The seed of an idea
UI student wins innovation award FEATURES, 6A
Who should pick the University’s trustees? Find out if the editorial agrees with the process OPINIONS, 4A
The Daily Illini
Thursday March 28, 2013
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Vol. 142 Issue 126
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UI, workers come to tentative agreement BY DAN WELIN STAFF WRITER
PHOTO COURTESY OF DENNIS ROBERTS
Residents of Zomba, Malawi, stand at a rural market. Urbana won a grant to further its relationship with Zomba, one of its sister cities.
Urbana joins Malawi, China in tri-city grant BY CORINNE RUFF STAFF WRITER
The small kitchen was crowded with plates of egg casserole and overlapping conversation that blended English and Chewa, the native language of Malawi. Steaming mugs of coffee and hot tea were passed around to men in thick sweaters and women in long patterned dresses with silver buttons and colored scarves wrapped around their necks. The idea of breakfast at a friend’s home isn’t customary in Malawian culture, but for the six visiting members of Urbana’s sister city Zomba, it’s a part of strengthening their relationship. “Our visit is two dimensions,” said Dickson B. Vuwa Phiri, chairman of the Zomba community and leader of the trip. “One is the project and on the other hand is the cementing of relationships between the citizens of our city and the other citizens here.” The project is a new trilateral grant given by Sister City International to develop methods of solid waste removal in an urban environment through the coordination of three cities. Urbana was chosen as one of three cities in the United States to receive the SinoAfrican Initiative grant of $100,000. For this grant, Urbana continues its partnership with Zomba, using the money to improve Zomba’s sewage system, but it will also add a new sister city, the Haizhu District of Guangzhou, China. Together, the three cities will work to develop better technologies for disposing solid waste. Throughout the week, community leaders from Zomba in the fields of engineering, administration, education, environmental health
Dan can be reached at welin1@dailyillini.com.
Box offers students, staff better services BY JANELLE O’DEA STAFF WRITER
PHOTO COURTESY OF DENNIS ROBERTS
Women are served first during a picnic on Malawi’s Mother’s Day, a national holiday, on Oct. 15. and liquid waste management, visited Urbana to explore the city’s organization of modern technology in sewage sanitation and garbage disposal. Environmental health officer Elizabeth Moreen Chingayipe said the lack of a detailed
network of trash collection in Zomba causes many problems. “We have the start of this system,” she said. “A few days the truck will come to get garbage
See MALAWI, Page 3A
Self-defense courses empower men, women BY SARI LESK STAFF WRITER
The University Police Department will offer its award-winning women’s self-defense courses one last time this semester, beginning next Tuesday. Since 1991, UIPD has offered Rape Aggression Defense courses for women. The $20 course comprises 12 hours of instruction broken up over one three-hour session per week for four weeks. During the fourth week, the instructors host three hours of controlled, simulated situations that let students apply their newly acquired skills. The course was deemed “Program of the Year” last year by the Women’s Resource Center after UIPD added men’s courses. Pat Morey, director of the Women’s Resource Center and former instructor of the courses, cited several reasons for giving the class the award. She said the main reason is that last year, UIPD added defense classes for men, called Resisting Aggression with Defense. She also
INSIDE
After nearly eight hours of negotiations Wednesday, the University and the Service Employees International Union Local 73 reached a tentative agreement on a new contract. Union members will vote to ratify the agreement next week. University spokeswoman Robin Kaler said in an email that negotiators for the campus and the union will meet later in the week to finalize the agreement, which will be presented to the union members to vote on April 4 and 5. “We’re pleased we were able to reach a fair contract that the bargaining committee feels is fair and equitable,” said Adam Rosen, SEIU spokesman. “Hopefully going forward, the strike shows the University that they can’t survive without us and we don’t have to resort to that again.” The Union went on strike from March 12 to March 14 instead of accepting the University’s previous proposal. SEIU Chief Negotiator Ricky Baldwin said in a previous interview members voted against it primarily because the proposed wage increases were too low. Rosen said the new proposal is a four-year contract with a wage increase for all four years but did not release further details regarding the wage increases. Negotiations started last June, a few weeks before the previous contract expired. If the Union members agree to the new proposal, the new contract will take effect in July and will run through July 2016. Rosen said the bargaining team is satisfied with the tentative agreement. “Based on the bargaining committee voting to recommend the vote ‘yes’, the bargaining committee’s pleased with what was presented,” he said. “Unlike last time, where the bargaining committee was neutral and said vote how you feel, this time it’s ‘we’re recommending a yes vote to ratify the tentative agreement.’”
said she appreciates how the program is focused on physiology, rather than entirely dependent on learning techniques like the martial arts. “RAD is really street smarts, and it’s about how you use your voice and how you use your attitude and how you defend yourself to the point where you can get away,” she said. Detective Rob Murphy, UIPD, has taught the adult courses for about four years. He explained that the purpose is to teach students about situational awareness, wanting them to be aware of where they are and how they position themselves in relation to other people. “We teach some self-defense skills, but we also teach a huge education component,” he said. “Think about where you’re walking on campus, where the emergency phones are.” Esther Bier, junior in LAS, took the women’s course last spring. “I felt a lot more confident in my ability to be protected,” she said. She also said she liked how the
Box, a new file sharing system offered by the University, increased its storage space at the beginning of this semester, and its usership continues to grow. In addition to the increase in space, from five gigabytes to 50, more than 9,900 users have joined the system, which is run by CITES. CITES switched from the Netfiles file storage service to Box over the course of the last semester, retiring Netfiles on Dec. 21. Netfiles was in service for about 10 years and had more users when it was retired than Box currently has, but Box is still gaining users daily and has been in service just since September 2012. CITES has had 30-50 users sign up for it every day. Brian Mertz, chief communications officer at CITES, said the sign-up rate, “while not some-
See BOX, Page 3A
University online storage space increases tenfold The University introduced a new file storage system last semester to increase storage and keep up with system requirements.
NetFiles 24,151 users
as of retirement on Dec. 21, 2012 500MB
BRIAN YU THE DAILY ILLINI
Detective Robert Murphy of the University of Illinois Police Department shows off practice pads used by the self defense class taught by the UIPD. The class teaches students basic self defense techniques and how to react in dangerous scenarios. class combated the cycle of victim blaming. “When that information is targeted at women, we then blame women for when they don’t take those methods,” Bier said. “That then leads to allowing people to blame women for when they don’t take these methods of protection.”
Morey, who has been an advocate, counselor and educator about sexual assault for about 35 years, was previously opposed to self defense because she thought it represented victim blaming. After learning the techniques in a program
See SELF-DEFENSE, Page 3A
BOX
9,946 users
as of Mar. 27, 2013 50GB Source: Brian Mertz, Chief communcations officer at CITES
AUSTIN BAIRD Assistant design editor
Police 2 A | Horoscopes 2 A | Opinions 4 A | Crossword 5 A | Comics 5 A | Life & Culture 6 A | Spor ts 1 B | Classifieds 5 B - 6 B | Sudoku 6 B