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T h u r s d a y, F e b r u a r y 1 6 , 2 0 1 7 | U s i s h i e l d . c o m | v o l . 4 7 i s s u e 2 3
SGA allocates nearly $13,000 in grants by Riley Guerzini news@usishield.com @rguerzini
SGA passed three resolutions Feb. 9 allocating $12,879.75 in grants to 18 different students and student organizations. SGA distributed the grants three ways between New Student Organzation Start-Up grants, Student Organization Support (SOS) grants and Travel grants. $11,879.75 was allocated to the Travel grant, while $700 and $300 was allocated to the SOS and Start-Up grant respectively. Two of the 18 grants were re-
imbursements from last semester’s December deadline. SGA’s Chief Financial Officer Keegan Roembke said he did not receive the applications for the grants until after the end of the semester, which is why they decided to reimburse them at this deadline. The student government has $15,300.25 remaining for the Travel grant for the rest of the semester along with $12,000 for the StartUp grant and $11,300 for the SOS grant, which means they allocated just over a third of the available funds for the semester with two more deadlines remaining. “Generally we would try to split
it up three ways, but we had more applications this deadline than we had all first semester,” Roembke said. “It was just a lot more, plus we had two from last deadline. We felt like it was a pretty solid number. We wanted to keep it in between $10,000 and $12,000 for the Travel grant.” Roembke said they allocated all $30,000 in Travel grant funds last semester, but did not allot the remaining funds for the other two grants. The next two grant deadlines are Feb. 28 and Mar. 31. These will be the final two deadlines for the semester.
GRANT BUDGET Amount allocated
32%
68%
Amount remaining Graphic by Abigail Stanley | The Shield
Chick-Fil-A, Steak Local Planned Parenthood rallies offer differing views ‘n’ Shake thrive, students lack late, weekend options by Gabi Wy Special to The Shield
Freshman Alicia Frederick doesn’t have other sources for meals when the restaurants on campus are closed on weekends. “It’s kind of disappointing,” the business management major from California said. “The money I have in my plan is all I’m relying on, so for (the university) to expect me to find food somewhere else is a little ridiculous.” As a freshman SGA member at-large, Frederick said she and other representatives are expressing the need for more food options and hours on the weekends for campus residents. Sodexo General Manager Lamar Patterson said there are no plans to extend any of the dining hours. Currently, the Loft is open for brunch Saturday and Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Cyclone Salads and Steak ‘n’ Shake are the only restaurants open in the evenings on Sundays. “I understand that those places are open, but those are very different kinds of meals,” Frederick said. “For international students, the place that can best accommodate them is The Loft.” For a comparison, The Shield looked at the dining options at other some other universities around the state. Indiana University, Ball State University and Indiana State University have at least three campus eateries open on Sunday evenings and most options still open on Saturdays. University of Evansville has two restaurants open on Saturdays and Sundays, including the main cafeteria. Frederick said the freshman representatives have tried to e-mail Sodexo
multiple times without response, but the SGA Chief Justice will meet with Sodexo representatives in the upcoming weeks. Senior marketing major Kayla Whitaker said because she works late hours at the Recreation, Fitness and Wellness Center, there’s usually only one or two eateries open when she clocks out. However, she said she appreciates Sodexo’s efforts in replacing Burger King and Archie’s Pizzeria with Chick-Fil-A and Steak ‘n’ Shake. “I like how there’s more variety,” Whitaker said. “Archie’s was basically the same as the C-Store.” She said while she wishes some hours were extended, she’s mostly satisfied. “It’s been better since Chick-Fil-A and Steak ‘n’ Shake came,” Whitaker said. As head of Sodexo, Patterson said the two new eateries are performing much better than the options they replaced. “If you want to compare them, Chick-Fil-A is making 2.5 times what Burger King was, and Steak ‘n’ Shake has twice as much business as Archie’s did,” he said. “They have pulled [revenue] from the other options, Fiesta Fuego, Cyclone Salads and SubConnection, though.” Patterson said the reason he has no plans to extend dining hours is the lack of late-night and weekend university programming. “The university had that 24/7 campus initiative, but it’s a problem to have [dining options] open when there are no students here,” he said. Right now, Patterson said Sodexo is focusing its efforts on the “You Plan,” idea for returning students.
Food options, PAGE 2
Photo by Jenna BOWMAN | The Shield
JD Golden holds a sign with Lady Liberty’s torch and shouts back and forth with people who want to defund Planned Parenthood in effort to support his wife and two daughters as they march for Planned Parenthood to keep it in business on Saturday February 11th.
she said. “I strongly believe in a democracy being rested on the ability of the people to freely express themselves and also to have civil dialogue in the public discourse.” Cannon, a youth pastor from Newburgh, said she only knew seven of the over 100 people who attended the counter protest.
by Riley Guerzini news@usishield.com @rguerzini
Weinbach Avenue is all that separated the pro and anti-Planned Parenthood rallies. Two separate rallies were held outside of the Planned Parenthood office in Evansville on Saturday morning The antiPlanned Parenthood rally was part of a nationwide protest organized by over 60 pro-life groups. The proPlanned Parenthood rally spawned from a Facebook event organized as a - Sarah Cannon counter-response to the antiOrganizer of counter protest, Youth Pastor Planned Parenthood rally. The organizer “I think if anything this presidency of the counter protest Sarah Cannon said her friend suggested that has urged people into action that maythey post an event on Facebook in be weren’t, and what I really found is response to the nationwide protest that all you need to do is provide an opportunity and people will come,” against Planned Parenthood. “It’s important to demonstrate not she said. Planned Parenthood, 41 percent of only to Planned Parenthood, but to the community that there is a diver- which is funded by the federal, state sity of opinions inside of Evansville,” and local governments according to the organization’s annual fiscal report,
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offers a number of services including healthcare services to women, contraception and abortion. The abortion services provided by Planned Parenthood, which are not funded by the government but by outside sources, have come under scrutiny from pro-life groups who argue that their tax dollars should not fund an organization that partakes in the abortion procedure. “The government has no right to tell us what we can and cannot do with our body and Planned Parenthood has saved so many lives and it should continue to be funded,” Henderson County High School sophomore Marlee Newton-Beck said. “We are in a very conservative state and not many people are openminded and understanding of what people are going through.” Newton-Beck said she has never used any of Planned Parenthood’s services, but she doesn’t want her access to their services to be prohibited if she were to need them in the future.
I strongly believe in a democracy being rested on the ability of the people to freely express themselves and also to have civil dialogue in the public discourse.
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Planned Parenthood, PAGE 3
Faculty Senate to vote on letter addressing executive order by Riley Guerzini news@usishield.com @rguerzini
Faculty Senate got political in its Friday meeting Feb. 10. The senate will vote on an open letter to the university regarding the recent executive order on immigration in the coming days. Executive Order 13769 bars refugees from entering the country for 120 days and
temporarily bans immigrants from seven majority Muslim countries. It also puts an indefinite ban on Syrians from entering. The letter, which seeks to reassure international faculty and students that the Faculty Senate welcomes them to the university, was debated at Friday’s senate meeting. Jason Fertig, an associate professor of management, said he thought the letter had good intentions but became a partisan issue. “There was a statement that attempted to speak for all of the faculty, and I did not
think that the premise of the letter spoke for all of the faculty since we are a diverse group with different political ideologies,” he said. Fertig said he was speaking up for conservatives who may agree with the order. “Part of the problem is the emotion of issues makes it difficult to express, for example, support of the president,” he said. “It’s not as simple as on one side you have a racist and on the other side you have everybody else.”
Fertig said he thought the executive order was mischaracterized in the letter and generalized as a ban even though “it’s a lot more complicated than just banning immigrants.” “I think there are people who believe that this is the course of action, and they need to be able to express their views; I just don’t think senate was the place to do that, because senate is a body that represents all the faculty,” he said. “We are not placed on senate with a political mandate.”
Faculty Senate, PAGE 3