9-28-2020

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THURSDAY, APRIL 5

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28

VOLUME 114, ISSUE 42

VOLUME 117, ISSUE 12

TOWN HALL

PMB CONCERTS

MISSOURI VALLEY

NEWS PAGE 2

CAMPUS LIFE PAGE 4

SPORTS PAGE 6

Office of Community Engagement hosts virtual town hall.

The PMB holds their Outdoor Concert Series on Lawther Field.

Missouri Valley anounces football schedule for the spring.

Students march for Breonna Taylor SARA QUALLEY

Staff Writer

hh.UNI students marched for Breonna Taylor on Thursday, Sept. 24 after officers were not charged for shooting her in her Louisville apartment

earlier this year, as reported by AP News. “Taylor, an emergency medical worker, was shot multiple times by white officers who entered her home on a no-knock warrant during a narcotics investigation,” AP

News wrote on Wednesday, Sept. 23. “The warrant used to search her home was connected to a suspect who did not live there, and no drugs were found inside.” AP News also reported that former Louisville officer

KARLA DeBRUIN/Northern Iowan

In light of recent decisions in the Breonna Taylor case, UNI students organized a march on campus.

Brett Hankison was charged by a Kentucky grand jury Wednesday for three counts of wanton endangerment due to shots fired into a nearby, occupied home. Prosecutors found the other two officers involved in the shooting to be “justified in using force to protect themselves after they faced gunfire from her boyfriend.” UNI students gathered at the Maucker Union fountain for the march on Thursday. Max Tensen, a secondary mathematics education major at UNI, kicked off the event. Tensen expressed that he was disappointed in the judiciary system for not giving Taylor justice, and said he won’t rest until everyone has the same rights that he, a white male, possesses. Tensen then introduced speaker Alisanne Struck, a public relations major with an emphasis in special events. Struck told the crowd that Black lives aren’t being val-

ued, especially when an innocent Black woman was killed in her sleep. Police interviews and transcripts have clarified that Taylor was not asleep at the time of her death, although she had been in bed at the time police arrived at the apartment. Testimony from Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker, as reported in multiple articles from the Louisville Courier Journal, has indicated that both Taylor and Walker got out of bed prior to the police entering the apartment, and Taylor died on the hallway floor. Struck told the crowd that the U.S needs to do better, and loss only comes if people stop fighting for what’s right. Diamond Roundtree, a theatre performance major, addressed the crowd next. She encouraged white members of the crowd to speak up and use their privilege. See MARCH, page 4

Some in-person classes opt for online AASHITA VADHERA

Staff Writer

According to UNI’s COVID19 reopening plan as detailed at forwardtogether.uni.edu, the fall 2020 semester began with over 80% of classes meeting fully or partially face to face and only 20% being fully online. However, now that it is halfway through the semester, a number of classes have temporarily converted online due to illnesses or COVID-19 exposures. Others, for various reasons, have gone completely remote or online. Lucia Jaime Hernandez, a junior elementary education major, recently had two of her classes converted to remote learning. “Personally, the shift is worse,” she said. “I have a hard time focusing online and I can get easily behind in class.” However, she noted that there are some advantages, such as the opportunity to still par-

ticipate in class if she is sick or otherwise unable to attend in person. Katie O’Brien, American Sign Language (ASL) instructor, recently converted all her classes, which had been meeting in-person, to online delivery via Zoom. While some classes have moved online due to COVID19 exposures, O’Brien’s decision to go remote was pedagogical. When she taught in person, she needed to wear a mask, and it was difficult for students to see her face, an issue in the visually-based language of ASL. O’Brien said that while moving her classes online didn’t involve paperwork, she did have to notify the department chair, who then notified the registrar’s office. Her decision to move online also involved a lot of back and forth as she tried to ensure that her students understood her decision. “Initially, I surveyed my classes the first week to ask

them how they felt about moving ‘online.’ I had to go back and clarify that I meant ‘remote,’ as in we would still meet during our regular class meetings, just via Zoom, and that I wasn’t abandoning them/throwing them to the wolves/ghosting them,” she explained. She also commented that she did not know why her class would assume such a thing, but still she changed the survey to help them better understand the question. “I think many of them were apprehensive, but I sort of slowly moved them to Zoom to have them try it out,” said O’Brien. “They were much more interactive and responsive on Zoom than in the classroom! I think seeing my whole face makes a big difference for them.” Nonetheless, some of her students were still not very happy with the change, and after receiving a “complaint,” she decided to return to in-person. However, she soon realized that

GABI CUMMINGS/Northern Iowan

CAC 108 sits empty as the Department of Communications and Disorders decides ASL instructor Katie O’Brien’s classes are no longer meeting in-person.

it may not have been the best thing for the students’ learning. “The statistical data I got from their exam grades showed that they were struggling to understand me, which I greatly attribute to them not seeing my entire face,” she said. “Armed with that data, I was able to make the professional decision

to permanently shift all my class meetings to Zoom for the remainder of the semester.” Unlike O’Brien’s decision, though, some class shifts did not involve student opinions, as mentioned by Sophia Aguirre, a strategic public relations major. See ONLINE CLASSES, page 2


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