state level to help facilitate understanding between what we’re doing here in our own little corner of the state and what’s going on in Springfield,” Farr says. “We can provide so much information that can help make our state better, we can remind people that we exist so that they can benefit from a Northwestern education . . . we would miss out on a million opportunities if we weren’t present.”
AS THE ENVIRONMENT SUFFERS THE CONSEQUENCES OF CLIMATE CHANGE, SO DOES OUR MENTAL HEALTH.
WRITTEN BY NIKITA AMIR DESIGN AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY EMMA KUMER
Lark Breen hails from Truckee, California, where ski slopes and hiking trails form the landscape as well as the collective identity of locals. Environmental consciousness, therefore, was a foregone conclusion. At Breen’s elementary and middle school, toting a non-reusable lunchbox was a social faux-pas. Her parents scolded her for taking 10-minute showers and her childhood camp counselors limited shower time to just three minutes. These small actions manifested into a deep awareness of her environmental impact, so much so that Earth Day is her favorite day of the year. But, when the Breen family traded in nighttime cartoons for National Geographic and the Science Channel, Breen’s concern translated into anxiety. “I would go to bed at night and, being alone, I would get into my head too much and have full on panic attacks relating to the end of the world due to environmental causes,” says Breen. For several months, 8-year-old Breen cried herself to sleep every night. Now a second-year journalism student, she has already seen the environment change in her lifetime — as we all have. Islands in the Pacific
Ocean face the threat of sinking, the Arctic ice caps resemble a lake dotted with ice and species across the globe are going extinct faster than we’ve seen in the past. An increased urgency surrounding environmental decline has pervaded the national conciousness thanks to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in October 2018. It detailed how we must cut carbon pollution by 45 percent by 2030 to remain within the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit. Exceeding this temperature may have dire consequences: disappearing glaciers, rising sea levels and more frequent extreme weather. The report moved Breen to tears. Media outlets have since published a flurry of frightening headlines regarding our uncertain future. A 2016 federal report by the U.S. Global Change Research Program found 40 percent of Americans reported hearing about climate change in the media at least once a month. Half of that group indicated their worries about climate
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“WE’RE AT THIS POINT AND THERE’S NOTHING WE CAN DO. EARTH IS ABOUT TO TAP OUT IN, LIKE, 20 YEARS.” change constituted a “powerful environmental stressor.” But young people are dealing with environmental anxieties like no generation before. An online Harris Poll of 2,029 US adults in 2018 found 72 percent of millennials said exposure to negative news stories about the environment impacted their anxiety levels. We can now label this proliferating condition: eco-anxiety. The APA glossary defines it as a “a chronic fear of environmental doom,” a definition that echoes dystopian young adult novels but is all too real. While roughly 40 million adults in the U.S. suffer from some form of anxiety, no specific data exists for those affected by environmental-related trauma. But psychologists know it’s on the rise. A 2017 APA report about the impact of climate change on mental health made headlines and spread to Vogue, proving that environmental anxiety has begun to define the new generation’s culture. Eco-anxiety has already been documented in the past, specifically stemming from natural disasters. After Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans in 2005, 49 percent of people in affected areas developed an anxiety or mood disorder, according to a March 2017 APA report. But perhaps no other scientific report has defined
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our seemingly imminent doom as clearly as “Deep Adaptation.” Detailing a resilience plan to confront absolute social and physical collapse, University of Cumbria Professor Jem Bendell’s “Deep Adaptation” has amassed an estimated 400,000 downloads. He argues the world as we know it will cease to exist, so we must adapt our lifestyles accordingly. Bendell has formulated a “personal and collective change that might help us to prepare for — and live with — a climate-induced collapse of our societies.” If Bendell’s language sounds post-apocalyptic, it’s because the reality he paints may eventually resemble that truth.
ADAPTING TO ANXIETY
Our generation’s concerns translated into action on March 15, when the youth climate strike became one of the environmental movement’s largest mobilizations of young people across the world. Also known as Fridays for Future, the protests drew a reported 1.4 million students in over 120 countries. Students walked out of class to emphasize the current severity of climate change and call for systemic action. In a feat of miserable irony, Northwestern’s own strike took place on a wet and dreary Friday afternoon on March 15. Despite the fact that the
sun was a no-show and only a fraction of the 496 ‘interested’ Facebook users arrived, the crowd of Northwestern students stood in the rain to emphasize their environmental concerns. Juan Zuniga, the former VP of Sustainability for the Associated Student Government, spoke at the strike. He remains critical of Northwestern’s commitment to sustainability because, while its goals are admirable, our peer institutions have charged ahead of us. “We claim to be this top 10 school, and I have no doubt we’re there academically, yet somehow we’re not paying attention to these other things that make us part of something beyond Sheridan Road,” Zuniga says. Moriah Lavey, a fourth-year graduating with a degree in sociology and environmental policy, was just a doe-eyed freshman when she walked up the sociology department building stairs and noticed a flyer: ‘Want to do good in the world? Here’s your chance.’ Despite its hyperbole, the poster’s message resonated. “I was like, ‘that’s me’,” Lavey says, remembering her former enthusiasm. Four years later, she says she’s sick of planning events where the same five people show up. “It sucks knowing what I know, and I’m still such an amateur. It’s painful to think about ... It’s painful to watch it unfold,” Lavey says of her classroom experiences. Lavey has noticed a disconnect between what she learns in Northwestern classes and the lack of opportunities and awareness outside of it. She finds Northwestern lacks any real space to voice concern or to collectively take action. “[It’s] just very individualistic, just goes entirely counter to everything I think about in relation to existence on this planet,” she says. Like Zuniga, Lavey opposes Northwestern’s approach to sustainability. Student organizations
ban ground flyering and place compost bins in dining halls, but these measures become performative when institutional change keeps getting halted, she says. Northwestern has yet to commit to the worldwide Fossil Free divestment movement, which protests investing in top 100 coal, oil and gas companies. While only around 150 universities worldwide have actually divested, peer institutions like Columbia, Stanford and Yale are already taking strides to put their money where their principles are. With $49.3 million invested in coal, oil and gas, the University’s commitment to sustainability remains questionable.
A PROBLEM OF EQUITY
In 2005, Northwestern professor Patty Loew began working with students from her native Ojibwe tribe to explore the effects of climate change through the Tribal Youth Media, a project in northern Wisconsin to which she dedicates her summers. In order to better understand the Ojibwe history, she asked the students to interview their grandmothers and grandfathers about the environmental changes they witnessed in their lifetimes. One 11-year-old girl caught Loew’s attention with a question that stuck with her — even fourteen years later. When this particular girl interviewed a biologist for her project, he explained how clan animals, like the waterfowl and deer, were beginning to migrate farther and farther north. “I remember her looking at him and there was just this sort of — I don’t know whether it was bewilderment or horror — but she looked at him and said: ‘But how can we be Ojibwe if we don’t have our clan animals with us?’” Years after witnessing this exchange, Loew, the co-director for Northwestern’s Center for Native American and Indigenous Research, still feels moved when recounting the story. Loew, who is a member of
the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, (federally recognized as Chippewa) says the environment inherently relates to her identity. “We have been tied to our landscape for forever, as far back as our memory goes,” Loew says. Communities of color, including indigenous groups, are subjected to eco-anxiety by the very nature of their marginalized identities. Art history second-year Brianna Heath sat in her Black Ecology class this spring during conversations on the philosophy of environmentalism. She grew furious at the concept that simply banning plastic straws would make a substantial difference. For Heath, these straws broke the camel’s back. “It’s not up to the individual, it’s about corporations,” she says. “We’re at this point and there’s nothing we can do,” Heath says. “Earth is about to tap out in, like, 20 years.” Her humor thinly masks her serious concern for the planet. Heath takes issue with public appeals to buy metal straws or recyclable bags because she believes they’re simply corporate profit grabs. “There’s no sustainable consumption under capitalism,” she says. “Latinx, Black and communities of color have been reusing plastic bags for years and years, but now all of a sudden, companies are selling these bags as if it’s a new thing.” Heath alludes to the broader concept of environmental racism, a concept that can be used to explain how communities of color feel the efffects of climate change more strongly.From airborne exposure to hazardous materials to contaminated water, you can often spot these environmental indicators by looking at the racial makeup of a community. Lavey, who has worked with the Illinois Public Research Interest Group in Chicago, has witnessed first-hand how environmental injustice is doled out to those most vulnerable. “You could try to piece out one or the other,
but it’s just deep systematic oppression. It’s transmitted through an environmental lens.” In fact, a 2018 EPA report confirmed that people of color are much more likely to live near polluters and breathe polluted air. The island nations like Kiribati and massive countries like Bangladesh are already facing the consequences of climate change, largely due to processes they had no part in. Such communities are among the first to notice and suffer from nature’s decline. The Great Lakes Indian and Fish Wildlife Commission has been collecting longitudinal data since 1984 on issues like delayed lake ice formation, increased mercury in the lakes water, and decreased health status of fish. For the 11 bands of the Ojibwe, this data is just further proof of the reality they already contend with. Breen also worries about water quality. She grew up seeing “Keep Tahoe Blue” stickers on people’s cars. The California drought lowered the water levels and exposed docks, an image that frightened her. For Breen, “the scariest thing we talked about [in an Environment and Society class] was the scarcity of freshwater. Not just the scarcity, but inability of countries and peoples to collaborate on that issue.” The earth is now in need of a continuous effort to “adapt to the rhythms of our environment,” warns Loew. While that seems like an uphill task, Breen puts it rather simply: we should just “do whatever you can to be more conscious about being kind to Mother Earth.”
THE MARCH
Medical leave provides struggling students with time away from campus, but hidden obstacles can complicate their return. BY RACHEL HAWLEY
48 | DESIGN BY SARAH FERNANDEZ | PHOTOS BY NIKITA AMIR
BACK BACK BACK
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n May of last year, Maya* was finally able to admit she needed help. Her depression and anxiety symptoms had become much worse during her second year at Northwestern.. She barely made it through winter quarter, earning grades far lower than she was used to. Completely overwhelmed and falling behind win her classes, she reached out to the Dean of Students Office in the latter half of spring quarter. It was then that Maya began the process of requesting medical leave. After Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) interviewed Maya about her symptoms, a counselor laid out a treatment plan. CAPS referred Maya to an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) at a local hospital, but they didn’t provide her with any referrals for a psychiatrist, leaving her to navigate providers and insurance issues on her own. “I felt like I was doing this all by myself,” Maya says. “Looking back, I didn’t even realize how alone I felt while [on leave].” Still, she soldiered on and committed herself to treatment over the summer, believing she would be ready to return to Northwestern for fall quarter. She couldn’t have guessed that her attempts to return to the University would end up spanning an entire year and that her application for reinstatement would be rejected three times.
Understanding medical leave According to the Nor thwestern Dean of Students Office’s website, “the purpose of a medical leave of absence is to provide students time away from campus for treatment of a physical or mental health condition that impairs a student’s ability to function safely and successfully as a member of our community.” In the 2017-2018 academic year, Northwestern granted 155 medical leave requests, a 20 percent increase from the previous year. Between 100 and 120 students are reinstated after taking a medical leave each year. According to Student Assistance & Support Services, the majority of medical leaves are mental health-related. There are a few key differences between taking medical leave and simply withdrawing from the university partway through the quarter. While medical leaves allow tuition to be paid back in full before the eighth week of classes, the University only gives full refunds for regular withdrawals within the first week of classes, and partial refunds between the second and fourth weeks. Medical leaves also provide later course withdrawals on students’ transcripts and can potentially grant international students the opportunity to
maintain legal status in the U.S. while not enrolled in school. According to Senior Associate Dean of Students Mona Dugo, these qualities make Northwestern’s medical leave program unique compared to those at similar universities. “There is no other school that I know of that gives tuition back and cancels out the transcript,” Dugo says. “Our agreement is that we will cancel out classes and give a tuition refund, but we’re really going to expect you to do treatment.” After completing treatment as outlined by CAPS or Health Services, students returning from medical leave are subject to a strict reinstatement process in which they must provide documentation proving they have successfully sought treatment. Additionally, they must fill out an application, sit for an interview with CAPS or Health Services, and then make a reinstatement appointment with an assistant dean of students – and at the end of the process, they still might not be reinstated if CAPS or Health Services recommends otherwise. “When a student takes a medical leave of absence, they receive a letter that specifies the course of treatment they have to engage in to return, and usually the treatment is more than individual therapy,” Dugo says. “We’re really trying to help students learn to manage
significant symptoms. So during the course of a leave, we work with students to help them identify treatment providers, and then we really expect them to engage the treatment.”
A national reputation Over the past decade, mental illness among college students has become increasingly prevalent. A 2018 study by Brigham and Women’s Hospital found that one in five college students has considered suicide. According to the Center for Collegiate Mental Health at Penn State, university counseling center resources devoted to “rapid access” (crisis appointments) increased by an average of 28 percent between 2010 and 2016. As students turn to university resources during times of crisis, concerning trends have emerged in the way many schools, particularly elite private colleges, respond. In 2014, Princeton University made headlines when a student filed a lawsuit after being forced onto medical leave — and barred from campus — following a suicide attempt. In 2015, Yale University came under fire after a student referenced problems with the school’s medical leave and readmission policies in a Facebook status shortly before
*Editor’s note: name has been changed to protect student’s identity.
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committing suicide. In 2016, NBC reported the story of a University of Chicago student who visited the student counseling center after self-harming, only to be placed in a psychiatric hospital for two weeks and compelled to take leave. Similar incidents have resulted in lawsuits against Stanford University, George Washington University and Hunter College, among others. Unlike these schools, Northwestern does not compel students to take involuntary medical leave. Some students, however, report facing distorted incentives in deciding whether or not to take medical leave.
“It didn’t seem worth it to stay” At the beginning of spring quarter last year, Medill third-year Kevin Wilemski began to feel sick with what he assumed was a cold. After a few days, his symptoms significantly worsened. Wilemski eventually went to the emergency room, where he was diagnosed with mononucleosis. Recovery, he was told, would take around a month; he emailed his professors, explaining the situation and requesting permission to take his midterms after he’d recovered. Wilemski was enrolled in three classes during the quarter of his illness. “Two of the professors were not thrilled but were kind of okay with it,” he says. “It was my professor for Intro to Microeconomics who said that she would not even consider letting me take the test [later].” Despite having documentation from the emergency room visit to confirm his illness, Wilemski had no recourse in the face of his professor’s strict policy. To Wilemski, taking a medical leave of absence seemed like the only viable course of action, even though he would be fully
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recovered by the time the leave went into effect. “You can’t really take a zero on something that’s worth thirty or thirty five percent of your grade and then continue the class, so my options at that point were either take medical leave and just go home, or else I’d only be taking two classes,” Wilemski says. While medical leave would result in a tuition refund, dropping the economics class would bring him to part-time status, which can have ramifications for financial aid dispersal and student loan repayment. “It didn’t seem worth it to stay and just take the two classes, which is why I ended up opting for a medical leave,” he says. Outgoing ASG President Emily Ash believes that “the tuition forgiveness aspect [of medical leave] is fantastic and shouldn’t go away,” but that refund can leave students in a situation in which medical leave is much more financially feasible than less extreme measures, such as taking fewer classes. “I don’t know that we couldn’t feasibly move to a tuition configuration in which that incentive distortion doesn’t exist,” Ash says. “There’s a strong financial incentive to go on full medical leave rather than switch to part-time.”
“I feel like I’m flying under the radar” When students opt for a medical leave, Student Assistance & Support Services (SASS) assigns them a contact from one of four assistant deans of students offices. While Wilemski describes his interactions with the SASS team members as positive and helpful, other students feel inadequately supported while navigating the
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There’s a strong financial incentive to go on full medical leave rather than switch to part-time.” — Emily Ash
reinstatement process. When former Medill secondyear Lillian Aff realized they had missed the application deadline to return to Northwestern for winter quarter by a day, they knew they had to talk to someone in the Dean of Students Office immediately. At the very least, Aff wanted to meet with their assigned SASS team member in the dean’s office to discuss their options. “I called on a Monday, which was the next business day, and they wouldn’t even give me the time of day, even to have an appointment with [my team member],” Aff says. “They basically told me, ‘tough luck.’” A little over a year before, Aff marched through the Arch and started their first year as a journalism major. They excelled academically — receiving straight As throughout their first year — but struggled with depression, which worsened toward the end of freshman year. Shortly after classes resumed in the fall, Aff visited CAPS, where a counselor suggested they take a medical leave in order to pursue intensive treatment. They returned to their home in Monte Rio, California, that fall, where they received treatment at a nearby hospital’s IOP. But as
the months wore on, Aff became increasingly aware of what they perceived to be the University’s radio silence. “I was under the impression that CAPS would be checking in and helping with things, but they didn’t,” Aff says. “I was really expecting a lot more support on NU’s end, or at least some kind of contact, and there was none. It didn’t feel like there was any follow-through.” Dugo says there are simply too many students in the medical leave system to keep close tabs on each case. “We’re not involved during [the treatment] phase of things because that should really be between them and the treatment provider,” she says. “I don’t have the bandwidth to monitor students who are on medical leave. I’m always here for students who have questions, who want to meet with me, who want to call, who want to check in about things.” “It’s extremely isolating,” says Aff. “Even though I have a few friends at Northwestern, I don’t feel connected to them because I’ve been in a limbo sort of state this entire time ... I don’t feel like this has helped me. I feel like I’m flying under the radar and forgotten by the University at this point.”
“Isolating” is also the word that Weinberg first-year Huma Manjra uses to describe her experience on medical leave this year. “I had no contact with Northwestern anymore, except for my roommate and the friends I talked to,” Manjra says. “Nobody reached out to me — none of the deans, none of the CAPS therapists — to make sure I got into treatment and was doing okay. I just completely fell out of the loop.” Manjra had already faced major obstacles in navigating the medical leave process by the time she returned home to Los Angeles in the middle of fall quarter this year. While she expected support from CAPS in securing the required treatment during her leave, she says she left campus with no plan in place and a list of potential providers who were unaffordable or unable to meet her needs. “My CAPS therapist made it seem like I would find a treatment center right away, that they were very accessible, very cheap,” Manjra says. “[The CAPS counselor] was literally like, ‘Oh, here’s a list of treatment centers, you’ll find an opening, just call them when you get home’ … It was a very hard time for my family and I because, while I was going through my depression when it was the most intense, I had to also be online, look up treatment programs, call treatment programs, day and night, and figure out the insurance plans.”
The road to reinstatement While undergoing treatment in Santa Monica, Manjra learned of another unexpected problem: Residential Services was trying to give her dorm room away. With her housing plan canceled at the start of her medical leave, Manjra
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had no guarantee that the room would remain open for her when she returned. “I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard,” Manjra says. “Because if you have high anxiety, and experience depressive symptoms, you want to keep your environment as stable as possible when you get back.” Like Manjra, Weinberg thirdyear Emma Latz faced challenges while applying to return to campus from medical leave during winter quarter. As a global health major, Latz’s curriculum requires her study abroad, which she spoke to her advisors and to CAPS about completing this summer. After being accepted into her first-choice study abroad program, Latz contacted the Dean’s office, who told her that she had to spend her first quarter after medical leave on campus and could not enroll in the study abroad program. “I had already signed the contract to study abroad. I was ready to make that deposit, and then I was told I couldn’t,” Latz says. “I understand that there’s difficulty in communicating across departments … but I was very upset about that … I think that the University sometimes cares a little more about me as a liability more than me as a student.” When Maya met with CAPS to develop a plan for her medical leave, she was given four requirements to complete over the remainder of spring and summer: an IOP, monthly therapy, appointments with a psychiatrist, and some form of substance use education. When she applied for reinstatement in August 2018, Maya thought she had completed all of the requirements. She says the fourth requirement CAPS gave her was particularly vague.
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“My IOP had this once-a-week day where we did an hour-anda-half thing on substance use, and I figured that would be good enough,” Maya says. At the end of her eightweek IOP, however, Maya’s point-person at the hospital recommended she undergo a substance use evaluation, “just to be safe.” But because she didn’t undergo an evaluation by the reinstatement deadline, Maya was denied reinstatement for fall quarter. Dismayed by the setback, but still determined to return for winter quarter, she completed the substance use evaluation late in the fall. The result shocked her: the evaluator recommended she go through a second, substancespecific IOP. CAPS, upon receiving the recommendation, determined she would not be allowed to return until she’d completed it. “It felt like they had added a requirement that wasn’t there in the first place and that I hadn’t agreed to when I left school,” Maya says. “CAPS’ Alcohol and Drug team viewed all of my materials – I never spoke to them personally, I’ve never met them, I have no idea who they are – and they decided that they would not let me come back without completing [the additional] IOP. And I never got the chance to give my input or speak to them.” The denial came as a shock to Maya, in part because she didn’t consider her substance use to be problematic in nature. She says her evaluation results only indicated a few red flags, just enough to put her “on the fence” for concern. “I felt really frustrated that they would not consider my preference because I feel like I should have a say in my own treatment,” she says. “And my therapist should have a say, but certainly not this Alcohol and
“
I was under the impression that CAPS would be checking in and helping with things, but they didn’t.” -Lillian Aff
Drug team that has never talked to me.” According to Dugo, when treatment goalposts appear to have shifted, it’s often because evaluations or treatment reveal an underlying issue different from what was previously assumed. Most often, she says, this problem occurs due to potential substance abuse issues. Students with substance abuse symptoms along with other health concern sare at an elevated risk, she says. “If they don’t go do substance abuse treatment, and I reinstate that student, there’s a very strong likelihood that they will need a second medical leave,” Dugo says. “The students who take a second medical leave, by and large, have substance abuse issues.” Many of the students interviewed described the process of reinstatement itself as unnecessarily complicated and slow due to its reliance on the approval of a number of individuals from different offices and departments within the University. Manjra had planned to take only distribution requirements during her first quarter back, hoping to set herself up for a successful return by avoiding difficult classes at first. She filled out the
reinstatement application early in the quarter with the goal of having her registration hold lifted before course registration began. Her CAPS counselor, however, failed to reach out to her for weeks, which precipitated longer and longer delays in the process. “First you have to go through a CAPS therapist, then you have to go through the Dean of Students, then you have to go through the Clinical Director of CAPS, and your own dean, and they finally clear you [to return],” Manjra says. “If the first person in that process doesn’t meet with me on time, everything else gets delayed. And that means you can end up missing class registration, that means you don’t know if you should book your flight or not.”
“A liability in their eyes” Last month, Dugo spoke to ASG about the state of the medical leave program at their weekly Sunday meeting. At the gathering, Dugo cited increased financial support for students on medical leave as a flagship improvement. A major remaining challenge, she says, is the persistent
overrepresentation of Black, Latinx, first-generation and low-income students among those who take medical leave. “It’s hard when you’re coming from the perspective of someone who hasn’t had the same privileges as a lot of people at Northwestern,” Aff says. “Even on Northwestern’s insurance, I couldn’t afford to pay the $20 a week copays – my family doesn’t have that kind of money.” After spending two quarters away from campus, Aff decided not to apply for reinstatement this spring. Maya says she feels fortunate that her parents were able to support her financially throughout her prolonged treatment process, as the cost of getting treatment while on leave could prove burdensome or prohibitive for many families.
This spring, after receiving three consecutive denials for reinstatement, she was finally granted permission to re-enroll and finish her sophomore year. Had she known that the road to reinstatement would be so turbulent, Maya says, she still would have taken leave — the time away from classes took a substantial burden of stress off of her. But she’s still frustrated with the lack of agency she felt at various points throughout the road back to reinstatement. This summer, Manjra plans to work with Dugo to identify changes that can be made to improve the student experience for those on medical leave. One of their current goals is to redesign the medical leave page on Northwestern’s website to include a detailed FAQ section, along with videos of students
talking about their experiences on medical leave. More broadly, Dugo says she hopes to build a sense of community for students who have taken medical leave and returned to campus, noting that the stigma of explaining why they were away from school and the process of reintegrating socially can be an isolating experience for reinstated students. “We’ve starting hosting reinstatement dinners this year,” says Dugo. “So every quarter, we invite all of the students from the year who went on medical leave and came back to a dinner, and just create some space for them to talk.” Additionally, she plans to have special laptop stickers printed for reinstated students to help them identify fellow
travelers around campus, and hopefully feel less alone in the process. Still, the structural obstacles faced by students like Manjra and Latz can’t be fixed with a sticker. Neither regrets taking a medical leave; the time away from campus allowed each of them to focus on the treatment they desperately needed. But Latz says her experience left her feeling more cynical about reaching out for help through the University. “It’s hard for me to see them ‘advocate’ for us, and say they care about mental health, and say that they’re going to work towards making it better at this university,” Latz says. “I feel like personally, I wasn’t super supported while going on leave, and that I am definitely a liability in their eyes.”
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unverified Northwestern’s discriminatory hiring process, which uses a program called E-Verify, presents a threat to undocumented students and workers. BY DANNY VESURAI & ALEX WONG
When Alexa* arrived on campus, she never discussed the legal status of her undocumented family members. The subject was taboo — dangerous, even. “I just assumed everybody else didn’t understand my struggle,” Alexa says. “Parents of these students tell us, ‘Don’t tell people about your status’ ... because of the fear that’s propagated during this political climate. No one really spoke about it.” Many factors contribute to an atmosphere of anxiety: the Trump
administration’s hard line against immigration, undocumented students’ inability to receive federal financial aid and a growing fear of deportation. Though Alexa is a U.S. citizen, she says Northwestern placed the burden of finding a community and support system on her. It took Alexa years to find students with similar backgrounds who also struggled with the institutional lack of financial and mental support. To find this community, Alexa attended the first meeting of the student-group
54 | DESIGN BY EMILY CERF | ILLUSTRATION BY LYSANDER WONG
Advancement for the Undocumented Community in May. The meeting was one of the community’s first steps toward establishing a dialogue around these issues — a step that came only after she felt comfortable opening up about her experiences. “My friends at Northwestern noticed my anxiety,” she says. “So once I shared this story with some of my friends, my friends started coming out to me like, ‘Hey, I also have family members who are undocumented,’ or ‘I’m undocumented myself.’ I started opening up
*Editor’s note: name has been changed to protect student’s identity.
doors and seeing there were other students just like me.” Despite these new spaces to quell her anxieties, Northwestern has exacerbated the pressures on students like her through its usage of E-Verify, a federal program that excludes undocumented students from University payrolls by comparing their information with government databases. Established by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 1997, the Basic Pilot Program, now called E-Verify, was made to prevent illegal immigrants from working in the U.S. In 2008, DHS required all federal contractors, including universities, to use the system. Out of the U.S. News & World Report Top 50 Universities, Northwestern is one of about 10 institutions that voluntarily chose to E-Verify all of its new hires, based on publicly available information. Because of this policy, undocumented individuals can’t work for the University — a decision Northwestern says it’s locked into. “You’re talking about a department that has [Immigrations and Customs Enforcement] in it,” Alexa says. “Right there and then, if you see E-Verify and you’re undocumented, you’re not going to apply for this job. You’re not going to even pursue it.”
Due to these dangers, third-year Seri Lee, an organizer for Students Organizing for Labor Rights at Northwestern, met with administrators several times to talk about ending E-Verify usage last year. “If you’re undocumented or if you don’t have the necessary paperwork to verify that you can work in the United States, E-Verify is an apparatus that basically puts you at risk,” Lee says. “It does not allow you to work and support yourself and whoever else you need to make money for.” Though Alexa passed E-Verify, she says undocumented students without workers’ permits must seek out “little jobs here and there” such as babysitting, in order to support themselves. “These students have to really navigate through how they’re going to get money for books or any other needs that they have,” Alexa says, adding there is no institutional support. The program also endangers undocumented family members of workeligible students, like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) students. E-Verify places those students’ personal information in databases accessible by Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, which Northwestern Interim General Counsel Stephanie Graham confirmed would place undocumented family members at risk. “Imagine putting your parents at risk of getting deported because you’re trying to get yourself a job at a university,” Alexa says. “You’ve worked so hard and you deserve this, but you have to choose between putting your parents — your mother, your father — at risk of getting deported or accepting this job.”
Signed Away With E-Verify’s potential for discrimination and errors, Illinois banned the program in 2007, even as the federal government expanded it. The state then passed the Right to Privacy in the Workplace Act, which contained a section preventing private employers from using E-Verify. DHS challenged the law in federal court in 2009 and won. Now, Congress is considering immigration reform to make E-Verify mandatory for all employers nationwide. But in a recent interview with Fox News, President Donald Trump expressed concerns about E-Verify because of difficulties hiring workers who the program rejected. Administrators involved with the decision to use E-Verify — including Northwestern’s Vice President of Human Resources Pam Beemer — didn’t comment on E-Verify’s discriminatory effects or on the reasoning behind the initial choice. Discussions about Northwestern’s E-Verify usage began in 2008, after President George W. Bush signed an executive order requiring E-Verify for all employers with federal contracts. The ruling only required universities to E-Verify employees working on federal contracts, so Northwestern officials had to make a choice: screen only hires with federal contracts, screen all new hires or retroactively screen their entire workforce along with all new hires. They chose to E-Verify their entire workforce. However, the majority of universities chose to take advantage of the ruling’s exemption. In fact, the ruling requiring federal contractors to use E-Verify points out why universities are exempt. If held to the same standard as other employers, Universities with even one federal contract would be forced to screen all workers. The ruling
says that because this would incur significant logistical costs, universities are exempt from using E-Verify for non-federal contracts. Documents from New York University and the University of California system show they deliberately used the exemption as a way to avoid E-Verifying their entire workforce after identifying logistical and financial problems with E-Verify. Yet a recently added Northwestern FAQ says the school chose to E-Verify all hires for “improved regulatory compliance.” As a result, the University says it would not have to individually track the few workers assigned to federal contracts.
Questionable Compliance
Northwestern’s E-Verification process disproportionately targets foreign workers. Though foreign workers constitute just 17 percent of the Northwestern workforce, they make up 70 percent of E-Verify rejections since 2010. Last year, Jacqueline Stevens, the director of the Deportation Research Clinic at Northwestern, submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents related to Northwestern’s use of E-Verify. These records, obtained from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), reveal that the University’s implementation of E-Verify discriminates against foreign citizens with work authorization. Due to errors in the process, foreign workers at Northwestern are 12 times more likely to be terminated than U.S. citizens. They’re also three times more likely to be forced to contest documentation issues in order to avoid the possibility of attracting ICE’s attention. This uneven distribution is also prevalent in Northwestern’s unresolved E-Verify cases. According to the USCIS records, over 1,500 workers’ E-Verification processes were never completed by Northwestern between 2010 and 2018. Around 40 percent of those workers are foreign citizens. Unresolved cases arise when the federal government flags workers’ documentation. After being flagged, workers must go through extra paperwork to fix any issues. They have eight days to contact the appropriate government agency to appeal their case, and if they don’t do so in time, employers may fire them.
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While the USCIS records indicate more than 1,500 unresolved cases this decade, Northwestern spokesperson Storer Rowley says the University currently has fewer than 20 open E-Verify cases and no unresolved cases that have been pending for over a month. The law prevents employers from terminating workers until E-Verify confirms the employee isn’t authorized, but it’s unclear whether these 1,500 workers were terminated, and if so, whether terminations occurred because of unfinished verifications. According to one USCIS representative, employers like Northwestern should follow up on unresolved cases extending past the time limit. The representative says Northwestern likely hadn’t taken the necessary steps to close the case. In its non-compliance, Northwestern risks losing money it receives from the federal
because they don’t understand exactly what they’re supposed to do, and so they make discriminatory assumptions.” National research further shows E-Verify’s discriminatory effects — a 2018 Congressional Research Service report confirmed E-Verify’s tendency to disproportionately flag legal foreign workers’ documentation. Those with two last names might be more likely to be flagged, Williams says. Workers with initial errors can miss work time and incur an extra financial cost, the Congressional Research Service report says. Some workers quit their jobs, as they were unwilling or too afraid to work without employment verification. The unresolved cases aren’t the only way Northwestern doesn’t comply with regulations. According to the USCIS documents obtained by Stevens, around 6,500 potential-employees were screened by E-Verify before they were hired, even though E-Verify is not allowed to be used until a worker is hired. These records also show that thousands of other workers were E-Verified months or even years after being hired, though regulation requires workers to be E-Verified within three days of their first workday. And after signing its first contract with DHS, Northwestern waited more than a year to screen workers — violating a contract clause requiring the University to start E-Verifying within 90 days of signing. Williams notes the lack of compliance most likely stems from E-Verify’s logistical issues. He says the lack of attention to requirements unnecessarily harms employees and employers. “Any time you put employers in the position of playing immigration enforcement officials, you run into a situation where employers not only do it wrong and harm workers, but they expose themselves to great liability,” he says. “We have had numerous cases against employers who have tried to play immigration enforcement and done so incorrectly, and it’s ended up costing them money.” However, Rowley claims that the University has always complied with E-Verify
“If you see E-Verify and you’re undocumented, you’re not going to apply for this job. You’re not going to even pursue it.” -Alexa* government — the same risk it would face if it changed its E-Verify use. For Alexa, receiving an initial error is more than a matter of completing extra paperwork. Any issue with E-Verify could put her family at risk. “If I went through E-Verify and got an [error], I would be panicking, [my family members] would be panicking,” she says. “Getting an [error] can mean so many things, including a possibility of starting a deportation process.” Although E-Verify law prohibits employers from terminating workers with unresolved cases, Chris Williams, a lawyer at Workers’ Law Office, says it’s common practice because they may not understand the law. Some say employers may not want to overinvest in training because the worker may ultimately be unauthorized, which means they would fire the worker to cut costs. “I had a case where an employer enrolled in E-Verify ... decided to fire all Latino workers without any basis [after initial errors],” Williams says. “When we sued him and I met with him, he said, ‘I thought that’s what I was supposed to do.’ ... Many times it’s
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regulations since the initial contract with USCIS in 2009.
Locked in?
The University claims it can’t change its usage of E-Verify without risking the loss of millions of dollars in federal research funding. Northwestern says E-Verifying all hires increases its federal research funding by demonstrating NU has a legal workforce. But other research universities, such as Stanford University, only E-Verify some workers but receive more federal funding than Northwestern. Still, breaking the agreement by changing E-Verify use may jeopardize around $25 million in federal funding contracts. But while E-Verify regulations confirm that Northwestern might risk its federal funding, federal departments can allow employers to maintain their funding contracts despite not complying with E-Verify. Considering the ability of federal agencies to grant caseby-case exemptions at their own discretion, Northwestern could potentially avoid losing funding even if it ends its E-Verify contract. However, the University and USCIS refer to separate legal reasons for why Northwestern must continue E-Verifying all employees. Rowley explains that a clause in Northwestern’s contract with USCIS locks the University into E-Verify. According to this clause, once the University signed the initial contract, it could not reverse any decision regarding which employees are subject to E-Verify. Based on Northwestern’s understanding of the agreement, if the University ever wants to break the terms and verify only new hires under federal contracts, rather than the entire workforce, it must wait until all existing federal funding contracts have expired.
But USCIS points to a different rule, which states that employers are only locked in if they E-Verify their entire workforce — regardless of whether the employer has federal contracts. As a result, Northwestern’s and USCIS’s interpretations can’t both be true. However, both indicate that the University cannot change its E-Verify use. University administrators did not elaborate on why their reasoning for being locked into E-Verify contradicts with USCIS’s reasoning, though Rowley says Northwestern confirmed its obligation with USCIS. He declined to provide said correspondences. He also did not comment on whether Northwestern administrators believed in 2009 their decision would be permanent. Documents show the University has already changed its contract once, and USCIS confirmed the University could request to change its contract. Harry Lewis, an immigration lawyer at the independent Cornerstone Law Group, says it’s unlikely any contract is permanent. While Rowley says the University can renegotiate the initial contract, he says it cannot change its choice to screen the entire workforce. “No contract, no agreement is permanent. You can always terminate,” Lewis says. “Maybe the government might give them a hard time … but it’s probably something that could be done.” Lewis and Stevens both say if the University wanted to end E-Verify, it could take the dispute to court for an official resolution. More contradictions further confuse Northwestern’s beliefs about its E-Verify usage. The University’s current stance — that it is legally locked into E-Verify — is at odds with an earlier statement by former Northwestern General Counsel Philip Harris. In an April 2018 email to Stevens and SOLR, Harris said there is no legal reason to E-Verify all employees. Harris left Northwestern this academic year and could not be reached for comment. Reasons provided by administrators for Northwestern’s E-Verify use have also shifted over time. Medill professor Jack Doppelt says when he raised concerns in 2009 over the University’s decision to E-Verify all workers, he was told it was legally required — contradicting the regulations exempting universities from Northwestern’s very decision. The University announced its stance that it was “locked in” to its voluntary decision to E-Verify all workers for the first time in May 2018, almost a decade after committing
to the program. That same month, Doppelt issued a public statement — attached to a petition to end E-Verify usage — calling the University’s use “convenient” rather than an issue of law. “[If NU is locked in], I find this ridiculous, a real catch-22 ... we just shouldn’t have done it in the first place.” President Morton Schapiro publicly said the University would “unwind [E-Verify] in a second” if it could at a Jan. 23 Q&A at Willard Residential College. “I’m not a lawyer,” says Schapiro, who wasn’t president when the decision was made. “From what I understand, we shouldn’t have done it, but once you do it, you can’t undo it. This is what they say… [and] I’ve been told we spent a lot of money to get this legal opinion.” Henry Bienen, Northwestern’s president when it started using E-Verify, did not comment through his assistant, nor did then-provost Daniel Linzer. Northwestern in Qatar Chief Financial Officer Barry Sexton, who signed the initial contract in 2009, also didn’t comment.
Reaction to inaction
In January, organizers sent Schapiro and Provost Jonathan Holloway an email calling for the University to stop its campus-wide E-Verify usage. Schapiro and Holloway did not reply. In February, the organizers wrote a Letter to the Editor in The Daily Northwestern, urging people to sign the May 2018 petition, which now has 144 signatories. They’ve received no response from administrators. For a university whose president has written extensively about his support for the undocumented community, Alexa says Northwestern does little to lessen students’ fear of exposure. “There are traumas that come with the stories of being undocumented that are very distinct,” Alexa says. “Northwestern does not have support for that. We have financial aid unwelcoming, mental health unwelcoming ... there’s no materialized action done.”
Regardless of whether Northwestern can end its E-Verify use, English professor John Cutler, who specializes in Latinx literature, says E-Verify signals a “weak link” between
the University’s public presentation and private practices. “If you want the campus to be a safe space for students, it needs to be a safe space for student workers,” Cutler says. “That’s impossible if you have undocumented students who don’t feel empowered to work here or feel under threat by the possibility of having their citizenship status exposed.” For undocumented students and students with mixed-family status, E-Verify only compounds the University and the nation’s anti-immigrant pressures. “At a political polarized moment like this, any risk creates great anxiety within the undocumented community,” Alexa says. Cutler echoes these concerns, though he is pessimistic the University will change. “E-Verify is not the sexiest issue for most students, so it’s hard for me to envision mass mobilization happening around that particular issue,” Cutler says. Still, Cutler thinks E-Verify may become part of a larger set of issues surrounding the undocumented community that students rally around. “If the university is a space of truly free inquiry, it needs to be free to question the state. Any degree to which the University is embroiled [in] the enforcement mechanisms of the state compromises that mission.” Alexa doesn’t anticipate University support for the undocumented community coming soon, as Northwestern often takes years to respond to student demands for diversity and inclusion — but that can change. “They could be a University that’s a step ahead instead of the University that’s a step behind,” Alexa says. “They will eventually have to listen to us.”
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hangover59 Dropping bars
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After the tragic demise of the beloved Nevin’s, students seek a new place to turn up.
Which presidential candidate are you?
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Tag yourself.
Overheard at...
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Which campus brand ambassador are you?
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The sexile diaries
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Dillo Bandersnatch
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No matter what side of the door you’re on, you’re fucked.
Will you make it to see all of your favorite bands, or are you destined to land in the ER by 2pm? Take this quiz to choose your own Mayfest
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DROPPING
B AR
ILLUSTRATION BY RACHEL HAWLEY
T
After the tragic demise of our beloved Nevin’s, students seek a new place to turn up.
S
DESIGN BY STEPHANIE ZHU
BY ROCCO PALERMO and JESSICA MORDACQ
oo young to have experienced the infamous Keg but old enough that your fake is a distant memory? Did you turn 21 just in time to watch Nevin’s be torn down and mourn the slow fall of The Deuce? Here’s a list of alternative nights out for those of age that don’t involve the words “improv” or “a cappella.”
World of Beer
Prairie Moon
Cool Factor: 4/5 World of Beer is now the shining Evanston Pub, conveniently located on Sherman Avenue. For you christened 21-yearolds, this disenfranchisement means nothing except the replacement of an unnecessarily pretentious name (for an extraordinarily boring one). While Evanston Pub has revamped their signage to reflect this change, you can still count on a wide variety of bubbly brews, entertaining trivia nights and a strange swarm of Northwestern grad students.
Cool Factor: 2/5 On Chicago Avenue, Prairie Moon tries their hardest to replace Nevin’s. It’s not working. Sometimes the bartenders slide you a free drink if you’re nice to them and are clearly a Northwestern student, but that will never outdo Nevin’s kitschy wall decorations and true college town spirit. At least Prairie Moon offers smashing seafood specials.
Bar Louie Cool factor: 3/5 A short walk down the block from Evanston Pub, Bar Louie fails to reflect what the martini glass on the front awning suggests. At first glance, Bar Louie could be the prime location for a classy, grown-up night out. But these said grown ups are mostly middle-aged white men. Stop by for $1.25 beers on Wednesday boys’ night if that’s your thing.
Your friend’s boyfriend’s house Cool Factor: 4/5 You only met Rob after he started dating your friend Ashley, but he has a cool living room and porch to chill on. He threw a party last week and let you and Ashley come early to help set up. And he never Venmo requests you for drinks. What a sucker.
La Macc Cool Factor: 3/5 Ah, La Macchina. We’ve all heard the name, and it’s probably not your first choice if you’re freshly legal. Residing on Orrington Avenue, La Macc is an easy walk from campus. While it’s frequented most on Thursdays by anyone and everyone in Greek life, their menu boasts top-tier linguine and risotto. Try stopping by for brunch and mimosas –$2 per glass and $10 per pitcher – if you don’t want to deal with the night-time crowd.
The construction lot where Nevin’s used to be Cool Factor: 5/5 An ode to the lost. If you go for a quick mourning sesh, remember there’s no security once the sun sets, which means no cover. Make sure to wear comfortable shoes in case you need to make a speedy getaway or step over gravel.
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IMAGES COURTESY OF MEG KINNARD, CHARLIE NEIBERGALL, PAUL SANEYA, FLICKR USER BARACK OBAMA, KATHY WILLENS, EDWARD KIMMEL, RYAN LAUREY
Bernie Sanders • Still lives in CRC as a senior (and isn’t an RA) • Gives an impassioned speech in class when all the professor asked for was a definition • Yells at students in Norbucks for using single-use plastics
Kamala Harris • The mom friend • Calls the cops on themselves for eating an edible • Won’t take your clicker to class so you can get participation points when you’re “sick”
Elizabeth Warren • Actually votes for ASG president • Never flakes on plans • Does all the class readings, even the optional ones
Kirsten Gillibrand • Heavily criticizes sororities while being in a sorority • From Westchester, New York • Refuses to do work anywhere but Colectivo
Joe Biden • In MARS; won’t stop talking about how they’re in MARS • Rides off the popularity of their cooler friend • Genuinely enjoys going to La Macc and paying the $5 cover
Pete Buttigieg • Mom cuts their hair • Donates to the Girl Scouts at the Arch; doesn’t even buy cookies • Rejected from Titanic four times; still in the audience for every show
60 | DESIGN AND PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY SARAH FERNANDEZ
Which presidential candidate are you? Tag yourself! BY KIRA FAHMY AND JULIA TESMOND
Beto O’Rourke • Gravitates toward elevated surfaces at parties • From the South but, like, the “chill” (not racist) part • Repeats a girl’s joke but louder; when everyone laughs, he apologizes
Cory Booker • Wears shorts and sandals no matter the weather • Has an electric skateboard and isn’t afraid to ride it down Sheridan Road • Probably works at Norris
Which campus brand ambassador are you? BY MOLLY GLICK
If you're trying to fund a kombucha habit on a tight budget, you might want to find a parttime job. After all, those crème brûlée Juul pods don't pay for themselves. You could earn minimum wage by making copies for your least favorite professor or washing strangers’ smelly SPAC towels, but fortunately, there’s a third option: influencing. As a Bumble Honey or a Tik Tok campus ambassador, you can harness your clout for cold, hard cash. Ready to dive into this pyramid scheme? Take this quiz to find your ideal influencer Brand™.
You’re getting dressed for the day. You opt for: a) Last night’s pajamas. And a Juul snapback. b) Head-to-toe brand spankin’ new Nike (all the same color)
c) A highly coordinated outfit straight out of a Fashion Nova Ad d) Skype-interview casual
You need some morning caffeine. It’s time for: a) Monster energy, duh! And maybe a shot 5-hour energy. And a Juul hit. b) Unicorn frappuccino
c) Keurig donut-flavored coffee d) Chai-mocha-lavender-Sriracha latte
Today’s classes have finally ended and you can’t wait for your evening plans: a) A dorm room vaping session
c) Clubbing in the Loop
b) A Billie Eilish concert
d) Bar-hopping for $14 bespoke cocktails
Oof, you’ve got quite the hangover. Your cure? a) Hair of the dog. And a Juul rip.
c) Bottomless mimosas and getting lost in Chicago at 1pm.
b) Blast some country music to yeehaw it away
d) A Cupitol brunch, as long as your phone eats first!
Now that you’ve gotten over the hangover, let’s talk post-grad plans: a) Consulting at your dad’s company (but you’ll pretend you got it yourself.)
c) Full-time influencer. You’ll go wherever the followers take you.
b) You’re literally 15 years old. You’re not even in college yet.
d) PR at a major New York firm, obvi.
Answers: Mostly A’s: Juul • Mostly B’s: Tik Tok • Mostly C’s: Sugar Bear Hair Vitamins • Mostly D’s: Bumble
DESIGN BY ALENA RUBIN
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“ The Anti-Vaxxer
My roommate sexiled me one night. Normal stuff: she asked first and I slept on the couch in our house. Later, we find out he’s actually an anti-vaxxer. I haven’t been sexiled since.
The Wildcat Welcome
The Quickie My freshman year roommate used to sexile me with her boyfriend and would text me and ask for the room for “10-15 minutes” because “that’s all he needs.”
My freshman year roommate told me one night that he was going to have a girl over. I headed out and, like any bored Northwestern sexilee, got shitfaced drunk and forgot why I had left in the first place. After enough debauchery, I stumbled back and walked right in on my roommate and his guest mid-fun. I realized she was a friend I’d made during welcome week and, drunkenly staring past their nakedness, made breakfast plans with her for the morning as I fumbled around the room. Eventually, it occurred to me that I was not welcome, so I wished my roomie a good night and spent the rest of the night on the lounge couch in just my boxers, dreaming of Allison french toast and scrambled eggs.
The Sexile Diaries
When are you coming back?
No matter what side of the door you’re on, you’re fucked.
The Condom Detective When I entered the room, my roommate was drunkenly searching around the room, Sherlock Holmes-style. Apparently during their “business transaction,” one of the involved parties yanked the condom off as the other was putting it on. Both were quite intoxicated and the condom was Hail Mary’d who-knows-where. There was a good chance that the jimmy hat could’ve landed in, or under, my bed. We could not find the missing condom, so we went to bed with the knowledge that the suspect was still out there. Fortunately, the next morning, my now-sober roommate found the latex Waldo under their bed. We were both quite relieved, overlooking the fact that my roommate technically slept on it for the night.
Can I have the room?
By Anonymous Northwestern sexilees
The “I Thought You Were Already Asleep” I didn’t get sexiled, but I woke up with a naked butt in my face. Does that count?
DESIGN BY KATHERINE GU
62
dillo bandersnatch Will you make it to see all of your favorite bands, or are you destined to land in the ER by 2 p.m.? Take this quiz to choose your own Dillo Day adventure. WRITTEN AND DESIGNED BY EMMA KUMER
You wake up at 5:45 a.m., reluctantly swing your legs out of bed, stumble into the kitchen, shotgun a beer and pour yourself a bowl of cereal. What’s your go-to?
FROSTIES
Time to get ready. What’s your outfit look like?
EXPOSED SKIN
FRAT PARTY
CARBS FIRST, CONCERTS SECOND
Nothing to do early afternoon...
Phone dies, so you lose your friends and make 20 new ones.
NAP AND RALLY
HIT UP YOUR TINDER MATCHES WITH A “WYD?”
Stranger offers you a suspicious drug. You...
No one is DTF.
GET OVERWHELMED AND LEAVE
Go home and watch the actual “Bandersnatch.”
CLUB SPORTS
You step up to play beer pong, but you’re up against Table Tennis Club.
Fanny pack can only hold the essentials.
JUUL
Put a freshman on your shoulders during A$AP Ferg.
Alright, time to start the party! Where to?
FACE GLITTER
Your friends want to get pizza, but the first opener starts in 15 minutes.
WHITE CLAW IS LUNCH
SUGAR PUFFS
PORTABLE CHARGER
Take 10,000 pictures you’ll have to sort through to compile the optimal Insta post.
Who gets celeb shot?
Throw up on someone who will become famous in 10 years.
THE HOT DUDE BEHIND YOU
Get absolutely slaughtered.
After a miraculous win, he asks for a hit, but you just ran out.
TAKE IT
Jump into the Lakefill naked and wash up on the shore.
DRINK MORE LIQUID COURAGE
YOUR LAB GROUP PARTNER
Run into your chem TA on the Lakefill.
RUN AND HIDE
CHALLENGE THEM
“I HAVE MORE WEED IN MY ROOM”
“TAKE A SHOT WITH ME!”
Get laid.
TOUGH LUCK, BUCKO
Power moves only.
Die, but get an A on the midterm.
Spring 2019 |
63
The UPS Store YOUR NORTHWESTERN STUDENT CENTER FOR SHIPPING, PRINTING, AND STORAGE
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