Tuesday May 4, 2010 year: 140 No. 101
the student voice of
The Ohio State University
www.thelantern.com
Ohio primary elections today! For polling locations visit: vote.franklincountyohio.gov
sports
Ex-Buckeye’s life after football
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arts & life
thelantern Photographer: ‘I’m on my own’ Despite requests, Kotran not likely to receive legal assistance from Ohio State MICHELLE SULLIVAN Lantern reporter sullivan.423@osu.edu A Lantern photographer who shot photographs of cows that escaped on campus two weeks ago now faces possible charges of criminal trespassing and, despite his requests, will likely not receive legal assistance from Ohio State or The Lantern. OSU Police sent an e-mail to photographer Alex Kotran on Saturday asking him to schedule a time today or Wednesday when he can be questioned. Kotran asked if either the university or The Lantern would provide him with an attorney and has yet to hire one himself. He is still not sure whether he will receive assistance from the university. “I haven’t been given a clear answer,” Kotran said Monday. “I’m assuming that I’m on my own right now.” In an e-mail to Ofÿcer William Linton on Monday, Kotran said “I am currently in the process of obtaining
a criminal defense attorney, and will instruct him to contact you once I do.” Linton is the ofÿcer who detained and handcuffed Kotran on April 21. Lantern General Manager John Milliken said representatives of OSU Legal Affairs told him the university cannot provide Kotran with an attorney or the money for an attorney because it is a con° ict of interest. “We have had conversations related to the entire issue. It is fairly ÿlled with con° icts and little nuances that make it very unique,” Milliken said. He said what makes this issue unique is that all parties involved are afÿliated with the university. OSU’s Legal Affairs Ofÿce generally does not respond to calls from Lantern reporters and refers all questions about its operations to Jim Lynch, director of Media Relations. “The university generally cannot provide legal representation in criminal matters, even to employees,” Lynch said Monday. Tom O’Hara, The Lantern’s adviser, sees things a different way. “I ÿnd it odd that the university has the resources to pursue prosecution
“
I can understand the budget issues involved. But budget issues aside, in every other way, the school should be fully supportive of the student journalist. Len Downie Former Editor of The Washington Post
of a student who hasn’t done anything wrong, but it doesn’t have the resources to help defend a student who hasn’t done anything wrong,” O’Hara said. Milliken said the case would be different if the issue involved a student facing criminal charges or being threatened with suit by a party outside the university. Still, The Lantern has no money budgeted for legal services for student staff members. Some student media organizations do provide students with legal
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Publication Committee vote to commend Lantern photographer declared invalid Page 2A
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I’M STILL WITH COCO Students wait in line Monday along High Street to purchase tickets for Conan O’Brien, who will perform at the Schottenstein Center May 24. The line stretched from the Ohio Union to Woodruff Avenue.
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Lewis Klahr at the Wex
Klahr received the Wexner Center’s Residency Award. His films will be shown throughout this month
campus
ANDY GOTTESMAN / Lantern photographer
Komen ‘Pink Prof’s book calls prisons ‘new Jim Crow’ it Up’ day at Racial makeup of the U.S. prison system the Union weather
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high 76 low 54 partly cloudy
JACK MOORE Lantern reporter moore.1732@osu.edu
The Prison System is the New Jim Crow. OSU law professor Michelle Alexander saw those words sprawled across a brightorange ° ier on a telephone pole 10 years ago in Oakland, Calif. Yes, the criminal justice system is biased, Alexander remembered thinking. But she said she found it counter-productive to link the prison system to the pernicious Jim Crow segregation of the pre-civil rights movement.
She was headed to her job at the Racial Justice Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. And after a year working there on issues such as police brutality, racial proÿling and disproportionate sentencing, she came to a different conclusion. The criminal justice system in the U.S. is not a fundamentally just institution infected with an unfortunate racial bias, she now argues, but “a different beast entirely.” She has chronicled the past, present and what she believes might be the future of mass incarceration in a critically
By the numbers...
2.3 million people are imprisoned in the U.S. in state and federal prisons.
1 in 11 black people are under correctional control in prison, parole or probation. 1 in 45 white people are under correctional control in prison, parole or probation. 51,606 people are in Ohio’s prison system as of January 2010. Source: International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College in London, Pew Center on the States
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MOLLY GRAY / Lantern designer
Students dance their way to fitness with Zumba at the RPAC
WE 84/60 t-storms TH 76/56 partly cloudy FR 76/49 t-storms SA 58/43 few showers www.weather.com
KELSEY BULLER Lantern reporter buller.10@osu.edu Hip shaking and shoulder shimmying aren’t the moves many correlate with exercising, but with Zumba, a Latin rhythm-inspired workout program offered at the RPAC, students are dancing their way to ÿtness. Alberto Perez, a Colombian dance teacher, accidentally founded the workout craze in 1986. Perez forgot the music for his aerobic class, so he compromised and used the Latin salsa tapes
he happened to have in his car, according to the Zumba.com website. Zumba Fitness, whose motto is “Ditch the workout. Join the party,” has spread across the nation, and the RPAC joined in on the aerobics program last summer. Unlike many of the other ÿtness classes the RPAC offers, Zumba is a trademarked company, meaning Zumba instructors have to be trained through the company itself. Training takes a day and costs $225 to $285. The only reason the RPAC started teaching Zumba was because an OSU student ÿtness instructor was already trained in the program, said Jennifer
Peters, the program manager of Fitness Services and Programs at the RPAC, and a certiÿed Zumba instructor. “Our department has an in-house training program for all of our instructors and we typically don’t support companies you have to pay into to teach the class,” she said. Peters, the sole instructor of Zumba at the RPAC, incorporates Latin, African and Greek rhythms into her classes and tries to make the class educational as well.
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