Fall 2011

NORTH BY FALL ‘11

WHEN

SOUL MEETS BODY A look inside transgender life at Northwestern by rachel hoffman | page 38

Rapping unwrapped Page 20 The ghost-busting rabbi Page 18 An existential crisis Page 48

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CHICAGO | EVANSTON | NORTHBROOK | WILLOWBROOK 2 | FALL 2010

44 More Than Morty

Re-evaluating the towngown divide

Fall 2011 northbynorthwestern.com Matt Connolly | Editor-in-Chief Joe Drummond | Executive Editor Julie Kliegman & Edwin Rios | Managing Editors Vanessa Dopker, Emily Ferber & Kevin Shepherd | Assistant Managing Editors Robinson Meyer & David Uberti | News Vince FitzPatrick | Opinion Marcus Lee | Features Lydia Belanger | Life & Style Eric Brown | Entertainment Stanley Kay | Sports Alyssa Howard | Politics Wendi Gu | Writing Dan Schuleman | Photo Arpita Aneja | Video Tyler Fisher & Katie Park | Interactive Kim Alters, Jack Foster, Susan Carner, Kit Fox, Emily Jan, Max Jones, Natalie Krebs, Denise Lu, Alice Li, Alexis Sanchez, Elena Schneider, Sandra Song & Alex Zhu | Assistants Editors Alejandro Valdivieso | Director of Marketing Gabe Bergado | Director of Talent Danayit Musse | Director of Operations Michael Anders | Business Manager Geoff Hill | Webmaster Veronica Benduski, Rachel Janik, Lauren Kaufman, Chris Lee, Jodi Naglie, Alexander Nitkin, Aimee Peng, Natalie Roth, Connor Sears & Danya Sherbini | Copy Editors

North by Northwestern, NFP Board of Directors Matt Connolly | President Joe Drummond | Executive Vice President Shaunacy Ferro | Vice President Danayit Musse | Treasurer Sunny Lee | Secretary

plus ...

A look at Northwestern’s Department of University Relations

29

On The Cover Making The Switch Transgender students have more on their plate than midterms. 38

Internet Haven Facebook isn't the only online community. 42 illustration: sarah lowe, cover illustration: gus wezerek northbynorthwestern.com | 3

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14 Hit me, baby, one more time

NORTH BY

Theatre majors throw punches.

Shaunacy Ferro | Editor Ariana Bacle & Lindsey Kratochwill | Senior Editors Camille Beredjick & Shirley Li | Associate Editors Krislyn Placide | Assistant Editor Erin Kron | Web & Video Coordinator Hilary Fung | Creative Director Rhaina Cohen, Alyssa Keller, Alexis Sanchez & Sarah Lowe | Designers John Meguerian | Photo Director Priscilla Liu | Photo Assistant

Published with support from Campus Progress, a division of the Center for American Progress. Online at CampusProgress.org

Subtle Style 17

Contents GENIUS 08 Whiskey

Have your Don Draper moment.

11 Playtime

SCOOP 32 Gadgets

SkyMall has to sell to someone.

35 Sports

De-bunk the basics of dorm sex.

Row through Skokie with NU Crew.

QUAD

EXTRA

26 Mailrooms

NBN got lost in the mail.

27 Political minorities

They’re coming out of the woodwork.

47 Wi-Fi

What’d you name yours?

51 Frances Willard

She’s back and ready for action.

24 Microgravity

07 Make it with maple

northbynorthwestern.com | 5

GENIUS

your guide to living smart.

Spice It Up Travel the globe without leaving your kitchen. By Amber Gibson While Evanston offers a wide range of exotic cuisine, what the restaurants don’t want you to know is that you can make a lot of these recipes yourself. Here, several students demystify authentic family recipes so GrubHub is not your only late-night snack option. You might not be able to pronounce some of these recipes, but making them will be a cinch — even in sparsely stocked kitchens.

PLATANOS FRITOS

HONG SHAO JI CHI

Darlene Reyes, WCAS ‘15

Miranda Zhao, WCAS ‘14

Reyes loves eating fried plantains with crema salvadoreña, similar to sour cream, which you can find at a Latino supermarket.

While studying abroad in Spain, Zhao discovered this dish could be more easily prepared in a microwave than in a traditional Chinese cooking pan.

These wings are less spicy than Buff Joe’s — you tell us if they’re tastier.

EL SALVADOR

1 ripe plantain 5 tablespoons vegetable or canola cooking oil 1. Cut plantain in half horizontally, then cut it vertically into long slices.

2. Heat 4 tablespoons of cooking oil in pan, then add slices of plantain.

3. Fry the plantains until golden brown on both sides. Watch out for splattering oil.

4. When the plantains are done, place them on a plate with a paper towel layered on top to soak up any excess oil.

5. Serve alone or with a side of sour cream.

KAYIANA

GREECE

Chrysa Cheronis, WCAS ‘15

CHINA

4-6 chicken wings, washed and unfrozen 3 teaspoons soy sauce 2 teaspoons cooking oil 1 teaspoon sugar Salt and pepper to taste 1. Mix soy sauce, cooking oil and seasonings in a microwave safe glass bowl.

2. Put chicken wings in the bowl, making sure that they all touch the mixture.

3. Cover the bowl and let it sit for 10 minutes.

4. Microwave on medium heat for 10 minutes until the wings come out with a rich brown color.

BATATA MAA KUZUBRA LEBANON

Sarah Daoud, Medill ‘13 This recipe originated in Greek villages and consists of simple ingredients people always had on hand.

3-4 eggs 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 1 medium ripe tomato 100 grams feta cheese Salt and pepper to taste 1. Dice tomato or blend in a blender.

2. Put oil and tomato in a hot pan.

3. Whip eggs and add some salt.

4. Mix eggs with tomato in the pan and cook for 4-5 minutes.

5. Mix in small cubes of feta cheese and serve.

Enjoy an exotic cocktail with us at northbynorthwestern.com.

Try this in a pita sandwich, or as a side dish paired with chicken.

4 potatoes, peeled and chopped in K inch cubes 8 cloves of garlic, smashed 1 bunch of cilantro, chopped L cup of extra virgin olive oil Salt and pepper to taste 1. Put oil in a hot pan and then place potatoes in the pan.

2. Cook the potatoes until they turn gold.

3. Add garlic and cook for one minute.

4. Add the cilantro, salt and pepper and serve.

CURRY CHICKEN

INDIA

Fenit Nirappil, Medill ‘12 Curry chicken is a popular staple throughout India, with variations on spices depending on the region.

Nirappil’s family recipe reflects a typical dish in Northern Indian cuisine.

3 chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized cubes 1 large onion 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 1 medium tomato, diced (or 6 ounces tomato paste) 5 cloves garlic 1 ounce ginger 2 teaspoons garam masala K cup coconut milk Marinade: 2 tablespoons soy sauce 1 teaspoon vinegar K teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon coriander 1 teaspoon chili powder (or more, if you prefer spicier) 1. Combine and mix all marinade ingredients in a large bowl.

2. Add chicken, toss until coated completely and refrigerate overnight.

3. Dice onion and fry until light golden brown.

4. Add tomatoes and stir until the mixture has a paste-like texture. Then add garam masala (or substitute more coriander and chili powder), garlic and ginger.

5. Add marinated chicken and let cook for 10 minutes on medium heat, stirring occasionally.

6. Add coconut milk and vegetables of your choice (green peppers, garbanzo beans, green peas).

7. Cover pot and cook on medium for another 10 minutes and serve.

PHOTO: JOHN MEGUERIAN

6 | FALL 2011

Cooking not enough fun? Watch Dan and Chloe of “Help Me Help You” whip up our maple chicken recipe at northbynorthwestern.com.

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Maple Syrup Madness It’s not just for breakfast. By Rhaina Cohen While maple syrup is delicious when doused on any breakfast item, it shouldn’t merely be seen as a culinary complement — this sap should be highlighted as a main ingredient. Whether you need to wake up with a hearty breakfast or respond to your midnight cravings, we’ve got you covered.

For these recipes, it’s best to use Grade B maple syrup, as its flavor is more robust than Grade A’s.

MINI MAPLE CHEESECAKES Indulge in these creamy mini cheesecakes featuring a maple-infused graham cracker crust.

Makes about 30 mini cheesecakes.

(Adapted from gourmet.com) For crust: 24 graham crackers 1 stick unsalted butter ½ cup maple syrup For filling: 4 cups cream cheese, softened 1 cup maple syrup, plus extra for drizzling 4 large eggs 1 tablespoon vanilla ½ cup heavy cream Preheat oven to 275° F. For crust: 1. Finely grind graham crackers in a food processor. Mix in melted butter and maple syrup.

2. Using a spoon, press crust into the bottom of each muffin tin cup.

Packed with fall spices and seasonal ingredients, these pancakes embody edible autumn.

The heartiness of the pumpkin and earthiness of the walnuts are a perfect match for maple syrup. Serves four.

1 cup pumpkin purée 1 ½ cups milk 4 large eggs 2 tablespoons vinegar 2 tablespoons vegetable oil 2 tablespoons maple syrup, plus extra for maple ribbons 1 teaspoon vanilla 2 cups all-purpose flour 2 tablespoons brown sugar 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon ground ginger 1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon ½ teaspoon cloves 1. Mix pumpkin purée, milk, eggs, vinegar, oil, maple syrup and vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda and spices using a whisk.

2. Stir dry ingredients into pumpkin mixture, leaving small lumps in the batter. Fold in walnut pieces.

3. Heat frying pan or griddle. Scoop ¼ cup of batter onto the pan. Pour a few drops of maple syrup on each pancake and swirl in with a fork.

4. Cook until bubbles appear on the surface.

Flip and cook until the other side has browned.

Serve with fruit and maple syrup.

MAPLE GLAZED CHICKEN This simple recipe offers a sweet, tangy variety to the standard chicken dinner. Serves two.

1. Whisk together marinade ingredients. Coat chicken in the marinade and refrigerate for 2 hours. Reserve extra marinade.

2. Remove chicken from the marinade and cook in a frying pan. While the chicken is cooking, boil the remaining marinade in a saucepan for about 3 minutes.

3. When the chicken is nearly cooked, pour the marinade into the frying pan and toss to coat.

PEANUT BUTTER MAPLE COOKIES Skip the PB&J and get your peanut butter fix with this maple syrup twist on classic peanut butter cookies. Makes 2 dozen large cookies.

(Adapted from food.com) ½ cup brown sugar, firmly packed ½ cup butter, softened ½ cup peanut butter ½ cup maple syrup 1 large egg yolk 1 ½ cups flour ½ teaspoon baking soda ¼ teaspoon baking powder ½ teaspoon cinnamon ½ cup raisins or chocolate chips (optional) 1. Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease cookie sheet.

2. In a large bowl, cream peanut butter, brown sugar and butter. Beat in syrup and egg yolk.

3. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking soda, baking powder and cinnamon. Add the dry ingredients to the peanut butter mixture until fully incorporated. Fold in raisins or chocolate chips, if you’re using them.

4. Roll dough into balls and press down onto the cookie sheet, about 2 inches apart. If the dough is too sticky to handle, refrigerate it for 10 to 15 minutes before shaping cookies.

5. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the cookies are golden brown around the edges.

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts 4 tablespoons maple syrup 2 tablespoons soy sauce ½ teaspoon ginger A dash of garlic powder A dash of black pepper 3 tablespoons water

PHOTO: JOHN MEGUERIAN

For filling: 1. In a large bowl, beat cream cheese until smooth. Add maple syrup and eggs, beating the eggs one at a time.

2. Add vanilla and cream; beat until combined.

3. Pour cream cheese mixture into muffin tin cups, about half full.

4. Bake for 20 minutes or until the cakes are golden brown around the edges. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours. Drizzle with maple syrup before serving.

MAPLE SWIRL PUMPKIN PANCAKES

northbynorthwestern.com | 7

drink HOW TO For a two-ingredient whiskey cocktail, add these to your favorite booze: Coke or Diet Coke Ginger ale (together, whiskey and ginger ale form a drink hilariously known as a Phlump. Becomes “The Creeps” with red Gatorade.)

Sprite or 7-Up (usually with Seagram’s Seven Crown or other blended whiskey. This is also known as a 7 and 7.)

Red Bull (Jack Daniel’s and Red Bull is a Tennessee Cowboy.)

Champagne (a Bourbon Lancer, if Bourbon is used. Mix Bourbon with André at your own risk.)

Lemonade (known as a Farnell.)

There are a bunch of more involved cocktails, but we’re assuming vermouth, bitters, Drambouie, etc. are hard to find when scrounging around campus. Here are some of the more manageable ones:

Lift Your Spirits

Like your whiskey on the rocks?

Check out page 33.

Irish coffee (coffee and Jameson, add cream and sugar as necessary) Whiskey sour (3 parts whiskey, 2 parts lemon juice, sugar) Mint julep (crushed ice, sugar, bourbon, mint leaf. Add tarragon if you’re feeling adventurous.)

Get to know your whiskey. By Tom Schroeder

I

8 | FALL 2011

a mixture of grains known as the “mash bill.” The grain is heated in water and fermented with yeast for a few days; ethanol is then distilled from the resulting mixture. Some chemicals with boiling points near that of ethanol are also collected (this is how flavor from the grain mash persists in the liquor). After distillation, the spirits are aged in wooden barrels for several years, then diluted to around 80 proof (40 percent alcohol by volume) and bottled for retail.

There’s room for variation at each step of this process, which accounts for the wide variety of whiskeys on the market. A bar off the Diversey El stop called Delilah’s showcases much of what the whiskey universe has to offer, carrying 540 types of the spirit.

Mike Miller, the owner, says that the growth in production and distribution of specialized whiskeys is a recent phenomenon. “Maybe 20, 30 years ago, the brands and the categories were a little more straightforward, a little more cut-and-dry.

Scotch was Scotch. Bourbon was Bourbon. Now you have Bourbon that’s been aged in a Scotch barrel and Scotch that’s been aged in a Bourbon barrel. So the boundaries have been crossed, much more so now than they ever have before.”

Different mixtures produce different whiskeys—rye, barley, and wheat are most often used.

Bourbons use bills where corn is the predominant grain. In Scotch, most or all of the grain used is malted barley. Scotch (particularly single-malt, which uses only malted barley and is distilled in only one distillery) is responsible for whiskey’s reputation for exorbitant pricing.

The longer (and longer ago) whiskey has been aged, the more expensive it is, and the Scottish climate and trade laws give unique assurances about quality and rarity. For example, the Macallan distillery’s “Fine and Rare” collection features bottles that routinely sell for more than $10,000.

But fear not: good liquor is still available on a college budget.

“What’s great is that you still have access to high-quality whiskey at a reasonable price, though the prices certainly have gone up,” Miller says.

“You can get Four Roses, Maker’s Mark, Jim Beam, Buffalo Trace, or Wild Turkey, all for under 30 bucks a bottle. All quality whiskeys. All major American whiskey distillers are making some kind of very high-quality product.” If you’re into corn-based whiskey and looking for assurance while shopping, check the packaging for the word “Bourbon” —federal laws ensure that whiskey must be up to certain standards to bear that label.

If you want to look like a badass, you will drink your whiskey neat.

If you want to sound like a badass, you will communicate this the way Miller does: “For me, the best mixer for whiskey is a glass.” He hastens to add, however, that he sells more whiskey in mixes than neat.

There are many whiskey cocktails that are cheap and easy to make. A few are listed above. Enjoy them responsibly.

PHOTO: JOHN MEGUERIAN

t is impossible for a college student to hold a glass of whiskey without feeling a twinge of self-conscious cool. Culture has inextricably linked the liquor with images of the boardroom, of hard-nosed brooders in tailored suits, of glamorous evenings tinged with postmodern despair. It is telling that in the opening scene of Mad Men’s pilot episode, cool embodied asks the waiter for two things: a light and a refill of the whiskey cocktail known as an Old Fashioned. Is there a more perfect mold for the pretensions of the newly-minted 21-year-old?

But there’s much to learn about whiskey beyond how to maintain a poker face while drinking cheap Scotch. If it’s hard not to grimace, you’re drinking the wrong whiskey—and there are many types to choose from. A basic understanding of the process of whiskey production makes it easier to understand distinctions in type and quality of liquor.

The basic process begins with

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Warm Drinks For A Cold Winter Stave off the shivers with these hot cocktails. By Joe Drummond It’s easy to get carried away with mixed drinks, but there’s really no need to turn them into a production — even the most basic can be memorable and satisfying. Hot drinks are a welcome pleasure after any amount of time spent outside in the cold. They’re also delicious, impressive-looking and easy to make. The following drinks only require basic kinds of alcohol, along with a few other ingredients that you probably have lying around. There’s no need to search for obscure liqueurs and garnishes that you’ll only use once. These drinks will do a better job of warming you than those crappy heat lamps at El stops.

SNOG (STOUT + EGGNOG)

MULLED WINE/CIDER

BUTTER RUM

Perfect for: Reading week experimentation The riskiest — but most pleasantly surprising — of all these drinks. More like beer with a hint of eggnog than eggnog with a hint of beer. If you’re a sadist, test this one out on your friends.

Perfect for: Autumn gatherings A great recipe for when you’re having people over, this one is easy to double or triple. It’s spicy, fruity and not too intense — a crowd pleaser.

Perfect for: Post snowball fight or Lakefill romp A drink with butter might sound strange if you’re not Paula Deen, so you’ll just have to trust us on this one. It’s smooth, sweet and caramel-y, so don’t accidentally drink too many.

1 bottle of creamy stout (Guinness is a good bet, don’t go too trashy) 1 shot of bourbon 1 egg 2 tablespoon brown sugar 1 orange or lemon Nutmeg and/or cinnamon Heat the stout, citrus and spices for 15 minutes.

While it’s heating, beat the egg with the brown sugar. When the beer is hot, pour a little into the bowl with the egg and stir. This will keep the egg from scrambling. Combine the beer-egg mixture with the rest of the beer in a tall mug. Add the shot of bourbon and drink immediately. As you can imagine, a lukewarm beer-bourbon-egg combination is a little gross.

MINT IRISH COFFEE

1 bottle of red wine (the cheaper the better) or a few cans of hard cider 1 orange 1 lemon Cinnamon and cloves Cut the citrus fruits into quarters, put all ingredients into a big pot and simmer on medium-low heat for 15 minutes. Serve hot. If you don’t want to keep the stove on, you can make this recipe in a slow cooker instead. Put the wine, citrus and spices in, turn the heat on low and wait 15 minutes to drink.

1 cup water 1 tablespoon butter 1 shot of rum (spiced is preferable but not necessary) Sugar (white or brown) to taste Bring the water to a rolling boil. While it’s boiling, put the butter in the bottom of a mug with the rum. Pour the boiling water into the mug. Wait until it’s not too hot, and then add sugar until it’s sweet enough for your taste (we used about two teaspoons, but we like it sweet).



Perfect for: Tailgating A slightly sweet twist on a morning-drinker’s classic. Bring all the ingredients and mix it when you arrive. ¾ cup hot coffee (or tea or hot chocolate) 1 shot of whiskey (Irish Whiskey is traditional, but it doesn’t make a big difference) Mint chocolate chip ice cream (take it out of the freezer a half hour beforehand)

PHOTO: JOHN MEGUERIAN

Fill a cup with coffee ¾ of the way, then add a shot of whiskey. Put a spoonful of ice cream on top. It will melt slowly and give the drink a wonderful, smooth texture.

northbynorthwestern.com | 9

love

Dogs in China say “wang-wang,” not “woof woof.”

The Chinese Beagle Spunky at the dinner table. By Wendi Gu he most polite form of greeting brown ears. Baba nods, picks up his chopsticks, in the Chinese language is not and the ingestion of rice, fried eggplant, tofu “hello” or “how are you,” but “have cubes and steamed shrimp commences. you eaten yet?” And to oblige the greeter, the greetee must respond, “why yes, I’ve My dad didn’t always like Spunky. When Spunky eaten.” Seeing that some of the most fundamental was a puppy, Baba, in fact, hated him. He peed on bits of Chinese dialogue are centered around, well, the carpets, shed all over the couches, ruined the the consumption of food, it’s safe to say that the grass in the backyard, stole his sweet potatoes— Chinese family exists first and foremost at the the list can go on. And Baba would get very, very, dinner table. irrationally angry when Spunky would commit And I hated it. All throughout my childhood, misdeeds, and lock the poor beagle in his kennel. phones, books, newspapers, television, anything “Time-out!” Baba would mutter to himself, dragand everything except food, chopsticks and your ging an unwilling Spunky by the collar into his own person were not allowed at the dinner table. crate. Then, of course, Spunky would whimper and Dinner time is family time, Baba would say. There howl, disturbing the peace of my dad’s coveted was, however, one reading time. exception.

Neither of my parents growing up in communist china “Spaaang-kee, knew what they were ah,” Mama sings getting into. They were meant that they could barely as we settle into woefully ignorant of feed themselves let alone a our dinner seats. how to raise a pet, since family animal “What are you dogrowing up in communist ing, Spaang-kee?”

China meant that they Baba grins like an idiot. “Spunk Keeee!” he could barely feed themselves, let alone a family says, tapping the little guy on the nose once with animal. My mother found Spunky more or less his index finger. amusing—he was cuter, more ke ai, she said, than They are referring to Spunky, the Gu housethe chickens her family kept in the closet while hold’s 11-year old beagle, who is shuffling impagrowing up. Well, I’d agree. tiently around our feet underneath the glass table, But my dad, the most composed man on the adjusting and readjusting his sitting position, nose planet, would lose his cool so easily whenever pointing hopefully at the undersides of bowls to Spunky had the gall to disobey. Baba was the leave streaks of moisture on the glass table. He’s man of the family, but Spunky clearly had no the sole distraction my father allows at the dinner respect for authority, an unfilial dog. A Confucian table, so long as no dog hair ends up in the rice. abomination.

It’s my turn. Mama and Baba are looking at me Once, Spunky went one step too far and peed expectantly. “Hi Spunks,” I grin, patting his plushy on my dad’s tennis shoes. “SPUNKY!!!!!!!!!!!” My

T

.

,

dad roared angrily. I heard pounding footsteps and the loud, frantic jingling of Spunky’s collar as Spunky ran for his life, my dad chasing him through the house. With nowhere to go but the master bedroom, Spunky hopped on the bed where my mom was sitting, probably hoping for protection. When my dad finally caught up to him, Spunky peed on the bed. Then he looked up at my dad, clearly terrified.

My dad, for a whole minute, just stared at him, and Spunky stared back. Then my dad started laughing. Then my mom nervously started laughing too, fearing that my dad had finally lost it.

Spunky, confused by this reaction, just wagged his tail.

We cleaned the sheets and replaced the comforter. The incident was never spoken of again.

Over time, Spunky won Baba over. Maybe it was because Spunky quickly picked up on Chinese, or the fact that he got better about peeing on the carpet. Either way, his antics were now a point of amusement for my father.

At the dinner table, Spunky is the greatest distraction. He whines and pines for attention, for his favorite bits of sweet potato, squeezing back and forth in the small space underneath our kitchen table, stepping on our feet, looking up with his irresistible puppy eyes.

But my dad doesn’t care. Despite the fact that Spunky’s true bloodline hails from Yorkshire and Essex and even Ancient Greece, Spunky is a Chinese dog now, belonging at the Chinese family dinner table.

And he probably understands more Chinese than you.

PHOTO COURTESY: WENDI GU

10 | FALL 2011

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For sexytime with with a little more Wildcat spirit, head over to northbynorthwestern.com.

Prefer to keep it classier? We’ve got date ideas for you too.

Top Or Bottom A guide to bunk bed sex. By Alyssa Keller Bunked beds may appear challenging to sexual creativity, but these creative positions can overcome them — just think outside the bunk. Results may vary. Please sex responsibly.

1

ILLUSTRATIONS: ALEXIS SANCHEZ

2 3

BOTTOM BUNK: SO DOWN TO EARTH



For guy-on-guy action, most of these positions will do the trick, though if you’re bold enough to go for No. 3, you’ll probably want to use the bottom bunk instead of the top — and seriously, make sure to stretch beforehand. Sorry lady-lovin’ ladies, these positions will probably only work for you if you’re willing to break out the toys.

Unfortunately, the bottom bunk doesn’t include much overhead space, however, by embracing other bottom bunk assets the possible sexual experiences are endless. Being close to the floor is a valuable thing; it’s easy to stumble into bed after one too many Monday night margaritas, plus it presents a convenient sitting area for guests.

And it provides a solid platform for a variety of positions for adult activities. Girl: Sit on the edge of the bed, brace your feet against his shoulders and reach to grab the frame of the top bunk. Guy: Stand on the ground and grab her calves while entering from the front. The grip provided by the floor and beds will allow for deep penetration and a down and dirty feel.

TOP BUNK: AT NEW HEIGHTS Not for girls with a fear of heights, this position adds a thrilling twist to the typical doggy-style.

Girl: Lie on your stomach with your torso hanging off the bed — you can reach around to the wiring under the top bunk to add stability. Use your inner thighs to squeeze his. Guy: Lie on top with your legs inside hers as you enter her from behind.

Put your hands on her hips to gain more control.

Keep your torso up instead of resting on her back.

With your legs inside of hers, you will be able to move quickly and precisely, creating new heights of climax.

MISCELLANEOUS: DING-A-LING IN THE DINGLE Two beds. No roommate. Let the games begin.

If available, an extra bed allows the opportunity to explore both top and bottom bunk positions in addition to using both. Girl: Stand facing the bed and lift your leg to the top of the bed frame.

Think of it like ballet class except with the bed as the barre and no tutus (or any clothing for that matter). Guy: Grab the girl’s hips as you enter her from behind. You will soon discover that two beds are better than one. Caution: Stretch beforehand to avoid injury.

northbynorthwestern.com | 11

body

Welcome to the Gun Show The Freshman 15 isn’t the only reason to hit the gym. By Alex Nitkin Every morning, McCormick freshman Stephen Lenzini takes eight vitamins, including Resveratrol, green tea extract and vitamins B, E and D. He goes to SPAC, lifts weights and does leg presses for about an hour, after which he does situps and other abdominal workouts to finish out his routine. On days he doesn’t go to SPAC, he runs three miles around campus and Evanston. Whatever exercise he does, he always finishes it with a protein shake made from “whatever’s cheapest at the Vitamin Shoppe.”

Lenzini stands six-feet-one-inch tall, at 195 pounds, built with solid muscle from head-to-toe.

He never skips his steadfast exercise routine, unless he feels sick. But he isn’t doing all this for any sports team, nor an athletic club on campus. He’s doing it for himself.

Lenzini is one of many members of the class of 2015 striving to make health and fitness a principal commitment at college.

For freshmen who are brand new to Northwestern, building confidence can be a difficult but important step in an environment that involves constantly meeting new people. For McCormick freshman Mihir Boddupalli, that’s one reason he’s made a habit out of weight training.

“I love to be able to see real improvements when I work out, and that’s what lifting does,” Boddupalli says. “From week to week you can see yourself getting stronger, and that’s a big confidence boost.” For freshmen, Boddupali said, gaining that confidence means “one less thing to worry about in a new environment.”

Lenzini agrees that one of the chief benefits of exercise is being able to show off the result of all the hard work that goes into it.

“You’re always meeting new people here, and you’re constantly struggling to maintain an image,” Lenzini says. “And people can be really judgmental.”

But working out for the sole sake of being more attractive, according to Lenzini, isn’t a strong enough reason to commit to exercise.

“People who work out just [to look good] tend not to continue very well—it’s not the best motivation,” Lenzini says. “It’s like being in a 12 | FALL 2010

relationship just for sex—it’s all superficial, and it doesn’t last.”

No, for Lenzini, the real reason he dedicates so much of his life to fitness is simple: try as he might, he just can’t stop.

“I would compare [exercise] to an addiction, almost like a drug addiction—if you don’t do it, you’ll feel really down, and that’s a lot of what drives you,” Lenzini says. “On days I don’t work out, it’s kind of like a yearning, you feel really lazy…you feel like you should be doing something productive—it’s like guilt.” While the initial reason he decided to stick to such a steady regiment was out of pure concern for his own health, Lenzini says, “over time you forget about health and it just becomes all about filling that routine.”

That discipline, according to Jason Pullara, director of sports performance for Northwestern athletics, is a key component of staying healthy in college. But even those who have a steady routine can fall into a physical lull if they don’t constantly challenge themselves.

“The single biggest mistake I see among new freshmen is not having a plan—just doing the same thing every day,” Pullara says. “If you’re not changing up your routine and challenging your body, you won’t see any real improvement.”

But even for Boddupalli, seeing that improvement in his physique isn’t the only reason why he chooses to lift—he also uses the activity as a way to bond with new friends. “[Lifting] is a very social activity,” Boddupalli says. “I do it with all my friends here—we’ll all meet up and go to Patten a lot—we’ve found it’s something that we all like to do together.”

One of those friends, McCormick freshman Brad Winters, felt like he wanted to feel and look better after falling behind on his exercise over the summer. But the real reason why so many new freshmen dedicate so much of their lives to fitness, Winters says, differs depending on who you ask. “The answer varies for everybody—some guys might do it because they want to get girls, or because they are really unhealthy and don’t want to get a disease later in life,” he says. “As for me, I just like knowing that I’m in good shape.”

THE DO’S AND DON’TS OF MUSCLE BUILDING The guy at the gym who can lift three times his body weight makes everyone selfconscious. But next time you see him, rest easy knowing he’s probably using improper exercising techniques. Show him up by following these rules.

DON’T 1. Work every muscle group at once. This is an easy way to tear muscles and injure yourself. Instead, devote your day to only one muscle group (i.e. back, arms, chest, legs or abs).

2. Limit yourself to strength training. Don’t forget about cardio. It’s good for your heart and increases stamina.

3. Lift too much weight. If you’re having trouble completing a full set of eight to ten repetitions, you’re lifting too much.

Start off low and work your way up to the heavier weights.

4. Push yourself too hard after a night of heavy drinking. You’ll become dehydrated and throw up.

5. Simply increase the weight. Lifting is not just about the weight. Before you step it up a notch, try increasing your reps to 15 instead of ten. You’ll be surprised how hard it is to complete just another five reps.

DO 1. Stretch. It prevents injury and increases blood flow to your muscles, meaning you’ll be able to lift more and run longer.

2. Eat a high-protein, low-fat snack before you work out. Your body needs calories to burn if you expect it to bench press 200 pounds. Carbs are a good idea if you plan on doing cardio.

3. Switch up your routine. Vary your exercises and you won’t be bored. This is a simple way to keep your motivation strong. ­—Alexis Sanchez

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Homestyle Fitness Ditch the gym, but not the workout. By Alexis Sanchez Three. That’s the number of gyms on campus. At first it seems as though there should be one gym near North Campus, one near South Campus and a final one somewhere in between.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

For those living on South Campus, the nearest gym is a half-mile away. SPAC and Patten are even farther, measuring one mile and 0.8 miles respectively. If you live off campus, good luck with that.

Here’s a better deal: Bring the gym to you.

With five main muscle groups — chest, arms and shoulders, back, legs and abdominals — just buying a treadmill won’t do the trick. Not to mention those babies can weigh in at $400.

Instead, here’s some ideas for how to build a gym in your room or apartment for less than $200.

ADJUSTABLE DUMBBELLS These are better than fixed-weight dumbbells because you can mix and match weight plate combinations to reach whatever final weight you want. This multi-purpose piece of equipment can be used for all five muscle groups and basic sets cost from $20 to $25. Additional plates cost $9 each.

A GOOD PAIR OF RUNNING SHOES Spending $50 to $80 can get you a piece of gear that will help your cardio regiment stay afloat. Running along the lakefill, around campus or even around your block can tone your legs. Also, it’s good for your heart.

FIND SOME STAIRS They could either be in your building or at a nearby complex – and you can not only re-enact the famous Rocky scene, but get a good workout for your quads and calves for free.

RESISTANCE BANDS These bands are a simple way to keep your abs, back and arms in shape. They’ll only set you back $36 for a set with increasing resistances or $6 for an individual band.

ILLUSTRATION: ALEXIS SANCHEZ

AN EXERCISE BALL This is helpful for ab workouts. Doing situps on a ball can relieve pressure on your back and make the whole ordeal more comfortable. Exercise balls run from $15 to $20.

A PLAYGROUND Monkey bars and high bars are extremely effective for arm and back muscles. Once again, this equipment is free. Try the equipment that lines the running paths along South Beach.

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info

Not enough violence? Watch a full demonstration at northbynorthwestern.com.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot The science of choreographing combat. By Lydia Belanger omewhere deep within the minds of Communication seniors Ned Baker and Alex Tey exists an alternate reality of Northwestern’s campus, where students have swordFight Club director fights in the Sculpture Garden and all-out brawls David Fincher experimented outside University Library, complete with chocolate pudding with chicken carcasses and and water balloons. other raw meat in order to Such fantasies set the scene of “Showdown: The Northcreate the sound effects that western Epic Stunt Spectacular,” an interactive theatrical would accompany punches. performance organized by Baker and Tey during Wildcat “It makes the perfect like, Welcome Week this year. “It was a satirical, mockumentarycrunchy, squishy, like, urrrrgh like exaggerated version of ourselves,” Baker says. “In a world sound,” Tey says. where violence isn’t totally out of the ordinary, to see a fight scene going on, it’s like a little bit of a cartoonish, satirical version of Northwestern.”

“Showdown” was a sequel to “Treasure Island: 3D,” which the two produced in 2010. These shows not only gave Baker and Tey creative license to manipulate reality, but also allowed them to exercise skills in the area of theatre in which they specialize: stage combat. The two are certified as actor combatants through the Actors Gym, part of the Noyes Cultural Arts Center in Evanston. They met during their freshman year in a theatre tech class. Their first conversation was about the “Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular!” show at Disney World. The two later decided to take the stage combat class where they bonded even more.

Tey and Baker learned stage combat from Chuck Coyl, an instructor at the Actors Gym and the president of the Society of American Fight Directors. Coyl is a Fight Master – the highest level of fight certification. He says that working with Northwestern students is unique, because not all are focused on pursuing acting careers. “Somebody that may want to be a stage manager may have more of an interest in how to run a fight call, or how to train their eye to be able to observe whether somebody is performing something in a safe manner or not.”

One of his other students, Communication junior Samantha Egle, says that she wants to explore stage managing, writing and fight directing. She also says she enjoys having fight choreography in her “bag of tricks.”

Categories of combat include knife, single sword, small sword, rapier and dagger, quarterstaff and more. Baker and Tey prefer to go unarmed. The list is limited only by imagination, but each requires special training to make the scene safe and believable. “[Violence design] is not just punching someone in the face,” Egle says. “People think that the fight exists as something that’s separate, when it really needs to be one integral part of the whole process.” Although for Egle, Baker and Tey, violent theatre is a specialty, they have never been seriously injured during a performance or rehearsal. Coyl says he taught them to be “in control of their art form.” They learned how to fall, hold a weapon, give a partner physical cues (initially make eye contact, but then switch to the area you intend to strike) and make the “knap” sound that is expected on impact.

Tey says he has always been interested in the kinesthetic aspects of theater, while Baker became an actor and a fan of professional wrestling during his teenage years. Both are into roughhousing, and grew up on comic books and action movies. Although both are anti-violence in real life, they say they are fascinated by the psychological and rhetorical implications of stage fighting. “I don’t think you could do a funny scene with a knife,” Baker says.

Tey compares fight choreography to memorizing a dance routine.

In stage combat, safety, coordination and communication are top priorities. “The idea is that we are working in tandem to create an illusion,” Tey says. “The whole thing is figuring out what you’re putting out into the world and what people are getting from it.”

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PHOTO: JOHN MEGUERIAN

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Check out the prices of more items on northbynorthwestern.com

Price Check What is the price of convenience? By Alison Decker

CHEEZ-ITS

PINT OF BEN AND JERRY’S

ORANGE JUICE

CVS: $3.69 (12 oz) C-Store: $3.99 (7 oz) Jewel: $3.29 (9 oz) Whole Foods: $4.99 (12 oz; Annie’s)

CVS: $6.29 C-Store: $4.95 Jewel: $5.19 Whole Foods: $4.99

CVS: $2.19 (13.5 oz) C-Store: $5.99 (13.5 oz) Jewel: $1.49 (12 oz) Whole Foods: $4.99 (half gallon)

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KRAFT MAC ‘N’ CHEESE

ORBIT GUM

HUMMUS

CVS: $1.19 C-Store: $1.69 Jewel: $1.09 Whole Foods: $1.99 (Annie’s brand)

CVS: $1.50 C-Store: $1.50 Jewel: $1.25 Whole Foods: Not sold

CVS: Not sold C-Store: $5.99 (13.5 oz) Jewel: $3.49 (10 oz) Whole Foods: $4.99 (half gallon)

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PHOTOS: JOHN MEGUERIAN

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OREO COOKIES CVS: $4.29 C-Store: $5.15 Jewel: $3.79 Whole Foods: $4.39 (Newman-o’s)

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



ADVIL

TROJAN CONDOMS

CVS: $5.99 for 75 C-Store: $6.39 for 24 Jewel: $5.99 for 50 Whole Foods: Not sold

CVS: $12.99 for 12 pack C-Store: $8.99 for 12 pack Jewel: $9.49 for 12 pack Whole Foods: $13.99 (for Sir Richards)

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Building Beer Pong One man’s quest to find fantasy in Ford. By Max Brawer THE BACKSTORY Allison Hall. Fourth floor. Freshman year. The sun would go down and the kids would creep out into the halls armed with plastic guns and bulletproof vests. We repped every class of soldier in these Nerf wars—Call of Duty taught us well.

And with this serious approach to shooting foam at one another came an interest in modifying our guns, a term which here means “breaking open the plastic and removing the safety features.” An engineer in my own imagination, I promised to spend time in Ford to build the ultimate pistol but, as apathy kills the college student, I never followed through.

Years later, this old war veteran wanted one last chance to use the university’s resources to realize his DIY dreams. Harkening back to high school, I recalled the one project that I always planned on using as an inroads to being cool in college: a beer pong table. In an attempt to put a variation on an old theme, I wanted to get more electronics involved.

Because that’s what beer pong tables are lacking.

Electronics. So, we put a computer in it.

THE SETUP Ira Glass once said something about the gap between our ambitions and actual ability. I should have listened to it. My psych major hadn’t equipped me for intermediate mechanical and electrical engineering, so I needed to bring in a consultant. Enter Kyle Richardson, a McCormick senior with a flair for channeling engineering prowess into creative party applications such as a wheel-o-party fouls to get back at spillers and a can crusher for the cleanup that follows.

Kyle offered some advice about utilizing the Ford Engineering Design Center, that lovely glass building right by Tech. A touch of backstory: Ford Motor Company set out to build a world-class de-

sign center at a university but wasn’t sure which.

Northwestern wowed ‘em and got the building placed here in Evanston, workshop and all.

The shop is technically for use by students in McCormick with official projects to work on. However, 24-hour access is available for most of the machines as long as you have keys to the building (or a friend with a set). The shop is reminiscent of the Mythbusters set with everything from jigsaws to lathes to laser cutters. While some Muggle building a table for drinking games is far lower in priority than a student with an actual project for class, it is still possible to find time (preferably after hours) to get on the equipment. Just stay supervised, kids.

THE BUILD There is no one way to build a beer pong table, but here is a simple formula (recommended by Kyle) that can get you the basics: start off by purchasing wood at the closest hardware store. You will need a good-sized piece of plywood (roughly 4x6 feet

at the largest) and several feet of two-by-fours to build legs. That—and a bunch of wood screws— should be all the hardware you need.

The plywood is already halfway there, but it could still probably use a good paint job. To begin, you’ll need primer to coat the porous surface.

Next, go to town with the paint job of your choosing. Protip: find someone with the art skills to create a stencil for you and bring some life to the design. Lastly, cover it up with some lacquer to seal in the paint and to keep the surface smooth and bouncy.

Finally, legs. This is optional, especially if you have no permanent space for a table and would rather just have the surface to lay down on top of a smaller table. But if you’re ready for a commitment, you can build wooden “sawhorses” to give the table some support.

The rest is limited only by your imagination.

Build some automatic ball washers? Stick cup holders on the sides? Drill in some LED lights?

All things we’d love to add in the future or see on tables at a frat house near you.

HOW TO

16 | FALL 2011

Buy plenty of wood screws and be sure to have at least a drill and proper screwdriver bits around.

While building from scratch is a possibility, sometimes it’s easier to work off of a pre-made table. We removed the top off of an old computer desk to use its legs, keyboard tray and drawer for storage.

PHOTOS AND ARTWORK: MAX BRAWER

Plywood is the most important material. Home Depot will cut it down to any size you request. We went for 2x6 to save space.

QUAD

what is going on around campus.

Free Style

By Ariana Bacle After dealing with his younger sister constantly scrutinizing his fashion choices, Weinberg sophomore Xander Shepherd sharpened up his style, swapping stripes-on-stripes for subtle striped socks—something little sis would surely approve of. North by Northwestern talked with this New York City native about why he’s not a hipster, what he wears to parties and why he is a self-proclaimed “sock person.”

Where do you shop?

There’s only like two brands that are kind of like my Achilles heel, like when I see it, I’m always drawn to it — Ben Sherman and Rugby. But beyond that, I don’t have a set style in the sense of, this is where I shop because they make clothes that I like. If I find something cool, I’ll buy it. A lot of people here label me unfairly as a hipster, but the funny thing is, I’m just as comfortable in really tight skinny jeans as I am in like, seersucker and a polo. I don’t have a certain style as much as if something fits well, I’m open to really wearing anything.

When did style become important to you?

I’ve come to realize that style became important at the end of eighth grade, beginning of high school. And it’s weird to admit this, but my style is really a product of my sister, who’s four years younger than me. I would take her to school in the morning and I would come out of my room and she’d say things like, “Xander, you have to go change your shirt,” and I’d be like, “Why?” and she’d say, “You can’t wear horizontal stripes with vertical striped pants,” and so I’d go and I’d change and I feel like that happened enough times for me to start to get a sense of what looked good with what, and I kinda went from there.

PHOTO: JOHN MEGUERIAN

Where do you get your style inspiration?

I just like clothes that fit well. That’s really the first criteria. I was always really scrawny when I was little and the problem would be that I could never find clothing that fit. It always kinda looked like I was drowning in my own clothes. So I guess the real inspiration is if it fits well, that’s really what I look for. I like stripes a lot. It just sort of happens though. I get up in the morning and grab whatever I see and I hope that when I put it on, it’s going to look fine.

What is your favorite style item?

Socks. I’m a big sock person. It’s actually kind of a new thing. I used to wear regular socks every day, then I realized that socks are a very important part because you can either wear really boring white socks or you can spice it up. People don’t really see your socks that often, but you know you have nice socks and if people see it for a second, it’s just sort of like a touch that “oh.

He thought enough to put on cool socks rather than like, a pair of Champion white socks.” So I have a pretty funny sock collection. My friends all kind of make fun of me for it.

Let’s say you’re going to a party, what do you wear?

I go for a button-down, sometimes I throw on a cardigan, and I like skinny jeans and beat-up Converse. So like flannel, skinny jeans, beat-up Converse.

Shoes, John Varvatos; pants, Modern Amusement; socks and jacket, Rugby; shirt, Theory northbynorthwestern.com | 17

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Who You Gonna Call?

Rabbi Klein is a part-time ghostbuster. By Anca Ulea

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18 | FALL 2011

donated all of it to the Chabad Organization.

Now instead of actively ghostbusting, he talks about his first experience dealing with supernatural spirits in a fireside called “Angels, demons, and ghosts: confessions of a Jewish ghostbuster.” In this fireside, which he presents each year around Halloween to Northwestern students, he also describes the different ethereal spirits recognized in Judaism.

“Judaism says that coexisting with this physical dimension are spiritual realities and spiritual dimensions,” Klein says. “When we talk about angels, there are positive angels, that want to reveal good in the world, and there are what we call demons, that are negative angels.”

In addition to angels and demons, which are agents of God, a third group exists in the spiritual dimension, which Rabbi Klein calls ghosts. But Klein’s idea of what “ghost” means is probably different from yours.

“A ghost, typically speaking, from a Jewish perspective, is a negative energy source that enters into an arena and can sometimes take on a physical form,” Klein says.

But the first time he solved a ghost problem, Klein says, he didn’t believe there were ghosts at all. What he sensed instead, when he visited the man’s workplace, was another spiritual entity: a dybbuk.

A dybbuk, according to Jewish lore, is a Jewish soul that has been blocked from reaching heaven and is stuck in Limbo.

“In Jewish tradition, we say that once a person dies, his soul or her soul is in Limbo,” Klein says. “During that period in time, it’s very painful for the soul.”

The only way the soul can escape Limbo and move on to the spiritual world is if the body is buried as soon as possible, Klein explains.

Even if parts of the body become separated during life or death, all of the parts must be buried in order for the soul to continue on.

“Sometimes the soul will force its way back into this world and it can enter into another human being and possess it or it can just float into a specific location,” Klein says. “It wants to communicate with people in this world to help it escape Limbo.”

Klein says that he doesn’t have any special supernatural powers that help him detect ghosts, but instead attributes his heightened perception to his intuition and spirituality.

“Yes, I’ve studied mystical things, which refines a person, but I’ve also trained myself not just to see the surface,” Klein says. “Sometimes we get so carried away in our corporeal self that we’re not in touch with our soul. But the soul can see a lot, a lot more sometimes than our corporeal self. That’s an acquired trait, to be able to be in touch with one’s soul.”

Despite his successes in ghostbusting ventures, Rabbi Klein says he’s not planning on increasing his participation in spiritual extermination. Instead, he hopes to continue to do what he really loves: advising and making connections with students.

“My rabbi used to say that his job is to help people reach their light switch so that they can turn it on,” Klein says. “I see that as part of my responsibility and job, that I have to help people reach their own light switch so they can create the miracle of their own life.”

PHOTO: JOHN MEGUERIAN

he first time Rabbi Dov Hillel Klein was asked to be a ghostbuster, a man called and asked him for help getting rid of the ghosts that had taken over his building. Klein’s answer was straight and to the point. “Maybe ­— but I can’t do it today. I could come maybe Sunday, but it has to be after I play baseball.”

The Rabbi has his priorities in order.

Known as somewhat of a renaissance man, Klein holds many official positions on campus.

He is the executive director and founder of the Tannenbaum Chabad House Jewish Center, which is part of the campus ministry. He is also the kosher manager for the university’s kosher food program, a faculty fellow at the Communications Residential College, and Senior Chaplain of the Evanston Police Department, a position which has earned him the nickname “Rabbi Cop.” Rabbi Klein also has had an interesting array of past employments and hobbies. On top of all his responsibilities on campus, Rabbi Klein has dabbled in cult-busting, worked as a photographer for the Chicago Tribune, and had his own sports radio show. And of course, he still plays baseball.

As for ghostbusting, Klein says that although he has done it a few times, it’s not his primary focus.

The first time the Rabbi attempted to rid someone of ghosts, he gave the man seeking help four steps to follow. A week later, he received a $10,000 check in the mail and the man’s gratitude for solving his ghost problem.

Instead of keeping the money, Rabbi Klein

The world’s largest comic book collection belongs to the Library of Congress. Gotta preserve our nation’s history!

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Comic Relief Josh Elder battled cancer, won, and even wrote a successful comic in the meantime. By Annalise Frank uring the seven months his life was in jeopardy, Northwestern graduate Josh Elder wrote a nationally syndicated comic.

The ’02 grad has come a long way from the day he was diagnosed with cancer nine years ago. Since then, he has worked every aspect of the comic book industry, from interning with DC Comics, to reviewing graphic novels for the Chicago Sun-Times, to putting his own comic ideas on paper. Recently, he moved to Los Angeles to become director of publishing at Legendary Comics, where he oversees production and runs all publishing operations.

In his work with comics, Elder has run the gamut of major U.S. media hubs, in cities including Los Angeles, New York and Chicago.

However, he first found his fit in the comic world at Northwestern while studying film.

“I said to my friend one day, ‘What if you could get a ninja out of those … crazy old ads they used to have [in the back of comic books]?’” says Elder. “And my friend said, ‘Dude, that’s the best idea you ever had,’ and he was right.”

As an RTVF major, Elder’s passion for screenwriting led him to draft what was originally planned as a short film about a boy who orders a bona-fide, sword-toting ninja from the back of a comic book. Elder soon realized his short film wasn’t going to work for two reasons: Ninjas are expensive, Elder says, and parents might be wary of letting their children play with college students and sharp weapons.

“So, with the film option as a practical reality off the table, I thought, well, why don’t I just do it as a comic?” Elder says.

Elder’s ninja comic idea settled in his mind and matured throughout his college years into a concrete story called Mail Order Ninja.

The Mail Order Ninja script took shape at an unlikely time. Elder drafted it soon after his college career ended, while coping with the aftershock of an unexpected and sudden cancer diagnosis. A doctor at Searle Hall found the

PHOTOS COURTESY: JOSH ELDER

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Reading with Pictures, founded by Josh Elder, is a non-profit organization that advocates the use of comics as a literacy tool.

cancer about a month before Elder graduated.

Elder, complaining of chest pains in the Searle clinic one day, left soon after with a shadow on his chest X-ray and, later, a diagnosis of Hodgkin’s disease, a type of lymphoma.

His last column for the Daily Northwestern detailed his feelings on facing a disease with a real possibility of death.

“I was diagnosed with it Thursday, and it was one of the best things that ever happened to me,” Elder wrote in the column, published May 29, 2002 and titled “Recent diagnosis bad for the body, good for the soul.”

Elder had no idea what was going to happen in the future, or if he’d have one. He was facing a disease with roughly an 80 percent recovery rate, and at the same time, readying himself to leave the safe haven of college for a harsher world of adults and employment.

In a way, Elder’s disease was a motivator for his artistic ambitions. The script for Mail Order Ninja, soon to be successful, took shape between hospital visits and through months of painful treatment. “[I knew] that I’d make something that would outlive me, if that’s what it came down to, but at the same time, I was confident I would live to see it come to fruition,” says Elder.

Though he did have to shave his head and “all that fun stuff,” Elder says his hair has come back in nicely since then. It was a long seven months, but he’s been in complete remission for nine years now.

Elder hired illustrator Eric Owen to help bring his comic vision to life. On the edge of self-publishing Mail Order Ninja, he entered the comic, on a whim, into a contest for aspiring American graphic novel writers called Rising Stars of Manga. Mail Order Ninja won the grand prize, including a slot in the contest’s fifth anthology of winning comics. The contest, held by manga and English-language graphic novel publishing company TOKYOPOP, resulted in a book deal for Elder’s work and a syndication deal soon after. Mail Order Ninja ran in the Sunday editions of over 50 U.S. newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe, from January to June of 2007.

Elder says after Mail Order Ninja’s success, he became a sort of comic “ambassador” in his work as a public speaker, publisher and writer.

Comics taught Elder how to read when he was four years old, and decades later, Elder’s own comic creation, Mail Order Ninja, has been his final stepping stone into the professional world of comics. northbynorthwestern.com | 19

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The Naked Rapper Tad Duval just wants to show Northwestern the love. By Erin Kron

here are three things you need to know about Thadeus Duval. 1) He’s gay. 2) He has a small penis.

3) He’s a genius.

Or at least that’s how he likes to introduce himself — both at parties and in class.

Really, there’s a lot more needed to explain the bizarre, self-deprecating raps of the 21-yearold Bienen junior who made a splash at last February’s Rap for Darfur benefit concert. He reportedly used the n-word, insulted audience members and got naked on stage before he was kicked out. But the former classical double bass performer (now “ad hoc music” major) insists that while others may deem him offensive, this is just his way of showing the world he’s all about the love.

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THE ORIGINS OF WITHERBERRY

20 | FALL 2011

Want more Tad? Check out our video on northbynorthwestern. com. Not enough? Head to witherberry.com for the full monty.

PHOTO: ALEX ZHOU

The Miami native didn’t always want to be a rapper. Born in Paris to a Haitian artist father and an English mother who was in the entertainment business, he was exposed to the arts early on but was first drawn to classical music. After watching him practice Bach movements on the double bass for hours when he was in high school, Duval’s mom says she was surprised he began rapping. “I think he’s

a very talented lyricist,” Nina Duval says. “But personally I don’t like rap music.”

His transition away from classical music came when he transferred to jazz studies his sophomore year. Driven to catch up in his new bass discipline, he practiced upwards of 10 hours a day until he developed severe tendonitis in his arm. The debilitating inflammation prevents him from playing bass indefinitely.

His rap endeavors began last year when he took the year off, hoping that if he rested his arm he would be able to continue playing in the 2011-2012 school year. But in the meantime he got productive. Always a fan of rap, he began creating his own beats on his computer and rapping over them. Now he has produced a classical album, an electronic album, a mixtape and a rap album, all under the name “Witherberry.”

“On the Witherberry site, it says Witherberry stands for that gay, white, little-dick, heartfelt music,” Duval says.

“I don’t know if 10 years from now Witherberry is gonna exist, but those things are true.”

A year ago he wrote the original song “Bangs,” the subject of his first music video, filmed on a nude beach in his hometown. In it he raps (naked), “yes my dick is small/you can call

Q me a wankster.” While he doesn’t quite have bangs, he does have a faux middle-aged-balding haircut he started sporting when his hairline began receding during high school.

The resulting chorus is, “you can’t judge my bangs, nigga/you can’t judge my bangs.”

His raps don’t fit an archetype detailing a gangsta lifestyle, partying or sexual exploits. In “Bangs” he raps, “I was embarrassed to be gay in high school/now I’m a super nova.” In his music video where he samples the Beach Boys song “I Get Around” wearing only a Speedo, he holds up signs that read “my mommy and daddy pay for everything,” and, “I’ve totaled two cars,” acknowledging insecurities and confronting parts of his life that most students might consider the most embarrassing.

He says his inspiration for “Bangs” was the length of his penis.

“I just felt like I had a small penis,” Duval says. “So back around a year ago, I’d just go to parties naked, and I still do that.”

PHOTO: ALEX ZHOU

TAD, THE CONTROVERSY He hadn’t been performing his rap for long when he participated in STAND’s Rap for Darfur. Communication junior Brandon Daley (of Pokémon rap YouTube fame and a new mixtape titled “Coolest Brandon Ever,” released over the summer) was also participating in the event, and he started collaborating with Duval on raps after he saw the bizarre performance.

“As much as it was just one of the most horrifying events to ever be a part of,” Daley recalls, “It was also just like, really interesting.”

Daley witnessed Duval ask the students running the event if he could get naked during his songs. He says they said no and laughed, not expecting Duval was serious.

After he finished his song, Duval announced to the audience he would strip. He stood on stage waiting for his music to begin while the organizers stood in shock. “It was all these STAND girls running it backstage who were all too timid to pull him offstage because he’s just this naked, just this hairy, uncircumcised man,” Daley says. Finally the emcee pulled him off.

The organizers didn’t kick him out, but agreed to let him compete in the freestyle portion of the competition. “He went on stage and pretty quickly the n-word just slipped out, and not derogatorily,” Daley recalls, “but more so just in a friendly way.”

But the audience, many of whom were black, did not see the

friendliness behind his racial slurs and started booing him. He then tried to “equalize everyone,” in Daley’s words, allegedly pointing to audience members and saying their race with the n-word after it—“you a Jewish nigga, you a white nigga, you an Asian nigga.” A woman Daley described as “heavier set” stood up and yelled at Duval, saying his words were offensive.

“And he just points at her and snaps like, ‘you’re a fat bitch, no one has to listen to a fat bitch like you,” Daley says. The emcee kicked Duval off again while the other confused rappers finished the competition.

Though he calls himself a “straight-up white boy,” Duval comes from a multicultural background and says he never uses the n-word to offend, and he doesn’t consider himself racist. He compares it to his friends’ use of “fag.”

“I mean, if they are offensive to gay people, first of all, like, I don’t give a fuck, you know what I’m saying? It’s like, are they really homophobic? Are they really trying to offend people?” Duval explains. “Ya know it’s just like, I didn’t create the word, it’s a word that’s out there.”

Duval understands that his unusual behavior is what’s bringing attention to his music. But at the same time, he sees his behavior as honest, not just an image. “This is me, ya know what I’m saying?”

Duval says. “And when I’m naked that’s me. I’m not trying to shock you. That’s literally me.”

Duval has a philosophical belief of sorts regarding the n-word — if he says it in private then that’s who he is, and who he should be in public.

“Whether or not you agree with that at least he has a logical reason,” Daley explains.

THE 24/7 SELF Perhaps this logic of being “himself” 24/7 is what makes his strange public performance carry over into his every day life. His former roommate, Bienen senior Thom Schwartz, witnessed his odd behavior and attachment to rap percolate during Duval’s year off. Schwartz remembers when Duval introduced himself in their sophomore year jazz improv class. When the professor asked Duval to introduce himself to the class, Schwartz says he just stood up, “crotch-chopped” himself and sat back down. “That was my first real impression of him.”

Schwartz doesn’t claim to know much about rap, but describes Duval’s as underwhelming. “He’s a very, very talented jazz bassist and a very smart composer and so I think when

Daley (left) and Duval (right) rap at a party in Duval’s Garnett Place home. he said he was rapping I expected something out of the way crazy different, interesting,” Schwartz says.

“And when I first heard it, it didn’t really live up to my expectations.

Like, now it might. But that first impression, I was like oh, this kind of sounds like other people.”

But Tad’s mom sees it differently.

“His composing work, it’s really quite phenomenal,” Duval’s mother says. “At the moment he’s gone in another direction. It seems like he’s reinvented himself.”

Daley says he thinks Duval reasons his performance oddity as part of a social martyrdom. “He’s doing these things even though they’re hurting him socially and they’re making other people’s social lives more interesting,” Daley says.

“They’re also making people have an opinion about him.”

Though he cites much of his material as coming from insecurities, he hopes that listeners will be uplifted by his music. “When you listen to [my music] I want you to feel inspired to lead your life more positively. Like, I don’t give a fuck if you do drugs or whatever the fuck, but I don’t do drugs, I don’t drink, I mean, I have done those things, I’m saying, but I haven’t done those in like, over a year and a half now,” Duval says. “I walk around with a smile every fucking day, I show everybody love.”

Daley speculates that Duval’s dedication could make him successful in the long term.

“Tad is gonna go completely crazy trying to do this or he’s just going to develop a following and maybe get a viral video and like, maybe make a movement, man,” Daley says. “But, that’s harder to do than going crazy.” He paused. “I

have faith in him though.”

For now, Duval seems unsatisfied with the impression his music has made. At the time of press Duval’s censored YouTube version of “Bangs” had 864 hits. The uncensored Vimeo video had 2,669.

“I mean if it really connects with that many people the numbers will support it,” he says. “But I’m fuckin’ small ass fuckin’ fish right now.”

SHOWING THE LOVE On a Friday night, Duval performed with Daley at a party at Duval’s Garnett Place house. He covered up with his robe again afterwards, having scared away the party-goers with his naked rapping, spitting over new renditions of hits like “What is Love” blended with his original verses.

Behind his apparent exhibitionism and “I don’t give a fuck” attitude, his frustration at the audience response was clear. He didn’t want his rap to break up the party. He had to have gone into the performance hoping he could “inspire” and “uplift” the crowd, or he wouldn’t have been so disappointed at the result.

As soon as there was time to contemplate him as capable of feeling the sting of rejection, he was back to the smiles. “I love you, I love you, thank you, thank you,” he said to the room, returning to his overlyappreciative trope. It’s hard to dwell on the misfortunes of someone who doesn’t dwell on them himself.

There’s no way to know how he acted after everyone had left — if he drowned himself in tears or just sat quietly listening to classical music.

Most likely, he was thinking over his performance, practicing so he’d be better at a Ridge and Davis party the next night. All he wants is to show

northbynorthwestern.com | 21

profile

The Secret Life Of The American Professor Bode and Weldon swap school for skates in their free time. By Heather Devane The puck drops with a hollow clatter. Hockey sticks hit the ice. Faces concealed by masks follow the puck, guiding it to the netted goal. But a closer look at one masked face may surprise a few Northwestern students.

When Dr. Martina Bode first laced up her skates and wielded a hockey stick as a graduate student at Brandeis University, she did not envision herself returning to the sport several years later. Now director of calculus and a distinguished senior lecturer at Northwestern, Bode is a fullfledged double threat.

“It fits in nicely because it’s in the evening and weekends,” says Bode, a mother of two. “Basically it means that during the hockey season all I do is work and play hockey.”

Despite the time-crunched schedule of teaching, practicing and competing, she is in good company on her team, the Wilmette Cougars: other players include attorneys, yoga instructors, an eye doctor and staff from Weinberg and Kellogg.

“It’s a wonderful group of women; we’re like a family,” says Bode. And it is no mystery why these women cultivate a bond stronger than ice — the six-month season spanning from September to March has them practicing and competing between two and four times each week. The spring and summer seasons, though less time-consuming, are still prime for participating in tournaments, which Bode calls “pretty competitive.”

Like Bode, Michele Weldon, a Medill assistant professor of journalism, laces up her skates in her spare time. As if teaching, public speaking, writing, blogging and parenting weren’t enough, in January she picked up another intense activity: roller derby.

“People have the perception that you’re just shoving each other and it’s highly violent and crazy,” says Weldon. “It’s kind of funny because they think just because you use your brain for a living that you can’t participate in a sport.”

As a member of the Windy City Rollers, the Medill alum straps on protective gear and hits the track weekly. Although she currently has no ambition to move past the intermediate level, she has proven that roller derby is not just for the aggressive type.

“My sisters all said, ‘Oh you’re going to fall, you’re going to get hurt,’” says Weldon, who has been teaching since 1996. “I’m not completely uncoordinated. I just thought it would be a really good time, and it really — it’s a blast.”

Michele Weldon is a Medill professor by day and a roller derby competitor by night.

PAIN PIE

22 | FALL 2011

ICE HOCKEY Lower body

Other

27%

Knee

31%

Shoulder

12%

Foot or ankle

15%

Head and face

42%

46% Upper body

27%

PHOTO: JOHN MEGUERIAN

A breakdown of the most common injuries in these collision sports. Source: British Columbia Injury Research and Prevention and The American College of Sports Medicine

ROLLER DERBY

Q

Keeping Up With Kara One band’s not enough for this senior songstress. By Eric Brown here is a crowd of people standing on a Chicago street corner on a warm summer evening, happily shouting and intermittently clapping. The mass of people could be cheering for a talented juggler or a street painter, but then a woman’s voice becomes discernible, carrying easily through the humid air and accompanied by the resonant melody of an acoustic guitar. Dancing audience members — about 40 of them — surround the young busker, guitar case open for tips as she casually takes suggestions from the cluster of people. Sounds like something out a movie, right? It’s just how Kara Goldsmith spent one evening this summer.

“If you really ever find that you don’t think that you’re confident as a performer, that you don’t think that you can do it—well, being in a situation like that puts you out there,” says Goldsmith, a Communication senior with a penchant for songwriting and performing. “It’s just balls-to-thewalls, lay it all out and that’s what I want to try to strive to do every time that I perform.”

Goldsmith’s strategy has worked so far. Since she started playing the guitar as a sophomore in high school, Goldsmith has been a part of numerous ensembles, won songwriting awards and had her music featured in the iTunes store. At Northwestern, Goldsmith has played a major role in the Niteskool program, which was designed to

PHOTO COURTESY: JUSTIN BARBIN

T

promote student musicians on campus, and she frequently DJs WNUR’s Rock Show.

Luis Pineiro is the drummer for The Cables, a group Goldsmith founded for the 2011 Mayfest Battle of the Bands. He says that the singer’s passion for music is infectious.

“She’s just a lover of music; she just has a really strong passion for that and it can be manifested in any way,” says Pineiro, a Communication junior. “She’s always inviting and welcoming and doing something musical, in one way or another, and that translates to the rest of the group. The rest of us want to be there with that same energy, and bring that same passion to the table.”

Although Goldsmith has been a performer for most of her life, singer-songwriter hasn’t always been the role of her choice. As a kid, Goldsmith channeled her enthusiasm for music into choirs and musical theater. It wasn’t until high school that Goldsmith began to branch out from “the little microcosm of musical theater” she was familiar with, and came across the genre of music — influenced by artists like Joni Mitchell and Iron & Wine — that has become her trademark.

Another reason for Goldsmith’s success is her refusal to conform to musical archetypes.

“Female-fronted bands are not something that’s that typical,” says Goldsmith, referencing both The Cables and an earlier Northwestern project, Kara & The Creepers. “I definitely see that

there’s kind of this need for more bands with a female leading the way.”

Goldsmith is part of the girls-only a cappella group Significant Others, and she has further pursued femme rock by performing with her friend Ursula Ellis both with The Cables and as a duo in New York City.

“She definitely has the ability to amass a following and to get people excited,” says Ellis, a Communication senior who sings and plays mandolin. “She’s versatile. It’s great fun playing with her.”

Although she’s an RTVF major, Goldsmith is sure she wants to continue with a career in music after she graduates in June.

“Without music I don’t know what I’d be doing,” she says. “I’d like to work for a record label or something, while trying to pursue my own musical endeavors. Even if I’m writing songs for other artists to sing or writing songs for licensing on reality TV shows, I just want to continue writing songs, even if it’s something I have to do on the side.”

Ultimately Goldsmith’s goal is to find a medium where she can express herself the way she wants to.

“It’s kind of like when you have these ideas in your head, and it sounds stupid, but you have to get them out,” Goldsmith says. “You don’t want to stop because it’s very addicting. It’s therapy, but it’s also scary.” northbynorthwestern.com | 23

tech

The Weightless Wonder flies over the Gulf of Mexico.

Flying Free In MicroG Not even gravity can hold down this team of student scientists. By Lindsey Kratochwill

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24 | FALL 2011

ago. It took time and research, but NUMG decided to tackle the problem of buoyancy in zero gravity — or rather, the lack thereof. With Earth’s gravity, bubbles in a liquid can float to the surface and pop, thanks to buoyancy. In space, however, bubbles will sit on the bottom surface. This becomes a problem because they will coat the surface of things like radiator pipes and heat will not flow through the surface as efficiently.

“Also, our experiment used electrolysis, which is where you are generating your running current through the fluid and you’re generating bubbles on the surface of the electrodes,” Coffel says. “And so if the surface becomes coated with bubbles, the electrolysis slows down.”

“And eventually stops,” Mills says. “Other people in the past — this is a big problem — have looked at mechanical means of just sweeping bubbles off the surface or trying to shoot bubbles off to recover efficiency.”

But the NUMG project looked at the cathode geometry. In other words, the properties of the solid surface that could encourage bubbles to release from the surface in a buoyancyabsent environment.

They are still crunching the numbers from the experiment, but the real magic happened for 20 seconds at a time.

NUMG was one of several teams from schools across the country chosen, to travel to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas this summer. They got to participate in a flight week, part of NASA’s Microgravity University program. This was the culminating event for their microgravity research.

In order to test their experiment in microgravity, they went up into the Weightless

Wonder, or Vomit Comet, depending on whom you talk to.

“It feels like you jumped off a high dive, that first moment when you’re falling,” Coffel says about the experience. “And it’s very strange to just float off the ground.”

The walls are padded, and professionals in blue suits are on hand to turn those who are head over heels right side up. It’s not uncommon for people to begin to float upside down, and with only 20 seconds of microgravity at a time, it could get dangerous.

“You have to realize and be aware of the fact that it’s 20 seconds and then it’s 2 Gs. Not only do you fall on the floor, but you’re like bam on the floor,” Mills says.

The rig, which Mills calls “a little tank,” worked fairly autonomously when they were in the air. It weighs about 200 pounds and measures about 3 feet by 2 feet, in a steel frame.

It had to be a pretty solid piece of equipment, contained with polycarbonate boxes to ensure that it could survive a crash (about 9 Gs). The equipment was mostly constructed in the Ford building, with a little help from some engineers. Though, after all the work they’ve done, Mills feels as though she might just deserve an honorary engineering degree.

For Mills’ and Coffel’s senior year, they want to see the group expand.

“It’s the usual undergrad research experience on steroids,” Mills says. “You think you have critical thinking before — you’re solving your own little problems. There’s nothing like when something goes wrong.”

But this year, the team is going to take a break and analyze their data from the flight.

It is what Mills calls a labor of love, and in the end, “it’s all worth it.”

PHOTO: NASA REDUCED GRAVITY FLIGHT PROGRAM

ate into the afternoon, students still dot the front room of the Integrated Science Program house on Noyes Street. Staring intently at a screen or discussing the numbers and lines scrawled across the chalkboard, their work seems common, what would be expected from any academic building on campus. But last year, a team of students used this small house for something pretty big: conducting microgravity research.

“NASA has this competition that one of our members, Katie [Jaycox], found and sent around. I mean, it’s kind of a unique experience — you get to fly on the Weightless Wonder,” says Weinberg junior Ethan Coffel, a member of the five-person team Northwestern University Microgravity Group (NUMG).

Neither Coffel nor Weinberg junior Jenny Mills, one of his teammates, had ever studied microgravity before. There was no Northwestern team that had participated in the competition before, so Coffel emailed some friends and got a team together. But the learning curve proved difficult.

“It took a while,” Coffel says. “We were reading through [previous projects] that had been done and reading through other papers on somewhat current microgravity research just to try to figure out what was an active topic to look at.”

The opportunity allows students to choose and design their own research topic, then test it out in microgravity.

“You normally have the experience of doing the research, but you don’t have the experience of choosing what to do, planning out how to do it,” Coffel says.

The project started about a year and a half

Q

Engineering Innovation Inside Northwestern’s artificial intelligence program. By Shaunacy Ferro or most people, artificial intelligence means C-3PO, the Jetsons’ robotic maid, that Steven Spielberg movie or maybe IBM’s Watson, the computer system that beat the two most successful contestants on “Jeopardy!”

For Larry Birnbaum, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science who also works with the Knight News Innovation Lab, artificial intelligence often means something much less grand. “One of the things about A.I. is that it’s a very romantic field,” he says. “But when you look at the individual components, it’s a lot more technical work. Taken individually none of that seems very romantic, and yet the result is pretty impressive.”

Birnbaum and his colleague, Kris Hammond, run the Intelligent Information Laboratory, which focuses on decoding and replicating the way humans deal with information. That might mean creating a program that can perform the tasks of a human researcher, such as predicting what news articles might be interesting to an Internet user. Birnbaum works in the lab with colleagues in Medill and is developing a program that can identify all of the “pork” in a legislative bill.

The hurdles most challenging to an artificial intelligence programmer can seem trivial to a human brain. Understanding that recommended articles need to be similar to the original seems obvious, but understanding what key differences make a new article worth someone’s time is not. A low-salt version of a recipe might be useful, but a political article wouldn’t have a low-salt version; it would have conservative or a liberal version.

Patrick McNally, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in Birnbaum’s lab, sums up the disparity between what is trivial to a human and what is trivial for a computer as he’s explaining “Manatee,” a system he created to automatically generate webcomics. “This is a more ‘artificial intelligence-y’ project,” he says, as the program takes a noun and searches the Internet for something often held in opposition. The results are put into expressions like “Whatever absorbs your oil spills” or “I like thrills like I like flights – cheap” which are placed over a Google image of the noun. “Depending on your perspective it’s a little more hardcore or a little more frivolous.”

One of his newer projects merged the three panel comic style of “Manatee” with a more news-oriented bent, relying on Twitter data instead of user-requested words. Using Google, the system determines what people in the world are talking about, like sports events, political speeches or natural disasters, and overlays tweets about those subjects on a Google image that’s related. It’s not perfect — sometimes the Google image is of an NHL

PHOTO: JOHN MEGUERIAN

F

game while the tweet is about the NFL, but McNally says sometimes that makes people pay more attention to what they’re seeing. “I’ll often hear people walking down the hall and they’ll stop, you know, for 30 seconds and then they’ll continue walking down the hall and I’ll be like ‘Yeah! It worked.’”

His office is filled with monitors which flash streams of tweets involving the words ‘I love,’ from “I love Cheetos” to “I love boobs” to “I love my dad.” According to the volume of data he gets per day, he says people use the phrase ‘I love’ four times a second.

“Twitter’s like a miracle to me. I can’t believe so many people are willing to pour out so much stuff every day.”

And in a field that sometimes requires huge amounts of data to be successful, Twitter can be a blessing. Shawn O’Banion, another Ph.D. student in Birnbaum’s lab, uses data from Twitter to create personal news recommendations. Most of the “recommended for you” stories on websites are generated by analyzing the things you’ve previously clicked on, but his project “Twitter Profiling” combs through your Twitter feed and matches articles to what it perceives as your interests. If you tweet about fall, for instance, it might suggest you try a new pumpkin recipe, because so many stories that mention the fall season also include the word pumpkin. “I don’t actually assign importance to the word ‘pumpkin,’” O’Banion explains.

“The system parses through these thousands of stories and it has an algorithm that calculates the importance of it.”

The large amount of data he receives from Twitter allows him to train his system and fine-tune its algorithms.

“Using Twitter is a good source of information because even though people use it in different ways, it usually says something about your personal interests,” he says. “It’s not just this combination of your personal life, your daily activities but also a platform for sharing information.” If you tweet about a baseball game, the system will recognize that and suggest sports

stories to you, but if you tweet a news story about a new Android tablet, it will recognize your interest in technology.

Though it seems hard to bare your soul in 140 characters, it turns out Twitter can be an incredibly revealing platform. “One thing I love about Twitter is it’s real people saying things,” McNally says. “So it’s wildly inappropriate most of the time, it’s often quite racist. It’s pretty real compared to other things.”

northbynorthwestern.com | 25

campus

Think picking up one package is bad? Try eight. Read about Ezra’s experience at northbynorthwestern.com.

Mailroom Mayhem Where did your care package end up? By Ezra Olson How long does it really take for your dorm’s mailroom to deliver your care package? North by Northwestern sent a package to each of Northwestern’s eight mailrooms and tracked their respective travel times. The U.S. Postal Service says each package took two business days to reach a mailroom, but in some cases, the long-awaited package slips took their sweet time.

ALLISON Sent: Mon. Sept. 19 Received: Fri. Sept. 23

PLEX Sent: Mon. Sept. 19 Received: Wed. Sept. 21

WILLARD Sent: Mon. Sept. 19 Received: Wed. Sept. 21

BOBB Sent: Mon. Sept. 19 Received: Wed. Sept. 21

ELDER Sent: Mon. Sept. 19 Received: Wed. Sept. 21

KEMPER Sent: Mon. Sept. 26 Received: Fri. Sept. 30

Oh, I hope you didn’t actually plan on reading for that class.

SARGENT Sent: Fri. Sept. 23 Received: Tue. Sept. 27

Sent: Mon. Sept. 19 Received: Thur. Oct. 6

1

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4

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TIME (IN DAYS) 26 | FALL 2011

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. . . 17 days later. . .

ILLUSTRATIONS: ALEXIS SANCHEZ

HINMAN

Q

The Vocal Minority Students outside the political mainstream want to be heard. By Christie Thompson n Oct. 5, roughly 30 students gathered around a conference table in Kresge scattered with newsprint and flyers. An undergrad in a Franz Kafka T-shirt sat next to someone wearing a purple polo and a heavy silver watch.

Students traded anecdotes on Kellogg studies and bemoaned midterms. The only semblance of a leader was a guy with a somewhat officiallooking clipboard. They were all there to start a revolution.

Well, maybe not immediately. But at the first meeting of NU Socialists, they talked about work around the world to overthrow the capitalist system. At a time when thousands are occupying cities across the U.S. and popular uprisings are throwing out autocrats in the Middle East, the possibility has never seemed more real to them.

“More people than ever are thinking about these questions,” says environmental engineering graduate student Lauryn Flizeer, who organized the first meeting of the group.

She may be right. Gallup estimates President Obama’s job approval ratings are at an all-time low of 40 percent. For some, it’s the continuation of two wars. For others, it’s our still-flailing economy and the looming threat of post-grad unemployment. Those who have long been in the political minority have a new opportunity to gain legitimacy among a potentially disparaging Democratic majority on campus.

“Maybe it wasn’t the George W. Republicans who were the problem,” says registered Democrat and Medill senior Josh Freund.

Freund sees a growing discontent among his peers. “Now we have a Democrat in here and it’s still a problem. Maybe we need Ron Paul,” he says with a laugh. He’s only half kidding.

Sophomore and Republican Laura Rollick isn’t laughing. She thinks Ron Paul is exactly what we need. But at Northwestern, it’s a position she’s grown used to silencing. “I feel like everyone here thinks they share the same political beliefs,” she says. She remembers an instance in class when a teacher said Sarah Palin was a disgrace to womanhood. “Everyone in the class laughed except for me,” Rollick says.

ILLUSTRATION: ALEXIS SANCHEZ

O

While she wasn’t nervous about attending a predominantly liberal-leaning school, having had mostly Democrat friends in high school, her parents were less sure. Her once-conservative brother had returned from college with two arm tattoos he’d designed himself, a coat of black dye over sandy-blonde hair and newly liberal beliefs to match. “[My parents] were more protective of me after my brother’s views changed so much,” Rollick says. “They would slip it into a side conversation that Northwestern is a really liberal school.”

She managed to find a like-minded community in NU Students for Life. With 11 steady members, they’re trying to revive a once-dead club and start conversation on the issue of abortion. While Rollick says most students are polite, they’ve heard a few snide remarks at the activities fair (“Pro-life club? Seriously?”).

But despite her involvement, Rollick still has a hard time speaking up when someone makes a comment against Catholicism or Christianity. She’s worried about “forcing her beliefs” on students who seem to disagree.

“I feel guilty, but sometimes I just ignore [disrespectful remarks]. I should stand up for my beliefs,” she says. “I’m not being true to myself or God.” Joe, a Communication junior, has always welcomed the rare opportunity to speak out about his libertarianism—everywhere but the office, that is. He asked to be referred to by first name only, as he fears for his paying job at a legal website.

“If they knew I was a libertarian, I’d be much more likely to be fired for small mistakes,” he says.

But in the classroom or the frat house, Joe says he has at least one substantial political debate a day. He comes by it honestly, with a Republican father (who refers to Joe’s views as “asinine”), a Democrat mother and an aunt and uncle who are a socialist and a diehard conservative, respectively.

Political discourse is something of a tradition in his family. They debate the death penalty and reasonable doubt over lasagna before turning on a Chiefs game.

“Republicans and Democrats both propose solutions that assume government can solve problems. I, as a libertarian, disagree with that premise,” says Joe, who says he’s not an anarchist, but he’s “pretty damn close.” Beyond limited national defense and the rule of law to protect property rights, Joe sees little that can’t be more effective if privatized.

“I sound extreme, but when you look at how it plays out in practice, I’m not that different from a lot of people,” he says.

Most people still think of libertarianism as a fringe group, or a college novelty you might try out. “I’ve been told [by my mom] that I do it for attention,” Joe says. “She’s wrong.”

Self-described “third-world socialist” Christopher De Notto is used to the same disregard for his political standing.

“My dad just finds it funny,” De Notto says.

“He thinks I’m going to learn someday when I have to find a job in the real world, [that] socialism doesn’t work in the way you imagine it will.”

But as this Bienen senior sees it, you can’t have capitalism without neo-colonial oppression. The only solution is to throw out the whole system. That’s the difference between him and his Democrat counterparts.

“The most fun is when you have a left winger who thinks that they are the epitome of leftism and liberalism,” De Notto says with a somewhat mischievous enthusiasm. He says he has yet to come across someone further left than him. “[Democrats] still aren’t going far enough in their goals. They’re almost being hypocritical saying that they support American workers when they support a system that perpetuates oppression.”

He understands his more extreme views are hard for many to accept. But if he can’t create a socialist majority at Northwestern, he can at least work to move past the debilitating crazy college liberal stereotypes.

“If you can’t convince people to our side, at least convince them that we’re not Joseph Stalin, or not stupid Che Guevara T-shirt-wearing individuals,” De Notto says.

For political minorities on campus, it’s a goal that may be closer now than ever before. northbynorthwestern.com | 27

campus

All Ears When Northwestern’s ready to talk, they’ll be ready to listen. By Camille Beredjick

Talking about our imperfections is easier said than done, but a new student group says mental health doesn’t have to be anyone’s dirty little secret. NU Active Minds (NUAM), a branch of the national mental health awareness organization Active Minds, launched in the winter as a forum for students to talk about mental health issues.

NUAM Co-President Jinny Lee, who founded Northwestern’s chapter of the organization, says mental illness is tough to talk about—and not just at Northwestern, but also on college campuses across the country. She founded NUAM to help dispel the stigma surrounding mental disorders at Northwestern. “People either don’t know much about mental disorders or [don’t know] how common they are around campus,” the Communication senior says.

The group held its first event, NU PostSecret, in the spring. Modeled after Frank Warren’s famous “PostSecret” project, more than 200 students wrote their “secrets” on postcards to be displayed at the Rock. In October, NUAM presented a panel called Stigma in which four undergrads spoke about their experiences with mental illness.

Co-President Shaina Coogan says the events are a way to put faces to mental disorders that can otherwise be filed away in textbooks as vocabulary terms. “Sometimes there’s this mentality of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ [as if] we’re normal and they’re the ones with the problem, when really people we see every day feel these things,” says the Weinberg junior. “We wanted people to know mental disorders are more common than they think and it’s really OK to talk about it, and absolutely OK to seek help for it.”

Throughout the year, NUAM will hold open meetings where all students are welcome to come talk about issues relating to mental health. They’ll also have resources available for students who need help.

“We’re trying to bring the community together,” Lee says. “[Students are] afraid to talk about their own problems and other people’s problems. We want to make it a friendlier community.” ­—CB

veryone has off days. For some, it’s stress from finals or a bad mood from gloomy weather. For others, it’s a little more serious. No matter what’s got you down, a new student group called NU Listens has your back. Northwestern’s new peer listening organization is set to be up and running by the spring, offering students a place to come in and just vent.

Weinberg junior and NU Listens founder and director Miriam Mogilevsky says mental health is a “nonissue” at Northwestern. She says students have a hard time opening up about what’s ailing them — some may be concerned about the stigma attached to mental illness, she guesses — and she wanted to help get students talking.

After some research, she found at least 16 of the U.S. News and World Report top 20 schools in the country provided a kind of peer listening support service to their students, and Northwestern wasn’t one of them. Last spring, Mogilevsky started planning NU Listens, envisioning a place where any student can turn for unconditional support. “[Northwestern] is one of those places where it’s super tough in many ways and a lot of people, especially as freshmen, feel lost,” she says. “This is going to be the one place where you always know that people care and are ready to listen to you.”

The group’s name is an acronym: “Listens” stands for Lending Immediate Support To Every Northwestern Student. The goal of the group isn’t to provide therapy or “fix” anyone, Mogilevsky says, but to provide a safe space where Northwestern students can openly discuss their problems with a peer who’s ready to listen. Listeners will be trained to recognize if a student needs professional help and will be able to recommend therapists and psychiatrists in the area.

“Many people are very, very hesitant about going and talking to an adult or a professional,” Mogilevsky says. “Not only are we there for people who don’t really need medical attention, but we’re also there as a stepping stone for those who do.”

Modeled after peer listening programs at Harvard and other top universities, NU Listens will train about 30 peer listeners in basic psychology, empathetic listening, diversity sensitivity and other skills. Listeners will also sign a confidentiality oath. Two peer listeners will be

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available every night to listen to students who come in to talk. Listeners’ bios and shifts will be posted online ahead of time so students can arrange to speak with a particular listener or keep in touch with someone to whom they felt a strong connection. “If someone is a person of color or they’re a member of the LGBT community and they want to talk to someone who also belongs to those communities, we want that to be an option,” Mogilevsky says.

Barrett Leider, a transfer student from Colorado College, says he had a hard time connecting with the student body at his previous school. He says NU Listens would be a meaningful way for him to get involved on campus. “It seems almost like a no-brainer for a college to have this sort of service to offer the students,” the Communication sophomore says. “It’s valuable to have someone trustworthy to talk to.”

Freshmen especially may find peace of mind through an organization like NU Listens, according to Weinberg freshman Meredith Goodman. She knew she wanted to be involved in peer counseling before she came to college, and she learned about NU Listens through a Google search before she got to Northwestern.

Students at Northwestern have been there for her as she adjusts to college life, she says, and now she wants to give back as a peer listener.

“I have had countless students help me with all the problems that arose during band camp and orientation,” Goodman writes in an email. “NU Listens is just another way in which Northwestern students support each other.”

Mogilevsky said she knows students may not come pouring in right away; opening up to anyone is intimidating, and it will take some time for students to get used to NU Listens. But more than half of Northwestern students use CAPS, according to figures they provided. She says she anticipates a similar response to NU Listens, even if it takes a little while.

“We’ll probably have some nights where we’re sitting there doing homework and playing Bananagrams because no one comes in, but I think that’s going to change,” she says.

When NU Listens finally takes off, Mogilevsky hopes it will thrive long after the founding members’ graduations. To open up the conversation about mental health at Northwestern, all students have to do is start talking — and listening.

ILLUSTRATION: RHAINA COHEN

SHATTERING STIGMA

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From Fucksaw To Front Page

ILLUSTRATION: ALYSSA KELLER

How University Relations manages our many scandals. By Jordyn Wolking

Imagine a university crisis happens – another Brothelgate, perhaps, or a sex toy demonstration at the Rock. The media goes crazy while students, alumni and parents demand explanations. The university has to release a statement — one that is tactful and truthful, pleases as many people as possible and, ideally, lets the university maintain its public image.

This is where Vice President of University Relations Alan Cubbage and his 40-person staff step in. They are responsible for media relations, the Northwestern News website and publications such as the alumni magazine.

“We support all areas of the university through a variety of communications,” Cubbage says, listing Facebook, Twitter, multiple publications and the website. “Our duty is to make the rest of the university look good.”

In a situation with issues of public concern that have potential legal implications, Tom Cline, Northwestern’s general counsel, helps to develop an appropriate message. He says there can be tension between the university’s goal of being transparent and the legal restrictions on some information, such as during a lawsuit.

“From a public relations perspective, the rule of thumb is to get as much of the story out as you can,” Cline says. “We’ll work with University Relations to draw the line in what can be discussed and what can’t.”

Another issue he deals with is choosing appropriate responses to inaccurate or incomplete stories. A response might prolong the story’s time in the media, but some corrections are worth making.

“Even if it’s a short news cycle, if years later you get a brand new issue that is similar in scope, a reporter will go back through the old news,” Cline says. “They’ll pick up the old story and reprint the inaccurate information.”

Cline rarely speaks to the media, because the rule of thumb is to refer all requests to University Relations. Although there may be legal constraints, university officials must stick together, which prompted Cubbage to respond with “whatever President Schapiro said” to

a question about conflicting press releases during last year’s debacle over the course on human sexuality.

In most cases, this means Cubbage is brought to the forefront. For example, seven former basketball and football players were indicted by federal grand juries in 1998 for point-shaving and betting on their own losses.

The university initiated the investigation and turned over their information, which Cubbage says helped improve Northwestern’s situation, but that did not make the announcement easy.

“The U.S. attorney talks about how this is a betrayal and what a great shame it is and then, ‘now Mr. Cubbage will speak for the university,’” he recalls. “That’s not a great day.”

As a Northwestern alum and professor who has held his position as vice president for 12 years, Cubbage has learned to keep his cool when people insult his beloved alma mater.

More importantly, he sees plenty of humor in his job.

For example, in 1999, a senior named Ryan Du Val painted a replica of the Sistine Chapel on his Bobb-McCulloch ceiling. When told the University intended to paint over the artwork, Du Val got a lawyer. The story made national news, even an appearance in People magazine, and the university decided to let him keep it for the year rather than face a lawsuit.

“Northwestern students are a very creative lot,” Cubbage says. “You have to have a good sense of humor.”

Cubbage compares his staff to stagehands, making sure the set is just right and the students and faculty members are in the spotlight. Usually, the staff remains invisible, and that is just the way he believes it should be.

“Nobody ever came out of their undergraduate years and said, ‘boy, I had a great communications vice president,’” explains Cubbage. “They don’t know who I am, and they shouldn’t know who I am. The only time that I think our office comes to the fore is when things go wrong and then that’s when you put your mud-spattered PR guy out to be the frontman.”

THE MAN BEHIND THE STATEMENT Depending on your height, the first image seen on Vice President for University Relations Al Cubbage’s office door collage varies. While some of the adornments are more recognizable, like a Chicago Tribune’s RedEye cover about the cancellation of the Human Sexuality class, the overall décor of the door says a lot about Northwestern — and Cubbage.

“This was a baseball game in Tokyo — I was there last year with President Schapiro,” he said then gestured to a yellow paper in the door’s center. “This is, of course, ‘Gambling scandal rocks Northwestern,’ probably 12 or 13 years ago, when seven of our former football players and basketball players were indicted for perjury and pointshaving, so that was a fun day.”

That headline refers to when, in two separate incidents, two former basketball players and a former football player were indicted for point-shaving and four former football players were indicted on perjury charges for betting on their own games.

However, not everything on the door is negative. In the center of the door, there’s a Y2K warning the university prepared. It reads, “Northwestern University is closed because of Y2K-related problems” and lists several Y2K-specific hotlines for students.

“I was in the basement of the Jacobs Center at midnight on the 31st and, you know, nothing happened,” he says. “So we had about 2,000 of these posters ready to go, but we didn’t use them.”

There is also memorabilia from Northwestern’s sesquicentennial, or 150th birthday, placed just above the Y2K warning.

“We had a chartered El train that went down to Wrigley Field, where we actually had 9,000 people from Northwestern go to a Cubs game,” he said.

A series of clippings from syndicated comics like “Zits” and “Dilbert” have their own places on top or beneath other layers of things Cubbage finds interesting, like several wristbands from Cubbage’s bike ride to Kenosha and back.

“This is really sort of random, [it’s just] whenever something strikes my fancy,” Cubbage says.

Whether it’s a cut quote from an article about former professor David Protess declaring that, “With all due respect, Al Cubbage doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” or a humorous road sign photo Cubbage took in Scotland, his door offers great insight into Cubbage’s humble nature and sense of humor.

— Dawnthea Price northbynorthwestern.com | 29

campus

Watch one of Lokken and Stern’s animations at northbynorthwestern.com.

A still from “Bystander,” a Studio 22 short animated film in the works. At time of press, 91 frames have been drawn.

Now Arriving At Animation Station “Bystander” stands out in animation at Northwestern. By Tyler Fisher

30 | FALL 2011

goal is to get into lots of festivals,” Stern says. their second night of animating, the animators are Although the plot is simple, the animation simply learning to draw their characters. Lokken process is complicated and lengthy. The creators and Naylor point out flaws in their renditions and chose digital ink and paint as the animation style, offer suggestions for improvement. Class is in seswhich Disney has used for their most recent sion. Lokken gives a quick lesson to one animator animation films. Although Pixar and DreamWorks on perspective drawing as Naylor references stohave pioneered and popularized 3D computer ryboards to demonstrate a character’s personality. animation, “Bystander” is going for “that handGiven the tedium of exacting the drawing of drawn feel.” The process a character, the atmossimplifies traditional ink phere could be stifling, and paint by scanning but the room stays full the hand-drawn images, of laughter and enthen adding the color ergy. A Pandora station and piecing together pumps out doo-wop, the characters and the and one character’s background digitally. name jokingly shifts To achieve that, the The speed at which “Bystander” is shot. Most from George (short for other animated films run at 16 frames per second. Georgia) to Demon creators enlisted nine animators in addition to Spawn. There’s an air Lokken and Naylor, along with 10 complementary of excitement among all the participants. “Pixar digital painters, who add color to scanned veris the reason I wanted to study film,” says Ellen sions of the hand-drawn images; three backBarry, a Communication sophomore and animator ground artists, who draw the backgrounds behind for “Bystander.” “In WALL-E, I admire how they the characters; two composers, a sound designer say so much without any dialogue.” Similarly, and six compositors, who piece together the back“Bystander” has no dialogue. ground images and the character images.

With “Bystander,” the creators hope to not One Wednesday night, the creators and four only learn animation for themselves, but push the of the animators huddle into a small room in Louis boundaries of digital ink and print.

Hall to begin the animation process. Three of “Bystander” will show at the Studio 22 Prethe animators have light boxes, desks that hold miere in spring 2012. the paper in place while allowing a light to shine *Full disclosure: Stern contributes to North by Norththrough the box to allow for easier tracing. On western’s Writing Section.

24fps

PHOTO COURTESY: “BYSTANDER”

“When it comes to 2D hand-drawn animation at Northwestern, we are the department,” says Communication sophomore Robbie Stern. By “we,” he refers to the crew of “Bystander,” a Studio 22 animated short film that received the studio’s Special Projects grant. Although Northwestern had an animate arts adjunct major program through 2009, the program lost its funding and the university subsequently killed the major. So now, Stern, the producer, and Neil Lokken and Ryan Naylor, the film’s two directors, can be considered the heads of Northwestern’s animation program.

“Bystander” is the brainchild of Naylor, a Communication sophomore who came to Northwestern for that now-defunct animate arts program.

“I’ve had the concept with me since high school,” he says, but the project didn’t come to complete fruition until he had a “great brainstorm” with Lokken and Stern where they hashed out the plot.

Naylor took the ideas from the brainstorm and wrote the script.

The plot is simple enough. A single father gets promoted from his small-town job to a gig in New York City. Upon arriving, he discovers New York features everything from larger-than-life monsters to apocalyptic disasters to a ghost catcher chasing a ghost who is chasing a bride, all in about three to five minutes.

The three creators are hesitant to directly quote any film for fear of copyright infringement, so instead of a giant gorilla, there might be, as Lokken put it, a three-headed monster. “The main

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the quarter in culture.

Wearable Warmth Fight winter woes with innovative items. By Lindsey Kratochwill It’s no shock that winter can be a cruel bitch. But technological advancements are trying hard to fight back fashionably. Here are some practical and fantastical clothing items that promise a warmer winter this year.

Uniqlo HEATTECH Skinny Jeans, $49.00 Sure, snow pants may get the job done, but try something a little less bulky for a sleeker look.

Uniqlo has a whole line of warm clothing, from knit shorts to strange tube skirts to pants that are made of a special rayon fabric. When the fabric absorbs moisture created by the body, it generates tiny droplets that create heat. The clothing boasts perks such as heat retention (with fibers that capture air to prevent heat from escaping), and odor control, and it’s also quick dry and antistatic. So as a base or outer layer, Uniqlo’s HEATTECH products help you create your own warmth in the dead of winter.

ModCloth Texting Gloves, $16.99 Almost everyone has a smartphone, and with that heat sensitive touch screen, winter means sacrificing your poor fingers to the frigid winds to send a text or answer a phone call. Jabbing the screen desperately and futilely with a gloved finger will only lead to you look rather pathetic, and maybe drive you to use your nose to type out “see you soon.” No longer, with this stylish pair of gloves.

They have special fabric on the thumb and forefinger that allow you to text and maintain warmth.

Plus they evoke a time when people actually wore fancy driving gloves with regularity.

PHOTO: JOHN MEGUERIAN

Nordic Gear Lectra Battery Heated Socks, $29.00 Battery-powered socks seem kind of stupid, admittedly. But when you’re waiting for the Frostbite Express and your toes are slowly but surely going numb from cold, you’re going to want these heated socks. Sure, they might not be the most fashionable, but when they’re hiding beneath your Frye boots, does it really matter? These Nordic Gear socks are designed to bring your toes hours of maintained warmth and are even safe for those slushy days when your feet get wet.

CuteCircuit Hug Shirt, not yet available This may not solve a winter-related problem, but who couldn’t use a hug in -10 degree weather?

CuteCircuit, a London-based design company, created an innovative long-sleeved hooded shirt filled with sensors that “feel the strength of the touch, the skin warmth and the heartbeat rate of the sender.” It sends that sensation to your long distance loved one or far away family member also wearing The Hug Shirt. The Hug Shirt basically works hand-in-hand with your mobile phone,

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Weinberg senior Caroline Raul rocks the MuseMuffs. using Bluetooth sensors to send the data to the recipient’s phone, which then transmits it to their shirt. Isn’t science cool?

Ecouterre Subtitle Scarf, not yet available While this may not be useful to everyone, it’s a beautifully simple design that tackles an everyday problem for some. Calum Pringle, an interactivemedia student at University of Dundee in Scotland, created Subtle Subtitles. This scarf’s pocket houses a smartphone with an app designed to convert the wearer’s speech into subtitles for those listening. Pringle designed this specifically to help those affected by dysarthria, a motor speech disorder resulting from neurological injury.

MuseMuffs, $24.99 Earbuds don’t fare too well in the winter — whether you’re looking for warmth or sound quality. These MuseMuffs will plug into any of your music devices and keep the phat beatz going all winter long. You can either stick out against the frosty white of snow or blend into it with MuseMuffs’ variety of colors. They are also ideal for runners who may not be able to wear those big hipster headphones while on their brisk morning jog, but still want warm ears. To take it one step further, just plug a microphone cord in to your smartphone and attach the other end to the MuseMuffs. Remember those gloves? These earmuffs could make for a great complement. northbynorthwestern.com | 31

entertain

Tools For Tools You might not need this, but you want it. By Kevin Shepherd From a wrist-based battery pack to ‘Whisky Stones’ that promise to cool your drink without watering it down, the 21st century has been host to a number of inventions that seem to exist primarily to convince the public that nobody actually reads patents. The unifying feature of all these gadgets is that they aren’t useless per se, but they’re so ultra-specifically handy that they might as well be. In many everyday situations, one of these gizmos could probably help you, but in the process will almost certainly cause more trouble than it solves. Or it’ll just make you look like a douche while you’re wielding it.

BECAUSE DAD’S GOLD CARD DESERVES THE BEST ACM Wallet | $39.95 to $59.95 No self-respecting Northwestern student is ever going to be caught with less than four credit cards on his or her person at a given time. But once you add in a WildCARD and a fake ID, that’s some serious plastic. Enter the ACM Wallet, which is basically a switchblade for your Visa. It features a row of external buttons which grant immediate spring-loaded access to any card in the wallet.

The convenience is well worth the necessary drop in self-image that naturally accompanies actually using this thing in public.

COLD DRINKS ARE A STONE’S THROW AWAY Whisky Stones | $20.00 These are admittedly pretty manly. They’re soapstone cubes that act as a substitute for ice, so they can cool your drink without watering it down.

The only problem is that three of them take five minutes to cool an ounce of liquid — so unless your friends are superlatively classier than mine, it’s likely that you’ll encounter relatively few drinking situations in college in which people will have the patience to make these worth your while.

RECHARGE EVERYTHING BUT YOUR SELF-ESTEEM Universal Gadget Wrist Charger | $39.99 Be the life of an extremely nerdy party. It’s almost too easy with the Universal Gadget Wrist Charger, which is a ring of extra battery packs that one wears like a watch. In fairness, portable technology does seem to progress far more rapidly than the corresponding technology to power it, as any smartphone user can attest. The poor things. In any event, if you really need that extra hour of Facebook-on-the-go, this is the gadget for you.

THE BEST PARTY FAVOR Personal Digital Breathalyzers | $14.99 to $39.99 So you got a little carried away with your new Whisky Stones, and after a few hours you have a few drinks in you. The next step is obvious — it’s time to break out your personal breathalyzer.

Faithful readers of Tucker Max know that the device is nothing short of a ready-made pissing contest from which nothing good can ever really come. Or you could conceivably use it to ensure that you’re safe to drive, but at the point when you need to check, you should probably just hand over the keys.

JAMES BOND OR FATAL ATTRACTION? Cell Phone Spy Recon | $169 I’ll admit it, for this one I cheated and just went to SkyMall, the undisputed mecca of the worthlessness. This product lets you get a live feed of the activity on whichever phone you choose to install it. Now, this would make sense if it were, say, a safety product designed to let you track your phone in the event that it gets stolen… but instead it’s marketed as a decisively creepier “spy recon” device. Still ostensibly useful (just break up with her, dude) except for the one little hitch, namely that you’re legally obligated to get the express permission of the person you want to spy on in order to install the software on their phone. Good one, SkyMall.

The manufacturers of ‘Whisky Stones’ use the Scottish spelling, dropping the letter “e” in “whiskey” even though the company is based in Connecticut.

Wishful thinking?

PHOTO: JOHN MEGUERIAN

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Get in the groove with an audio slideshow at northbynorthwestern.com.

Gathering Grooves These stores serve all vinyl needs. By Olivia Curry From Chicago blues to Chicago house, there’s nothing quite like blasting the jams of the past the way they were intended—using a needle and a groove. Whether you’re a trend-setting hipster hopping on the record bandwagon, a high-class audiophile or just a person who happens to own an old record player, here’s a guide to venturing into the city for a little vinyl visitation.

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2nd Hand Tunes used to be a citywide chain back in the day, until one by one all the locations were bought out (Dave’s is one example of a former 2nd Hand Tunes store). The location on Dempster was the only shop in the defunct chain to keep its original name. It’s conveniently located within walking distance of campus and has a diverse enough collection of new and used records to be an excellent first stop in the search for a particular find. Prices tend to run a few bucks cheaper than at many other stores, and it also sells CDs. Perhaps most importantly, it has a motorcycle in the front window.

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800 DEMPSTER ST. DEMPSTER PURPLE LINE STOP

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PHOTOS: OLIVIA CURRY & JOHN MEGUERIAN

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If jazz music is what gets your gramophone going, this place is a paradise. The Jazz Record Mart has existed in Chicago for more than 60 years and claims to be “the world’s largest, most complete jazz and blues shop.” It’s not hard to believe when you consider that the enormous store is filled almost exclusively with jazz records and CDs, with sections ranging from pre-World War II jazz to big band and Brazilian. The collection is impressive, but unfortunately so are their prices.

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27 E. ILLINOIS ST. GRAND RED LINE STOP

Start at Reckless Records’ Broadway Street location. This student favorite moved into a bigger space a few years back, and is a good stop for used records of all genres. Their giant rock section spans generations and styles, and it’s the city’s surest bet for records that might have a few scratches but cost a few dollars less, although the walls are decorated with rare finds that could set you back hundreds. Reckless has a decent collection of everything from rap and jazz to house and electronica, with a sizeable heavy metal section separate from the rest of the rock and pop. They also sell used CDs and DVDs if vinyl isn’t your thing. It’s almost impossible to leave without a bag in hand.

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Dave’s is a small record shop that, like the Jazz Record Mart, seems somehow more mature than the used record shops that cater to too-cool youths.

The walls are decorated with rare and pricey finds, and the store seems to specialize in new releases, reissues and vintage. This means higher prices, but also higher quality. Unlike many record stores, where you have to hope your used vinyl labeled “poor” quality isn’t too beaten up, Dave’s Records carries only three kinds of stickers — “new,” “light marks” and “not perfect condition.” Dave’s is also a purist’s store. It carries only vinyl, no CDs and boldly declares that it “never will.”

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It might feel like getting to this store is a little bit of a trek, but if soul is what you’re looking for, there’s no better stop. Dusty Groove is on the smaller side, but bright and well-organized with plenty of room in between the aisles for comfortable perusal. The enormous soul music section fills almost the whole store, but the jazz and hiphop sections hold their own. The prices for used records also run slightly cheaper than at Reckless, and seem to reflect someone’s personal taste — a Lil Wayne single was selling for a mere 89 cents.

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Three Chicago businesses made it onto Rolling Stone’s top 25 record stores list in 2010: Dusty Groove, Laurie’s Planet of Sound and Dave’s Records.

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sports

For The Love Of The Game On-campus pickup games provide a place to play for the casual athlete. By Ryan Connelly Holmes

34 | FALL 2011

that with the intramurals scheduled year-round and there is very little time left over for pickup players.

Intramural director Ryan Coleman acknowledged that casual pickup players face an uphill battle when it comes to availability.

“We program quite a bit, whether it’s for intramurals, club sports or varsity athletics,” he says.

“A lot of our gyms on campus are being used by those three departments, so it’s tough [for pickup players] to find times to play because [gym times] are being programmed out As winter approaches, grab by us.” a stick and some skates and Another join a pickup game at Robert challenge facing Crown Center ice rink on Northwestern’s Main Street (See page 22 for pickup community a professor who hangs out at is a lack of gender Robert Crown.) diversity: This casual, play-forfun population is dominated by male students.

Weinberg junior Carol Li, one of the women’s Ultimate Frisbee club team captains and an experienced pickup player, said fear could be a reason for scarcity of girls.

“For pickup, because it’s usually people without much experience and want to just run around and have fun, maybe it’s a little intimidating,” Li says. “Because if you see 50 guys out on Deering, not many girls are going to want to play.”

But when it comes to practice perhaps that anxiety is misplaced.

Palak Patel, a Weinberg freshman who arrived at Northwestern a few months ago, says her nerves about being the only girl in a pickup soccer game disappeared once the game began.

“I was really cautious to play because there is a difference between girls and guys playing,” she says. “But it was very comfortable and fun.”

She didn’t even realize she was the only girl playing. “I definitely will continue doing that throughout the rest of my time here,” Patel says.

Across all sports, students have Fridays. Gill said that like he and a unique opportunity to interact and Park, other players develop friendbuild relationships with others who ships on the field. share their interests.

“There’s a lot of guys that you Minjae Park and Herman Gill, can see are good friends,” Gill says. now Medill and Weinberg juniors “And I think the camaraderie on the respectively, became friends after field is pretty cool.” playing pickup soccer together on These on-field friendships and

the pickup community itself are both continually growing. Pickup games, whether in Patten or on the battle-worn grass at Long Field, can be seen throughout the year in all conditions. And while access is sometimes limited, it cannot deter the players’ love of their games.

PHOTO: PRISCILLA LIU

Mykel Beygel slaps the wall in disgust after missing a layup during a pickup basketball game at SPAC. As beads of sweat fall from his brow, he sprints back across the court to help his teammates play defense– most of whom are total strangers. Beygel’s team ultimately lost the game, but a smile crept onto his face as he high-fived his teammates and foes walking off the court.

The Weinberg junior finds himself at SPAC playing pickup basketball around four times per week, and says his sole motivation is passion.

“Basketball is the greatest sport that has ever been, and I just really like playing,” he says.

And Beygel is not alone. Across the Northwestern campus, from the courts of SPAC to the grass of Deering Field, students congregate with friends and strangers alike to play the games they adore. These athletes have numerous avenues to pursue their lifelong love of sports.

While the pickup system is not perfect, its accessibility and benefits are undeniable.

Students looking to continue the sports they played in high school can do so with relative ease. SPAC is crawling with those looking to play basketball and Long Field constantly has Ultimate Frisbee and football pickup games occupying its grass.

The pickup soccer community operates through an email list that was passed down to Weinberg junior Jeziel Jones by former students who have since graduated. Jones sends out weekly emails organizing times for groups of anywhere between 10 and 25 students to play together on the fields by the Lakefill.

These groups meet about three times per week, Jones says. The constantly expanding list is comprised of students of all skill levels who are interested in soccer. He estimates that nearly 140 people get his weekly emails, and he is excited to be a connector.

“Soccer is supposed to unite people,” Jones says. “It’s the world’s sport, so at a school where every nation is represented, I think it’s good to get people to meet.”

But just because finding people to play with is easy does not mean there is always space to play.

Northwestern has 19 Division I and 40 club sports teams which use the athletic facilities as well. Combine

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Rowing was the first intercollegiate sport contested in the U.S. The first rowing race was between Harvard and Yale in 1852.

Gently Down The Stream

PHOTO: PRISCILLA LIU

NU Crew navigates the North Shore. By Max Jones It’s hard to keep a sunrise from being beautiful, but you would think the North Shore Channel is trying its best. As the Northwestern Women’s Crew Team enthusiastically notes, signs everywhere along the channel warn swimmers about its toxicity (that didn’t stop one heroic member of the Men’s Crew Team from diving in to rescue a sinking motor from a coach’s boat), and the periodic skyline interruptions in the form of highway overpasses and El tracks leave little to be desired.

Nonetheless, the sun still rises beautifully, and once it does the women’s team has been out on the water for almost 45 minutes. Every weekday during the fall and spring quarters, Northwestern Crew takes to the channel before dawn for practice. And when they do take to the water, the rowers could not be further from Evanston life.

“It’s really foreign to a lot of people,” says SESP senior Rebecca Stith, the team’s captain.

“For me, I didn’t do it in high school. It’s a really big commitment for us, and people on campus wouldn’t know that since they don’t see this.”

Stith is referring to the team dutifully shouldering their boat at 5 a.m. on a Wednesday (as Weinberg sophomore Alanna Henry puts it, “if you miss practice, we know that you’re sleeping”). Senior coxswain Izzy Rodriguez barks orders that seem far too imposing for her 5-foot-2-inch form, leading her rowers down from the boathouse to the channel (a coxswain serves as the boat’s de facto captain, steering and setting the pace for the rowers).

They hit the water under cover of darkness, flanked by a second boat with men from the Chicago Rowing Union that practices with the team. Anthony Chacon, a technology manager at the University of Chicago by day, coaches both teams from a motorboat, making liberal use of a flashlight and megaphone.

“Race with your brain, not with your muscles,” Chacon calls out after one stretch of intense rowing. The team is in heavy preparation for the Head of the Rock Regatta on Oct. 9 in Rockford, Ill., and Chacon is trying to fix a balance problem the boat is having. Chacon’s coaching is half-psychology, half-physiology: Whether he’s egging the rowers on with allusions to the “amazons” from a rival school or attempting to eradicate a particularly troublesome flaw in a rower’s stroke (today all of them are struggling with their hips), the rapport between the team and Chacon is strong.

It needs to be, as the Northwestern program operates with a heavy handicap. Many of the programs they compete against have the luxury of scholarships and heavy funding from their school, while Northwestern’s team members raise their own funds and pay their own coach.

The vast majority of the team started rowing after they arrived on campus.

When they arrive on dry land at 6:55 a.m., having rowed from Skokie down northeast past Ryan Field and back, the exhaustion sets in. The complete product of rowing crew is elegant, with smooth boats gliding seemingly effortlessly along the water, but the individual effort is strikingly primal and intense. When asked what makes the extraordinary toil that takes place everyday in Skokie worthwhile, Rodriguez hesitates momentarily, nearly defeated by the cold wet morning, but she almost instantaneously recovers.

“I get a lot of satisfaction from putting this much time and work into something, and then seeing it pay off in a race,” she says, beaming.

“Knowing that we’re kind of an underdog team, not as funded as other teams and without as many members or equipment, that we can still go out there and win regardless, I think that’s pretty cool.”

WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING 0455

Departure from the corner of Sherman and Emerson Avenues, via team member’s car.

0503

Arrival at the Dammrich Rowing Center.

0505

Boats are unloaded and taken down to the channel.

0520

The two four-rower teams set sail alongside the coach’s motorboat; they will row from Skokie northeast, turning around just north of Ryan Field near the point where the Skokie Channel empties into Lake Michigan.

0602

The first sign of sun.

0655

The team returns to dry land.

0655

Boats are carried uphill and locked up, while the team makes travel plans for their upcoming regatta.

Depart Dammrich Rowing Center.

0720

Arrive Sherman and Emerson Avenue.

0729

Nap

0900 Class northbynorthwestern.com | 35

town

The Power Of Purple Plastic See where your discount can take you. By Lindsey Kratochwill Sure, you can get a discount at Andy's and various highly-trafficked restaurants in Evanston, but your WildCARD might get you further than you thought.

Here's a highlight of the discounts students can gain from flashing that purple card.

GOOD DEAL

The Spa at Trump

Sarpino’s Pizza

Viand Bar and Restaurant The Moving Experts Jos. A. Bank Premier Dental Care

USELESS

Ghirardelli Ice Cream and Chocolate Shop Uncle Dan’s

Chicago CPR

USEFUL

Northwestern Vision Correction Associates

Visiting Angels

BAD DEAL EVANSTON The most confusing discount for college students: Visiting Angels of Chicago Northshore. Not sure exactly how many students take advantage of this in-home care service for seniors, but it's a 5 percent discount off the hourly rate!

Best discount for those fearful of winter woes: Uncle Dan's. This gives you 10 percent off those pricey coats and boots good for -32 degree weather. Given the high prices of items in this store, the discount could save you a significant amount of money.

The discount on top of a discount: Sarpino's Pizza. With your trusty WildCARD, you can get an additional 15 percent off any of your late night pizza orders on top of any other discounts and coupons already applied.

The most responsible way to use your WildCARD: Premier Dental Care. Get a whopping 20 percent off all dental services. Go ahead, make your mama proud.

Use this discount quick before your WildCARD expires after senior year: The Moving Experts. This company specializes in cross-country moves. Get one month free for storage and save $25 to $50 on moving costs.

The discount that can help you get a job: Jos. A. Bank. Get 20 percent off full-priced items at this menswear store. Get the suit to nail your first impression at on-campus recruiting sessions.

36 | FALL 2011

CHICAGO The discount to get you certified: Chicago CPR. Learn some important life skills at a fraction of the cost — 15 percent off all CPR and safety courses here.

Chocolatey indulgent discount: Ghirardelli Ice Cream and Chocolate Shop. You know that place that you always go when you're in downtown Chicago to get free squares of chocolate?

Well, if you ever actually wanted to spend money, you could get 20 percent off. Try the Earthquake, an eight-scoop ice cream sensation.

A fancy dining experience with a great discount: Viand Bar and Restaurant. The 20 percent off discount gets you pretty far at this swanky Streeterville establishment. With $30 steak dinners and wine that can run up to $14 per glass, you can splurge without feeling so guilty.

The discount to see clearly: Northwestern Vision Correction Associates. These LASIK physicians are offering WildCARD holders $1000 off LASIK or PRK surgery. That's $500 off per eye.

The discount no student will ever use, probably: The Spa at Trump. Granted, when you look at the savings, this might be a steal. But the limited offer one-time enrollment fee of $500 makes you wonder why in the world it would ever be $2,000 regularly. Come on.

S

Flickr user Eric Fischer has created maps that track where locals and tourists take photos in cities, including Chicago.

Beyond The Mag Mile Avoid the crowds and check out these historical havens. By Dan Camponovo

NORTHERLY ISLAND Museum Campus Red Line to Roosevelt



Say what you will about the old mayor, Richard M. Daley, but he spent a lot of time and money beautifying the city. Northerly Island used to be the site of Meigs Field, a single strip airport south of the planetarium. In 2003, Daley famously snuck out in the middle of the night and destroyed the airstrip, citing “homeland security” purposes, and subsequently unveiled city plans that coincidentally converted the island into green park space and incorporated it into the museum campus.

Located just south of Adler Planetarium (which was beautifully renovated for the 2011 season), Northerly Island boasts some of the best parkland and beaches in the city. The museum campus is best known for the Field Museum and the Shedd Aquarium, but Adler and the rest of the island are worth checking out as well. A peninsula jutting out into the lake, the shore just north of the Planetarium provides my personal favorite view of the city skyline and are a great photo-op.

NELSON ALGREN’S HOUSE 1958 W. Evergreen Ave. Blue Line to Damen-O’Hare Winner of the first ever National Book Award for his novel The Man With The Golden Arm, Nelson Algren remains one of Chicago’s (and America’s) forgotten treasures. Enjoying a moderate renaissance in academia — led in part by Northwestern’s own senior lecturer Bill Savage — Algren and his pals Saul Bellow, Mike Royko and Studs Terkel helped reshape the Chicago literary scene in the 60s and 70s. Though he lived in Wicker Park before it was cool, Algren’s modest house (specifically, the third floor apartment) has since become a city icon and landmark. Afterward, check out the Violet Hour on Damen (if you can find it — there’s no sign above the door, and also no “door”) for one of their famous cocktails.

FORT DEARBORN

PHOTOS: SHANUACY FERRO

Intersection of Michigan and Wacker Red Line to State/Lake



Way back before Chicago was officially incorporated as a town in 1833, there was Fort Dearborn.

Built in 1803 to guard the western territories, the fort was razed by a Potawatomi Indian tribe during the War of 1812. The site of the original fort (about where Michigan and Wacker intersect, just south of the river) now houses some incredible statues and memorials of the battle by American sculptors Henry Hering and James Earle Fraser.

After paying your respects, hop across the river to the famous Billy Goat Tavern (430 N. Michigan Ave.) and see if you can find one of Mike Royko’s columns about the fort tacked on one of the walls.

ROBIE HOUSE

GREEN MILL JAZZ CLUB

5757 S. Woodlawn Ave. Green Line to Garfield-Green

4802 N. Broadway Ave. Red Line to Lawrence

Guys, I’m gonna level with you. I like to play up the Northwestern/University of Chicago rivalry as much as the next guy. So for me to tell you to make the trek all the way down to our city rival’s campus, you need to just trust me. Located in Hyde Park, Robie House is perhaps Frank Lloyd Wright’s most famous design, the prime example of his prairie style of architecture and a designated historical landmark and a member of the National Register of Historic Places. It’s breathtaking. Just be sure to wear some purple down on their turf.

Green Mill has that perfect mix of history and modern culture so important to maintain in an evolving city. Opened in 1907 and run by one of Al Capone’s henchmen (“Machine Gun” Jack McGurn) in the 20s, the Green Mill has been hosting live swing and jazz bands for the better part of the 20th century. In addition to the live music, the Green Mill also hosts the world-famous Uptown Poetry Slam on Mondays, which some scholars regard as the first ever organized slam poetry competition, founded in 1986. Just be sure to bring your ID — even for the concerts or poetry shows, the Green Mill is strictly 21+.

THE SILVER PALM 768 N. Milwaukee Ave. Blue Line to Chicago-Blue Located in River West by the Kennedy Expressway, The Silver Palm is pretty much your run-of-the-mill restaurant and bar, except for one small detail: the restaurant’s located inside a refurbished 1947 dining car. The dining car, named after an Amtrak train that used to run on the Atlantic Coast Line from Washington, D.C. to Miami, opened as a restaurant in 2003. The menu consists largely of American comfort food and an extensive bourbon and scotch list, as if the car were still making the 30-hour trip. The restaurant shares a sidewalk (and a friendly rapport) with next-door bar The Matchbox, and if you’re looking for some culture after your lunch, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art is just a block away.

northbynorthwestern.com | 37

College is a time of transition for everyone. But for those transitioning to another gender, the process is a little more complicated.

Brave New World

By Rachel Hoffman

38 | FALL 2011

She slips a satiny, rose-hued dress from a modest rack of women’s clothing in her closet, ignoring the thick line of cotton-striped men’s polos hanging in the corner.

A light coating of dust outlines the broad shoulders of men’s pressed dress shirts.

“I remember when I was really young, I would scour, you know, in the middle of the night. I would sneak out of my bedroom and try to find clothes I could wear,” Steph says animatedly.

The dress limply folded across her arm sways gently with a gesture.

“So, I was just like, ‘Oh my god, this is amazing!’ I try it on. I’m wearing it, oh my god, how amazing,” she raises her voice in false excitement, holding the dress by the pinched, hourglass waist up to her body. She rocks back-and-forth, as if to dance, entangled in the memory.

But the dreamy recollection soon fades to a sharp reality.

Steph tilts her head to the side and lowers her voice for dark, comedic effect. “Of course, I was caught a few times with it.”

In an uneasy tone, she adds, “I was kind of chided for it, a little bit.” After multiple secret dress-ups, costumes plucked out of her mother’s wardrobe, the reaction intensified.

“I remember one time she called me a pervert,” Steph says, recalling that she cried at the harsh accusation.

Steph wasn’t born with the body of a woman, but she’s chosen the name “Steph” to replace her birth name of “Stephen.” The pronoun “he” is now foreign to her as she strives to be gendered as a female by her Northwestern peers.

Most won’t ever encounter a transgender student here. They are poorly represented in campus culture and university policy and programming, and according to the LGBT Resource Center at Northwestern, there are only five to 10 trans students at the university during any given year. Student health insurance explicitly bars coverage for trans-related procedures, and many struggle for comfortable campus housing and appropriate bathroom accommodations.

For students who undergo a gender transition during college, these complications come in the face of equally turbulent and exciting emotional, and many times physical, territory.

Steph picks some ruffled, pink sleeve fabric off a shelf and holds it up to the now seemingly plain armholes of the dress. Her routine forays into cross-dressing as a kid left scars on the delicate vintage silk straps. Frayed threads remain where the ruffled sleeves were once connected to the dress. She hopes to sew them back on as a coming-out present to her grandparents in a week. It’s the next step after telling her mother and father at the beginning of this summer, when she began to publicly dress as a female.

But adequately playing tailor may be the least of her worries.

“The reason I’m most concerned about coming out to my grandfather is that the one time he did catch me wearing that [dress], he just didn’t want to believe.”

Having completed her undergraduate degree in mathematics at Cornell University, and continuing onto Northwestern as a graduate

student, at 23 years old Steph was the first in her family to attend and excel at not one, but two prestigious universities.

“I’m his like star child,” she says of her grandfather’s opinion. “He just kind of was in denial about it.”

Steph retakes her place on the couch in her bedroom, littered with the sleeves of classic rock albums and glossy fashion magazines. She swigs from a murky brown bottle of a friend’s home-brewed beer from the co-op where she lives, swallowing it briskly.

“This is very much a limbo for me. It’s confusing as fuck. I haven’t even gotten the hormones yet, and I’m dressing like a girl every day. I don’t know how people will read me that way,” she admits bluntly with a characteristic peppering of profanity, adding that “at times it can feel a little distressing. Like, how do I look?

And how do people interpret me? Am I bothering people with whatever?”

She pauses for a moment and raises her chin as if about to announce a royal decree.

“And you know, I shouldn’t worry about that because I gotta be who I am.”

S

ince coming out, Steph has made friends in the trans community at Northwestern. One of them is Mym Johnson, a graduate student who began transitioning nearly a year ago.

The process began during her seventh year of grad school, though she began transitioning socially the year before. Though she had hoped to begin earlier, when her father died in 2004 — the year she entered Northwestern to study nuclear physics — his passing stalled any hope of a transition. Suffering the loss of a parent and waffling on whether or not to undergo the massive physical and social change a gender switch entails, she sunk into depression.

After seeing a therapist and starting to take Lexapro, an antidepressant, Mym says she began to “feel like I was really in my body, instead of piloting around this meat puppet,” practically spitting out the last two words as if they were a rotten taste in her mouth.

Mym overcame the hurdle and was able to begin transitioning, but telling her family about it was an entirely different challenge.

“I came out to my mom and my sister about a year ago, about the same time I started [estrogen] hormones. In an email. It took me like two or three months to write it,” she confesses, letting out a vaguely embarrassed quiet laugh at the thought.

Though coming out would perhaps prove to be easier than dealing with the cutting comments and slip-ups that followed. In the beginning of her use of doctor-prescribed estrogen hormones, tensions arose between Mym and her mother.

“Another time she said she was relieved that I didn’t look like a girl, but that I looked like a boy in a dress. Which was upsetting, really upsetting. Um, so after that [my family] did not get to know anything,” she says, letting the wounded words hang in the silence that followed. She nimbly tucks a wayward strand of long brown hair behind her pierced ears and

fiddles with the metal and rainbow chain-link bracelet she crafted encircling her wrist.

Even the basics were difficult for Mym and her family. Getting her mother to use “she” instead of “he” was a battle in and of itself. “For whatever reason, people switch names easier than pronouns, it seems. But yeah, when I get mis-pronoun-ed by someone who ought to know better, it’s like you’re stuffing me back in this box that I’ve tried so hard to get out of,” she says.

Shaking her hands in frustration, she waves her arms, delicately coated with a thin layer of fine blondish brown hairs, before regaining composure in her seat. Her face returns to its normal state of calm collection, betraying no emotion. After months of hormone therapy, Mym’s small features and rounded chin leave no hint of her previous masculinity.

“I have the privilege of not [looking obviously transgender], but I want to be open,” she says, adding emphatically, “I really don’t want to be stealth. That’s because of my politics.”

T

he politics take place in a small conference room with a floor to ceiling window, flooded with mid-afternoon sunlight on a Wednesday in September before the start of the school year. Mym is attending the first of this year’s LGBTQA Campus Advisory Network (CAN) meetings that will be sprinkled throughout the quarter.

The meeting is led by Doris Dirks, who has been the coordinator of Student Organizations for Social Justice and the LGBT Resource Center for five years. The hour-long discussion with staff from different departments, like the Study Abroad Office and Health Promotion & Wellness, centers around their current initiative for expanding the number of gender-neutral bathrooms, specifically in the Technological Institute building, beyond the few underpublicized stalls scattered around campus.

But there have been some obstacles to enacting the initiative. Dirks leads the meeting with impassioned energy, her laughs and frustrations about the issues echoing loudly, all comments seemingly bubbling from the bottom of her stomach.

“I think some of the people who are at the levels below [President Schapiro] have not been educated on the topic — need to be educated on the topic — and therefore may be resistant to what I feel like are pretty simple changes that can be made without having a long conversation about bathroom facility laws,” she says exasperatedly. But she makes a point to mention that Schapiro has been incredibly supportive himself, even attending a Safe Space Ally Training session to learn about LGBT campus concerns and experiences.

Though handicap bathrooms around campus can be used by either gender, there are few gender-neutral stalls, such as the one open to students and staff at the Women’s Center on the corner of Sheridan Road and Foster Street.

An active LGBT Resource Center ally, they participate in Safe Space programming and see themselves as a common organization that battles oppression and discrimination along

with the center, according to Cara Tuttle Bell, director of programs for the past two years.

“You don’t want students feeling like they can’t even use the restroom throughout the day without facing hostility. You don’t want students holding it all day, that’s not healthy.

It can lead to urinary tract infections, kidney infections, not to mention just being uncomfortable where you’re trying to learn. That’s not an equal experience,” she asserts.

Beyond that, some feel that the lack of housing options for transgender students is a second element of structural inequality at Northwestern. This fall, a student group called the Gender Protection Initiative (GPI), run by Medill junior Zach Wichter, ran their pilot program for gender-open housing for the second year. After a couple of rocky years trying to persuade the administration of the need for gender-open housing on campus, they were granted two mixed-gender suites in 1835 Hinman in 2010. They propose that more housing options could ease the process of transitioning and make students who refuse being categorized as female or male more comfortable.

This year, the Gender Protection Initiative was granted 20 rooms, all filled, in FosterWalker Complex. A promising achievement considering that there were only six students in the first year’s suites, says Wichter. But since freshmen aren’t eligible to live in that section of Foster-Walker, he feels the initiative is missing out on the largest group of students that typically live on campus.

Additionally, the rooms available are all singles. This raises issues concerning cost, considering that single rooms are more expensive than doubles. But perhaps more troubling, says Wichter, is the message it sends to the Northwestern community. With no roommate option, students who don’t fit the typical gender and sexuality binary remain isolated, as opposed to integrated and accepted.

“There are a lot of people who do prefer to have roommates,” says Wichter, who is also a co-president of Rainbow Alliance, an LGBTQ student group. “I think that an important part of having a truly successful gender-open housing program are having options open to whoever wants to live there, not making people who might want to live there fit into the category of room that we have available to them.”

Regardless of the challenges Gender Protection Initiative is having with their work-inprogress housing, the option would have been immensely helpful for transgender students like Anakin Morris, a 22-year-old who completed his undergraduate degree in performance studies in winter 2011. He transitioned genders during his freshman year.

Anakin speaks ecstatically about his former residence, the infamously theatre-centric haunt of Jones Residential College. But despite the liberal, artsy atmosphere that welcomed him socially, it was a different story behind the closed doors of his room.

“I struggled a lot with having to live in, you know, women’s housing. I had female roommates freshman and sophomore year. Which was…its own adventure,” he says sarcastically.

He flashes a quick grin at his girlfriend Sharon Friedenbach fiddling on her phone next to him, as if he’s still in disbelief at the awkward predicament that permeated two years of his college experience.

“My freshman year roommate had more issues. I mean she signed up to live with a girl, and then I stopped being that. And it wasn’t her fault, and it wasn’t my fault, but it sucked, for her and for me, and for everyone,” he says.

As the transgender student community and their allies like the Gender Protection Initiative and the LGBT Resource Center become more vocal about housing needs, Wichter is hoping that experiences like Anakin’s won’t repeat themselves, but instead will pressure the administration to formalize their genderopen housing and let them expand. “Because there aren’t really any drawbacks,” he argues.

“Whereas, if you’re behind the times and people are asking for it and you don’t have it, it ends up looking kind of bad and sort of like you didn’t have the foresight to see this coming.”

Northwestern’s infrastructure isn’t the only part of campus life charged with being illequipped for transgender students by students and resource groups.

One thorn in the side of transgender students seeking medical treatment is page 33 of Northwestern’s student health insurance policy, a plan purchased from insurance provider Aetna, which services universities throughout the nation. It states under No. 41 in a list of exclusions to coverage “expenses incurred for, or related to, sex change surgery, or to any treatment of gender identity disorder.”

Gender Identity Disorder (GID), as defined by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, is “a conflict between a person’s actual physical gender and the gender that person identifies himself or herself as,” and it’s how people who identify as transgender are diagnosed within the medical community. Despite recognition in the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorder’s IV-TR (DSM), transgender students diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder are currently unable to receive coverage for estrogen or testosterone hormones and/or sex reassignment surgery in order to make a physical gender transition.

But medically defining transgender people as having a disorder is controversial in and of itself, according to the American Medical Student Association. They, along with groups like GID Reform Advocates, stress that a social stigma is associated with medical terminology like “disorder” in relation to a person’s identity.

Chris Johnson, the director of the Department of Risk Management, which administers student health insurance policy at Northwestern, says that their policy agreement with Aetna was designed by a student committee years ago, and that in the past few years holding his position, he’s heard no requests or complaints by students in regards to the trans-exclusion within the policy. Hormone therapy and sexual reassignment surgeries are still considered not medically necessary and therefore remain uncovered, Johnson explains.

But some people feel otherwise, whether or not the university or Aetna acknowledges that it’s a “necessity.” Namely, many transgender students find that hormone therapy and surgery are integral to feeling comfortable and self-fulfilled in their gender and life in general.

A

nakin and Sharon casually slide a thick glass mug of a caramel-colored coffee between them over a small marble table at Unicorn Café. His

arm rests comfortably around the back of Sharon’s seat as she relates how taking hormones regularly to get the full gender transitional effects is key to mental health for people, like her boyfriend, with Gender Identity Disorder. With a transgender brother and having had multiple relationships with pre and post-transition peers in her own time at Northwestern, she speaks with confidence on the topic.

“You wouldn’t put someone through undue psychological stress, make them function without their anti-depressants or without their psych meds,” she says, comparing the importance of commonly accepted and covered treatments to hormone therapy.

Anakin breaks the jovial mask he’s been wearing throughout the interview. He cuts off Sharon mid-thought, as opposed to happily finishing her sentences.

“But I’d sure be depressed as hell if I wasn’t [taking hormones],” he admits.

Depression can be a major prompt for reevaluation of whether or not to transition. For Steph, she even decided to take off her second year of academically rigorous grad school to focus on changing dress and name and beginning hormonal treatment in late October.

“I mean, it’s a risk I’m taking. I’m not sure if [transitioning is] more important. Maybe it’s not. But like, this is something I’ve been struggling with most of my life. I’ve clearly been depressed for the past, like, year or so, and struggling with gender issues in the privacy of my own home: staying at home, cross-dressing, or whatever, just trying to make myself feel better,” she says, shaking a head of shoulderlength red-blonde curls she’s in the process of growing out.

She describes her first year here as a troubling time, desperately trying but ultimately failing to regain a focus on the math work she loved as an undergrad, instead secluding herself to play video games in her room as a distraction.

S

tudies about the medical risks of prolonged hormone therapy are sparse, but Ohio University’s LGBT Center gives an overview of the possible health complications that could result. Blood clots, mood swings, acne outbreaks, weight gain, breast cancer, diabetes and sterility are all conditions that have been identified through current research of patients undergoing prolonged treatment, though it depends whether or not testosterone or estrogen are taken.

Steph wouldn’t discuss her method of insurance coverage for hormonal treatment, but Johnson says Northwestern is willing to appeal to Aetna “if it’s determined that the absence of hormonal therapy may be medically detrimental to the student,” and that all it takes is a simple phone call.

However, Johnson claims no knowledge of any university insurance policy that covers hormonal therapy and sexual reassignment surgeries for transgender people.

But they exist. At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Genny Beemyn directs the Stonewall Center: Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Educational Resource Center.

Because of the center’s vehement persuasion, the school changed their insurance policy with Aetna for this school year.

Beemyn, who prefers the gender-neutral

pronoun “ze” (pronounced “zee”), says proudly that UMass Amherst has “been at the forefront of having policies that support transgender students. So we will [help to] change names, change genders, offer hormones, offer surgeries, have gender neutral housing available, have [gender neutral] bathrooms in all the [newly constructed] buildings.”

Making the change required stressing the need for coverage to the University of Massachusetts Amherst administration before the next round of negotiations between Aetna and their school. Additionally, with a few students a year taking advantage of this trans coverage, Beemyn assumes, there would be minimal cost.

This fall, a transgender student was able to get a mastectomy with Aetna covering his transition surgery.

“He was thrilled, although, I have to say … we had to keep calling saying … ‘yes, this is covered under our policy,’” Beemyn recounts, explaining that Aetna wasn’t handling the change in policy well. “I just saw him a couple days ago, in the end it worked out fine and with no problems. But he was panicked up until the last minute that it wasn’t going to be paid for.”

For schools that have not updated transgender student coverage in their insurance policy, a major medical loophole exists, though the extent to which it was and is used is unknown.

Beemyn admits that prior to this negotiation, they were providing hormone therapy to students on the sly — and so were others. “Institutionally — like what they did in Ohio State for years — was someone who wanted hormones who was transitioning would be coded as having an endocrine deficiency. And in that way it would be covered by insurance, because Ohio State at that time had an exclusion for people who were transitioning.” The endocrine system controls glands throughout the body that secrete different hormones, including estrogen and testosterone.

At Northwestern, the LGBT Campus Advisory Network, comprised completely of volunteer staff and students, sees altering our health insurance policy as a key initiative to creating a comfortable and equal environment for transgender students. Mym is working to lead this reform, trying to pay forward what she’s learned in the process of transitioning and becoming informed on trans issues, she says, which is a change for her.

“I’m just really glad to be involved on the activist side of it, which, I hadn’t really done anything before so that kind of surprised me.

But it’s kind of fulfilling. Also, my friend just told me that if I get this done, he’ll buy me an entire case of beer,” Mym chuckles, trying to make light of the exasperating situation.

After a beat, she adds in a grave voice, “Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to happen in time for me,” referring to university coverage.

However, Mym was aided by Chicago’s Howard Brown Health Center, an LGBTQ-friendly resource center that works with insurance plans to help arrange for hormone therapy, among other treatments for Gender Identity Disorder.

Northwestern’s own LGBT Resource Center is searching for more support for their educational initiatives, funding and staff. Created in 2004, they remain under the labyrinth of the network of the Division of Student Affairs, and have two staff members including Dirks, who only works there part-time. Dirks says

“You wouldn’t put someone through undue psychological stress, make them function without their anti-depressants or without their psych meds.”

— Sharon Friedenbach

the $9,700 they receive in funding per year isn’t enough to bring in any notable speakers, host events and give Safe Space trainings, though these have risen from once per quarter to eight times per quarter.

“I think we’re doing pretty well given the amount of time and resources we have — ­ which we’re pretty new and it’s not a lot. I think we’re in a good position but we have a ways to go,” she says firmly, her striking blue eyes narrowing behind the clear plastic frames of her stylized glasses.

Working at one of the 175 LGBT resource centers in a nation of around 3,000 accredited universities, Dirks says they are always looking to other schools, such as Emory, as models for inspiration in their work.

“They got a five-star rating,” she nearly whispers in admiration with a trace of jealously, referring to the national ratings of a campus climate measurement tool for LGBTQfriendly campuses. Our score is low, she says, because of the lack of gender-neutral facilities, no simple name changing process on diplomas and transcripts, and most importantly because there is no bias-incident response team for incidents of discrimination, violence and harassment on campus.

The Women’s Center, a better-funded and more established group, tries to pick up where the LGBT Resource Center leaves off. It offers benefits to students including up to 52 free counseling sessions with professionals trained in issues of sexuality and gender, which have been used by transgender students dealing with Gender Identity Disorder and considering transition, says Tuttle Bell, their director, who urges students to call, email or even send her a message on Facebook to set up an appointment. For them, it’s about fostering community between campus tools to dismantle any kind of discrimination or injustice, regardless of gender association.

Steph has taken a lot of solace in the support of her open-minded housing community at the co-op for the past year and during the transitional months of this summer, she says while preparing dinner with housemates.

Taking a break from spreading sticky, golden tamale dough across corn husks and slathering them with various spicy avocado fillings, Steph hangs out with a fellow math major in her room, catching up as the others zip about the house to taste dipping sauces and stir pots of boiling beans. He’s talking about upcoming classes that Steph won’t be attending this quarter and inquiring about her plans for the year when “Steve” slips out of his mouth.

“It’s Steph,” she says quickly, slightly cutting into the casual quality of the conversation.

“Sorry, it’s just hard sometimes,” he replies gently, looking down at his hands fiddling in his cross-legged lap. They resume talking normally, and Steph admits later, “It’s not a big deal, it takes time for people to get used to.

And I know that I don’t currently present very femininely. Like I still have very masculine mannerisms, which I think will take some time to erase, but I’m not trying to erase who I am.”

She continues after a pause for reflection between sips of her beer, “I think it’s probably going to be character-building in the long run, as cliché as that sounds ... Like I’m gonna make mistakes, I’m gonna screw up, and that’s fine.

That’s just a part of life.”

ILLUSTRATION: SARAH LOWE

Now Connected The internet is what you make of it. Beyond the Lolcats is a world where community flourishes, under the radar and behind the screen. By Sara Grossbarth Truth be told, sometimes I think I might be fighting a losing battle. But it’s one I can’t not fight. ...I went back, you know. A couple weeks ago.

What happened?

What happened is that I failed, and she died.

I’m... sorry to hear that.

The first time I could barely bear it.

Now I’m just... I’m just tired.

I

t sounds like a scene from a Stieg Larsson book, or maybe an intense exchange between characters in the Jason Bourne movies.

It’s neither. It’s dialogue from an online text-based roleplaying game (RP for short), pieced together collaboratively by people portraying various characters — some from popular TV shows and books, others developed by the player from scratch. The story is told one line at a time, the chance to narrate rotating among the participants.

Among these RP users is Carly Ho, who graduated from McCormick last year and now works at the engineering school as a digital media specialist associate. Hers is the first voice in the above passage. As she navigates the various posts and threads of this RP, called Bete Noire, she sheds her identity as a young professional in Evanston. She becomes a revised version of Homura Akemi, a dark and quiet magic girl, originally a character in the anime television series Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

What’s perhaps most striking as you read through Ho’s logs is the synchrony between Homura and the other characters. They bounce dialogue and action sequences off one another, melding their writing styles and interacting as if they know each other.

But aside from a few fellow Northwestern alums, Ho has never met any of her fellow players.

Ho is one of a number of Northwestern students whose Internet use extends beyond tweeting and Facebook stalking.

They are part of a deeper community, for whom the Web is a

42 | FALL 2011

platform for connection despite physical barriers.

She’s been at it since age 14, and though the details of her first game are hazy, her motivations for getting into text-based role-playing are still clear. “That was the summer between middle and high school and I didn’t actually have any friends to speak of at that point,” she explains as she reaccounts her favorite scenarios. “So I was like, ‘Internet! Let’s meet people!’” Ho was a self-described “larval nerd,” one who’s blossomed into a full-blown fan of anime, webcomics and Internet trends. It seems role-playing was inevitable.

“Even before I discovered the Internet, I was writing [fan fiction] on my computer about Star Wars and a Jedi character who happened to be just like me,” she says, laughing. “So this was an outlet to be able to do that with other people as a social activity, because I didn’t have a whole lot of social activities at that age.”

Coming to Northwestern fostered such interests, but middle school – full of pop culture-obsessed tweens – made it hard for Ho to find people with the same passions. She had a desire to reach out to others who shared a love for Harry Potter and Sailor Moon, and it led her to turn to message boards, which themselves led to text-based role-playing.

And she wasn’t the only one who felt isolated by a quirky interest that her peers in person didn’t share. Other Northwestern students and alums had something they loved so much, something that the people they were friends with in-person didn't understand, they felt the need to indulge themselves and search it. This initial click of a mouse eventu-

ally turned into an active online presence before the advent of social media as we know it today.

“I feel like it is just sort of a natural step for any kid our age to, like, Google Harry Potter at some point and find all of these websites,” says Abby Schulman, a bubbly senior double majoring in theatre and English who first discovered the Harry Potter news site MuggleNet in middle school. What appealed to her about entering the Harry Potter fandom — or fan community — is that it made finding people her own age to talk about the series with incredibly simple. “When I was younger, all my friends were super into it, and then as I got older, some of my friends stopped,” she says. “I think the Internet’s actually a really great resource to find people who are just as into it as you.”

For others, it was art that motivated their Internet searching. Communication junior Taylor Cleland had humble beginnings making art in her house, and eventually she stumbled onto deviantART, which she says played a formative role in her growth as an artist.

“My family wasn’t very supportive of [my art] and it was the first time that I had people that wanted to see what I did,” she says. “I think if I hadn’t had that in middle school, I probably wouldn’t have improved as much as I did.”

Cleland kept her online life secret from her parents. If she wanted to tell them about something an Internet friend said, she’d tell them she was talking to a friend who had moved away. (“They were like, ‘Damn, did your entire fifth grade class move away?’” she says with a laugh.) That worked well until an Internet friend became a real life one — her nowboyfriend Sean, whom she’s been dating since last year. She came clean to her parents about how they met after they became official.

Even at Northwestern, an online interest in art helped Cleland bond with classmates. A post on the Northwestern University Class of 2013 Facebook group led to a friendship that extended to deviantART. After meeting on Facebook, she and Weinberg junior Li Gao began following each other’s art profiles, and they have remained friends — both virtually and in person.

H

o made that transition from Internet interactions to real life ones her sophomore year at Northwestern, when she discovered the live action role-playing group Dead City Productions. She made friends she now plays with both in-person and online. It actually becomes difficult to ask Ho about her Internet life from before her arrival at Northwestern, since she tends to gravitate toward discussing Dead City Productions and RPs that involve the people in it.

Through Dead City Productions, Ho has blended two worlds: the corporeal and the virtual. Now that she and her friends are “scattered to the four winds” post-graduation, they play together online, taking friendships once based on in-person interactions to online forums and games.

In a digital age, we can see the Internet’s integration into our personal lives all around us. You could pose as anyone on MySpace, but that has been replaced by Facebook, which is more intricately tied to everyday life and is moderated for authenticity. And now there are Google Plus circles, for which you must use your real name. Check-ins on foursquare allow you to digitally mark where you are in person. And the virtual can become very, very real in online dating, which is more popular than ever.

In that vein, Cleland says she believes Google Plus is the next big website for artists. “It’s cool to see an artist and see their name on it and know that they’re a real person somewhere with a real life who really makes art,” she says. But she also takes issue with the fact that the Internet doesn’t allow as much anonymity as it did when she was coming of age.

“You had this alternate universe to kind of test things. If you were an idiot, you’d change your screen name and no one knows that you were the idiot,” she says. “It is interesting and kind of sad to me that that time of user names was so quick

“My family wasn’t very supportive of [my art] and it was the first time that I had people that wanted to see what I did,” she says. “I think if I hadn’t had that in middle school , I probably wouldn’t have improved as much as I did.” and is over because it was an incredibly liberating, interesting experience that I think really helped me grow up and test who I was.”

Nowadays, a person’s real life experiences are bound up so much with virtual ones, it can be hard to draw lines and navigate between two worlds. Making transitions between them can be tough, and one way or another, sacrifices must be made. All these students cut back on their Internet involvement once they came to Northwestern. Schulman used to spend 10 hours a week moderating fan fiction submitted to her favorite website, MuggleNet.com. Approving stories to be posted for that long, that often, was enough to cut into her social life, even though she was struggling to meet her minimum editing quota. When her fellow moderators nominated her for the superlative of “lurkiest,” she realized she needed to make a change.

“This isn’t fair to anyone,” she recalls. “I shouldn’t be claiming this spot on a website I’m not on all the time.” Though she no longer works for MuggleNet, she still chats on forums, checks Harry Potter news websites daily and interacts with her favorite series through the new website Pottermore. “I didn’t have to sacrifice my love for it,” she said. “I just had to sacrifice talking to people everyday or writing fan fiction all the time or being a moderator, which I think was worth it. The essential part is still there.”

Similarly, Cleland majorly cut back on posting to her deviantART once she came to college. A part of her decision to do so was that she no longer needed emotional support from Internet friends. “I don’t need the escape as much because I can pick my friends here a lot more than I could in high school,” she says.

And Ho responds to invitations to role-play more slowly now that she has a job and friends from Northwestern she can hang out with in-person. “I can barely keep up with it now just because I’m, like, the slowest poster,” she says.

Yet their relationships with friends online have persisted.

Ho and Cleland gush over how cool it is to have friends in other countries, from places like China, Malaysia and Australia. But even better was connecting with people over a shared interest and a shared Internet connection, so much so, it wasn’t even obvious the people they were chatting with were foreigners.

“I made friends with people that lived all around the world and we talked about the same things and never picked up on the fact that we didn’t live in the same country,” Cleland says.

And of course, no one hesitates to say the Internet has been a force of good in their lives, whether it’s helped them grow as a writer or an artist, or even if it’s helped them get closer to their true selves — in both the real and virtual senses of the word.

northbynorthwestern.com | 43

The Gawker Effect

Evanston doesn’t hate us. Why town-gown relations might not be as fraught as you think.

By Julie Kliegman

S

ix people lounge in a book-filled living room on an early October day, drinking cider and eating cheesy bread as they wait for the lasagna to heat up. Ordinarily, most would see the cluster of people as not one, but two distinct groups: three students and three Evanston residents. Tonight, there is no awkward gap.

As part of PeaceAble Cities’ “Evanston Evenings” program, city residents like Acting Executive Director and Co-Founder Joey Rodger invite small groups of students over for dinner with the sole purpose of getting the Evanston and Northwestern bubbles to collide.

1854 The City of Evanston is named.

1851 Northwestern University is founded by John Evans and eight other Methodists.

1878 Northwestern wins University v. People.

This Supreme Court ruling allowed the University exemption from paying property taxes.

THE “HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR:”

A timeline of relations between Northwestern and the City of Evanston

1940s The three-unrelated housing ordinance, also known as the “brothel law” comes into effect. It states no more than three unrelated people can live in the same building.

And collide they do. When McCormick senior Alex Wilson mentions he will be running his first marathon a few days later, Rodger’s face and those of her neighbors, who are cohosting the dinner, light up.

“We’ll watch for you on Sunday,” Rodger says to the student she met just two hours earlier. “I think that’s just terrific.”

This apple crisp and ice cream-laden event is just one small piece of the town-gown relations puzzle. It is no secret that students and city residents do not always look favorably upon one another, something that Rodger wants a part in changing. She leads PeaceAble Cities: Evanston a group that wants to end violence and promote respect in the city.

“Unless the people who live in Evanston have a specific, role relationship in Northwestern, like they’re faculty or staff or have kids there, it’s very hard to cross that boundary between the town and the gown,” she says.

Town-gown relations is a historically sore subject for all those involved, and has been even more so in recent months. But now that some time has elapsed since the three-unrelated, or “brothel law” controversy, it’s easier for all of those groups to assess the dynamic in a more unbiased way.

It is true that the situation is far from perfect. However, now it seems that relations are better than they have ever been, despite whatever scandals and conflicts have occurred in recent memory. The city and the university are upping their efforts to connect with things like Evanston Evenings, student-resident ice cream socials and continued discussions between both groups, who say they are generally pleased with where the dynamic is headed.

“We have a great mayor and a wonderful city manager and a great group of aldermen,” says University President Morton Schapiro, decked out in a purple shirt and tie, as to be expected. “I think they recognize that we’re together and it’s not just making the best of it, but having Northwestern make Evanston an economically and otherwise vibrant city.”

There is a reason Northwestern and Evanston officials like Schapiro need to spend time convincing their constituents that the city-

university connection today is just fine. Relations had been strained long before Schapiro and Evanston Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl were even born.

TUMULTUOUS PAST Northwestern came into being in 1851, three years before the City of Evanston was named.

From the beginning, the university wanted property tax exemption before Illinois made educational institutions exempt under law, an issue that slowly made its way to the Supreme Court in 1878 after several legal appeals and reversals. Northwestern won University v.

People, according to Jay Pridmore in Northwestern University: Celebrating 150 Years, a brief yet definitive account of Wildcat history that sits on a shelf at the University Archives.

When Acting University President Oliver Marcy heard the news, he advised students to build bonfires in celebration. “The fires rose in a ‘blaze of glory’ as a student recalled, and did nothing to salve the town’s wounds,” Pridmore writes. But the “Hundred Years’ War,” a term coined by Chicago Magazine in 2003, had only just begun. Disputes about taxes and other issues – everything from a president siding with Cuba in the war for independence to an effort to put a hotel tax on the Allen Center – sparked heated and often impolite debate between the city and the university.

Surprisingly, for years and years the most notorious university opponent was former Alderman Jack Korshak, a ‘Cat himself (Law ’36).

He made national news by supporting a tuition tax at Northwestern and other universities in 1990, a cause that stirred controversy but never came to fruition.

Then-University President Arnold Weber recalls hearing Korshak speak at a class reunion where he “slammed the university” by encouraging his former classmates to refrain from contributing to Northwestern in any way.

“It was almost as embarrassing as the sex object,” he says, referring to former human sexuality professor John Michael Bailey’s agreement to allow an after-class sex toy demonstration during winter quarter 2011. Weber, who was

president between 1985 and 1994, is quick to point out that although relations were often frustrating, it was never as if the whole city council was anti-Wildcat. Evergreen issues like student alcohol consumption and zoning laws were minor rifts, he says. “The lesson is there’s always going to be tension.”

PRESENT-DAY STRUGGLES Weber’s prediction is true, as current students and residents know after taking one look at the 2011 publicity of the three-unrelated ordinance, not-so-affectionately nicknamed the “brothel law.” But is there really as big a disconnect as there seems to be between different Evanston groups, or is the “brothel law” a magnified bump in the road?

Word spread through campus in the days leading up to a town hall meeting about how the city was preparing to kick people out of apartments and houses if they violated certain safety restrictions, most notably having more than three unrelated people in the same building. According to Eric Palmer, Evanston’s community information coordinator, the ordinance has likely been around since the 1940s at the earliest. Elaine Autwell, the city clerk’s secretary, says it has not even been amended since 1983 and Tisdahl repeatedly says that there will be no changes in enforcement and no specific student targets.

“The whole thing was a wonderful example of misinformation in the Information Age,” Tisdahl says, putting the emphasis on “wonderful” as she rolls her eyes. “I do think that President Schapiro is a great guy and we talked about it quickly. I think he’s been tremendously helpful in resolving town-gown problems as they come up.”

Alderman Delores Holmes presides over Evanston’s 5th ward which includes the Fireman’s Park neighborhood west of North Campus. She says in terms of housing issues, she is always looking out for the students’ safety.

“I’ve been in some places that are not very safe,” she says. “If you can’t get in and out, if you don’t have windows in the basement, no one has any business living down there.”

2010

1983 This marks the last time the “brothel law” was amended.

The University encourages students to participate in the census. Their efforts secured $4.8 million for the city each year until the next census.

1990

2009

Former Alderman Jack Korshak stirs up controversy by supporting a tuition tax for the University. His plan never succeeded.

The University donates $550,000 to the City of Evanston for a new fire engine.

PHOTOS: JULIE KLIEGMAN ILLUSTRATION: ALEXIS SANCHEZ northbynorthwestern.com | 45

a bone,” Tisdahl says smiling. “I don’t give up on it.”

BREAKING THROUGH

(From top left) McCormick junior Louis Knapp, Evanston residents Miah Logan and husband Kwesi Logan, Medill junior Nicole Magabo and fifth-year McCormick senior Andrea Fraga attend a PeaceAble Cities: Evanston dinner at the Logans’ house. Photo courtesy of Kwesi Logan.

Underneath all the communication barriers and frustrations last winter, the “brothel law” myth may be something that ultimately bolsters relations. City manager Wally Bobkiewicz, Tisdahl, Schapiro and local police officers all speak to how communication between the two sides is an important area for all-around improvement, in order to quickly and effectively handle situations like the “brothel law” confusion. But those events are not the majority of Evanston-Northwestern interactions.

“The problem is that whenever we get publicity about the brothel thing or about the fall with the pictures [of the house party ] and Gawker or the residual fallout from Dillo Day, that’s the story,” Schapiro says, laughing. “The reality is we get along really well with this city and it’s a great city.”

Although many credit Schapiro and Tisdahl with turning the tide in town, he cringes at the suggestion. He credits his and Tisdahl’s predecessors with building momentum in the right direction. “Sometimes I worry a little bit if people think it’s the Liz and Morty show,” he says. “‘They saved the day, riding in on their white horses.’ That’s not true.”

There’s a third, often overlooked part of the Evanston dynamic that seems to get much less time in the spotlight than Schapiro and Tisdahl: area businesses.

ECONOMIC IMPACT Evanston Chamber of Commerce Board President Dan Mennemeyer says he rarely hears complaints about the university from business owners. Most of the time, they are appreciative of all the money students, faculty, staff and all their visitors bring in. “It kind of pains me that the university feels compelled to defend their economic impact because of the pressures of a few,” he says. “I think that as a whole, most people in Evanston have no problem with how the university operates here in Evanston.”

While areas such as the Central Street Business Association may benefit from student business on game days, it’s not an on-going source of revenue like for stores in the down466 | FALL 2011

Even without the extra cash, Tisdahl says she likes how Schapiro is handling city relations.

She smiles, talking about Schapiro and his administration giving the city a fire truck, an ambulance and countless other contributions.

“I know that Morty wants to have relations be as good as possible and he knows that that’s what I want,” she says.

The moment Schapiro arrived in town, he and Tisdahl formed a relationship. “She reached out to me on day one,” Schapiro recalls. “Before I knew where my office was, pretty much.”

Although the heads of both sides are on good terms, no one in Evanston, student or not, would say relations are perfect. They never will be. But their progress is noticeable, and noticeably good. It might not always be clear on the macro level, with Gawker tainting the image. Northwestern is a university, after all, with typical alcohol and rowdiness issues from time to time. “The residents like the students, except when they’re drunk,” Tisdahl says after pausing, struggling to sum up the city’s general perception of their neighbors. “Then, they don’t like them as much.”

All it takes is one look at the micro level, though, to see how residents and students can enjoy themselves together. At Rodger’s PeaceAble Cities dinner table, topics range from the “brothel law” to off-campus drinking to completely unrelated issues like the Dallas Cowboys, the future of Facebook and stay-athome dads. Both groups knew plenty of people who had less-than-stellar impressions of either students or residents.

“A lot of people I know kind of carry the attitude that Evanston could have it so much worse,” says Weinberg sophomore Jeffery Arnier. It is not uncommon to hear remarks about how Northwestern is not an overwhelm-

town area, Mennemeyer says.

The university’s special assistant for community relations, Lucile Krasnow, says that it can be assumed that Northwestern reels in hundreds of thousands of visitors per year.

Though she admits, it’s almost impossible to count and track the actual number. “We’re the biggest employer in Evanston,” she says. Krasnow notes that “we’re a magnet for visitors.”

She rattles off all the people who frequently visit downtown — students, faculty, parents, fans of football opponents and fans of prospective students, to name a few groups. They frequent the retail stores Mennemeyer describes.

Krasnow uses Taco Bell as an example of a high-traffic place that sustains itself primarily on Northwestern business.

But Northwestern also helps the economy in ways other than bolstering retail sales. In 2010, the university worked with all residence halls to encourage census participaThe residents like the students, tion. The end result was that except when they’re drunk. Then 98.3 percent of on-campus students and 98.8 percent they don’t like them as much. of students in Greek houses participated, as compared to the overall Evanston rate of 76 percent, Krasing party school in the same category as many now wrote in an email. That level of student other Big Ten institutions. Rodger’s solution to participation secures almost $4.8 million in the bitterness is finding more ways for students state and federal dollars for the city each year and residents to connect and develop a support until the next census. What Krasnow — and system, not unlike what Evanston Evenings others — say is that revenue sources like that offers. “Student living is in a bubble,” she says. one, along with donations to the city, phil“It’s an intense, wonderful bubble, but it’s a anthropic efforts like Dance Marathon and bubble. And it’s a temporary one.” the retail strength provide many alternative “How can those of us who live here reach revenue streams. inside the bubble and say, ‘Good for you, right Krasnow says the university’s presence on,’” she says, pointing out that students can creates revenue streams and consistently and always benefit from words of encouragement constantly works to enhance partnerships, but as they pursue their goals.

Tisdahl says she still pushes the university If both sides keep making efforts to reach for a PILOT, or a payment in lieu of taxes. The out to one another, like Rodger and others mayor may not have a physically intimidating are doing, Northwestern could see the end of presence, lounging meekly in a muted pantsuit an era. The Los Angeles Times’ description of behind an enormous city council desk, but she the university being “praised as a municipal is biting in wit and quick to make her opinions sugar daddy and damned as the town’s No. 1 heard. deadbeat” in a 1990 piece about the tuition tax “Oh yes, I’ve brought it up, like a dog with debacle may become a thing of the past.

EXTRA

one last thing.

Password-Protected Puns Do your neighbors have Wi-Fi wit? By Jon Oliver Anyone who’s lived in an apartment has participated in the strange discourse that is public Wi-Fi naming. Like any open act of creativity, even something as plainly insignificant as a network name can reveal something about your personality. And, much like any act conducted over the Internet, we see the amazing things anonymity does to people. Here are a handful of Evanston’s very own expressions of individuality, uniqueness, art and absolute nonsense.

On or near Garnett

RAMBO

You can’t just turn it off!

THE CHICKEN SHACK

I’m unsure as to whether the Chicken Shack has its own network, and if so, whether this is it.

On or near Maple

ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S CUNT

Put your best foot forward, as they say. I wasn’t lucky enough to stumble into this one on my own.

Rather, a friend told me to check in the area for “Abraham Lincoln’s Dirty Cunt,” and this is what I found. Nice to see he’s cleaned up his act in the last few weeks.

THE CRACK HOME Nevermind. Here it is.

On or near Ridge & Church

FRANCO-EVANSTON I know he’s been busy lately, but this is ridiculous.

Still, at this point, this was probably the logical next step for James Franco.

4 LADIES AND GIBBS

Gibbs has been shopping this idea around at CBS, but still can’t get a pilot deal. Get some for the rest of us, Gibbs!

WHORESOMEFOURSOME

Gibbs is willing to step out of the spotlight if that’s what it takes, though. Humility is a virtue.

ADMIRAL ACKBAR

If you can guess the password, you should probably go outside once in a while — myself included.

Bonus points if you capitalize your first attempt.

BOYS TOWN II

This only makes the list because at first glance I thought it said Bad Boys II.

2 BLACKS & A WHITE

That’s it everyone, racism is dead!

MAP: EMILY CHOW & HILARY FUNG

2CHOCOLATESAND1CARAMEL

In fact, it’s time to usher in a newer, sexier era of diversity and candy bars.

WHATCHAMACALLIT

... Is this one also about race? Okay, now I’m a little confused.

On or near Oak & Church

On or near Sherman & Emerson

---_OR_MY_ANUS

OWN

They also say to save your best for last. “Currently connecting to the network — or my anus!” Good one, jokesters. “Or my anus” doesn’t have the catchphrase crossover potential of, say, “That’s what she said,” but don’t let it stop these guys.

Someday, it’ll catch on. “Hey, wanna eat some lunch?” your future office coworkers will ask.

Then, just as you’re about to respond — “Or my anus!” There lies our hope for the future, America.

I’d like to think that Oprah lives here and Stedman did this as a little joke.

PSALM 19

And the Lord said, “Lift up your arms to me, so that you may get better reception. And try turning your AirPort off and on again. It’s weird.”

STAY AWAY FROM MY BEDROOM Perhaps this isn’t the best strategy for alienating the public.

BOOKLOVERS

A very good strategy for alienating the public. northbynorthwestern.com | 47

Watch Movies, Play Games My first existential crisis. By Joe Drummond

We always woke up early in Ireland. It was 5 or 6 in the morning, and our parents wouldn’t be up for hours. My sister and I were sharing a room. I was 6 and she was 3. My mom said we were “thick as thieves.” It was June, but it was foggy and cold out, so we were wrapped in thick quilts like peasants in the middle of a long-ago wintertime. I was fully awake, but getting out of bed seemed like it would violate an unspoken rule. All I could do was sit up and think.

“What do you think it’s like to be dead?”

My sister grimaced.

“I don’t...know.”

“I think it’s just black, for a really really long time. And you can’t talk to anyone,” I told her.

What was it like to be dead? That morning was 15 years ago, 4,000 miles away. I don’t remember my first thoughts on the subject. I had no great epiphany. But there were quiet moments on that trip that drew me full-on into the darkness. And when I was in the darkness, or it was around me, the same image always lay suspended in my head. A photo of my greatgrandmother who died just after I was born.

Her hair was the same shade of gray as steel wool, and she was on a beach, wearing a blue cardigan, squinting as she smiled. It looked like she was ready to rub the sand off your nose, kiss you on the cheek and give you a cookie. To me, she represented all the dead.

And here I was, on the little island where she and the rest of my ancestors were buried.

Maybe their ghosts stirred up my thoughts. But they could have kept asleep and the darkness still would have come, for signs of decay were all around. We saw so many ruins on that trip: old abbeys and churches from the Middle Ages, and Celtic burial mounds and settlements from the millennia before. Where were their inhabitants now? Had it been just black for them for thousands of years, so long that they had gone insane speaking to themselves in their strange languages, with no way to understand where they were, what had become of them or how much time had passed?

“When I die...”

48 | FALL 2010

Later that summer, we were back home. It was probably July, but it could have been September. After dinner, my dad took my sisters and me to the park. He pulled my sister in a wagon.

When we got there, I climbed up the slides while my dad looked for cicada shells.

But summer twilight troubled me. The first pale shade of night. Seeing the moon and the stars while the sky stayed blue, I was fearful.

The suggestion of oncoming darkness was worse than the eventual darkness itself. I didn’t want to be outside with other people anymore.

So I walked home and went into my room. I sat on the carpet and tried to play with my action figures. But I could only think about what would happen when I died. I was playing with a Superman action figure — I had never been a fan of Superman, and had gotten him for my birthday, but the thought of dying and leaving him behind was unbearable.

I looked at him and cried. “If I die, there will be no one to play with you.”

“If I die, I don’t want you to get sold at a garage sale.”

A few days later, I was sitting with my mom at the kitchen table. I was reading a book while she clipped grocery store coupons out of fliers.

The light was really bright. I finally decided to tell her.

“I’m really worried about when I die. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” I started crying.

“When I die I won’t able to see my friends. Or watch movies, or play games...”

I don’t remember what my mom said to me.

I think it was consoling. She talked about how she thought the same things when she was a kid, but she was too scared to tell anyone, and it was good that I talked to her about it.

All of that fear, and only a child’s mind to deal with it.

Here are some real Twitter accounts for you. Follow @nbn_tweets and @nbn_overheard.

E

Taking Over Twitter Become famous in 140 characters or less. By Gabe Bergado Fake Twitter accounts always cause a stir and have tons of followers. Look at @Lord_Voldemort7 and @darthvader, whose tweets are continuously being retweeted over the Twitter-sphere. Do you want to be famous up and down Sheridan Road?

Then recreate yourself as a fake Northwestern Twitter account. Here are just a couple of tips for creating your online persona.

1. Choose someone or something interesting that can connect to a lot of Twitter users The first step of creating a Twitter account is figuring out who you are going to embody. With your insecurity issues and inability to talk to people in person, you’ll probably pick someone who is able to connect with a large audience via cyberspace.

Nobody will expect that quiet Asian boy playing World of Warcraft in your Intro to Philosophy class is actually @NrthwesternGrl. If you choose the right subject, expect an influx of followers once you start tweeting.

2. Commit to your character and brand yourself If you’re going to be @NrthwesternGay, you better exemplify what it means to be a queer Wildcat.

Be the hyperbole of your character. Obviously the things fake Northwestern Twitter accounts tweet are going to be exaggerations or else it’d be just like following any other person. By being so dramatic, the tweets will be similar enough to

be relatable, but still distinguishable from all the other generic updates coming from students.

3. Stay Twitter active One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a pseudo-famous fake Northwestern Twitter account is disappointing your followers by going MIA. They expect constant stimulation from your passive-aggressive tweets, so you better be putting out at least every half hour. If you fail to update consistently, expect a decrease in follower feedback. However, if you strategically choose to take a break from Twitter, your revival must be something grand. Like returning on Easter—just like Jesus, along with a picture of you and a nun in a catfight during mass.

4. Use hashtags fellow students will understand People love creating their own hashtags. It is your duty as a fake Northwestern Twitter account to experiment with different hashtags to see which ones will catch on. Although anybody can make up hashtags, think of hashtags that will infect the crowds like a disease. Examples include #loveconnectionsatthekeg and #saferideconfessions.

5. Tweet at @FakeEvanWatkins and @FakeMorty Not exclusively to these two Twitter accounts, but you should be tweeting at already-established Twitter personalities with a large number of

followers. This way, their followers will see your tweets and hopefully start following you as well.

It’s also entertaining to interact with these other Northwestern-related accounts, as the Keg will probably offer you an-over-the pants handjob once you’re Twitter friends.

ILLUSTRATION: HILARY FUNG

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Brunhilde!

O Leofrick!

Another child of Will nothing ours died stem our o’ plague misery?

Guys! Hey! I hope I'm not interrupting but you're not going to believe what this here calendar says!

1111 A.D.

by Alexander Fones and Greg Uzelac So it's eleven, eleven, eleven, eleven...

Eleven, eleven!

It's November the 11th, 1111 A.D! And it's 11:11 A.M!

Shut the **** up, Hans.

Make a wish!

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50 | FALL 2011

p hel re t o , he NB N

Me a Bur nwhil ger e, a Kin t g...

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DESPERATE

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Frances Willard Zombie Apocalypse

By Sean Kane

START You're minding your own business at that fundraising party for that play with that friend who wouldn't leave you alone until you said, "Fine, I'll go to that stupid sharks and lasers themed party,” when you hear a knock on the door...

Why, it’s none other than suffragette and temperance movement leader Frances Willard! But this isn’t the Frances we all know and love!

Her skin is pale and decomposing, and she’s craving human flesh!

Quick! Dive behind the bar! You can hide from the cops behind that drunk girl bartender!

Frances lets out an inhuman roar.

Your drunken companion asks her if she wants her secret recipe signature drink (”It’s just vodka and cranberry juice!”). Willard sees the bottle of vodka, and in a terrifying rage, lunges for the girl’s throat! You duck away just in time.

You need to find a weapon to defeat zombified Willard. To the kitchen!

The sturdy oak paddle was definitely well made by whichever Sigma Upsilon Pi brother constructed it, but it doesn’t give you enough reach.

You swing wildly at the zombie, but she grabs you and takes a bite out of your skull. ALCOHOL BAD. BRAINS GOOD. DEATH

Your chainsaw makes swift work of Willard’s half-decomposed body.

Everyone at the party cheers! You’ve saved the day! Your spirits are sky high, until you realize the teeth marks on your arm. You’ve been bitten! The crowd notices, and you know what must be done for humanity’s survival. DEATH

The zombie quickly devours the poor girl and turns to you. You’ve got to buy yourself more time!

You throw your cup of vodka cran at Willard. The alcohol burns her and she screams in pain.

ILLUSTRATION: HILARY FUNG

It’s a good thing that a member of the Hobart House intramural chainsaw team lives here. Grab the saw!

Grab the fraternity paddle hanging on the refrigerator. It’s well-crafted and superbly painted.

The suffragette monster’s weakness is booze! You make a mad dash for the kegerator refrigerator and grab the nozzle. You spray the zombie with half a keg’s worth of Busch Light. She melts into a puddle of zombified flesh and cheap beer.

YOU’VE SURVIVED

You throw the wideeyed freshman guy standing stunned next to you. You’re no hero. You’re just trying to survive this nightmare!

Karma frowns upon your selfishness.

Zombie Willard grabs the boy and rips him in half. She turns to you.

“BRAINS,” she screams, and tears into your flesh. DEATH

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