Spring 2016

NORTH BY NORTHWESTERN

SPRING 2016 northbynorthwestern.com

INSIDE: Inaccessible: physical disabilities on campus Mental health abroad Bob’s Rockin’ Tacos The Blackout Student innovation Thoughts from a townie

FALLEN

& FORGOTTEN The death and legacy of Rashidi Wheeler.

NORTH BY NORTHWESTERN, NFP WINNER OF PACEMAKER AWARD FOR WEB AND MAGAZINE NAMED BEST STUDENT MAGAZINE BY THE SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS

DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI:

Lisa Gartner, a 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner Derek Thompson and Robinson Meyer, journalists at The Atlantic Tom Giratikanon, our founder and graphics editor at The New York Times Veronica Roth, author of the Divergent series Priya Krishnakumar, a 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner

We are Northwestern’s leading independent student publication, funded fully by donations and grants. North by Northwestern is immensely important to many students on campus. At NBN, students get the chance to apply the skills they learn in class to the real world.

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CONTENTS 7 8

north by northwestern

spring 2016

pregame EMAIL ETIQUETTE: Learn how to mind your email manners.

BREAD GUIDE: Discover the best carbs Evanston has to offer.

genius

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CROSSING BORDERS: Students help Syrian refugee families adjust to life in Chicago.

BLOODY HELL: Your monthly gift doesn’t need to be so inconvenient.

BOB’S ROCKIN’ TACOS: Northwestern alum combines music and tacos in new web series.

spotlight

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INNOVATION: Students challenge themselves to solve world problems.

Carrie Ingerman, co-founder of Beyond Compliance, stands in front of Locy Hall, one of many NU buildings that is not ADA compliant

features

quad

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TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES: The computer science program struggles with a lack of resources.

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HIGH NOTES: Performing arts community sends students to perform with the Lyric Opera.

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PANGAEA: Student crew films on location in New Orleans.

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ACCESS AS AN AFTERTHOUGHT

Over two decades after the ADA, students with physical disabilities still face structural barriers.

FALLEN & FORGOTTEN

Northwestern football player Rashidi Wheeler died during practice 15 years ago, but no one knows his story.

LOST IN TRANSITION

Dealing with mental health becomes even more challenging during off-campus programs.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: One newsstand stands the test of time.

hangover TOWNIE: Life in Evanston, 15 years in hindsight.

PROFESSOR PUPS: Where to find Northwestern’s fluffy fourlegged academics.

COUNTER-CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: PHOTOS BY EMMA SARAPPO, ALEX FURUYA AND MIA ZANZUCCHI

COVER DESIGN BY DANIEL FERNANDEZ AND SAM SPENGLER COURTESY NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

SPRING 2016

North by Northwestern

What was your childhood dream job?

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managing editor Alex Daly editor-in-chief Morgan Kinney creative director Sam Spengler executive editor Tanner Howard photo director Emma Sarappo managing editors Ma senior features editors Andy Brown, Austin Siegel rio Ricki Harris, Danielle Elliott assistant managing editors Ba tal senior section editors i Amal Ahmed, Erin Bacon, Mira Wang Jason Mast, Natalie Escobar news editors American Girl Doll associate section editors Rachel Frazin, Jordan Friedman Trevor Bohatch, Jacob Meschke, assistant news editor Orth Fashion designer Madison Rossi Lila Reynolds odon tist assistant editor Sophie Stein features editor Samantha Max senior designer Sasha Costello assistant features editor designers Krish Lingala, Andie Linker, Rachel Wolfe Lela Johnson, Daniel Fernandez life & style editor Aine Dougherty assistant designers Virginia Nowakowski assistant life & style editors Irena Yang Isabella Jiao and Arielle Schwartz Web liaison Leo Ji politics editor Abby Blachman assistant photo director Zoe Davis assistant politics editors photographers Ethan Dlugie, Lauren Bally and Libby Berry Natalie Escobar, Alex Furuya, Cassie entertainment editor Clare Varellas Majewski, Jacob Meschke, Zoe Davis, assistant entertainment editor ut a n o Julia Song, Mia Zanzucchi, Emma Sarappo Andrew Stern r t As contributors Andy Brown, Candace sports editor Will Fischer Butera, Rosalie Chan, Madeline Coe, assistant sports editor Rob Schaefer Jack Corrigan, Danielle Elliott, opinion editor Harrison Simons Natalie Escobar, Will Fischer, Daniel Hersh, assistant opinion editor Tanner Howard, Devon Kerr, Abbey Kutlas, Martina Barrera-Hernandez Shannon Lane, Jeremy Layton, writing editor Walter Ko Andie Linker, Morgan McFall-Johnson, assistant writing editor Jenna Lee Malloy Moseley, Kayla Reardon, Lila photo editors Reynolds, Nicolรกs Rivero, Emma Sarappo, Virginia Nowakowski, Mia Zanzucchi Arielle Schwartz, Isabel Schwartz, assistant photo editor Sophie Stein, Carolyn Twersky, Clare Zoe Davis Varellas, Katie Way, Mia Zanzucchi video editors Arch nt e Margaret Corn and Missy Chen e aeol h ogist sid f t interactive editors Pre en o Matthew Zhang and Leo Ji North by Northwestern, NFP A e social media coordinator Qu US Andy Brown board of directors graphics editors president Morgan Kinney Sasha Costello and Lela Johnson executive vice president Tanner Howard copy editors vice president Alex Daly Nick Garbรกty, Morgan Smith, Petra Barbu, treasurer Leo Ji Dalia Jude, Rachel Wolfe secretary Austin Siegel webmaster t Consultan Alex Duner corporate creative director director of marketing Kayla Reardon Nicole Zhu director of operations Leo Ji directors of talent Rosalie Chan and Madison Rossi director of ad sales Trevor Bohatch director of business operations Austin Siegel

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PREGAME

The party before the party

Robert Gordon’s official title is the Stanley G. Harris Professor in the Social Sciences at Northwestern University. Translation: he’s

an economics badass. His new book, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, has made serious waves since it was published in January. North by Northwestern sat down with him to discuss Facebook, the job market and Dillo.

Condense your book into two sentences.

We had a special century from 1870 to 1970, where an amazing number of things were invented that completely changed human existence both on the job and at home. Since 1970 we’ve had the computer revolution, but its impact has been narrower, and while profound, it has not affected human life in anything like the way the great inventions of the special century did.

Do you not see these larger breakthroughs happening again?

The big innovation in the last 10 years has been social networks.

It’s been the degree of communication and photo sharing among ordinary people. That certainly has improved the standard of living. It has not directly improved business productivity. You don’t gain the extra productivity to be able to pay higher wages just because your employees are shooting pictures back and forth to each other.

Is R&D (research and development) into this sort of stuff looking in the wrong direction?

They’re looking just where they should: where they think they can make money. If consumers are willing to pay for virtual reality goggles and the latest coolest software, and their payments make some people rich, then that’s where invention will go, even if it doesn’t raise productivity in the business part of the economy.

For Northwestern students graduating in the next five years, what does your theory mean for them?

Northwestern undergraduates should pay a lot of attention to the development of artificial intelligence and try to stay away from occupations that have prospects of being replaced by computers.

If you have an expensive college education, you don’t want to be caught in an occupation where you’re competing with computers.

PHOTO BY NATALIE ESCOBAR

What can we do to bring back this era of American economic success?

I think we need much more aggressive, federally financed preschool programs. The social distance in this country between the bottom and the top or the bottom and the middle is much different than in many countries. Here we are in Evanston, Illinois, and we have enormous gaps between the white and the Black populations in school, even though it’s a well-funded school system. [Addressing that] has been at the heart of sociology and the education literature going back for 50 years.

Have you ever been to Dillo Day? No, I don’t even know what it is.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

SPRING 2016 | 5

PREGAME

GREAT GRADUATES Warning: article may cause inferiority complex.

BY ABBEY KUTLAS

Northwestern always has a brilliant graduating class, so we thought we’d put a few in the spotlight.

Elena Barham Writing for academic journals, meeting high-level officials and testifying before Congress will all be in a day’s work for Weinberg senior Elena Barham as a Carnegie Junior Fellow.

Junior fellows work alongside senior ones at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. in one of the institution’s eight programs. The year-long position is highly competitive, accepting roughly 5 percent of applicants (10-12 a year) nominated by their universities. Barham will assist with research on the Democracy and Rule of Law program, which focuses on the evolution of democracy, human rights and law around the world.

“I’m not really scared about any dimension of this,” says Barham, who was also an Academic All-Big Ten cross-country runner at Northwestern, in an email. “I look forward to being challenged by the experience and to learning everything I can from this opportunity.”

Evan Rindler and Jon Rizik

Casey Kendall and Jonathon Bauerfeld During their freshman year, Jonathan Bauerfeld (Bienen ‘16) and Communication senior Casey Kendall dreamt up a musical.

And this past March, DEVOTED premiered on campus.

“It’s an irreverent comedy that follows two candidates for president – a Black Republican and female Democrat – that fall in love with each other on the campaign trail,” Bauerfeld says in an email.

After graduation, Kendall and Bauerfeld will move to New York to pursuit careers in musical theatre, and to find a way to produce DEVOTED on a bigger stage. “[Moving to New York] can be a little daunting,” Kendall says.

“But if there is even the slightest chance that it will all work out, there isn’t a thing I wouldn’t do to make it happen. Hopefully we write something awesome and live off the royalties forever.”

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PHOTOS BY MIA ZANZUCCHI AND CASSIE MAJEWSKI

Even before finishing their final classes last fall, Evan Rindler (Comm ‘16) and Jon Rizik (Comm ‘16) had started making a movie.

The two have been working on The Living End, a feature-length home invasion thriller, since last summer. “[The choice to make a movie] was deceptively simple,” Rindler says. “We wanted to challenge ourselves and see what it was possible to do ... We wanted to be the creative and productive minds behind the film.”

But Rindler says in the last few months they’ve been “closer to entrepreneurs than filmmakers.” The process has been less creative and more analytical, with constant fundraising headaches, pitches to production companies and negotiations with agents. They’ve even had to hire a fundraising consultant to help out. But the challenges haven’t stopped them yet.

“I hope that people [at Northwestern] who hear about my projects are encouraged to take risks too,” Rindler says in an email. “Both Jon and I can’t imagine being anything but filmmakers. It’s that simple.”

To whom it may concern RE: Email etiquette questions answered.

3 Subject: Respect your elders “The thing that bothers me most is a sense of entitlement: anything that can be summarized [by the student] as ‘let me explain to you what I deserve.’ The perfect email includes brevity and a clear request or question, with as much deference as possible. I don’t think formality and excuses are important. Excuses just violate the brevity rule; for me, they just take up space.”

BY ARIELLE SCHWARTZ As a Northwestern student, you’re probably an email expert – or so you think. As a communication method, email has an unenviable downside: There’s no immediate feedback. NU Professors gave us their best tips and tricks for crafting the perfect message and shared insights into what professors and employers hate the most.

-Scott Ogawa Assistant Professor, Economics

4 1

Subject: Go in with a plan “First and foremost, you want to think of your goal for the email. The second thing is to think about the overall life of the email. You want something that’s long enough so that you can talk about your goal and a little bit about your qualifications and experiences, but you don’t want something that’s as long as a cover letter.”

Subject: Give the doctor their due “It bothers me when an [upperclassman] addresses me by my first name or calls me Mrs. Breen (rather than Prof. Breen or Dr. Breen). The first email in a chain should be pretty formal, with a proper salutation and complete sentences. Later emails in the same chain can definitely be more casual.”

-Mark Presnell Executive Director, Northwestern Career Advancement

-Katharine Breen Associate Professor and Associate Chair, English

5 ILLUSTRATIONS BY SASHA COSTELLO

2 Subject: Don’t be informal; it’s not a text to your BFF! “It drives me crazy when students don’t have a greeting, but just sort of launch into it [and] when there is no capitalization or punctuation. It should look as though it was written with a little bit of thought. There’s always some students who email with no thought like they’re in a conversation with their friends.”

-Claire Sufrin Professor, Religious Studies

Subject: Don’t waste their time “My biggest pet peeve is when a student asks you a question that was explicitly answered in the syllabus already. [An email] should have a relatively brief question or statement. It’s important to remember that professors get hundreds of emails every day so brevity is always appreciated.”

-Daniel Krcmaric Assistant Professor and College Fellow, Political Science Editor’s note: Interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

SPRING 2016 | 7

PREGAME

BREADUCATION A guide to the greatest grains in Evanston.

BY NATALIE ESCOBAR Anyone who has eaten a stale dining hall roll knows that not all bread is created equal. But if you dare to venture off campus to one of Evanston’s artisan (or not-so-artisan) bakeries, gluten goodness awaits.

Jimmy John’s

1729 Sherman Ave. $ The “free smells” of baking bread that waft out of the Jimmy John’s on Sherman Avenue are tantalizing – before you remember how Jimmy John’s sandwiches actually taste. But for the low, low price of 50 cents, the cashier will hand over one of their squishy day-old sandwich rolls, sans meat and shredded lettuce. While a bit bland on their own, these rolls will more than do the trick as a solid vehicle for French toast or bread pudding.

Hewn Bakery

810 Dempster St. $$$ Hewn bread is the craft beer of the Evanston bread world: non-commercial yeast, 100 percent organic ingredients and super-long fermentation times that result in more flavorful bread. Their country loaves and traditional baguettes are staple favorites, but they play around with tradition, too. Unconventional loaves such as polenta pumpkin seed rosemary or nutella brioche rotate on and off the menu on a daily basis.

1000 Davis St. $$

Bennison’s might be best known for their impressive display of doughnuts, pastries and cakes, but they also churn out baguettes, enormous French sourdough miche loaves and special daily breads like sourdough and flaxseed. Each loaf has a crackly crust and a chewy crumb, thanks to the 30-plus hours of fermentation that allow the gluten proteins to break down and develop rich flavors.

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PHOTO BY NATALIE ESCOBAR

Bennison’s Bakery

Whole Foods

1640 Chicago Ave. $$

Great Harvest

Most people bypass the bread section en route to buying cereal or some other broke college student staple, but you can discover a treasure trove of options, including fresh-baked French bread, pretzels and challah. If the mood strikes, you can also pick up wine and cheese to keep your baguette company.

Whole Foods is the best option for latenight carb cravings, too; it’s open until 10 p.m., much later than most bakeries.

2126 Central St. $$

Sandwich bread isn’t usually this fancy (or pricey). Great Harvest’s whole wheat loaves, studded with seeds, nuts and other healthy things, cost $6-7 (luckily, samples are available).

The clerk runs the bread through a machine that slices the loaf into the perfectly proportioned pieces found on grocery store shelves—or not, if you like your toast thick. And for something less fiber-filled or multigrain, try one of their giant buttery Apple Scrapple loaves or pans of monkey bread.

Glossary

Brioche: A soft, flaky bread Monkey Bread: A type of sweet Flaxseed: A type of nutty-flavored enriched with butter and eggs, bread, similar to several extra sticky seed, often called a superfood because of its omega-3 fatty acids.

Polenta: Cornmeal, usually used in Italian cooking.

Miche loaf: A type of large, round French sourdough bread that can weigh up to 11 pounds.

originally from France.

cinnamon buns, smashed together.

Crumb: The way the inside of Fermentation: the bread looks when the loaf is cut open, in terms of the size and pattern of the holes.

Challah: An egg-enriched braided bread typically eaten on Shabbat and other Jewish holidays.

The process through which yeast in dough breaks down to produce carbon dioxide and alcohol, which gives artisan loaves their tangy, almost sour flavor.

Simply put: Longer fermentation means more flavorful bread.

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GENIUS

Bright ideas, new perspectives

Book & mortar

A local bookstore works to keep Evanston’s literary community alive.

BY TANNER HOWARD

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from the web for the sake of reading. Her store provides a space that promotes the value of deliberate, concentrated reading – something that has been challenged by the web’s emphasis on fast-paced information and resulting short attention spans.

“We feel that the experience that you have when you unplug is a very intellectually important experience,” Barrett says. “It’s kind of like going to the gym and exercising when you lead a very sedentary experience.”

Through their efforts, Barrett and her husband Jeff Garrett, who helps manage the store, have already started to revive a piece of Evanston’s literary past. Bookman’s Alley long served the community as an intimate, overstuffed bookstore, immortalized in Audrey Niffenegger’s bestseller The Time Traveler’s Wife. The store was well-known for its endless towers of used books, stacked precariously high. Its owner, Roger Carlson, was a lively figure who was always eager to discuss books.

“We understood it was an institution, but we didn’t want to run an antiquarian bookstore,” Barrett says. “Without adopting [Carlson’s] business model, we wanted to preserve the sense of a quirky literary space and honor it in that way.”

While Bookman’s Alley closed at Carlson’s retirement, Evanston has rapidly seen the damage of a changing marketplace

ILLUSTRATION BY ANDIE LINKER

ust off the beaten path of Sherman Avenue, tucked inconspicuously into an alleyway unseen to most passersby, lies Bookends and Beginnings. White footprints painted on the alley’s asphalt lead pedestrians to the bookshop’s door. Inside may be the last refuge for Evanston’s literary community.

Bookends and Beginnings opened in 2014 in a building that once housed Bookman’s Alley, a store that played an enduring role in Evanston’s book-loving community for more than three decades. Bookends is a strikingly beautiful space; it is full of long, well-stocked wood shelves, and many paper tabs inviting shoppers to learn more about the owner’s favorite books. There is history in this place, a deep reverence towards the act of physical book buying that is in danger of disappearing from Evanston for good.

To preserve this tradition, the store has heavily invested in its web presence, promoting itself primarily through its Facebook page and a monthly newsletter that reaches more than 4,500 people. In a competitive business climate that has seen a sharp turn towards online shopping, the stakes are simply too high for Bookends to ignore the internet’s power.

At the same time, owner Nina Barrett hopes their digital efforts ensure that more people understand the value of unplugging

PHOTOS BY ETHAN DLUGIE

for traditional independent bookstores. The city has seen two attention of a room of fellow students. Sobhani was struck by other traditional used bookstores – the Book Den and Howard’s the unique atmosphere of the store, so quaint in a downtown Books – permanently shut down in the past year. littered with big-box bookstores and other retailers.

While Bookends and Beginnings sits just half a block from Barnes “Especially for a community like Evanston that’s a very & Noble, the owners know their urban kind of suburb, you can bigger concern is the threat of online get very caught up in going to “We feel that the experience that you have when you the bigger stores,” Sobhani says. booksellers, particularly Amazon.

At Bookends in mid-April, Evanston unplug and read a book is a very intellectually important “We couldn’t do something like resident and economic analyst Matt experience. It’s kind of like going to the gym and this at Barnes & Noble, and this Cunningham presented “Amazon store really gives a character to exercising when you lead a very sedentary experience.” and Empty Storefronts,” one of the community.” first wide-ranging examinations While Garrett and Barrett into the myriad impacts of the web behemoth on local economies. acknowledge the challenges of keeping a bookstore afloat in the Among its findings: With Amazon’s $5.6 billion of book sales in 21st century, their backgrounds have given them the knowledge 2014, the company could have created the equivalent of 3,600 they needed to succeed from the start. Before retiring, Garrett independent bookshops. worked almost two decades at the Northwestern library, often Amazon’s impact on the economy, Barrett says, is “retail focusing on international children’s literature, a passion he’s climate change” for all physical stores. continued in the store. Barrett has published several books, in Bookends still depends heavily on the web to reach out addition to spending 15 years working part-time on and off at to more prospective customers. Garrett in particular works Women and Children First, a feminist bookstore in Chicago’s carefully to maintain the store’s online presence, noting with Andersonville neighborhood. pride that the store comes up as Evanston’s best bookstore For the couple, the success of their bookstore isn’t just an on Yelp. The store recently hired Weinberg freshman Tomer idle passion. It is their lives, and it has given them a mission to Cherki, in part to get them on Twitter. Still, Garrett says, “We preserve a piece of the world that threatens in a changing social want to be a physical store.” and economic climate.

For that reason, Bookends uses its web presence to promote “We are cultural warriors,” Barrett says. “We have to advocate its many in-store events, including author talks, cooking lessons for [bookstores] to be a piece of our lives that we don’t want to and, in late April, an open mic thrown by Helicon, Northwestern’s lose. If it goes away, there’s a piece of social community that goes literary magazine. On a drizzly afternoon, Weinberg junior away with it.”

Mahalia Sobhani read her poem “Sprung” to the rapt

SPRING 2016 2016 || 11 11 SPRING

Award and Grant Funding for Faculty Excellence and Innovation in Diversity Provost Awards for Faculty Excellence in Diversity and Equity

Provost Grants for Faculty Innovation in Diversity and Equity

The Provost Awards for Faculty Excellence in Diversity and Equity celebrate exemplar individuals or groups who are working collaboratively to build a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable climate at Northwestern University.

The Provost Grants for Faculty Innovation in Diversity and Equity fund faculty proposals for novel and innovative practices that will enhance our missions of education and research through improved diversity and inclusion at Northwestern University.

Awards will be made by nomination of a faculty member or members. Nominations should clearly demonstrate how the individual or group has led an effort, initiative or project to build greater diversity, inclusion and equity related to sex, gender identity or expression, race, ethnicity, disability, socioeconomic status, age, political affiliation, religion, philosophy, or sexual orientation. Projects should demonstrate a positive and collaborative approach to achieving this goal. Examples of activities that may merit award funding may be viewed on the full nomination form.

Two awards in the amount of $5,000 will be made each year. All faculty are eligible for nomination, as are joint nominations for initiatives that involve two or more faculty members, units or departments.

NOMINATIONS: Any member of the Northwestern community may nominate a faculty member, unit or department whose contributions are significant as noted above. Nominations must be received by October 1, 2016.

Further information and the nomination form can be found at www.northwestern.edu/provost/

Proposed projects should demonstrate how they will enhance our academic enterprise through expanded diversity, inclusion and equity at Northwestern University as related to sex, gender identity or expression, race, ethnicity, disability, socioeconomic status, age, political affiliation, religion, philosophy, or sexual orientation. For examples of the types of projects expected to be funded, see the grant application form.

Funding is expected to range from $2,000 for modest proposals to $25,000 for extensive proposals that may include multiple faculty partners or extend across units or schools.

APPLICATIONS: All faculty are eligible to apply. This includes department chairs and program or center directors, but excludes those faculty with a decanal appointment. Proposals must be submitted by October 1, 2016. Work on projects should commence

by January 2017.

Further information and the application form can be found at www.northwestern.edu/provost/

faculty-resources/career-development/ faculty-honors/award-for-excellence-in- diversity-and-equity-grants/index.html diversity-and-equity/index.html

Crossing borders Students connect to refugees through the Syrian Comunity Network.

BY LILA REYNOLDS

F

ewer than 10 miles away from Northwestern is a community of refugee families who fled a civil war more than 6,000 miles across the world.

A growing population of Syrian refugees, virtually invisible to the Northwestern student body, lives in Rogers Park, and throughout the Chicago metropolitan area. A small group of Northwestern undergraduates has sought them out through the Chicagobased Syrian Community Network (SCN), hoping to help.

One of these students is Weinberg senior Ameer Al-Khudari. For him, the ongoing civil war in Syria is very personal, as his family immigrated from Syria to the Chicago suburbs in 1971, and the war has displaced a number of his extended family members within the country.

As refugees from his family’s home country have continued to establish new roots nearby, it felt natural for him to join the SCN, where he now interns.

“Being an American citizen has proven to be an immense privilege and it’s part of why I feel the need to help in whatever way I can,” he says.

Al-Khudari has helped connect a handful of

Northwestern students with one of the SCN’s newest programs, in which volunteers partner with families to make their adjustment to the United States more comfortable.

The SCN launched in 2014 to help arriving refugees resettle in the United States. According to SCN Vice President Hadia Zarzour, the organization provides an environment where refugee families can connect with each other and different communities in Chicago. These social interactions can help refugees’ adjust after the trauma they experience, she says.

“Helping them through their basic needs like social interactions will help them feel like a part of the community,” Zarzour says.

Jack Cavanaugh, McCormick senior, has gone to Rogers Park to spend time with one family and help them grow accustomed to conversational English.

He says that helping refugee families is important to him because he wants to combat widespread anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric. He opposes Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner’s efforts to stop Syrian migrants from entering the state.

“It’s really heartbreaking to me that we alienate people who have already been through so

much and dehumanize them to such an unbelievable extent,” Cavanaugh says.

Colleen Cassingham, Weinberg senior and another volunteer with SCN, says she looks forward to going every week, particularly after she discovered a dance class for Syrian children run through another SCN program. Two children from the family she works with attend the class, which incorporates English into their dances, giving them vocabulary words like “zip, jump, and skip” to practice.

“One little boy in my family was so exuberant and was totally performing,” she says.

“It was so cute.”

At the beginning of April, Northwestern Interfaith Advocates put on a concert to benefit Syrian refugees featuring music from all around the world, and plan to continue hosting the concert annually.

Tahera Ahmad, the director of Interfaith Engagement, says she thinks dialogue about the conflict has been increasing.

“Northwestern students are really concerned about social justice issues and I think many of them are focusing on right here in Chicago,” says Ahmad.

“Because there’s a lot more conversation at the national

and global level, there are more faculty and staff that are creating those opportunities and students are also initiating those opportunities.”

But volunteering with SCN itself hasn’t gained much recognition on campus, as only a handful of undergraduates currently work with them.

Including graduate students, Al-Khudari says there are under 10 Syrians on campus.

When there are refugee-focused events, he says, they tend not to be student-run because there is no centralized organization focused on the Syrian refugee crisis on campus.

For Cassingham, though, it’s important to know about the opportunity to help in the first place. She says her friends never discuss the refugee crisis.

She was excited, then, when another student reached out to her over Facebook to ask how they could get involved with the SCN. “I feel like it would be better if it was in our consciousness more,” Cassingham says. “It’s really invisible. I just wish that people even knew that there are students here that are doing this.”

SPRING 2016 | 13

GENIUS

Bloody hell Menstrual hygiene products that won’t cramp your style.

BY KATIE WAY

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PHOTO BY EMMA SARAPPO

he first time I got my period, I was at my friend’s bat mitzvah party. My stomach cramped all night, and when I finally headed to the bathroom to investigate, I pulled down my panties to discover that Cora Stern wasn’t the only one who’d become a woman that day. I’ve been getting my monthly negative pregnancy test from Mother Nature ever since. And honestly, it hasn’t gotten any simpler. Of the two mainstream options for dealing with menstruation, one leaves me feeling like I’ve pissed myself and the other involves shoving a glorified cat toy up my vagina.

I’m not the only Wildcat fed up with pads and tampons.

Alternative menstrual products are having a renaissance, and more and more students at Northwestern are staunching the crimson tide in unconventional ways. Sharon Wang, a Weinberg sophomore and the events chair for Sexual Health and Assault Peer Education (SHAPE), recently gave a presentation to the group on some lesser-known menstrual products, including menstrual cups, sponges, reusable pads and “period underwear” such as THINX. Wang was inspired to make the presentation after SHAPE’s faculty advisor heard her extolling the virtues of the DivaCup, a popular menstrual cup sold at retailers like Whole Foods, before a meeting and suggested she prepare a more formal talk.

Wang speculates that students might not explore their options because they aren’t taught to think outside the box when it comes to menstruation.

“Part of it is probably just that when you start your period you go to your mom and the simplest, most readily available thing are pads and tampons,” she says.

ILLUSTRATION BY ANDIE LINKER

Wang started using the DivaCup regularly her first year at Northwestern after her older sister introduced her to the product.

Besides the fact that it eliminates the risk of toxic shock syndrome, a potentially life-threatening bacterial infection that can develop when someone waits too long to change a tampon, and that it promotes a “healthy vaginal environment,” Wang says she likes the DivaCup because it’s easy to use. According to the company’s website, it is safe to wear the menstrual cup for up to 12 hours before cleaning it, and the cup is reusable for up to a year.

“It’s just so convenient, you can wear it for as long as you want,” she says. “So many times I’ll just forget that I’m even on my period. It just helps your period not inhibit your life.”

Wang’s presentation inspired Phoebe Fox, a Communication sophomore and SHAPE member, to purchase THINX’s period panties. Fox has quickly become enamored with the underwear.

“I feel like I could be a spokesperson for them,” Fox says. “I love them so much, I’ve been telling so many people.”

Fox had always “detested using pads and tampons,” and was thrilled with how effective her THINX were at keeping her dry and comfortable throughout her cycle.

“I’d check them because I was scared they would leak, but they didn’t,” she says. She even slept in them overnight by mistake on the heaviest day of her period, but was still leak-free when she woke up the next day.

She also likes how eco-friendly they are, especially when compared to pads and tampons. Fox plans to purchase more pairs of the panties, which she describes as “lacy and cute,” as soon as possible.

Others use intrauterine devices (IUDs) to deal with menstrual drama. IUDs are contraceptives inserted directly into the uterus that prevent pregnancy until the device is removed.

Jess Zeidman*, a Communication sophomore, struggled with intestinal problems every time she menstruated, causing her incapacitating pain for days at a time.

“It would obliterate me,” Zeidman says.

Though IUDs are used primarily for birth control, Zeidman’s mother, a gynecologist, recommended a hormonal IUD to alleviate Jess’s symptoms. Zeidman got the small plastic implant in August of 2014, and hasn’t had a period since.

Northwestern students might be experimenting with different ways to deal with the blood that gushes from their nether regions every four-or-so weeks, but campus health services haven’t quite caught up. According to Lisa Currie, Northwestern’s director of health promotion and wellness, Searle Health Center does not offer any literature or education about alternative menstrual products, primarily due to lack of demand. It also does not offer on-site IUD insertion, only prescriptions for the procedure.

“If there was interest, it’s definitely something we could pursue,” Currie says.

Until then, students can learn more easily about ways to ditch the Kotex from friends or online sources than they can from the University itself.

Everyone I talked to stressed that these methods might not be good for those who aren’t totally comfortable with their anatomy. Fox described wringing the blood out of her underwear in vivid detail, and Wang mentioned that “sticking things inside yourself can get messy and weird,” when using a menstrual cup. But lucky for me, I’m not squeamish, which is why I’ll be heading down to Whole Foods before my next period to pick up a DivaCup of my own. I’m probably never going to look forward to my period, but at the very least I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and try something new.

Against the Flow Menstrual cup Pros: Sanitary, eco-friendly, long-lasting Cons: Be ready to get your hands dirty

“Period panties” Pros: Comfortable, super-absorbent, reduce waste Cons: Hemophobes beware

Period sponge Pros: Makes you feel like you’re a mermaid or something Cons: The cleaning process will not

Reusable pads Pros: Machine washable, cost effective Cons: You have to use it again…

IUDs Pros: Birth control, lighter periods Cons: May actually increase period-related pain or induce a heavier flow

*Editor’s Note: Zeidman previously contributed to North by Northwestern.

SPRING 2016 | 15

GENIUS GENIUS

E C A P S

D D O

e e th r o l xp

gut

ty. ravi g ero in z

rs e

he earc

s n re

r este w h t Nor

S E I T I

BY ISABEL SCHWARTZ Dr. Martha Hotz Vitaterna and Dr. human body – muscle atrophy, changes in Fred Turek, scientists at Northwestern’s eyesight, etc. – is insomnia.

“It’s just hard to fall asleep and stay Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology lab, will soon have their hands full of asleep,” Vitaterna says. “It’s loud, it’s feces – astronaut feces, to be precise. The zero gravity, you kind of always have that researchers will handle stool from Scott feeling you’re upside down.”

The analysis Turek and Vitaterna are Kelly, recently returned from a year in doing is not your typical space, and from his twin high-school microbiology. brother, Mark Kelly, who Rather than looking at stayed on Earth. These “If we see this big DNA and mitochondria, samples may provide Vitaterna and Turek with expansion [in bacteria] they will examine how part of the key that will in association with space different bacteria co-exist unlock the first manned flight, we’re going to want in an ecosystem, and to take a closer look at what happens when sleep mission to Mars.

Turek and Vitaterna are that bacteria. In which loss disturbs it. Vitaterna leading one of 10 research situations is this helping, compared it to studying experiments in NASA’s and when is it harmful?” rainforest biomes, where changes in the diversity of Twins Study, examining plants and animals can negatively impact the impact of long-term spaceflight on Kelly’s body. While some of the other the entire biome. Only instead of plants research teams study changes in things and animals, bacteria, and instead of the like behavior and genetics, NU’s study rainforest, the gut.

The balance between “good” and “bad” measures the effect extended space flight has on what scientists are now calling the bacteria is delicate. Intestines are swarming body’s “newest organ,” bacteria in the gut. with bacteria, 10 of them for every human The Twins Study is the latest in a series cell in the body, Turek says. Scientists have of Northwestern-led programs to aid found that the right balance can improve NASA’s efforts to put humans on the Red mood, bolster the immune system and can Planet. In December, two professors and even alter genetics. But the wrong balance a doctoral student created concrete that can lead to cancer, obesity and mental could be used to build shelters on Mars, health disorders such as depression.

“If we can discover which bacteria and another team is experimenting with prototypes of a humanoid robot to aid the are most vulnerable to being ‘lost in space’ we may be able to reduce first astronauts who land there.

What are sleep researchers doing the risk of gastrointestinal illness in studying astronauts? Turns out, among the future spaceflight missions like Mars,” myriad impacts on space flight has on the Vitaterna says, noting that intestinal 16 | northbynorthwestern.com

issues have been a common complaint for astronauts.

Although Turek and Vitaterna will not have all of the data collected until this fall, they predict the diversity of microbiota will drop significantly during space flight, partially due to the limited diet of astronauts. Astronauts eat mostly freezedried food because it doesn’t expire, and they rarely have access to fruit and vegetables that replenish some of the good bacteria.

“If we see this big expansion [in a certain type of bacteria] in association with space flight, we’re going to want to take a closer look at that bacteria,” Vitaterna says. “In which situations is this helping, and when is it harmful?”

The study will also investigate other possible reasons for changes in bacterial diversity. Researchers believe the real question will be the extent that the microbiota levels return and whether the loss of bacteria helped their bodies adapt in space.

Researchers will collect and synthesize the results at Stanford University to create a holistic picture of space flight and health, and they hope to take preventative action against in-flight illness. Pro-bacteria measures that could result from these studies include a specially engineered astronaut probiotic, according to Vitaterna.

Think interstellar Activia.

“I’ve heard NASA people refer to Scott Kelly as the pre-Martian,” Vitaterna says.

“It’s an important step toward getting ready for Mars.”

BY CLARE VARELLAS One of the country’s first late-night college sketch shows finds its footing.

PHOTOS BY EMMA SARAPPO AND JACOB MESCHKE

Communication junior Zack Laurence operates a camera during the filming of a Blackout sketch in Louis Hall on April 18th.

“Fuck Chelsea!” a dozen students shout from the desks of a Louis Hall classroom. They pound their fists and scream in unison at the video camera in front of them, rattling their laptops and spilling LaCroix.

In the center of it all is the mastermind: Communication sophomore Chelsea Jacobson*, doing the exact same thing.

They’re filming a comedic sketch to be screened before Jacobson takes the stage in the fourth live show of The Blackout, Northwestern’s first studentproduced late-night variety show. Jacobson launched the show in the fall, inspired by the comedic exploits of NU alumni Stephen Colbert (Speech ‘86) and Seth Meyers (Speech ‘96).

Eight months later, after four shows, contributions from over 100 students and the departure of their co-founder and executive producer, they’re still trying to answer the central question: Can

a fully student-run Saturday Night Live spinoff succeed?

The “Fuck Chelsea” skit is an odd beginning considering this particular episode, filmed on April 30, is supposed to be space-themed. But that’s the beauty of a variety show and the reason Jacobson loved the idea: Students can include any and all comedic content.

“For someone making [the show], it’s super fun because we can do almost anything and everything,” Jacobson says.

And they do. The contents of the show, broadcast twice per quarter, range in topic and comedic tone. Jacobson reads jokes about both local and global happenings from a teleprompter, adding her own riffs in between.

She mentions Northwestern’s most recent, notably-low acceptance rate of 10.7 percent, wonders if her dad will finally be proud of her, and notes that not only are the NHL Playoffs heating

up, but the climate is, too.

Months of preparation go into each live show. Chelsea brainstorms with the writers, manages the details of filming sketches, organizes interviews and pulls everyone else together during Monday night all-staff meetings. In total, it’s a 25-hour per week job.

“It’s fair to say this is one of the most ambitious things in recent RTVF memory,” says Weinberg junior and head writer Joshua D. Razo. “It’s also a film club; you have all these great people doing sound and costuming and makeup, but at the heart of it, it’s a comedy show.”

Because of the diverse skill set required for both planning and live production, Jacobson describes her recruitment efforts Fall Quarter as a fulltime job. The size of her staff has been growing steadily ever since. Drawing mostly from

RTVF students, the show has attracted 40 consistent writers, technicians, actors, producers and marketers, though about a hundred others have contributed in some capacity.

Jacobson is trying to make the show a Northwestern institution, a beloved routine event like Burlesque or WaaMu, but the large-scale format of the platform and the sheer amount of time required to execute each show has caused some team members to question the direction of The Blackout. Two days after the April 30 show, co-founder and executive producer Devon Kerr, a Communication sophomore, left the The Blackout. In his opinion, it was growing too fast in both staff size and aspirations.

And in the fall, Jacobson will go abroad, putting the show in uncharted waters with a new host.

Jacobson says she wants to improve The Blackout further by searching for ways she, as the show’s host, can showcase the talents and voices of the student body, in part through interviews with people across Northwestern. She hopes the show, a product of passion, persistence and the rowdy hilarity of college, will continue to evolve for the better.

“I believe in my crew, and I believe in the campus community that has supported us,” Jacobson says in a moment of seriousness.

“I believe that we can take this project further than we have, and I know we will.” *Editor’s Note: Jacobson has previously contributed to North by Northwestern; Kerr contributed to this issue.

SPRING 2016 | 17

GENIUS

Bobby on... ...tacos

Bob’s Rockin’ Tacos

“When it comes down to making a good taco, even if you do something weird with it, you have to respect tradition first. A taco is so much of a street food that you should never try to fancy it up to be something completely artisanal. Basically, I should never pay $5 for a taco.”

...interviews “I bring them in and I just ask them the same questions as if we were hanging out. For me, a good interview is where we sit down and we talk about things that show more of the personality of the people who are writing the music.”

...the NU work ethic “You go four years being the most productive in your life, ever, and you ask yourself, ‘How the hell am I doing this?’ ... I think it’s totally acceptable to be able to step back and take a breather while you’re still young and spry ... The biggest thing I can say is just don’t compare yourself to everybody else that went to school with you, because that’s how you’re going to get down on yourself.”

NU alumnus combines food and music in new web series.

BY NICOLÁS RIVERO Bob’s Rockin’ Tacos began as a makeshift taco stand in the Communications Residential College lounge. Today, it’s a budding YouTube series where Bobby Ramirez (Comm ‘15) shares his recipes and interviews local bands as they devour his creation.

Talking over tacos might sound like a disastrous idea for an interview series, but Ramirez says he wants to catch his guests with their mouths full. As band members struggle to respond through a big bite of barbacoa, viewers get to see the human side of the artists.

“It’s kind of endearing to see someone whose music you respect so much, on camera, with salsa dripping from their lip,” Ramirez says.

“Everything I do with Bob’s Rockin’ Tacos, I just want it to feel personal, not stuck up, and as if you were friends with me already.”

In fact, Ramirez is already friends with most of his guests. Many are members

of bands he has met while working concerts at Thalia Hall or hanging out at shows around Chicago. It’s not a hard sell to bring them over to his Pilsen, Chicago home to go on camera.

“I have a backlog of people that want to schedule interviews,” Ramirez says, “because they’re all just like, ‘Oh, free tacos? Fuck yeah!’”

Ryan White, bassist for local new wave band Dimwaves, met Ramirez while working security with him at Thalia, and appeared on Bob’s Rockin’ Tacos in March. White says he felt more comfortable talking to Ramirez on Bob’s Rockin’ Tacos than he has in most other interviews he’s done as a musician.

“There’s no lights, glitter and glam on you,” White says. “You just go in there and he has one cam set up, no extra mics, no frills. I felt like for half the thing I was just eating a taco. I forgot it was an interview.”

Years before he sat down

18 | northbynorthwestern.com

PHOTOS BY NATALIE ESCOBAR

Ramirez serves his signature barbacoa tacos with cilantro, diced onions, Pilsen-made El Milagro tortillas and cheap beer (usually Tecate).

with Dimwaves to share a new barbacoa recipe, Ramirez was a sophomore RTVF major living in CRC. That’s when he realized people would pay good money ($2 each) for the tacos he had learned to cook while growing up in Yuma, Arizona.

The lines were so long that Ramirez started bringing his speakers down to the first floor lounge of CRC to liven up the atmosphere while people waited. He made a taco playlist on Spotify, a medley of the Latin classics his parents played at home and the songs he heard drifting out of people’s cars back in Yuma.

“I would pick a weekend, cook a shit-ton of tacos and sell them to people either before they were going out or after they came back and were drunk,” Ramirez says. “I would just make a killing.”

As business boomed, Ramirez and his friends joked about an imaginary restaurant called Bob’s Rockin’ Tacos where patrons would chow down on cheap, greasy food next to a stage where punk bands would play.

Of course, Ramirez never actually wanted to work in a restaurant – he thought that would take the joy out of food.

But his former roommate, Communication junior Catherine Yang, says that did not stop him from dreaming up ways to capitalize on his love of cooking.

Yang remembers Ramirez as an energetic early riser, who was particular about keeping the kitchen clean and eager to share his food with her. She says he was always cooking, always down to hang out or listen to music and always taking the ‘L’ to Pilsen to buy esoteric ingredients, like the hibiscus

Ramirez plates tacos in his Pilsen home. leaves he uses to brew agua de Jamaica tea. His restless energy also led him to churn out a constant stream of Bob’s Rockin’ Tacos business ideas.

First was Bob’s Rockin’ Tacos the restaurant and music venue. Then came Bob’s Rockin’ Tacos the food truck.

After that, Ramirez started talking about writing a Bob’s Rockin’ Tacos cookbook with illustrations from Yang.

He finally decided on Bob’s Rockin’ Tacos the YouTube series after a disastrous attempt to spend a year in Europe after graduation.

Ramirez planned to stay with a friend in England for a month before traveling to Italy to teach English until the next summer. But after spending all his savings on a one-way flight to Manchester, he learned the Italian consulate had denied

his application for a work visa.

Stranded in England, Ramirez worked in an ice cream shop in North Yorkshire until he saved up enough money for a plane ticket home.

He wound up back in Chicago just before New Year’s, months earlier than planned.

“I came back with no plans because none of that shit was supposed to happen,” Ramirez says. “It was just this weird moment where I was like, I have all this free time on my hands, I don’t necessarily have a full time job that takes up a bunch of time, so I needed to do something.”

Bored, one day in January, Ramirez posted on Facebook that he was thinking of starting “a food and music video blog where I interview starving artists while we gorge on my recipes.” He vowed that if the

post got 100 likes, the series would launch within the month.

The post hit triple digits in less than three hours. Exactly one month later, Ramirez uploaded his first video, a recipe for agua de jamaica.

Since then, he’s interviewed members of the bands Falcor Friends, Dimwaves, Lala Lala and Glam Camp, and shared recipes for carne asada, barbacoa and potato tacos. Already, strangers have started coming up to Ramirez at shows to tell him they’ve seen his series.

“I feel like so far it’s still not anything whatsoever,” Ramirez says. “A couple hundred views is nothing to brag about nowadays ... but it’s growing in a way that feels very organic and that I’m proud of and want to keep doing because I could see it

being a cool thing.”

Ramirez hopes to interview local indie bands Flesh Panthers and NE-HI soon.

He also wants to upgrade his recording equipment and find someone to replace his tripod as the show’s cameraman.

In the long run, though, Ramirez plans to find steadier work as an event producer.

He’s already applying for jobs around the country, which might pull him away from Chicago and leave him with much less time for side projects. But Ramirez says he’ll do everything he can to keep Bob’s Rockin’ Tacos alive if he lands a full-time gig.

“In the meantime,” he says, “I’m having fun literally just working concerts and cooking tacos every day, so I’m cool with living that life for a while.”

SPRING 2016 | 19

SPOTLIGHT

Take a closer look.

on Innovation

Shark Tank

Entrepreneurs shine in NU Venture Challenge.

BY ANDIE LINKER

B

20 | northbynorthwestern.com

pitch their ideas to venture capitalists who decide whether they want to invest.

The contest has five categories: business products and software, consumer products and software, healthcare and medical, green energy and sustainability, and social enterprise and nonprofit.

The challenge comes in three rounds: screening, semifinals and finals, and has multiple winners per category.

The idea for Audiovert sprung out of Alexander’s love for music. He says that he has had similar ideas since high school.

“There’s a much more meaningful way to design audio speakers, and that’s through customizing them and injecting your personality into the speaker system,” Alexander says.

HearYe, an app that creates a centralized platform for events on campus, has also found a home at the Garage. Anyone with a Northwestern email can create an event, and users can either scroll through a general feed or fine-tune their search to find events by interest.

Founders Max Weidell, Weinberg sophomore, and Drake Mumford, SESP sophomore, developed the idea during Winter Quarter last year after seeing the

A&O Productions Interstellar screening.

Weidell and Mumford believe that having one interface for all events on campus will drastically change the way Northwestern socializes.

“What it allows everyone to do is experience events they would normally not be able to,” Weidell says.

HearYe did not advance in the competition. For Weidell and Mumford, the loss means that a big marketing push they’d been planning will be tough to fund. However, Audiovert did move on, and was the top undergraduate team in the semifinals. Alexander feels prepared going into the finals on June 2.

“Winning is the goal,” Alexander says.

“We were semifinalists last year and we did not make it to the finals, so this year we’re really going at it.”

Alexander plans on working part-time to further develop Audiovert after he graduates. If he wins the Venture Challenge, he hopes to use the money to expand his production to meet increasing demand.

“Ultimately, this is definitely not the endall,” he says. “But if it happens it’s gonna relieve a lot of stress off of our shoulders.”

PHOTO BY ALEX FURUYA

efore the Garage opened on North Campus in the summer of 2015, McCormick senior Ahren Alexander was sleeping in the sawdust of his prototypes.

Alexander is the founder of the startup venture Audiovert. He and his partners are aiming to redesign speakers as customizable pieces of art instead of as simple black boxes. Although Alexander developed his whole startup in his studio apartment, the Garage, an innovation incubator, has given him a new space to work.

“There is a mess in the very back corner [of the Garage] that’s got a lot of wood stacked up, a tool chest, lots of sticky notes on the wall – that’s my mess,” Alexander says. “The Garage has given me a home for all my mess, and I’ve never had that before.”

While students can develop their ideas at the Garage, making them into realities poses a unique hurdle. That’s where the Northwestern University Venture Challenge comes in. Each year, NUVC raises $25,000 to $30,000 to fund Northwestern students’ startup dreams.

The competition works a lot like the TV show Shark Tank: young entrepreneurs

The Impossible Challenge Inaugural competition aims to solve the world’s biggest problems.

BY MORGAN McFALL-JOHNSEN

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SAM SPENGLER

O

n a Monday evening in midFebruary, while hundreds of students filled the library cramming for Chemistry tests and churning out history papers, 46 students divided into nine teams prepared for a presentation they hoped would help change – maybe even save – the world.

Two teams analyzed state-of-the-art agriculture technology to grow crops without soil in crowded cities and disaster zones. Another two explored oil-free magnetic levitation driverless cars and trains that could travel upwards of 186 miles per hour. One team analyzed solar farms and another built-in solar panel roofing. But regardless of project or topic, every team has one goal: to find the best solutions to climate change.

Formed this school year, the Impossible Challenge draws inspiration from a stepby-step process for solving global issues laid out in retired computer programmer and systems analyst David Paul’s book, Standards that Measure Solutions: A Guide to Solving 21st Century Problems. Each year, the program will address a new major global issue for which solutions are complex and difficult to implement – what Jeffrey Strauss, the program director, calls “wicked problems.”

The Impossible Challenge is just the first step or the “first-cut analysis” phase in Paul’s book. Students do not try to enact the plans, but instead analyze how likely they are to be implemented and how effective they would be by looking at economic, political, social and technological feasibility.

“I’ve seen a lot of the programming with student groups at Northwestern and Impossible Challenge was very different from anything I’ve seen,” says Victoria Yang, a Weinberg senior on one of the two teams analyzing different sustainable

transportation systems. “The project is very open and it allows students to be creative.”

Students do most of their research independently, while meeting with their group throughout the quarter. After final presentations on May 26, each student will receive a $500 stipend, and the winning team will receive a $5,000 cash prize.

But the students have their own reasons for joining the project. For many, it’s a chance to explore fields, like transportation technology, that are not part of their academic experience.

“This was a taste of something that I couldn’t have done otherwise,” Yang says.

How magnetic levitation works

train guideway

guidance magnets

support magnet

“It intrigued me so I wanted to be involved and this allowed me to do that without having a physics background.”

Weinberg junior Kathryn Kim is on a team working on aeroponics: using mineral-filled mist to grow food instead of soil. Kim, a pre-med student, analyzed the political feasibility of her team’s project, allowing her to use her political knowledge outside of conversations with friends for the first time.

“I was interested in [the Impossible Challenge] because it was a year-long project, so it required a lot of time and devotion,” Kim says. “I like that commitment to it because it made it seem like it would be something worth doing.”

But with every solution comes complications.

At their midterm presentations, for example, Yang’s team presented the benefits their magnetic levitation train system could have in India: perfect fuel efficiency, noiselessness and speed. But the judges pointed out the trains would not accommodate India’s growing population and corruption would deter investors. Aeroponics systems could make food deserts sprout fresh produce, Kim’s team says, but would require high amounts of energy and could force farmers out of jobs.

For the students, though, the program makes a difference, regardless of whether the solutions come to fruition, through education and raising awareness around climate change.

“It will make people take a pause and think about [climate change] more thoroughly and I think that’s, in and of itself, a way to say that this is working,” says Weinberg sophomore Caili Chen, a member of the aeroponics team.

Next year, the Impossible Challenge will start up again with a new crop of students and a new global challenge.

SPRING 2016 | 21

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The campus scoop.

Symone Abbott

PLAYING PAST PREJUDICE Athletes explore racial identity as minorities in their sport.

BY DANIEL HERSH

22 | northbynorthwestern.com

race and inclusion on college campuses across the country. When Mizzou’s football team stood in solidarity with Black students and refused to play, protests involving racial discrimination distinctly wove their way into athletics.

At Northwestern, athletics and protests mixed differently. Protesters wanting to stop the proposed reductions to the Black House interrupted the dedication of the new athletic facilities at the Henry Crown Sports Pavilion. One of the biggest issues in this year’s ASG presidential election was the experience of marginalized groups on campus. But do these same conversations on race and inclusion follow athletes onto the playing fields?

The four student athletes featured in this story do not represent the experiences of all student athletes of color. But their

stories demonstrate the stereotyping, discrimination and cultural barriers they’ve had to overcome to get to where they are today.

Symone Abbott

Volleyball Communication Sophomore Everyone wanted Symone Abbott to play basketball. From her dad to her gym teacher, everyone assumed a tall, athletic Black girl would. Not volleyball. “[My dad] was like, ‘It’s in your culture. I played basketball, your mom played basketball, you should be playing basketball,’” Abbott says.

The pressure started early in fifth grade gym class, when students chose basketball, floor hockey, juggling and more. Abbott

PHOTOS BY MIA ZANZUCCHI

Athletic development starts at a young age. Offensive lineman Ian Park was six when he started playing. Nandi Mehta started travel soccer in seventh grade. Symone Abbott first picked up a volleyball at age 10. Brandon Medina was 5 years old when he stepped onto a soccer field.

For these four Northwestern students, racial prejudice influenced their lives as athletes; however, most of the racial and cultural obstacles they faced took place in their childhood, before they arrived at college. At Northwestern, the narrative has become more nuanced. These athletes experience race uniquely as one of, or the only, member of their race on their respective team.

Protests at the University of Missouri this past fall sparked conversations about

chose juggling. Her teacher asked her why she did not choose to play basketball.

“He just assumed I would go over there,” Abbott says. “That just kind of let me know maybe I should start fitting into that, and then I tried it and hated it.”

As she got into volleyball in middle school and joined a club team, her coaches did not bother developing her skills after they saw her 6-foot frame.

“They just looked at ‘Okay, she’s tall, she’s Black, she can jump, we should just put her in the middle,’” Abbott says. “That kind of put me at a disadvantage when it comes to learning the all-around game, because they just threw me in the middle and didn’t worry about teaching me.”

Abbott soon realized she was not going to be tall enough to play middle in college – most players are at least 6-foot2 – so she asked her coaches to move her to the outside. They refused, which forced Abbott to change clubs altogether.

At the next club, Abbott refined her game and became a dominant outside hitter, propelling her to the Northwestern team, where she has been in the starting lineup since she was a freshman.

Like almost every other volleyball team she has played on, she is the only Black player out of 15.

“They think I’m like the guru when it comes to Black culture,” Abbott says. “I really don’t know that much, but I get a lot of questions.”

The questions took a much more serious tone in fall 2015, after activists protesting the proposed renovations to the Black House interrupted the dedication of the new athletic facilities at the Henry Crown Sports Pavilion.

“Of course, me and my team talked about it. They just want to know if I felt like that, and I said, ‘No, I don’t,’” Abbott

Nandi Mehta

Brandon Medina

says. “Athletes really don’t feel the brunt of it if there is a lot of racial things going on out there because we are athletes.”

Nandi Mehta

Soccer Weinberg Senior As two-time captain of the women’s soccer team and one of Northwestern’s representatives on the Big Ten StudentAthlete Advisory Committee, the conference’s student athlete government, Nandi Mehta has turned into one of the school’s most distinguished student athletes. The senior midfielder stands out not only for her leadership skills, but also on the field as an Indian athlete, an ethnicity that is rarely represented in soccer in the U.S. Mehta grew up playing on predominantly white teams for both her high school and her club. When she was younger, she didn’t face the same kind of stereotyping that several other athletes

interviewed for this story experienced – Mehta says it’s because there are so few Indian athletes in general.

“Honestly, probably in the sense with [Abbott], there are stereotypical sports that Black people play, and it’s not like that for Indian people,” Mehta says.

But there was familial pressure for her to not play soccer at all. Mehta’s grandfather, who was born in a small town in the state of Gujarat, India, was opposed to her playing soccer as anything more than a hobby.

“The idea of anybody playing a sport that seriously, that didn’t exist in India at that time, especially not for girls. That’s unheard of,” Mehta says.

Despite her grandfather’s wishes, Mehta’s parents encouraged their children to play sports. They saw how happy she and her younger sister were in athletics and let them pursue their passions as intensely as they wanted.

The two eventually became collegiate athletes: one soccer player and one equestrian. In both sports, the Mehta sisters were always the only Indians on the field. That changed for Mehta this fall when she got an Indian teammate, freshman Simmrin Dhaliwal.

“I was really excited when I found out that Simmrin was coming,” Mehta says.

Mehta’s presence helped put Dhaliwal’s parents at ease when their daughter transitioned from high school to Northwestern. Because both sets of parents grew up in India and lacked first-hand knowledge of the American college experience, they struggled to fully understand the importance placed on collegiate athletics.

“Having me on this team and having gone through it gave [Dhaliwal’s parents] a sense of comfort,” Mehta says. “They knew that somebody has gone through it, and it’s going to be okay.”

SPRING 2016 | 23

QUAD

Ian Park

In order to see more Indian athletes and more diversity in general on playing fields around the country, Mehta says that the integration needs to start at a younger age.

“It has to be like an Indian family getting their kid into sports, Black people playing volleyball and ice hockey and things like that,” she says. “I think the more that happens, the more you bridge cultures.”

Brandon Medina Soccer Weinberg Junior

Brandon Medina was born in Mexico City and moved to Chicago when he was 5 years old. He is one of only two Latino players on the Northwestern soccer team; Cuban goalkeeper and Weinberg sophomore Francisco Tomasino is the other. The pair is two of a small number of Latino Northwestern athletes in general.

“For soccer, it’s kind of weird, especially for a team in Chicago—there’s obviously a strong Latino population, and we do recruit a lot in California and Texas—to not have more Latino presence [on our team],” Medina says.

Growing up, the racial makeups of Medina’s soccer squads varied depending on the type of team. His high school team, St. Ignatius College Prep, a private school in Chicago, was mostly white, while his club team, Raiders FC, was mostly made up of Latino athletes.

While not yet an American citizen (he is currently a permanent resident and plans on getting his official citizenship in the next year or so), Medina considers himself both Mexican and American.

“Sometimes I actually yell [on the field] in Spanish,” he says. “The Northwestern guys look at me like ‘What the hell are you saying?’ I struggled with it a couple of times. For example, ‘man on,’ (te llegan) I say it in Spanish, or ‘turn’ (vuelta) or ‘pass me the ball’ (pásala). It’s really weird. Sometimes I’m trying to say it, but it doesn’t come out in English, and it doesn’t come out in Spanish, and it’s just gibberish.”

For the Latino soccer players who come to Northwestern, volunteer assistant coach Ovidio Felcaro can smooth the language dichotomy. He is a native of Argentina, who has been with the soccer team for 14 of Head Coach Tim Lenahan’s 15 seasons as coach. “[Felcaro] speaks Spanish,” Lenahan says. “He’s been in constant contact over the years with Brandon’s father, and also can pull Brandon aside to talk in Spanish to provide that comfort.”

But Medina did not escape racist 24 | northbynorthwestern.com

incidents growing up. With his club team in high school, he traveled down to a tournament in Georgia and played a team that consisted of mostly white players.

“They were saying ‘Go back to Mexico, go over the wall,’ kind of that thing. It’s kind of difficult because it’s the middle of the game and there’s always a lot of trash talking going on, but that was a bit out of it. You don’t usually hear racial stuff in the middle of a game.”

In college, he says the trash talk he hears during the game is directed more at the whole team and is along the lines of, “Northwestern, you guys don’t even know how to party.”

But at Northwestern, he found the lack of Latino athletes strange, especially in soccer, a sport with a typically larger Hispanic presence, a concern he raised to his head coach. Lenahan says in his experience, he has seen fewer Latino athletes at elite tournaments.

Another factor out of the team’s control is when recruited Latino athletes decide to commit to another school.

“I do remember there’s been a couple of times where we have tried to actively recruit Latinos on the team who would do a great job,” Medina says. “But for one reason or another, they decided to commit somewhere else.”

Ian Park

Football Communication Redshirt Junior In the days leading up to one of his biggest games of the year against rival Bethel Park High School, then-high school senior offensive lineman Ian Park’s mind wasn’t on his half-white, half-Korean heritage — he was simply preparing for the matchup.

But one of his upcoming opponents, a trash-talking wide receiver, was thinking about Park’s race and posted about it on

his Facebook wall.

Yeah, we’re gonna smack you guys. You’re a stupid chink.

“That was basically it,” Park says. “Just that word. I remember that word.”

Park mentioned it to one of his friends, his friend told the principal and that player was suspended from the game.

“It’s just an insult based on where you come from and what you look like, it kind of gets to you,” Park says. “I try not to think about that and just play football.”

Racially charged trash-talk is not something new for Park: He has dealt with it on just about every stage of his career.

“As a whole, Asians don’t really have a big presence in football or many American sports,” he says. “They think all Asians are the same, a lot of stereotypes—being smart, all this kind of stuff, not being athletic.”

Park’s two brothers also have football experience at the collegiate level. His older brother, Alex, played quarterback at Dartmouth College from 2011-2014. “It was especially tough for my older brother, being quarterback. Especially anyone with some Asian ethnicity at QB, I feel like people weren’t sure what to think of him,” Park says. His other brother is an offensive lineman at Amherst College. While Park says his family never had any explicit talks about overcoming racism, his parents were always there for him whenever he was down or had a bad day.

“My brothers and I, we’ve always just tried to let our play do the talking,” Park says. “If you’re a good football player and people see that, they’ll put all biases aside, sometimes.”

Park says that most of the time at the college level, race has not come into play despite being one of the only Asians on the Northwestern football team.

“If I ever meet somebody that is Korean or Asian and they’re trying to play football, I immediately try to make a bond because there aren’t many of us out there,” he says.

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

BY ROSALIE CHAN

ILLUSTRATION BY VIRGINIA NOWAKOWSKI

Growing interest in computer science strains department resources.

As a freshman, McCormick senior Nikhil Pai took the introductory Electronic Engineering and Computer Science programming course (EECS 111) with fewer than 120 other students. Now, the course has tripled in size – and, as an undergraduate, he is a teaching assistant for the class.

Computer science has exploded across all sectors of the economy, from Silicon Valley’s titans of tech to Wall Street and New York’s new media companies. Job-hungry students are streaming into Northwestern’s program faster than McCormick can manage.

“Over my years, I’ve had to fight to get into classes,” Pai says.

“You have to talk to the professor and department people and convince them you need to be in the class. There’s a lot of stress getting into classes.”

In the 2007-08 school year, there were 61 computer science majors. Now, introductory classes alone have more than 100 students, and last year the number of majors swelled to 345.

That’s just for those who want a full degree. Enrollment in all classes has grown from 710 students in 2007-08 to 3,790 students in 2014-15.

Northwestern is not unique in its growing program. According to the Computing Research Association, the number of new undergraduate majors in U.S. computer science departments rose about 18 percent in 2014.

“Computer science used to be seen as too nerdy of a topic,” says computer science professor Fabian Bustamánte. “I think some of that has gone away. The impact of computer science across the fields has become very noticed.”

High demand for classes and a low supply of resources, often shuts out undergraduate students from basic classes required for their major. Part of the problem has been the limited amount of faculty and enrollment slots, as well as graduate students’ higher registration priority.

To snag a spot, students say they often have to email professors

and staff in the EECS department and explain that they need to take the class to graduate. McCormick sophomore Jimmy Song says that he was shut out from two introductory courses in Fall Quarter 2015 because they were full.

“I kind of regret doing computer science here,” Song says.

“One of the big reasons is the school doesn’t have a lot of faculty.”

However, he does plan on continuing the major.

To accommodate overflowing classes, Northwestern turned to undergraduate TAs – formally called peer mentors – in a rare but not unheard of practice across different schools at NU. Last quarter Pai was one of 18 peer mentors for EECS 111.

In response to overcrowding, the computer science department started to play catch-up. This quarter marks the first time that computer science majors are able to pre-register for classes, allowing them to grab spots before graduate students. Both Horswill and Bustamánte also say that the EECS department will hire more professors in the near future.

Kyle Delaney, executive director of Strategic Initiatives and Marketing, confirmed that McCormick will announce some new initiatives for computer science in May, but could not comment further.

Many undergraduates are concerned that changes won’t come in time to help them.

“It might be great if they hire 20 professors in four years, but I’ll have graduated by then,” Weinberg junior Haley De Boom says.

Part of the problem is a lack of doctoral candidates, Bustamánte says. Earning a Ph.D. in computer science takes four to six years, and the number of Ph.D.s hasn’t caught up to the recent boom.

Students hope Northwestern will be able to build a program fast enough to accommodate growing interest, including Alaina Kafkes, a Weinberg junior studying computer science.

“We want to create an infrastructure to hold more students not deter them from staying in the department.”

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Beyond the ballot box International students follow the election cycle.

26 | northbynorthwestern.com

that lasts almost 20 years, and hundreds and thousands of people [are] dead.”

NU-Q Medill junior Faizan Shakir follows politics for a similar reason: After living in the U.S. for a scant three months, he’s realized the vast extent of the United States’ political impact overseas. “[My] newfound enthusiasm for American politics was the realization that we live in a global landscape where America is deeply entrenched in most political decisions,” Shakir says in an email.

“As an overseas Pakistani, I feel that my life will probably be affected more by the type of regime in America than Pakistan.”

Other students, however, don’t feel as closely connected to America’s current election cycle. Some students from Europe and Canada only follow American politics to the extent that it’s become a major focus of foreign media.

“In Canada, we pay close attention to American politics … in a pop-culture sense,” says Bienen junior Chris Fenje.

Trump gets more airtime than Trudeau …

It’s entertaining.”

Others feel alienated by U.S. political

ideology, claiming U.S. policies operate on a conservative value system and that the electoral process seems flawed by design.

“For me, it feels like the whole spectrum of American politics is lifted up and shifted further over to the right,” says Christopher Bennett, an Australian graduate student in Bienen. “Your left wing is significantly more right than ours.”

Another reason for Bennett’s lack of interest in the election cycle is that he’s only lived in Evanston for a year, and he doesn’t intend to live or work in the U.S. after he finishes his degree.

“I came here for an education; I came here so that I could further myself,” Bennett says. “Really, it’s a bit selfish, but I kind of don’t care.”

Shakir, on the other hand, argues that regardless of his personal ineligibility to vote, he feels obliged to follow U.S. politics because the impact of the country’s policies reach far beyond its borders.

“An American president is powerful not just because of their executive powers,” he says, “but because of their ability to set the agenda for the world to discuss.”

ILLUSTRATION BY SASHA COSTELLO

“Those [who live] outside of America want to believe in the freedom that America promises. It’s freedom, or the idea of it, that makes America great … not the ideas Trump promotes,” says Neha Rashid, Medill sophomore of NU-Q, in an email. It’s this freedom that Rashid, who grew up in Qatar, fears she might lose if Donald Trump wins the presidential election in November.

Rashid is one of many Northwestern students who, though they aren’t U.S. citizens, have begun to pay an increasing amount of attention to the 2016 election cycle.

“I always joke that we should be able to vote, because we pay the price for the U.S. electing the wrong president as much as, if not more than, U.S. citizens do,” says Michal Massoud, a Lebanese graduate student in Bienen. He adds that the U.S. election makes him concerned for his family members, who still live in Lebanon.

“It’s been really hard there, even though Obama’s been trying to clean up the acts of the people who came before him,” he says.

“It takes one U.S. president, and the next thing you know you have a war [in Iraq]

BY SOPHIE STEIN

A league of their own Former Northwestern athletes fill first women’s semi-professional lacrosse league.

ILLUSTRATION BY LELA JOHNSON

BY WILL FISCHER When Alyssa Leonard graduated from Force, Long Island Sound, Boston Storm Northwestern, she wasn’t sure if she and Baltimore Ride, will compete from would ever play lacrosse again. Without May 28 to July 30. Featuring the sport’s top a professional league for women, people talent and new rules designed to make play always told her that she would have to find quicker and more exciting such as a shot another job after college. While Leonard clock and the two-point shot from beyond (SESP ‘14) was one of the lucky 36 players the arc, the league will showcase a more named to the U.S. national team in 2015, dynamic brand of women’s lacrosse. everyone else had to hang up their cleats Teams will play at many of the major after college graduation – until now. college lacrosse recruiting tournaments The first ever professional women’s this summer, including the opening lacrosse league, the United Women’s games at Lehigh University, where 70 Lacrosse League (UWLX), will debut high school teams from across the nation this summer, giving dozens more will also be participating in the the U.S. women the chance to continue playing Lacrosse Women’s National Tournament. the sport they love while Jackson says the proximity opening new professional will help bridge the gap “It’s kind of funny to between the youth, collegiate pathways for a generation turn around and [show] and professional levels, of female athletes.

For Leonard, the league all those people who encouraging girls to strive for serves as validation after said there’s no such a career in women’s lacrosse. everyone told her she thing as sports for girls “If a 14-year-old girl couldn’t play professionally, after college, that here can show up to a large words that motivated rather recruiting tournament and we are.” than discouraged her. see her biggest role model “I think that’s something in lacrosse up front, close that’s inspired me to stay in coaching and personal, that’s huge for the growth and play for the U.S. team and now the of the sport,” Jackson says. “[You’re] able professional league,” Leonard says. “It’s to really see your future within the game.” kind of funny to turn around and [show] The league will not be able to offer all those people who said there’s no such players salaries in its first year, Jackson thing as sports for girls after college, that says, but through ticket sales and here we are.” sponsorship revenue, players should have The UWLX comes 15 years after paychecks by year two. But for most, it’s Major League Lacrosse, the major men’s not about the money – they just want to professional league – an example of the play the sport they love again, a thought ongoing battle for equality in athletics. that gives Communication senior Kaleigh Previously, the only option for female Craig hope. athletes hoping to stay involved after “The thought of not playing anymore college was coaching or joining the is really hard,” Craig says. “I just love U.S. national team. So when UWLX competing and love playing, so if you get a commissioner Michelle DeJulius called chance to, it’s hard to pass it up.”

Caitlin Jackson (Comm ‘09), who won Players and coaches hope the creation four national championships in her time of a professional league where women at Northwestern, and asked her to be pursue their athletic dreams will resonate a general manager in the new league, beyond the sport of lacrosse.

Jackson knew she had to take the job.

“There really aren’t a whole ton of “It just sounded, right off the bat, venues for women who want to go into like such an exciting opportunity and athletics as a career,” Jackson says. “To something that all of us feel a little bit be able to create jobs that allow someone responsible for in terms of hoping to grow coming out of college who can then move the sport and grow opportunities for forward in their career, that’s really big. women in athletics,” Jackson says.

That’s bigger than just lacrosse.”

The league’s four teams, the Philadelphia

UNITED WOMEN’S LACROSSE LEAGUE ROSTER OF WILDCATS CAITLIN JACKSON (‘09)

General Manager of Philadelphia Force Four-time national champion defender

SHANNON SMITH (‘12)

Head coach of Long Island Sound Three-time national champion attacker NU’s all-time leading goal scorer (254)

ALEX FRANK (‘12)

Assistant coach of Long Island Sound Three-time national champion midfielder

BROOKE MATTHEWS (‘11) Assistant coach of Long Island Sound Three-time national champion midfielder

ALYSSA LEONARD (‘14)

Sixth overall pick to Long Island Sound Two-time national champion attacker Graduated as NCAA all-time leader in draw controls (469)

KARA MUPO (‘15)

11th overall draft pick to Philadelphia Force Two-time national champion attacker

BRIDGET BIANCO (‘15)

15th overall draft pick to Philadelphia Force One-time national champion goalie

KATRINA DOWD (‘10)

30th overall draft pick Long Island Sound Three-time national champion attacker

COLLEEN MAGARITY (‘11)

Selected by Boston Storm with the 40th overall draft pick Three-time national champion defender

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HIGH NOTES

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HIGH HOPES Wildcats take on the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

BY MADELINE COE

PHOTO BY ETHAN DLUGIE

L

ast spring, two Northwestern theater students shared a stage in downtown Chicago with Steven Pasquale, one of Broadway’s biggest stars. They owe this experience to Northwestern’s long-standing relationship with the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

In addition to the numerous performance opportunities available to vocalists on campus, Northwestern’s proximity to Chicago provides extra options for undergraduate musicians. For years, singers in both the Bienen School of Music and the School of Communication have taken on professional opera jobs while simultaneously performing in Evanston and maintaining a full course load. These students often find their first jobs at the Lyric.

As Bienen senior Caitlin Finnie finishes up her degree in vocal performance, she’s also singing in the Lyric’s production of The King and I. The show opened April 29 and ran until May 22. While Finnie says balancing performance at the Lyric with her schoolwork is immensely difficult, the job has helped reaffirm her conviction that she has chosen the right career path.

“I’ve always been the type of person who likes to sing to herself,” Finnie says.

“I just can’t imagine doing anything else.”

Finnie’s experience at the National High School Institute, a Northwestern summer program she attended at age 15, solidified her passion for performance.

Now 21, Finnie has been involved in countless student productions on campus, including Little Women and Ruddigore.

Frequent trips to the Lyric with studentpriced tickets introduced Finnie to the

professional opera community in Chicago and encouraged her to audition for The King and I. After an initial audition and a successful callback, Finnie accepted a role in the ensemble. She entered the professional world of opera, where she found a different sort of performance experience than Northwestern offers.

“The house is incredible and the costumes are so lavish,” Finnie says. “Just being on that stage is a dream.”

Finnie isn’t the only Northwestern student who has pursued professional opportunities downtown.

Alyssa Sarnoff, Communication senior, has performed in two Lyric Opera shows, CAROUSEL and The Merry Widow, during her NU career. While there are many student theater performances on campus, a desire for deeper involvement draws students downtown.

While Sarnoff has valued all of her theater experiences on campus, she notes that at the professional level, “there is a different caliber of respect between cast and crew,” she says. “At the Lyric, everything runs seamlessly. There are so many more resources.”

After attending a discussion with CAROUSEL Director Rob Ashford, Sarnoff decided to audition for a role in the show.

This began a series of negotiations with NU professors in the hopes of balancing her chaotic schedule.

While she says many of her theater professors acknowledged the difficulty of her situation, given their firm belief that “experience is excused,” economics professors proved to be less understanding.

It took some rearranging and deliberating, but Sarnoff was able to create a schedule that could keep her enrolled as a full-time student while she worked professional hours.

Closer to the show, rehearsals can go as long as nine hours, six days a week, putting extreme physical strain on performers’ bodies. Sarnoff says she basically could not attend class for the two weeks prior to opening night because of the long hours and the need to prioritize sleep for her health’s sake.

Finnie ran into similar scheduling conflicts with The King and I, for which four hours of rehearsal was considered a “light day.”

“You know your role, you know how much you can take,” Finnie says. “We are encouraged to mark often, continually hydrate and get as much sleep as we can … as difficult as that is.”

Communication junior Rosie Jo Neddy, who performed in CAROUSEL as an ensemble member, also had to tackle the difficulties of creating a flexible schedule.

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Neddy says. “Spring break [rehearsal] week was thrilling. My only job was to take care of myself so I could be at my best for the hours when I was at work. I fell in love with the lifestyle. Then classes started.”

Apart from the time crunch, all three women agreed that working at the Lyric was one of the most fulfilling experiences they’ve had.

“I learned more in three weeks of CAROUSEL than I have in any class,” Sarnoff says. “It snaps you into this professional reality.”

Rosie Jo Neddy (opposite) sings in this year's Waa-Mu show, Another Way West. Neddy has also appeared on stage at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

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A cinematic shift

Student film crew explores untold Katrina narrative in New Orleans.

BY MALLOY MOSELEY Moving continents is a gargantuan feat, an incremental process that takes millennia. Abstracting this process, Communication senior Olivia Peace wrote and directed the film Pangaea, exploring a young girl’s attempt to rationalize Hurricane Katrina.

The film, shot in a style of documentary filmmaking called “cinéma vérité,” is set days after the 2005 natural disaster. The 6-year-old protagonist, unnamed in the film, uses her brother’s explanation of how the continents formed from the landmass Pangaea to understand the force of nature that has unfolded in front of her.

While Peace says her film explores childhood more than it does Blackness, the story unfolds in Treme, a predominantly Black neighborhood in New Orleans.

“From the beginning,” Peace says, “I knew I wanted people of color in the forefront.”

Initially, Peace was unsure what this might look like, so she began to investigate the stories she didn’t remember seeing in the news when the hurricane hit. She thought of the children who Katrina impacted, and the fact that many of them would be around her age now.

As her vision for the movie expanded, Peace scratched her original idea of shooting on a roof in Evanston and instead set her sights on New Orleans. Most Northwestern-funded student films shoot in northern Illinois or nearby Wisconsin, but few have attempted to film nearly 1,000 miles away.

Peace approached Ethan Senser, the Communication senior who went on to produce the film, with an early idea at the beginning of this past fall. The two spent much of Fall Quarter reading about individuals impacted by the traumas of Hurricane Katrina. Peace was initially struck by how few mainstream narratives of Katrina concentrated on people’s experiences in the poorer wards in New Orleans, so she and Senser looked to

the work of journalists, survivors and psychologists to create a picture of the tragedy through a child’s eyes.

“It seemed like there was a lot of media distortion,” Peace says, adding that listening to podcasts during the research process was a liberating experience. “There’s so much more than just people crying. For the first time, it felt like I was hearing a lot of personal stories.”

Once they completed their research, it became a matter of Peace and Senser working out the logistics. Moving the equipment was one of the biggest obstacles, Senser says, but he made sure the ninestudent crew and the Northwestern RTVF equipment traveled safely to New Orleans. This was the first time undergraduate students had taken Northwestern’s film equipment so far away.

Although the hurricane happened more than 10 years ago, the impact on the neighborhood was still palpable when they arrived.

Peace and her crew could even see water lines left on rooftops around one of the neighborhoods where they shot.

For Peace, communicating the youthful perspective was an important part of making this movie. The vitality of her lead child actress, Raeghan Keys, captured it. To further convey the lens children use when viewing the world, she includes animated scenes in the film, a vision she shares with Senser.

“You see the politics, the environment, the news – what you don’t see is what that might be like for a kid living through it, that was something we wanted to address and achieve through the film,” Senser says.

Pangaea will screen on Northwestern’s campus through Studio 22 on June 4 and Inspire Media at the end of the quarter. Peace then plans to take it on the festival circuit.

“I hope the audience can feel the love and care when we’re done,” Peace says.

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Crew members Ashley Mills, Jeremy Le, Ethan Senser and Olivia Peace, on the set of Pangaea.

PHOTO BY CYNTHIA CHEN

30 30 || northbynorthwestern.com northbynorthwestern.com

we accept euros Al’s Deli brings a piece of Paris to Noyes Street.

BY CAROLYN TWERSKY

PHOTOS BY JULIA SONG

A

l’s Deli has a palpable French flare: Pictures of Parisian landmarks line its walls, and smells of freshly baked baguettes waft from its kitchen out to a long line of customers. Sandwiched between the Coffee Lab and Tomate Fresh Kitchen, Al’s deli has been a Noyes street staple for over 65 years.

Owners and brothers Bob and John Pottinger wear their mutual love of Paris on the sleeves of their matching white aprons.

“We’re both terrible Francophiles, so as soon as we started running the business we started doing all sorts of French things here,” says Bob, co-owner of Al’s. “It’s a niche that we fill and we’re also doing what’s in our heart.”

Bob and John’s father, Al, was a chef in the Navy during World War II. After coming home to Evanston, he worked in a nearby grocery store until the empty space on Noyes Street opened. In 1949, he decided he wanted to run a grocery store of his own and opened up Al’s Deli.

“It was supposed to be temporary, but you know how temporary things go in family businesses,” Bob says of his job at Al’s. “So I’ve been here for 45 years.”

In the beginning, Al’s was a gourmet

Brothers John (above) and Bob have run Al’s Deli on Noyes for more than 40 years.

grocery market, and the deli did not have a very imaginative menu.

When Bob joined the team after graduating from college, he decided to add his own personal touch to the menu.

“When my brother John and I came on board, the main sandwich that we sold here was roast beef on white bread with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise,” Bob says.

A French deli seemed like the obvious solution for the Pottinger brothers, who both discovered a passion for Paris at a young age. Bob fell in love with the city after watching a short film called The Red Balloon.

“It’s about a little boy in Paris who has a red balloon that follows him all around the city and he stops in a patisserie and gets a pastry,” Bob says. “It’s a wonderful little film and ever since then I’ve wanted to visit Paris.”

After years of hard work and saving, Bob now goes to Paris twice a year to explore the sights and tastes of his favorite city.

Because of Bob’s frequent visits to Paris, the Pottingers are willing to accept Euros at their store. So if you have a few extra coins lying around after studying abroad, the Pottingers will take them off your hands in exchange for a French treat.

“It’s a good deal for everybody,” Bob says. “I give a good exchange rate, and at the end of the day I just put them in my sock and when I head to Paris I have like a thousand Euros in my pocket, which is good walking around money. You can buy a lot of chocolate éclairs.”

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Newsstand still

BY MIA ZANZUCCHI

T

he Chicago-Main Newsstand’s Depression-era neon sign glows in the shadow of the nearby ‘L’ stop.

The store was almost a park, almost a coffeehouse, but against all odds, it’s still a fully functioning newsstand and a thriving historical landmark.

The same family owned and operated the newsstand from its opening in the 1930s until 1993, but the CTA owned the land and the City of Evanston owned the building itself. When the stand’s rent increased, the original owners closed the shop down and the building stood vacant for eight years. Current owner Joe Angelastri, who founded City Newsstand in Chicago in 1978, re-opened the stand in 2001.

32 | northbynorthwestern.com

standing

Eight decades of print at Chicago-Main.

“Some of the businesses [in Evanston] both for eclectic magazines like Teddy Bear knew about us,” Angelastri Times or Beads and Buttons, says. “We had a bit of a and for the novelty of reputation of being a big visiting a newsstand in a It’s a different newsstand, and they digital age. called up and said, ‘Why “There’s still a lot of sensation of reading don’t you come over here interest in just getting on paper versus and see if you could open away from the electronic reading on screen. up this old newsstand and screens, you know, holding start running it again?’” something in your hands,” While the newsstand Eric Ismond, newsstand serves mostly Evanston residents, the manager, says. “It’s a different kind of occasional out-of-town shopper stops by, experience. The feel of the paper, the kind

“

”

Northwestern Wildcat Football, The ABCs of Evanston, and special editions of certain publications. They were also one of only a handful of American stores to sell the comeback issue of Charlie Hebdo following the January 2015 terrorist attack on the satirical newspaper. The day after President Barack Obama was elected in 2008, the stand sold hundreds of papers, with customers lined up outside the store waiting for multiple deliveries.

Ismond says that while prominent publications have gone out of business, moved online or switched to direct sales only and the amount of ads in magazines and papers has decreased, the stand is still as busy as ever.

“It’s becoming increasingly difficult with all the changes in the industry,” Angelastri says. “It’s not the heydays of ink and paper, but we think it’s still going to be here.”

PHOTOS BY MIA ZANZUCCHI

of reproduction of images, that kind of thing. It’s a different sensation of reading on paper versus reading on screen.”

But Chicago-Main Newsstand is still, for the most part, for the regulars. They tend to be older Evanston residents, who come in daily for daily newspapers or visit weekly or monthly to grab each issue of their favorite magazine. Commuters on the Purple Line stop by in the mornings, afternoons and early evenings on their way to and from work.

Fred Jennings is one of those loyal customers; Chicago-Main has been a part of his life since it was still under construction when he was 16 years old. He left Evanston as an adult, but when he moved back in 1989, he fell into the newsstand routine again. Now 74 years old, Jennings browses the newsstand about once a week, looking at photography magazines and whatever else catches his eye.

“It may feel different,” Jennings says.

“But it’s still my favorite place to come.”

Another newsstand regular, Teresa Collins, moved to Evanston in 2012 and wandered into the stand one day. She tries to come by every other month to look around at canoeing, kayaking and gardening magazines.

“It’s a cool store,” Collins says. “I’m old, and I prefer to touch it, feel it, read it, hold it in my hands.”

Aside from obscure and niche publications like Chickens, Coin World and Veranda Magazine that regularly line the shelves, Chicago-Main stocks a few Evanston-centric books, including

SPRING 2016 | 33

ACCESSas an

AFTERTHOUGHT

BY EMMA SARAPPO

Over two decades after the ADA, students with physical disabilities still face structural barriers.

PHOTO BY EMMA SARAPPO

Y

air Sakols, who graduated from Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy in March, uses a simple hypothetical situation to illustrate the universal benefits of physical accessibility and the attitude it is often met with: Imagine a building, the steps and ramp leading up to it covered in snow. Almost instinctively, the stairs are cleared first.

“If you clear off the ramp, everyone can get up, but if you clear off the stairs, only certain people can get up,” Sakols says.

Northwestern’s policy is to clear stairs and ramps at the same time, but this mentality is still present at the school in other ways. On a campus where conversations about marginalized communities and their needs frequently occur, it seems as though students with disabilities are often forgotten.

Sakols has had a chronic back and neck pain condition since birth, which he describes as a “periodic” physical disability.

“Some days I’m lucky enough to be ablebodied, and some days I’m not,” Sakols says.

At its worst, his pain can feel paralyzing to the point where he is unable to move, he says. For bad days, he carries a collapsible cane in a side pocket of his backpack to help him walk and move around campus. Otherwise, his disability is mostly invisible to others.

The office set up to serve and support students with disabilities, AccessibleNU, has around 900 total registered students. About 65 percent of those are undergraduates. Ninety percent of those 900 students registered with AccessibleNU have an invisible disability, one that is unrecognizable just by looking at them. This leaves roughly 90 students with a registered, visible disability or mobility impairment.

According to a 2015 report by the National Center for Education Statistics, 11 percent of college undergraduates in both 2007–08 and 2011–12 reported having some disability. But at Northwestern, that number hovers around five percent of total undergraduate students.

“Do I think we have as small a number of people with physical disabilities or mobility impairments as we do because of our architecture and whatnot?

Yes,” says Alison May, director of AccessibleNU and assistant dean of students. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a student came onto campus and pretty quickly got messages from a variety of buildings they might try to enter. They might see, ‘Oh, wait, I can only go on the first floor,’ that it’s going to be a constant struggle.”

The underrepresentation of students with disabilities is apparent across Northwestern. As outlined in Northwestern’s nondiscrimination policy and mandated by Section 504 of the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the school does not exclude students with physical disabilities. However, Sakols and others feel that because there are so few students with these disabilities, the University can easily ignore them, and that Northwestern as a whole is built for able-bodied students.

“In general, the University is apathetic,”

Sakols says. “It’s not that they don’t support us or they do support us, but it’s like we’re not really here.”

The multiple buildings that do not comply with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 or Illinois state accessibility codes on the Evanston campus illustrate Northwestern’s attitude towards students with disabilities. The ADA’s Title III requires educational entities to accommodate the needs of people with disabilities and remove barriers to access (like stairs or other impediments) when “readily achievable.”

Although Northwestern has renovated many historic buildings and has updated accessibility in the last decade, physical barriers remain present across campus, even in buildings that claim to be compliant.

One example is Locy Hall on South Campus. All of Locy’s entrances have steps in front of them, and the building has no ramps as an alternative. Inside, Locy does not have an elevator to transport students between its four floors.

“The long-term viability [of Locy] is under consideration,” says Bonnie Humphrey, director of design and construction for Facilities Management at Northwestern. Despite this, multiple Weinberg departments use Locy as a “swing space” while Kresge Centennial Hall undergoes major renovation, Humphrey says.

If a student cannot access a classroom in which they have a class, it will be moved to a different, accessible location. According to May, her department has moved more classes out of Locy than any other building, especially since it took over Kresge’s previous functions.

Dearborn Observatory, used by the physics department, also fails to comply – its telescope can only be reached by climbing multiple flights of stairs. At the end of 2015, Dearborn underwent construction, but accessibility was not improved because the work was a repair project. Since ADA guidelines are not retroactive, buildings only have to comply when renovated. The building is also considered a historic landmark in Evanston, and in some cases, “historic preservation trumps accessibility,” Humphrey says.

Another building of concern to May is Northwestern Career Advancement’s office on Lincoln Street, which also fails to comply with the ADA. “That just sends a terrible message if your career advancement building is inaccessible, especially given that [disabled] unemployment rates have not changed in the 25 years since ADA,” May says. In the 2010-12 period, only 32 percent of working-age people with disabilities were employed on average, compared to 72.7 percent of people without a disability, according to the United States Department of Labor.

And while signs at the front entrance of the Norris University Center proudly proclaim ADA compliance, Norris is a common target of accessibility complaints. People with

SPRING 2016 | 35

mobility issues often struggle with the Kellogg School of Management building steepness of the hill in front and the incorporate principles of universal large amount of force required to push its design, i.e. creating buildings and spaces automatic door button. all people can access. In the Ryan Center, “Norris is pretty terrible,” Sakols says. gradual ramps replace traditional stairs.

“It’s possible to get into different rooms, but AccessibleNU is meant to help students it’s very, very burdensome. If I’m having a work around problems of accessibility rough day physically, which means I’m in and inclusion, but May says the small pain, to have to walk all the way around the department has only been fully staffed building and then through the food court just for six months since Fall 2013, limiting its to get to the elevator just to get to Norbucks is ability to do advocacy or outreach work. kind of absurd in some ways.”

Instead, it focuses its resources on campusAn audit performed on Norris three centric accommodation requests. years ago revealed various accessibility Sakols says he is frustrated with the problems with relatively cheap fixes, none lack of student input and conversation of which were made due to high leadership around disability. Northwestern’s focus and staffing turnover as well as future on forms of diversity, such as race and plans to demolish Norris, according to socioeconomic status, does not seem to May. Meanwhile, Humphrey says plans include disability at all, he says. According to renovate Norris in the near future are to Carrie Ingerman, a SESP freshman with mostly focused on increasing the building’s accommodations for nerve damage in her available space. back, students with disabilities lack the “Certainly it would include accessibility campus community and support other as well, as far as the scope of the project, groups have. but that’s not the driver,” she says.

“Disability, and ability in general, Like Norris, other compliant is a form of identity,” she says. “We as buildings on campus have design flaws a University claim to be accepting of that make them hard or impossible to use. While The multiple buildings that do Northwestern voluntarily not comply with the federal added a ramp up to the first floor of Dearborn, the Americans with Disabilities Act of heavy door it leads to has 1990 or Illinois state accessibility no automatic door opener. codes on the Evanston campus Harris Hall’s ramp is on its north side, but to illustrate Northwestern’s attitude get to its elevator from towards students with disabilities. that entrance, one must go through two more doors without an automatic opener. The diversity and promote diversity, and I think Communications Residential College has it’s really sad that we are so inaccessible in an automatic first set of doors, but once many different ways, because that basically inside them, the second set of doors has cuts off an entire identity base.” no opener.

Currently, Ingerman is working with “You have buildings designed in Scott Gerson, a SESP sophomore with a ways that don’t allow for students to cognitive disability, to change that. The pair comfortably move around, and adding a has created a new kind of student group for ramp doesn’t make it handicap accessible all students with disabilities called Beyond or disability accessible, it just means Compliance. As the name implies, they you can walk up to it,” Sakols says. believe basic compliance with disability“Accessibility is thinking about design as related laws and guidelines is not enough encompassing all types of people.” to fully serve the needs of those students.

The school responds to the needs of Ingerman says she intends to model its students, and has made significant it after groups like Rainbow Alliance, an progress, Humphrey says. In the last LGBTQ advocacy and student group, decade, multiple ramps have been installed providing a sense of community for in buildings, including many along students with disabilities, as well as a space Sheridan Road and in the sorority quad. to advocate for their needs.

Facilities Management works closely with “We didn’t really feel like students May and AccessibleNU, she says. with disabilities were included past The University has also been proactive the accommodation side,” Gerson says. in making all its new construction exceed “There wasn’t really any community the minimum requirements of both the aspect when it came to disability, there ADA and Illinois accessibility codes, wasn’t any social support, anything like she says. For example, the new Patrick that from the University.”

G. and Shirley W. Ryan Center for the Because AccessibleNU keeps the names Musical Arts and the under-construction of its registered students confidential

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and not all students with disabilities are registered, students with disabilities – especially invisible disabilities – often have a hard time meeting one another.

Beyond Compliance aims to promote that missing community.

But when Ingerman initially tried to make it an official student group, she was immediately referred back to AccessibleNU. “That was kind of my first roadblock, the misconception that everything related to disabilities needs to go through AccessibleNU, and that was really unhelpful,” Ingerman says. May says she was also frustrated by the assumption that Ingerman was seeking AccessibleNU’s services instead of trying to establish something separate.

“It’s almost like we [at Northwestern] stop listening after we hear disability,” May says.

Beyond Compliance had its first meeting May 9 in Annenberg Hall. Seven people attended and discussed paternalism among many disability-related organizations on campus, Dance Marathon’s inaccessibility to students with physical disabilities and lack of disability awareness in academic curriculum and discussion, Ingerman says.

Overall, May describes Northwestern as reactive, not proactive, in accommodating disabilities.

“I’ve found the school to be really good to respond if there is a student with a particular need,” she says. “But if you’re choosing where you’re going to go to school, why would you choose to go somewhere where you know right off the bat you might have to ask for something major to be done?”

But students with disabilities still do come to Northwestern. For Ingerman, apart from looking for schools with relatively flat campuses, accommodations and accessibility weren’t a large factor in her college choice. Being close to home made attending Northwestern much easier for Sakols – he didn’t have to change any of his medical treatment or doctors.

Though he says he would choose Northwestern again, Sakols notes the nature of the school makes the simplest of activities, like eating in dining halls or attending events, hard for people with a physical disability, distinguishing their experiences from those of their able-bodied peers.

“I’m very, very lucky that I’m ablebodied a lot of the time, so when looking at schools I put academics above personal care,” Sakols says. “Sometimes I wonder about that. Going to physical therapy twice a week, seeing doctors, is not something you can do if you want to be an active member of the Northwestern community with extracurriculars and four classes. It’s kind of just … hobble to the finish line.” v

FALLEN & FORGOTTEN

PHOTO BY EMMA SARAPPO

Football player Rashidi Wheeler died during practice 15 years ago. But no one knows his story.

BY SHANNON LANE AND ANDY BROWN

O

n Aug. 3, 2001, Northwestern football player Rashidi Wheeler died during a preseason conditioning test.

He was 22 years old and asthmatic. He started all 12 games during the 2000 season and finished third on the team with 88 tackles en route to a Big Ten title. His teammates, everyone from the kicker to the quarterback, liked him. It was hard not to.

Wheeler’s parents—his mother, Linda Will, and his father, George Wheeler—sued the University on behalf of their son’s estate, and after an exhausting four-year lawsuit, a Cook County judge ordered Northwestern to pay the family $16 million for Wheeler’s death.

The late Randy Walker was head coach of the football team at the time. When he died of a sudden heart attack in June 2006 at age 52, he was lauded for introducing the ‘Cats to the spread offense, leading them to a Big Ten title in 2000 and taking them to three bowl games. His legacy lay with his on-the-field accomplishments, not with Wheeler’s death.

One of the only people still on staff from the time Wheeler died is current head coach Pat Fitzgerald. He returned to his alma mater in July 2001 as a coach for defensive backs, the position Wheeler played. Assistant Athletic Director for Communications Paul Kennedy says Fitzgerald only met Wheeler once before he died and was not present at the practice in August. Fitzgerald declined to comment for this story.

During Fitzgerald’s coaching tenure at Northwestern, the football program began giving out a Rashidi Wheeler Award to team members who played with Wheeler’s characteristic enthusiasm at its annual banquet.

Eventually the football program phased out the banquet, and along with it, the award.

Now, Wheeler’s name appears nowhere on campus. No one has worn his number, 30, since his death, but it has not been officially retired. Nearly 15 years after his death, with no memorial in his name, few people on campus know who Wheeler is.

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Northwestern football tried to move on and honor its fallen teammate. The players dedicated the 2001 season to Wheeler, Brown says, and they wore "R.A.W," his initials, on their uniforms the entire year. Wheeler's locker stayed untouched that season, according to Wieber. The 'Cats, ranked No. 16 in The Associated Press preseason poll, their highest ranking since 1963, finished the season 4-7, after losing their last six games in a row.

Wieber says Wheeler’s death had an impact, but several factors contributed to Northwestern’s disappointing season.

COURTESY NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

Despite his on-field prowess on Saturdays, Wheeler was known for cutting corners in practice, says Marvin Brown (Speech '02), a former Northwestern safety and one of Wheeler’s teammates. At the time, his fellow defensive backs thought he was just being lazy. They later realized his asthma unnerved him every time he stepped on the field.

“During times in practice, he wouldn’t go his hardest, and he didn’t want to push himself to the limit of having an asthma attack,” Brown says.

Brown says Wheeler’s asthma was likely the reason he saw Wheeler take two different supplements containing ephedrine, a substance then commonly used as a stimulent in dietary suplements and to treat asthma. The NCAA banned ephedrine in 1997, but didn’t start testing for it until 2002. The state of Illinois and the FDA later followed suit in 2003 and 2004 respectively, due to a high risk of stroke and heart attack.

Most NU football players usually took only one supplement, according to Brown. Dr. Mark Gardner, then the University’s director of health services, noted Wheeler’s asthma and his ephedrine use in his medical exam on July 12, 2001, less than a month before Wheeler died.

“He always felt like, ‘I don’t know how much I have in my tank,’” Brown says. “That’s probably why he took two supplements [the day he died], because he didn’t know if he had enough to do it. He didn’t know if he had enough strength to get it done. He felt like he needed that extra push.”

A lot had to go wrong for Wheeler to die that day.

Because of rain the night before, the players had to move from a grass surface to the shorter turf hockey field by the lake, which was like “running on concrete,” Brown says. This, combined with the intense Chicago summertime heat, made Walker’s already difficult conditioning test (10 100-yard sprints, eight 80s, six 60s and four 40s) borderline brutal.

Official team activities had not yet started, but players were expected to be in Evanston in early August, according to Brown.

It was known among players that the strength coaches were more lax on stopwatch times for the summer conditioning test than they were when they administered the test in the fall for those who hadn’t stayed on campus. This incentivized players to “voluntarily” stay rather than go home for the summer. Brown estimates 70 to 80 players showed up to the hockey field to take the test on the day Wheeler died. The staff present at the practice recorded all of it on video.

Just four months earlier, in April 2001, the NCAA tightened its definition of a voluntary team activity. Players had to initiate the workout, no information about the practice could be reported back to coaches and there could not be any threat of punishment for those who didn’t attend, nor incentives for those who did.

Wheeler fell a few times during the test, and again after his test was over, but so did a lot of players.

No one was surprised when he collapsed. Wheeler always had trouble finishing drills.

It was a few minutes before trainers noticed him.

It was another few minutes before anyone realized he was having an asthma attack. Wheeler’s heart stopped on the field, and head trainer Tony Aggeler administered CPR to resuscitate him as they waited for an ambulance. The training staff did not have a defibrillator on site to help start his heart.

“When he collapsed, I’ll never forget this, I just remember looking at him, and somebody grabbed his arm and picked him up,” Brown says. “His vein was like, popping out of his arm. It was, you know, abnormal, the size of his vein that was popping out of his arm.”

“He’s saying he’s dying,” another teammate at the time, Sean Wieber (Weinberg '02) told the Chicago Tribune six years later.

“He couldn’t breathe … he bites his tongue. He starts bleeding.”

Trainers continued timing other players finishing their tests as Wheeler struggled to breathe, all while on camera.

Wheeler’s mother told the Los Angeles Times in 2003 that the most appalling thing about the video of the practice was that the drill continued while her son suffered: "To them, it was business as usual and I'm enraged; I trusted them with my child.”

The poor cell phone reception by Lake Michigan didn’t help, either. The phone on the field wasn’t working, so the 911 call had to be made from a cell phone, ESPN reported later that month.

Paramedics arrived at the field and took Wheeler to Evanston Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival around 6 p.m. Coroners ruled that his death was caused by exerciseinduced bronchial asthma. Wheeler became the third college player to die during “voluntary” team workouts in 2001 alone.

“You just don’t lose a friend and a teammate and not have it have some sort of mental impression on a weekly basis,” Wieber tells North by Northwestern. “But I don’t think the two have a direct correlation, meaning had Rashidi not passed, I don’t think we go 11-0 and play in the national championship.”

But Brown tells North by Northwestern Wheeler left behind a bigger hole than many even realized.

“When adversity hits, your true character comes out,” Brown says. “So when we lost a game or two, our true character was revealed, and our true character was that we didn’t trust each other anymore. We didn’t trust the system. We didn’t trust our coaches. All that came out.”

Wieber says in the ensuing weeks Wheeler’s mother, along with the University, coordinated a memorial service for Wheeler at Alice Millar Chapel. He also says that Northwestern provided counseling for his teammates and other students who may have been emotionally affected by Wheeler’s death.

“I don’t think there’s a playbook for what one does or what a response should be when someone loses a student at their university,” Wieber says.

But in the years following her son’s death, Will was tireless in her pursuit of justice. She argued that Northwestern coaches and staff, not the drugs he took, were to blame. Linda Will could not be reached for comment.

Will didn’t care about the money; it was never about the money, says Chicago Sun-Times columnist Rick Telander, who covered this story as it unfolded. She wanted apologies, from Northwestern claiming responsibility for the role it played in what happened to Wheeler. She wanted action, namely the firing of Walker, as well as that of then-University president Henry Bienen, Telander says.

She wanted recognition for her son in the form of a memorial dedicated on Northwestern’s campus.

Will was so singularly focused on fighting for Wheeler’s memory, Telander says, that it was easy for Northwestern to cast her as obsessed, deranged and even dangerous.

When she glared at witnesses during their depositions and stormed out during the trial, NU lawyers wanted her barred from the courtroom. According to the Tribune, when she called Walker a “murderer,” the University sent undercover plainclothes police officers into depositions, a decision Cook County Judge Kathy Flanagan called “a wild, wild overreaction.”

The school argued Wheeler’s ephedrine use caused an irregular heartbeat and resulted in cardiac arrest, disputing the coroner’s official report. At the time, University spokesperson Alan Cubbage called ephedrine “unregulated and dangerous” in a statement.

Surely someone could have known the rigor of the drill combined with Wheeler’s asthma would have tragic results. That someone was health director Dr. Mark Gardner, Northwestern said, who admitted to burning Wheeler’s medical records soon after Wheeler’s death, including the medical exam Gardner himself administered three weeks earlier. Gardner then took what would become a permanent leave of absence.

The University reportedly tried several times in the year after Wheeler’s death to recover those records, but to no avail. After Gardner left his post, Cubbage said the University could not get in contact with him until April 2002.

The Tribune slammed Northwestern with allegations of a cover-up as soon as the University released this information to the public in June 2003 – 14 months after the initial contact.

In a statement, Cubbage said the former health director acted independently from the University.

“Northwestern has such a great reputation, and this [situation] had the potential to taint it,” Brown says.

Gardner was named as an individual defendant in the Wheelers’ suit against Northwestern, but he virtually

disappeared from news reports after 2003. Cubbage says the University does not have any information regarding Gardner, and declined to comment further for this story. Gardner could not be reached for comment.

None of this was good enough reason for Will to believe anyone but the University was at fault. She refused to settle, holding out and switching legal teams for years, until the suit included the stipulations that Northwestern construct a memorial for Wheeler on campus and formally apologize to her family.

On Aug. 16, 2005, just over four years to the day Wheeler died, Judge Flanagan ordered Will to take the proposed settlement, in which Northwestern would award her family $16 million, the largest wrongful-death settlement in Cook County for a single male under 30 at that time, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Flanagan reasoned the suit had gone on long enough, and the pay-out alone was fair compensation for what happened. Will appealed Flanagan’s decision, but in December 2007 the Illinois appellate court ruled to uphold the judge’s original order, saying Will was holding out for her own personal interests rather than the best interests of Wheeler’s estate.

“I remember talking to her,” Telander says. “She kept saying, ‘I don’t care about the money, I don’t want the money.’

Is money enough to compensate for a wrongful death? There’s nothing else you can do.”

Wieber, now a lawyer based in Chicago, pushed a law titled the R.A.W. Initiative (inspired by Wheeler’s initials) through the Illinois State Legislature in 2007. The only semblance of public commemoration of Wheeler’s life, the unfunded mandate requires AEDs to be present at outdoor sports facilities, and that defibrillator-trained staff be present during all activities at sporting events and practices.

Because the training staff did not have a defibrillator on site when Wheeler died, Wieber pursued the opportunity to honor his teammate by championing the law.

“I had thought there were a lot of things that weren’t there that I could’ve changed,” Wieber says. “That’s something tangible, and that could be the difference for another set of parents or another athlete.”

“Rashidi is smiling from Heaven today!” Will said in a statement after then Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed the bill into law. “[Wieber’s] actions, and the signing of House Bill 1279, ensures that his friend’s tragic loss of life is not in vain and ensures that other students and their families will have the opportunity to pursue their dreams in a far safer environment.”

Though there was no state funding behind the R.A.W. Initiative mandate, Kennedy says an AED now travels to every Northwestern game and practice.

Despite all the media attention the case received at the time, despite the years during which Will and her family rehashed in court the tragedy of losing their son, despite the R.A.W. Initiative’s momentum in Illinois, the nightmare Will fought to prevent happened anyway. Wheeler’s story faded away, relegated to a single phrase in the story of Walker’s tenure, at most, and completely omitted, at least.

This summer will mark exactly 15 years since Wheeler died during a team activity, and Northwestern officials have yet to publicly memorialize him or apologize for his death. Every day thousands of Northwestern students walk the same sidewalks Wheeler did, sit in the same classrooms he did and go back to the same dorms in which he lived. Every day they walk past the fields where he died. But with no tangible reminder on campus— a memorial, a game played in his honor or an annual 5K race— how would they know? v

SPRING 2016 | 39

Lost in transition

Dealing with mental health becomes even more challenging during off-campus programs.

BY NATALIE ESCOBAR

I cannot remember when I had my first anxiety attack in the Medill on the Hill newsroom, but I do remember exactly how it felt. Two hours into a morning of making phone calls and sending emails, my vision blurred, my chest throbbed and my limbs went numb.

I made a beeline for the restroom, avoiding eye contact with everyone else in the office. Behind the safety of a stall door, I curled up into a ball and began to sob.

Ten minutes later, I regained control of my breathing. I dried my eyes, washed my face and took a few deep breaths. I walked back into the newsroom, and nobody was the wiser.

In the weeks before I went to Washington, D.C. for Medill on the Hill, a quarter-long politics reporting program, I worried about things like stocking up on knee-length skirts to wear around Capitol Hill, finalizing rent payments and catching up on the news. I had not thought much about my mental health.

When students spend time away from the Evanston campus, Northwestern can connect them with mental health resources off-site. For international programs, administrative procedures such as health forms and pre-departure orientations facilitate these conversations. For domestic experiences such as internships or teaching residency programs, students can reach out to advisers or Counseling and Psychological Services if they have concerns.

These systems, then, are largely predicated on students anticipating and pre-disclosing problems they might have. For some, however, mental health concerns do not necessarily fall under the neat umbrella of “pre-existing condition.”

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Rather, the stresses of new environments – culture shock, professional expectations, loss of a campus support system – can pose unanticipated challenges that affect students’ day-to-day faculties to function. Depending on the program, communication about these challenges and how to deal with them can be limited at best and non-existent at worst.

Tight protocols & procedures A huge whiteboard hangs on the wall in the office of Julie Friend, the director of global health and safety at Northwestern.

Covering it are the initials of the programs she is currently monitoring, from South Africa to Israel, representing the 76 students abroad this spring.

Friend is responsible for hundreds more students in the fall, when about 400 leave campus. Worrying about Northwestern students abroad is her full-time job. She works closely with Northwestern’s Study Abroad Office and Office of International Program Development to identify and work with students who might need help. When applying to study abroad programs, students must fill out a form to disclose pre-existing health conditions, including mental health. Students can then meet with a CAPS counselor to talk about strategies and coordinate with the HTH Worldwide Student Health Insurance, a U.S.-based insurance company that provides coverage for students abroad, to find a therapist in their destination. For Northwestern-designed programs run through IPD, all students must attend pre- and post-departure orientations that,

in part, talk about how to seek treatment while away.

Emily* sat through IPD-mandated orientation and did not check the box disclosing any health problems before she left to study abroad in Paris in fall 2015.

She had never seen a therapist and did not think she would need to. Instead, she was preoccupied with thoughts of how thrilled she was to leave the country for the first time. But once the novelty wore off and loneliness replaced her initial excitement, she says she felt “pretty depressed” and isolated, especially when alone in her room at her host family’s house.

“That was really disconcerting because I was like, I should be having the time of my life and I’m really not,” she says.

As part of her program, however, she had been given an emergency contact list that included the names of two local English-speaking therapists. She went to one of them for a handful of sessions before deciding to stop. The two of them did not really click, she says, but she had other friends and IPD staff members there that were supportive enough to help her through her time abroad.

“I think that in this particular situation, it wasn’t the fault of Northwestern staff or faculty,” she says. “That’s what having a mental health problem feels like. It’s a shitty feeling, and you feel like no one understands, even if they would or they would try.”

The limits of being proactive For students looking for resources before they leave campus, Mona Dugo,

senior associate dean of students in Student Assistance and Support Services, can also help. Typically her office reaches out to students she has worked with in the past who have pre-disclosed mental health issues to ensure their plan of action in regards to treatment abroad, in order to make the transition as seamless as possible.

“A transition like that is really stressful on a good day, for somebody who’s feeling really well,” says Dugo. “And if there’s a history of depression and anxiety, of course I’m going to be worried.”

However, unforeseeable events during the study abroad experience itself can leave students feeling lost and isolated. They can reach out to the Dean of Students Office to find support, but this doesn’t necessarily play out in reality.

For most of Angela’s* fall 2015 semester in Europe, she felt fine. But things took a turn for the worse during the final weeks of the program.

Angela had been romantically involved with a non-Northwestern college student living in her building, whom she had been close to since the beginning of the program and sleeping with since the third or fourth week.

Everything was consensual at first, but then things changed with two weeks left.

ILLUSTRATION BY SAM SPENGLER

“There were lots of days that I was just like, ‘Okay, if I make it through, it’s another day crossed off the calendar and another day closer to being home.’”

to in order to get help. Apart from friends back home, she never told anybody else on the trip about was going on because she did not think they could help.

Even when she came back to campus, Angela did not report the case to the University. She did not believe the accompanying emotional distress would be worth filing the paperwork. She did not want to dredge up the memories.

“Ultimately, I decided to just deal with it,” she says.

Lack of conversations for domestic programs While unplanned events can affect the mental health of students such as Emily and Angela while abroad, Northwestern tries its best to provide resources for students who ask for them. The issue, then, lies in finding adequate enough support or knowing where to turn.

For students who complete domestic programs, such as Medill’s quarter-long Journalism Residency (JR) internship requirement or SESP’s practicum, leaving campus entails entering high-stress professional environments for the first time while simultaneously adjusting to new cities.

Unlike with international programs, there are no pre-departure discussions about mental health. Students leaving campus must take the initiative to disclose concerns to their program

coordinators or individual advisers before leaving.

When the time came for Medill senior Jillian Sellers to leave campus for her JR during Winter Quarter 2015, she could hardly wait. Sellers says she had always considered school a trigger for her depression and eating disorder, while she has thrived in all of her “real-world” multimedia journalism internships.

Everyone else – her JR and academic adviser, friends, family and therapists – was less sure. They initially encouraged her to stay in Chicago, where she would still be able to go to her usual rehabilitation, psychiatrist and clinical nutritionist appointments. After a lot of conversations about insurance, therapists and contingency plans, though, she received the green light to go to New York.

Sellers says she was grateful for the trial-run of handling her mental health independently while on JR. “From my perspective going to New York, that was my decision, and it’s so reflective of what the real world is like,” she says.

But for students without a complete grasp of their mental health and a support system like Sellers, conversations about wellness do not always happen. Issues with international insurance do not arise, and the Office of Global Health

“I had lots of instances when I’d wake up in the middle of the night and he’s getting in my bed and essentially not asking for consent and doing things to me while I was trying to get him to stop physically and verbally,” she says in an online message.

Angela did not label the encounters as “crazy unhealthy,” emotionally or physically, until the end of the semester, when she started avoiding him – which was difficult, given that they lived in the same building and belonged to the same friend group.

“There were lots of days that I was just like, ‘Okay, if I make it through, it’s another day crossed off the calendar and another day closer to being home,’” she says.

Angela remembers a pre-departure presentation on bystander intervention situations that she says would not have applied in her case; she does not know whom she would have been able to talk SPRING 2016 | 41

and Safety does not get involved. CAPS is the authority on handling mental health concerns, according to Journalism Residency Director Karen Springen.

CAPS, however, is only a piece of the overall community responsible for students’ wellness, says Executive Director John Dunkle, especially since the department has been stretching its resources to accommodate the growing number of students walking through its doors every year. Currently, CAPS has only one staff member available for every 1,032 students on the Evanston campus, a significantly lower staff-to-student ratio than other comparable universities, according to the faculty task force report on the undergraduate academic experience published in December 2015.

“We only have a finite number of people here to do what we need to be able to do,” Dunkle says. “We need to think carefully about how to do it.”

CAPS has a liaison that works with each Northwestern school if their programs request consultations about mental health, according to Dunkle. However, he says he has never personally worked with Medill’s JR program, and they’ve never done a pre-departure workshop. Instead, CAPS has helped individual students map out treatment plans for when they leave, on a case-by-case basis.

“While CAPS really does its best to make sure that we’re providing the essential services, especially here on campus, we obviously can’t be everywhere,” he says.

so consistently anxious and sad, even during the most stressful parts of the year on campus. In return, he gave me some lackluster advice about maintaining balance and taking time for myself, and our hour was finished.

I left the office angry, but not quite sure at whom. Before I left for Medill on the Hill, our orientation consisted of an overview of tips on how to find housing, the program schedule and basic expenses.

Health care was mentioned only in passing and mental health not at all. Why had no one – program coordinators, other students or faculty – prepared me for the fact that I might need support? uuuuu Having an early conversation would have helped Erin Donohoe (Weinberg ‘15) when she left campus during her senior year Winter Quarter 2015 for SESP practicum her major required, she says.

For the quarter, she worked New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, where she helped teach an American studies class and two English classes.

“How do you tell the difference between normal stress of being a young professional who know what they are doing versus having issues with your mental health?”

uuuuu CAPS certainly was not in D.C., where I had to wrangle with my mom’s insurance company to schedule a meeting with a psychologist.

We filled out insurance paperwork for most of our first meeting. I gave him a rundown of my mental health history: I had seen a therapist in high school and my freshman year of college for disordered eating and anxiety but had never been diagnosed with anything clinical or taken medication.

Finally, he asked how I was feeling. I started to answer. But then I stopped; I did not know what to say. What could I say?

That I was miserable at a program that I had wanted to attend the moment I found out about it? That I had fought off panic attacks in the newsroom that I had worked so hard to get into? That I had lapsed back into old patterns of obsessing about food and exercise when this was supposed to be the best three months of my life?

I told him the truth: I had never felt

42 | northbynorthwestern.com

Despite the three-and-a-half mile distance from campus, the environment was a shock to her. She had never planned lessons before and had little experience with classroom management.

Donohoe had expected it to be stressful, but not to the extent that she felt sick at the thought of going to school every morning, or that she would cry on the phone to her mom every night. She had been taking medication for ADD for years, but she had never seen a therapist or asked for any sort of support, even throughout the more difficult parts of high school.

In the final months of her college career, Donohoe was reluctant to share her anxiety and doubts about teaching, worried that it might affect her grade or ability to graduate.

“How do you tell the difference between normal stress of being a young professional who doesn’t know what they’re doing versus having issues with your mental health?” she says. “The only reason I held on so long was because I thought what I was going through was normal and expected.”

In the end, she reached out to her SESP professors for help after realizing she could not get through student teaching without further damaging her mental health. Her adviser helped waive requirements so she could transfer to Weinberg during February of her second-to-last quarter at Northwestern and graduate on time as an English major.

Donohoe felt like her professors and advisers cared about her, but she wishes that during the weekly check-in seminars with other students and professors that they had talked about the specific kinds of stress that teachers face, or how to find a counselor if necessary.

“If you don’t talk about it,” she says, “how are you supposed to know?”

Coming home Looking back, I know I could have reached out for support. Logically, I could have called CAPS or the Dean of Students Office and asked for help with therapist referrals. I could have emailed my adviser back on campus to let him know what I was experiencing.

But logic does not apply to mental health, and level-headed thinking often falls to the wayside. Like Emily, I felt guilty for not being happy. Like Angela, I had no idea how to go about finding support locally. Like Jillian, I was grateful for the professional experience, but like Erin, I had no idea what I was getting myself into because no one had talked about that. Reaching out for help felt next to impossible.

My experience in D.C. was not as simple as being miserable the whole time, either. There were many moments of joy: museum visits, morning runs to and from the White House, day trips to national monuments, watching documentaries with my roommates. I loved, loathed and was exhausted by D.C. – a kind of nuance that Facebook photo albums cannot capture and small talk cannot convey.

When I came back to campus, I found myself repeating the same cliches I had heard before I left: best quarter ever, great to be away during the winter, strange to be taking classes again. Eleven wild, exhausting weeks condensed into bitesized chunks for quick conversation.

I’m still not entirely sure how I would have wanted someone to prepare me for the quarter. So when people ask me, “How was D.C.?” I respond: “It was a lot.” And I leave it at that. v *Editor’s note: name has been changed to protect student’s identity

HANGOVER

Enjoy with coffee and Advil

From Wildkit to Wildcat.

BY JEREMY LAYTON

PHOTO BY JULIA SONG

H

ere’s something you might not know about me: I’m a townie.

Four years ago, I walked the stage at Welsh-Ryan Arena as a member of Evanston Township High School’s Class of 2012.

Four months later, I rode my bike to Bobb-McCulloch Hall while my parents lugged all of my shit in their station wagon.

I was ready to get out of Evanston after living here most of my life, so I didn’t always want to go to Northwestern. I looked at universities all over the country and wasted plenty of time and money visiting all of them. But Northwestern was the best school that I got into, so I said “fuck it” and decided to ride out the next four years in the place I spent my previous 11.

For the most part, I knew what I was getting into. I knew about the academics, since the nerdiest percentile of ETHS seniors (myself now included) went to Northwestern every year. I knew about the athletic futility, since I had been freezing my ass off watching Ohio State’s football team blow Northwestern out of the water since I was 7. I knew about the party scene. My friends and I spent our senior year of high school trying to sneak into frat houses on Friday nights (our batting average was .000). My biggest misconception going into freshman year was probably that Bobb was “the #1 party dorm in the country,” as the Huffington Post so naively claimed.

When I went to visit a friend at a state school, they set up a Slip ‘N Slide in their dorm hallway. Now that was a party.

Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to see Evanston as both a college town and my hometown, and it functions more appropriately as the latter. Evanston is a suburban residential community, and a pretty bougie one at that. There are literally two Whole Foods within a mile of each other, and a third not much farther. Quite simply, Evanston is no Bloomington, Indiana, or Ann Arbor, Michigan, where students bar-hop nightly.

Some think that Evanston is an anti-fun vacuum, which may be perpetuated by a number of myths and bizarre city ordinances.

For example, if you want to trick-or-treat on Halloween, it is actually not illegal. It is, however, strictly regulated to the hours of 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. Ring the doorbell at 7:05 p.m.? Sorry kid –

you’re not getting your Butterfinger.

There’s also a myth that whistling is illegal, which is only partially true. Evanston’s website says that yelling, shouting, hooting, whistling or singing is unlawful, “particularly between the hours of 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.” So if you have a desire to “hoot” on the public streets of Evanston, make sure you do it while the sun is still out.

But regardless of all the quirks, weirdness and questionable administrative policy this town has to offer, they do call this place “Heavenston” for a reason. (Okay, it’s actually because of its heavy Methodist influence, but we can alter history for the purpose of this piece.) We have beaches, more than 80 parks and some of the friendliest people in America, when they’re not calling the cops on your off-campus frat party. President Barack Obama even gave us a shout out during his speech at the 2016 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, calling Evanston a “great town,” right after thanking Joe Biden for not shooting anyone in the face during his term as vice president.

My love for Evanston has made it hard for me to shake the “townie” label. My freshman year, I was the guy who knew all of the restaurants, campus buildings and streets where upperclassmen were hosting off-campus parties. And every year people with whom I haven’t spoken since elementary school ask me to get them Dillo Day wristbands.

So, instead of trying to fight my townie label, I’ve come to embrace it. I’ve happily doled out restaurant recommendations to dozens of my friends, borrowed my parents’ car to drive people all around the North Shore and even let my parents come to one of our football game tailgates.

Either way, within the next few months, I likely will move away from Evanston for the first time in 15 years, probably to New York. No matter where I end up, when people ask me where I’m from, I will always say, “Evanston.” And when the New Yorker that I’m talking to inevitably doesn’t know where Evanston is, I’ll say something about deep dish pizza and probably get punched in the face.

SPRING 2016 | 43

HANGOVER

Classroom cardio Get toned in Tech.

BY CANDACE BUTERA

So you want to get in shape and get ROCK HARD ABS? Thanks to Chicago weather, the “sun’s out, guns out” motto has been pushed back, giving you a few extra weeks to tone up. Let’s take advantage of Northwestern’s largest building, Tech, to whip our beach-bodies into shape – or at least to get into good enough condition that we’re not winded from just walking up the stairs. You already have all the tools you need: a building with seven miles worth of hallways and a set of expensive free weights in your backpack. Here are some Tech workout options:

Capture the flag Capture the flag can bring out the best and worst in people. It’s a chance to be competitive outside the classroom, disregarding grades and studying, of course. First, divide Location: All of Tech into two teams. Next, each team hides their Time: Unlimited flag on a specific side of Tech and then races Difficulty: Depends on your to see which team can teammates’ creativity find their opponent’s flag first. Collisions Sweat Level: Low, but may occur. someone might get injured

t-shirt groupies

The Pac-Man It’s pretty simple, just rally up a group of people and chase each other through the maze of Tech. It’s like the building was made for this. Running 3.5 laps through the whole building is basically the equivalent of a full marathon.

Location: Hallways of Tech Time: As long as desired Difficulty: Easy Sweat Level: Low

The Tech flex Even though you might not actually read your textbooks, you can still get creative and make great use out of those $200 weights in your backpack.

Hold your book in both hands over your head, bend your elbows and push the book behind your head – we call this the intellectual warrior pose. This exercise aims to strenghten your triceps. Next, lift the book repeatedly in front of you while bending your Location: Classroom knees at a 90-degree angle into a squat position Time: 20 minutes to strengthen Difficulty: Medium your shoulders, back and legs.

Sweat Level: Low, but That way you soreness high won’t be skipping leg day.

These avid fans wear their hearts on their sleeves.

BY KAYLA REARDON

Jazib Gohar, Weinberg sophomore

“I have been to a million and one concerts, but The Killers concert was my very first. To this day, they were still one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to and they got me addicted to concerts, and music in general, for the rest of my life.”

Sydney Lindsey, Weinberg senior “My friend Shruti (far right) and I (center)discovered Bastille while listening to the British radio show ‘The Breakfast Show with Nick Grimshaw’ on BBC Radio 1 in the summer before senior year of high school, and they’ve been my favorite band ever since. A group of us went to their concert in the House of Blues in Houston during their first U.S. tour.”

Ogey Ibik, Weinberg sophomore 44 | northbynorthwestern.com

PHOTOS BY ZOE DAVIS AND KAYLA REARDON

“Currently, I’m on my big concert season. Over the next five months I’ll be going to 19 concerts and all four days of Lolla. I saw [Young The Giant] at Lolla two years ago and I will be seeing them in June and July.”

Puppy love Find your perfect canine match.

BY DANIELLE ELLIOTT Forget Tinder guys – get your priorities straight.

Dogs are the real companions we want to find. They are constantly happy, decrease people’s stress levels and will laugh (or bark or do nothing) at all your jokes. Humans are fickle. Dogs are forever!

But being on campus makes it hard to get your animal fix. After leaving our pets at home when coming to college, finding the right dog to make your day can be a real challenge. That’s why we brought the dogs to YOU. Below are four eligible dog bachelors looking for love and best friends.

PHOEBE: SELFIE KWEEN

RUBY: LOVABLE SCIENTIST

JASON BRICKNER, Ph.D., MOLECULAR BIOSCIENCES

You might recognize me from my glamour shots in the SESP office of Student Affairs, but I promise I’m really down-to-earth. I love relaxing and warm weather days, but do not ask me to go for a walk if it is too hot, too cold, raining or snowing. I have a low belly that is NOT about to get wet. I hate clothes, so don’t suggest any of that costume shit; I prefer the nude.

DM me if u think u can hang and grab some grub: my appetite is insatiable.

Wanna share your electrons with me? I’m looking for that covalent bond. I’m part of my dad’s lab so people come and see me all the time. He calls me a “total love savage,” so I’m down to hang with just about anyone. When I’m not hitting the books, I enjoy swimming, hiking and playing games in the hallway for snacks.

Come chill if you want your daily dose of oxytocin (for those who don’t know, that’s the love/cuddle hormone).

Find me in Pancoe 3105

Find me in Annenberg 216

REGINA LOPATA, Ph.D., SESP

TOBY: ALL-AMERICAN STUD

Find me in 1940 Sheridan Road Eating, sleeping, catching but NOT retrieving, and tug of war are my favorite things to do, but I am also happy to lend an ear if you’re stressed out about making life plans after graduation – my mom says I am really good at that. Fair warning: I shed a lot, so BYOLR (bring your own lint roller) for playdates.

While hair loss is an issue, I have this great lotion for my fur that you HAVE to come and smell. Stop by, say hello and take a whiff of my luscious locks.

Find me in Crowe 3-101

PHOTOS BY MIA ZANZUCCHI

AMY KEHOE, FELLOWSHIPS

WEEZIE: THE SILENT SLAYER

JORGE CORONADO, Ph.D., SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE

Don’t be fooled by my demure personality; it’s not because I’m shy – my vocal cords were clipped as a puppy for hunting. .

Before Jorge, my owner, adopted me, I lived with a nice family who eventually couldn’t take care of me. I may not be able to bark, but I’m a great listener who isn’t distracted by flighty things like squirrels. I also have the hunting skills to protect you from larger animals and menacing humans; I promise to keep you feeling safe and protected.

SPRING 2016 | 45

HANGOVER

BY DEVON KERR

Do better, NU. We gave Northwestern a few more accurate names.

Guys, let’s be real here. “Northwestern” is a terrible name for a university. Look, I love the school as much as the next person, but why are we named after a cardinal direction? I don’t want to explain it anymore. No, Northwestern is not in Washington.

No, it’s not in Boston either, that’s Northeastern University. Sure, some call us “Nerdwestern” or “Northwasted.” But the former sounds like we’re the cast of The Big Bang Theory, and the latter implies we’re all in the Zac Efron fraternity from Neighbors. I think it’s finally time for us to come up with a new name for Northwestern. Here are my suggestions:

NorthStresstern:

This name really gets to the core of our beliefs and values here, and I think it would definitely save some time when telling extended family about college. Instead of listing off the five classes you’re taking, the three publications you write for and the Greek organization you’re in, just tell them you go to NorthStresstern.

They’ll understand.

46 | northbynorthwestern.com

Congest­ern:

If you love being sick for five months straight, come on down to Congestern! Our dorms are so cramped and our weather is so cold, you’re practically guaranteed to get swine flu by October. Plus, as a bonus, our health center is only open for urgent care on Saturdays and not at all on Sundays, so if you’re sick on a Sunday, have fun! You’ll be stewing in a pit of your own excretions till Monday!

North West­ern:

Hey, remember how Kanye and Kim’s baby is named North West? Well, that’s funny, because we go to Northwestern! Get it?! Ha, ha, those jokes never get old.

So why not just streamline the process and name our school after the baby that people already put on our T-shirts? It’s guaranteed to be topical for at least 70 more years.

Midwestern:

Finally, our geographyrelated problems are solved!

Simple, clean and easy. I think we’ve finally got the perfect school name. Now, for the real question: Are we MW or MU?