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THURSDAY, APRIL 5
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17
VOLUME 114, ISSUE 42
VOLUME 116, ISSUE 36
GUEST COLUMN
THEATRE REVIEW
WRESTLING
Opinion PAGE 3
CAMPUS LIFE PAGE 5
SPORTS PAGE 6
Wellness Services advocates for HPV vaccinations.
Theatre Critic Anna Alldredge reviews “Black History: A Musical Journey.”
UNI Panthers take down West Virginia Moutaineers 36-6.
CME panel features Black voices LAUREN MCGUILL Staff Writer
On Thursday, Feb. 13, the UNI Center for Multicultural Education (CME) hosted a panel discussion with Black and African American students. This was the latest panel in the “What Your Students Want You to Know” series, which was launched in Nov. 2019 to feature the voices of UNI students from diverse populations. Thursday’s panel, hosted by CME Assistant Director Keyah Levy, focused on challenges, experiences and fears black students have at UNI. Five UNI students answered questions from Levy and the audience, giving professors, staff and other students a glimpse at what everyday life is like for Black students. While many of the answers contained information on what can be
GABRIELLE LEITNER/Northern Iowan
improved, students mentioned several UNI programs that helped them transition into college more easily, such as Jump Start. “Jump Start was just a great way to meet other people who look like you,
who are going through the same transition as you, maybe from a different background or whatever it may be, but you guys are heading towards the same path,” said panelist Christina Downey, a sophomore marketing
clothing business started by Brown, now a senior, to make thrifting and secondhand clothes shopping more accessible for UNI students. The College Rack ’s most recent pop-up events were held this past weekend on Thursday, Friday and Sunday in the Business and Community Services Building on campus. Thursday and Friday included clothes that were individually priced and Sunday’s event was a $10 bag sale. Brown said she has a vision of her customers feeling as if they got a good deal. Brown describes the business as “Plato’s Closet with a social enterprise twist.” That social enterprise aspect includes donating 10% of the profits from every pop-up event to a local charity. Cedar Valley Friends of the Family, a local organization that supports and advocates for victims of sexual and domestic abuse, human trafficking and
homelessness, was the benefactor of the string of popups held by The College Rack this past weekend. All the clothes that are not sold at the end of each semester at the pop-ups are donated to a charity or other in-need organizations. In the past, Brown has donated the clothes to Youth Emergency Services and Shelter of Des Moines, IA. This organization provides a safety net for children who find themselves in a family crisis. Since learning about another on-campus organization, International Justice Mission, which also sells secondhand clothes, Brown now plans on donating leftover clothes to them in the future. “I actually just heard about Threads [...] through the [UNI] International Justice Mission and all the money goes to the International Justice Mission.”
major. “It was a great way to meet each other, to discuss things that you were going through, and you could always go back to them.” Levy asked the panelists what challenges or issues they might have faced in
navigating the campus. Panelist Laito Zarkpah, a junior philosophy and political science major, expressed frustration with feeling as though she had to be a “spokesperson” for the Black community. “Feeling like you have to be the spokesperson for your people, that you speak for every single person that looks like you,” she said. “Sometimes just having to be that spokesperson gets really frustrating. Sometimes I just want to go and sit in class and not have to answer questions about Black history. Sometimes I want to be able to move on campus and not have to deal with the ignorance, the stares and the questions. Sometimes I just want to be a student and being a Black student on campus, sometimes you’re not afforded that luxury.”
Student hosts pop-up thrift sale TAYLOR LIEN
Copy Editor
Communication studies major Reagan Brown didn’t know what to do with the hoodies she received from various romantic partners, so she decided to sell them. The business started as Project Ex, from the hoodies Brown sold from her exes. Then, during her junior year at UNI while Brown was taking entrepreneurship classes as a part of her minor, the idea took on a different form. “So I took two entrepreneurship classes in my junior year [...] and started really diving into this and making it like an actual business. In those classes, it was still Project Ex; the name stayed but the idea concept changed,” Brown said. After the inception of Project Ex, The College Rack was born. The College Rack is a pop-up secondhand
See COLLEGE RACK, page 4
GABRIELLE LEITNER/Northern Iowan
See CME PANEL, page 2