‘CARRIE’ REMAKE DOES NOT CARRY WEIGHT | Page 10 University of Denver student newspaper since 1899
Vol. 120, Issue 22
oct. 23, 2013
www.duclarion.com
ASSET bill impacts campus Students audit campus trash by anita balakrishnan Editor Emeritus
Although incoming applicants to DU will not benefit from legislation passed last year to grant undocumented Colorado students in-state tuition, DU students and alumni are still working to promote equal access to education for these students. DU sophomore Cynthia Rodriguez, an undocumented student and prospective Accounting major with minors in Spanish and mathematics, and alumna Blanca Trejo, a 2010 DU graduate, are both working to implement the bill through outreach and education. Rodriguez, who was born in Zacatecas, Mexico but who has lived in Denver since she was one year old, does most of her outreach through a program called the Puksta Program, a scholarship offered to three incoming students every year at CU Boulder, Colorado State University and DU, which focuses on social justice issues that students seek to change in their communities. After being awarded the $6,000 per year scholarship, students create a project for their four years of college and establish ties to work with in their community after graduation. “My vision for my project is to begin a mentorship program, connecting with mainly Denver Public Schools, high schools to be specific, and help undocumented students achieve their goals, which I hope for many of them will be being able to continue on to college after high school,” said Rodriguez. “I also want to become involved with the students’ families, especially those who have overcome family separation due to deportations or those who are currently going through something similar.” Trejo, a Denver native who triple-
majored in International business, political science and Spanish at DU, works as the Parent and Student Outreach Coordinator and Bilingual Presenter for the Higher Education Access Alliance, while also doing community organizing with Together Colorado in Denver and throughout the state. “Now that we have spent 10 years passing this legislation, I am honored to help implement it,” said Trejo. “I facilitate and coordinate parent and student information meetings. Not all of the students I meet with will benefit from ASSET but it was written with DREAMers in mind, so they will benefit most.” DREAMers, a name derived from a piece of national legislation called the DREAM act, Trejo said, are undocumented students brought to the country in the young age or in their teens who have been here for many years and would now call the United States their home. Rodriguez herself is a DREAMer. “Being an undocumented student myself, I know the struggle that comes with getting ready to graduate from high school and having to look for scholarships that don’t require you have a legal status,” said Rodriguez. “They can be really hard to find and not only that but also having to expose yourself to counselors about your situation is hard. Another factor that inspired me was that three years ago I had to undergo through a family deportation and furthermore family separation, so that is why I look to incorporate family into my project too - because I know that there are many situations like mine and I would like to be a support for those who are going through something similar.”
SEE alum, PAGE 8
Volleyball wins in home games
gusto kubiak|clarion
SEE pios, PAGE 16
Watercourse Foods proffers masterful vegan fare LIFESTYLES | Page 7
QUOTABLE
Volleyball swept its games against xxx and yyy over the weekend.
gusto kubiak|clarion
Students and volunteers, organized by DU-ET sort through trash from the DU campus last Wed, Oct. 16.
by lanna giauque News Editor
Last Wednesday, over 60 students, faculty and staff volunteered sorting waste from across campus near the corner of Iliff and High as a part of a waste audit called Mount Trashmore. “Our goal was to do a one day trash audit and visual demonstration of how much trash is produced across our whole campus on one day,” said Sustainability Coordinator Chad King. The decisions people make when throwing away their waste was a major theme of the audit, and King says one of the factors measured was how much recycling is going into trash cans and how much trash is going into recycling and composting bins. There was so much waste to sort through, according to King, that some buildings had to be excluded from the waste audit, including the Ritchie Center, Centennial Halls, Centennial Towers and some campus buildings that are not as close to the central campus. “If we were to have more time and volunteers, we would have tried to get to those buildings we excluded and do those counts, but it just became a whole
lot of extra work,” said King. The volunteers were able to sort through waste from some representative buildings, however, including Ben Cherrington Hall and Craig Hall. King said the data collected from these buildings will provide baseline data for pilot projects focused on waste in those buildings. For example, King says desk-side trashcans will be replaced in those buildings with small half liter “trash caddies” attached to larger recycling bins. “[The trash caddy] just emphasizes the fact that trash should be small and recycling should be bigger, especially at a desk,” said King. “It’s too small for a sheet of paper to fit into, so it emphasizes that should just go right into the [recycling] bin.” King says he hopes the initiative will reduce the number of trash bins in the buildings and begin to create behavioral change. Another initiative, according to King, is making sure that trashcans are accompanied by recycling bins wherever possible. “We want to give people the option of doing the right thing every time they throw something away,” he said.
“We shouldn’t raise taxes with the likely possibility that little positive change will result from them.” OPINIONS | Page 12
SEE mount, PAGE 2
16th
DU’s ranking in top 20 sexiest schools