THEUWMPOST est. 1956
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Population: 7 billion page 13
The first ever fringe calendar page 8
the student-run independent newspaper
November 7, 2011
Issue 11, Volume 56
Handcuffs, uniforms and a camera
SA senate has Two UWM students and a photojournalist arrested at march along Oakland Avenue highest senator attendance in six weeks Attendance by over two-thirds of senate allows it to take up bylaws By Aaron Knapp Assistant News Editor news@uwmpost.com
UWM senior Kevin Suemnicht (left) and Kristyna Wentz-Graff (right) photographer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel were among the arrested at Wednesday's protest. Post photo by Paul Freund. By John Parnon Assistant News Editor news@uwmpost.com
Milwaukee police arrested two students and a Journal Sentinel photographer at a march, which began in UW-Milwaukee’s Spaights Plaza, linked to the Occupy Milwaukee movement on Wednesday. A police vehicle following the march down Oakland Avenue told protestors through a megaphone that they were
obstructing traffic and should clear the road immediately. Protestors responded by chanting, “This is what a police state looks like!” Several minutes later, the police arrested UWM student Derek Barnett for not obeying a police order, at which point Kristyna Wentz-Graff, a Journal Sentinel photographer, went into the middle of the road to take photographs of the arrest. She was also cuffed and arrested for not obeying a police order.
Wentz-Graff was released a few hours after the protest along with Barnett and Kevin Suemnicht, another UWM student who was also arrested at the march. Police have not charged the three with any crimes but are still considering issuing citations. The Milwaukee Police Department has been releasing short statements on the issue as status updates on their Facebook page. According to a statement released on
the MPD’s Facebook page, “Important point: No one at MPD had any idea Journal photographer was a journalist until she arrived at the police station. She never identified herself as a journalist to officers. We know there are often many people with cameras at these events and they are not always news people.” Wentz-Graff was wearing a photo ID press badge at the time of her arrest. As she was being handcuffed, the protestors
See ARREST page 2
UWM astronomer disseminates Mayan prophecy A full house of apocalyptic enthusiasts underneath the stars By Graham Marlowe Assistant Fringe Editor news@uwmpost.com
UW-Milwaukee’s Manfred Olson Planetarium seems like an unlikely place for an event to sell out, but under the banner of “2012: Fact or Fiction,” Planetarium Director professor Dr. Jean Creighton made the news topic hard to evade Friday night. Creighton showed that the Mayan calendar’s original endpoint, Dec. 21, 2012, is no longer just a creative party theme for the end of the world.
INDEX
NEWS SPORTS
The complex topic was broken into five interrelated parts, the first and most significant being what the mysterious date means to the Mayan calendar. Like author Daniel Pinchbeck, some researchers anticipate a shift in global consciousness, not the apocalypse. Creighton’s presentation did not address such inferences but explained that the Mayans had “no idea” of what this would bring for their civilization’s advanced conception of mathematics and astronomy. With the aid of a pictograph with ancient symbols,
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FRINGE EDITORIAL
Creighton highlighted key differences that account for the media’s growing fears. First, the Mayans employed a system based on 20, not 10 like ours. In effect the end of this particular cycle, the 13th baktun, is nothing more than an “odometer change” for their society. “You just start a new cycle,” Creighton said, alluding to ancient Egypt’s own similar shift from the Fifth Sun to the Sixth Sun and explaining how one baktun equates to roughly 394.5 years. The results of such change are
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varied. For Creighton, this has spawned speculation based on improbable celestial dynamics. “Some alignment will happen,” Creighton said. “… But not as much as people think.” For example, although the sun will align with the galactic center, it will not align with the galactic plane. Additionally, this will not coincide with an alignment of the planets, a “once every 180 trillion years occurrence,” said Creighton. To illustrate the planets’ comically
COMICS PUZZLES
For the first time in four meetings and the second time this semester, two-thirds of the Student Association senate came to its meeting last Sunday, allowing the senate to discuss its own bylaws, as well as those of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The meeting lasted almost four hours, and the debates on these bylaws, and those of the temporarily defunct Campus Activities Board, took up most of the meeting, despite seven other pieces of legislation and nine speakers addressing the senate. With the senate bylaws, which have been on every agenda since September, the debate centered on whether or not the Speaker of the Senate, Rick Banks, or the Executive Committee should have control over who sets the agenda for each senate meeting. The senate discussed two separately proposed versions of its bylaws: one by Banks, advocating that he have control over the agenda, and another by Senator Jesse Brown, leaving the current system in place, which has the Executive Committee setting the agenda. “[The executive committee] offers transparency, which is something President Kostal campaigned on. It allows students, the Post, you name it, to attend,” Michael Ludwig said, one of Brown’s sponsors. “It also provides a forum where the legislative branch and the executive branch can be seated together and basically provide a check and balance.” Ludwig and others argued that leaving the agenda to the speaker of the senate alone allows him or her to abuse their position by ignoring some legislation. Banks attempted to compromise in his version of the bylaws by proposing an electronic forum that automatically publishes proposed legislation online, also called a “hopper.”
See SA page 1
See PLANETARIUM page 2 uwmpost.com 14 15
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