L OYOLA P HOENIX VOLUME 46 | ISSUE 13 | NEWS | Wi-Fi woes| PAGE 5 OPINION | Immigraon reform | PAGE 9 A&E| FKA twigs puts on trippy show | PAGE 15 MONTEL JAMES CLOSER LOOK Late night stories from a 24-hour diner CLOSER LOOK | PAGE 10 SEE EDITOR’S DESK | PAGE 2 In good and bad BY ESTHER D. CASTILLEJO Editor-in-Chief [email protected]Dear readers, This is the very last thing I ever wanted to write. But being editor-in-chief is not just about finding pride in the good stories and making the paper soar. It is also about making the tough choices when things get hard and carrying the paper, as much as possible, through good and bad. I have been blessed to be on staff through many good times, but this week I am in the unenviable position of carrying The PHOENIX through less pleasant circumstances. We at The PHOENIX take our jobs very seriously and pride ourselves on unveiling the truth about what goes on around us. In the years I have worked at the paper, I’ve seen editors and writers work hard to not only give our readers interesting content week after week, but also to hold our university, its officials, groups and students accountable for their actions. We have a history of breaking stories and promoting discussion. We were even ranked the No. 1 weekly student newspaper in the nation several years ago. But this week, it is The PHOENIX itself I have to hold accountable. Two weeks ago, we ran a high- profile, controversial opinion piece on our pages. Titled “Greek life plays a large role in sexual violence,” the piece elaborated on the incidence of sexual assault at Greek life- sponsored events and called for the elimination or reform of Greek life culture in the country. The opinion piece touched on an incredibly important issue concerning our times. Sexual assault in and outside Greek life has been haunting college campuses nationwide, with an increasing number of reports and studies showing not only the disturbing statistics about sexual assaults on campuses but also just how bad some universities have been at dealing with the problem. SPORTS | PAGE 17 Junior college transfer student shines early in the season WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2014 THE AWARD-WINNING STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO Last week, a panel of representatives from various administrative departments held a question-and-answer session for students, which focused on tuition and university finances. Hosted by the Student Government of Loyola Chicago (SGLC), formerly known as the Unified Student Government Association, the panel was an effort to raise students’ awareness BY MATTHEW RACCHINI [email protected]Photo courtesy of Shaun Baluyot Members of the panel hosted by the Student Government of Loyola Chicago fielded quesons from students concerning university finances. of the financial decisions made by the university and boost administrative transparency. The panel, held on Tuesday, Nov. 11 at the Mundelein Center’s Palm Court, began with a discussion about tuition pricing, and the conversation frequently steered back toward it. Tuition and mandatory fees cost $38,536 for full-time incoming freshmen for the 2014-15 school year, with the exception of nursing students and those studying abroad. With this figure, Loyola is ranked as the 12th most expensive school among the 28 Jesuit universities in the U.S., according to Robert Munson, senior vice president for finance and chief financial officer. It has mostly remained in this position over the last several years, he added. Loyola’s Provost John Pelissero addressed the distribution of tuition dollars by the university, saying that most of the money is spent on faculty wages and the salaries of academic support staff, which includes academic advisors. “We employ a highly educated workforce, a workforce that primarily holds Ph.D.s and M.D.s and J.D.s,” said Pelissero. “We are competing with companies and private firms for the services of these employees, so we have to pay a competitive salary that allows us to attract and retain.” Loyola’s Vice President for Student Development Jane Neufeld addressed the costs of mandatory fees, sixty percent of which are directed towards student development. Full-time students pay $633 in mandatory fees per semester. This includes a $381 student development fee, a $115 technology fee and a $137 CTA U-Pass fee. This means that full-time students pay $1266 in mandatory fees each year. The student development budget is broken down into six categories: departments, special events, student groups/club sports, transportation, athletics and facilities. SEE TUITION | PAGE 4 On his shoulders Doyle plays despite injury, scores 34 points in two games Photo by Steve Woltmann BY NICK MORENO [email protected]Despite a torn labrum in his shooting shoulder,sophomore guard Milton Doyle has opted to play through the injury and avoid surgery. “Our trainer and [Doyle] are working together to manage the situation,” said Coach Porter Moser. “It’s something we are aware of, but, right now, he’s feeling good enough to play and is playing well for us.” Doyle has certainly played well through two games against Division II foes, Rockhurst University last Friday and McKendree University on Monday. The guard scored 13 points, grabbed seven rebounds and notched five assists in a 71-58 victory over Rockhurst. He was even better against McKendree, scoring 21 points and collecting eight assists while grabbing two steals in a 78-68 victory. There was little indication he was nursing his shoulder. Last month, it appeared that Doyle would be out for a significant amount of time. If surgery has been necessary, the guard would have missed a large part of the season. However, since Doyle is playing, the injury doesn’t seem to be as serious as originally believed. The 2-0 Ramblers are definitely happy to have their star player as they face a big test in East Lansing on Friday. Loyola is taking on No. 18 Michigan State University in a regionally televised game on the Big Ten Network at 6 p.m. Panel discusses Loyola tuition and finances
This is the very last thing I ever wanted to write.
But being editor-in-chief is not just about finding pride in the good stories and making the paper soar. It is also about making the tough choices when things get hard and carrying the paper, as much as possible, through good and bad.
I have been blessed to be on staff through many good times, but this week I am in the unenviable position of carrying The Phoenix through less pleasant circumstances.
We at The Phoenix take our jobs very seriously and pride ourselves on unveiling the truth about what goes on around us. In the years I have worked at the paper, I’ve seen editors and writers work hard to not only give our readers interesting content week after week, but also to hold our university, its officials, groups and students accountable for their actions. We have a history of breaking stories and promoting discussion. We were even ranked the No. 1 weekly student newspaper in the nation several years ago.
But this week, it is The Phoenix itself I have to hold accountable.
Two weeks ago, we ran a high-profile, controversial opinion piece on our pages. Titled “Greek life plays a large role in sexual violence,” the piece elaborated on the incidence of sexual assault at Greek l i fe-sponsored events and called for the elimination or reform of Greek life culture in the country.
The opinion piece touched on an incredibly important issue concerning our times. Sexual assault in and outside Greek life has been haunting college campuses nationwide, with an increasing number of reports and studies showing not only the disturbing statistics about sexual assaults on campuses but also just how bad some universities have been at dealing with the problem.
SPORTS | PAGE 17
Junior college transfer student shines early in the season
W E D N E S D A Y, N O V E M B E R 1 9 , 2 0 1 4
T H E AWA R D - W I N N I N G S T U D E N T N E W S P A P E R O F L O Y O L A U N I V E R S I T Y C H I C A G O
Last week, a panel of representatives from various administrative departments held a question-and-answer session for students, which focused on tuition and university finances.
Hosted by the Student Government of Loyola Chicago (SGLC), formerly known as the Uni f ied Student Government Association, the panel was an effort to raise students’ awareness
Members of the panel hosted by the Student Government of Loyola Chicago fielded questions from students concerning university finances.
of the financial decisions made by the university and boost administrative transparency.
The panel, held on Tuesday, Nov. 11 at the Mundelein Center’s Palm Court, began with a discussion about tuition pricing, and the conversation frequently steered back toward it. Tuition and mandatory fees cost $38,536 for full-time incoming freshmen for the 2014-15 school year, with the exception of nursing students and those studying abroad.
With this figure, Loyola is ranked as the 12th most expensive school among the 28 Jesuit universities in the U.S., according to Robert Munson, senior vice president for finance and chief financial officer. It has mostly remained in this position over the last several years, he added.
Loyola’s Provost John Pelissero addressed the distribution of tuition dollars by the university, saying that most of the money is spent on faculty wages and the salaries
of academic support staff, which includes academic advisors.
“We employ a highly educated workforce, a workforce that primarily holds Ph.D.s and M.D.s and J.D.s,” said Pelissero. “We are competing with companies and private firms for the services of these employees, so we have to pay a competitive salary that allows us to attract and retain.”
Loyola’s Vice President for Student Development Jane Neufeld addressed the costs of mandatory fees, sixty percent of which are directed towards student development. Full-time students pay $633 in mandatory fees per semester. This includes a $381 student development fee, a $115 technology fee and a $137 CTA U-Pass fee. This means that full-time students pay $1266 in mandatory fees each year.
The student development budget is broken down into six categories: departments, special events, student groups/club sports, transportation, athletics and facilities.
SEE TUITION | PAGE 4
On his shoulders Doyle plays despite injury, scores 34 points in two games
Despite a torn labrum in his shooting shoulder, sophomore guard Milton Doyle has opted to play through the injury and avoid surgery.
“Our trainer and [Doyle] are working together to manage the situation,” said Coach Porter Moser. “It’s something we are aware of, but, right now, he’s feeling good enough to play and is playing well for us.”
Doyle has certainly played well through two games against Division II foes, Rockhurst University last Fr iday and McKendree Univer s i ty on Monday. The guard scored 13 points, grabbed seven rebounds and notched five assists in a 71-58 victory over Rockhurst. He was
even better against McKendree, scoring 21 points and collecting eight assists while grabbing two steals in a 78-68 victory. There was little indication he was nursing his shoulder.
Last month, it appeared that Doyle would be out for a significant amount of time. If surgery has been necessary, the guard would have missed a large part of the season.
However, since Doyle is playing, the injury doesn’t seem to be as serious as originally believed.
The 2-0 Ramblers are definitely happy to have their star player as they face a big test in East Lansing on Friday. Loyola is taking on No. 18 Michigan State University in a regionally televised game on the Big Ten Network at 6 p.m.
Panel discusses Loyola tuition and finances
2 NOVEMBER 19, 2014 | LOYOLA PHOENIX
Thursday, Nov. 13, 8:24 p.m.Residence Life requested Campus Safety take possession of narcotics and drug paraphernalia found in Regis Hall.
Thursday, Nov. 13, 11:45 p.m.Residence Life requested assistance with an intoxicated student who refused to show his student ID to staff in Fairfield Hall.
Friday, Nov. 14, 4:10 p.m.An employee of the bookstore in Baumhart Hall reported the theft of approximately $1,000 in textbooks.
Friday, Nov. 14, 4:32 p.m.A student reported the theft of two unattended electronics chargers in the IC.
Saturday, Nov. 15, 12:54 a.m.Residence Life requested Campus Safety take possession of narcotics and drug paraphernalia found in Mertz Hall.
Saturday, Nov. 15, 1:02 a.m.Residence Life requested Campus Safety take possession of drug paraphernalia found in Santa Clara Hall.
Sunday, Nov. 16, 8:07 p.m.A student reported receiving harassing messages from her ex-boyfriend and his father.
LOYOLA PHOENIX
Last week, I wrote a column defending that opinion piece against accusations of libel, hate speech, slander and defamation. I was firm about my position in support of the article, which I thought expressed the author’s position clearly, if forcefully. I stood by the piece, the facts it exposed and the author’s right to write it. For me, it became a matter of freedom of speech and the right that every student has to be published in our pages.
Now, although I can still stand by the message of the opinion piece, I can no longer stand by the piece itself. Now I’m in a position I never thought I’d find myself in when I first got this job, and that is the position of recanting a piece for being too similar to an op-ed published earlier in a different newspaper.
It was recently brought to my attention that the Greek life and sexual assault piece we published greatly resembled the structure, content and ideas of a piece written by Jessica Valenti and published on the British newspaper The Guardian. I call it “the” piece and not “ours” because even if it was printed under one of our bylines and some of the elements, wording and order of facts were altered, we can no longer claim the opinion and solutions given as our own.
Both pieces started with an anecdote and presented the same facts and statistics. Both pieces called for either the suppression or reform of Greek life. Both pieces cited the same studies and elaborated on the exact same points. After examining them thoroughly, the editorial team, together with our advisor, came to the conclusion that the similarities were too great to be ignored, and that the piece we published took too many of the ideas presented in The Guardian’s piece.
Following this discovery, we discussed the situation with the writer, who was part of our editorial staff, and decided it was best for her to leave the paper –– a decision she took gracefully and without fight. Tight deadlines, lack of time, taking inspiration or citing similar sources –– there are really no justifications for using someone else’s materials in such a way, and we at The Phoenix do not condone such conduct.
Because we take this issue seriously, the original piece and the writer’s defense of the piece, published in last week’s issue, have been taken down from our website.
I take consolation in that the piece we published, if not ours, addressed an important issue. Even if the piece is overshadowed by the circumstances, we stand by the importance of the subject and continue to support an open conversation about the incidence of sexual assault at universities around the country. We beg you, our readers, not to let this issue go unnoticed. Research it, discuss it, contact us if you want to voice your opinion, but do not let the discourse about sexual assault fall into oblivion. Do not discredit an opinion because of how it made its way into our pages.
For me having to write this letter is, in all honesty, a personal failure. I am embarrassed that the name of The Phoenix, that my name, is entangled in this situation. But I hope, and will make sure, that this is the first and last time I ever have to write this. You deserve better; Loyola deserves better.
I can only hope that you will be able to get over this roadblock, as we will, and continue to rise with The Phoenix.
FIND US
loyolaphoenix.com
Loyola Phoenix | FACEBOOK
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FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK
SECURITY NOTEBOOK
Compiled from Campus Safety ReportsTimes represent when incidents were reported, not necessarily when they occurred.
Monday, Nov. 10, 2:10 p.m.Two Loyola employees were arrested for fighting with Campus Safety officers in Lewis Towers.
Monday, Nov. 10, 4:02 p.m.A student reported offensive graffiti on a bulletin board in Marquette South Hall.
Tuesday, Nov. 11, 4:26 p.m.A student in International House reported her ex-boyfriend was stalking her. She declined to pursue criminal charges.
Tuesday, Nov. 11, 10:29 p.m.Residence Life requested Campus Safety take possession of narcotics and drug paraphernalia found in Mertz Hall.
Wednesday, Nov. 12, 7:26 p.m.Residence Life requested Campus Safety take possession of narcotics and drug paraphernalia found in Messina Hall.
Thursday, Nov. 13, 11:26 a.m.Residence Life requested Campus Safety take possession of narcotics found in San Francisco Hall.
Thursday, Nov. 13, 7:39 p.m.Residence Life requested Campus Safety take possession of drug paraphernalia found in Mertz Hall.
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Esther D. CastillejoDominic CiolliAshley IannantoneRobert Baurley
The university’s next five-year Strategic Plan is now in its initial draft-writing stage, and students are eager to add input to the discussion.
Strategic plans are intended to guide the university’s policies and conduct, while focusing on a uni-fying theme. While the previous plan emphasized public service and research, the plan for 2015 to 2020 will focus on social justice.
With this theme in mind, the university has identified five insti-tutional priorities that will be ad-dressed in the plan.
These are to “leverage univer-sity resources to ensure under-served student success, reimagine knowledge to solve complex so-cietal challenges, engage societal challenges locally and globally, integrate faith, reason and justice, and build a community of dia-logue and justice,” according to Loyola’s website.
Last spring, a team of admin-istrators and staff met to devel-op a broad visioning statement that would guide the plan. Lisa Reiter, director of Campus Min-istry, was part of this team, rep-resenting the Division of Stu-dent Development.
Although all departments con-tribute to the five-year Strategic Plan, the Division of Student De-velopment was the only one that asked for student input — holding three forums in late October and early November for discussion.
“The purpose of a floor like this is to invite the students to help us brainstorm,” said Reiter, who added that she was interested in helping with the forums because facilitating such discussions often brings new and creative ideas to the surface.
There is no completion date for a final copy of the five-year Stra-tegic Plan yet, but an initial draft must be completed by Dec. 1. The board of trustees — the governing board of the university, to whom President and CEO Rev. Michael J. Garanzini S.J. reports — meets in June, so the plan has to be ready for them to approve then, accord-ing to Reiter.
“The board of trustees has the responsibility to see that Loyola is fulfilling its mission as a university in terms of its teaching, research and scholarship, and then doing that in terms of who we say we are as an institution,” Reiter said. “They’re the ones who make the big financial decisions — they’re the ones who set the budget.”
With the Dec. 1 draft deadline quickly approaching, Reiter has plenty of ideas she’d like to see in-cluded in the plan.
For instance, she described a gang prevention program in Los Angeles that gets young people out
of gangs by doing tattoo removals and helping former gang mem-bers run a T-shirt screen shop and bakery. Reiter would love to see something similar outlined in the next five-year Strategic Plan, in which Loyola clubs and organiza-tions would put all apparel orders through one place that would help employ former gang members.
Many students who attended the forums also came with ideas they’d like to see implemented, as each five-year Strategic Plan has the potential to directly af-fect students with major changes to Loyola.
For instance, the Damen Stu-dent Center, the Institute for En-vironmental Sustainability, con-struction of new residence halls and Ramble Outdoors (a program that provides trips and educational opportunities for Loyola students) are just a few things that were en-visioned in the previous plan.
Some of the students at the fo-rums were part of the Social Justice Coalition — a group of students from various clubs on campus, including Global Brigades, Fair Trade, Urban Agriculture and the Student Government of Loyola Chicago — who joined forces to make a list of their priorities for the five-year Strategic Plan.
“It’s a complete draft of what we’ve come [up with] together and decided are really important things that we would like to see our uni-versity do in the next five years,” said senior Neil Veirup, a member of the Social Justice Coalition and forum attendee.
The coalition’s proposals range from implementing a center for social justice at Loyola, to holding Loyola accountable for supporting living wages, fair trade, undocu-mented students, racial diversity and free speech.
Veirup, a 21-year-old psychol-ogy major, would like to see the creation of a social justice center that doesn’t necessarily have a faith component, so as not to deter peo-ple without religious backgrounds.
Other ideas involved partner-ships and community benefit agree-ments in which Loyola would foster engagement between community members and students. From swim and music lessons, to artist work-shops and basketball camps, the So-cial Justice Coalition aims to make Loyola less of a “bubble.”
“Walking home, students don’t feel threatened by other Loyola students because they’re familiar faces,” said Amanda Koenig, pres-ident of the Women in Science and Math Club. “So recognizing some-one from the community — some-one I might have played basketball with through the programming a department could potentially put on — could help students feel safe off campus and also help Loyola’s perception in the community.”
While students were grateful
to have the opportunity to voice their opinions regarding the plan, many want a more substantial role than simply brainstorming.
Allison Grant, a senior social work major and member of the So-cial Justice Coalition, stressed that she wants strong student involve-ment in writing the five-year plan, and to hold the school accountable when the implementation of the plan beings.
“I just really hope that they don’t see it as just feedback, but take it to heart and actually care to implement these things even if they are difficult or controversial,” said the 22-year-old.
Veirup, 21, added that he wants to be involved in the plan so that he can help create something that he would be proud of if he visits Loyola five years from now.
However, he has had difficul-ty getting clear answers regard-ing administration’s schedule for the plan and lack of student involvement throughout the whole process.
“Part of our frustration is we’ve been asking for more answers on where are we going to be involved next in this process and they ha-ven’t given us a clear answer. They’re like, ‘Well, we don’t know yet. We’re getting a more concrete draft in the beginning of Decem-ber, and then we’ll let you know,’” he said.
Senior Katelyn Coghlan, a 21-year-old international and environmental studies major and also a member of the So-cial Justice Coalition, said the forums were an important, rare opportunity for open and honest discussion between stu-dents and administration.
Loyola administration and the visioning team are looking for student input regarding what kind of initiatives they can take, and nothing is yet set in stone, accord-ing to Director of Residence Life Cass Coughlin.
“We’re not saying, ‘yes, defi-nitely that,’ or ‘no, not that…’ We’re going to compile the stu-dent input into ‘these are some of the ideas and seeds that have been planted,’ and then we’re gonna take that to one of the directors of the strategic vision,” he said.
Many students are passionate about being influential in Loyola’s path for the next five years — es-pecially regarding social justice issues, but some aren’t satisfied by simply having their ideas taken into consideration.
“I think that having students present in that room when the final document is made instead of just being like, ‘ok, it’s draft-ed, it’s done — here’s what we decided...’ You know, it would be more transparent of the universi-ty to have student input before it was finished,” 21-year-old Koe-nig said.
Students want input in Strategic Plan2009-2014 Strategic
Plan Results
before
after
Full-time faculty who teach CORE and introductory classes
before
after
Amount of students who study abroad
before
after
Four-year graduation rate
55%
40%
20%
65%
75%
32%
de Nobili and San Francisco halls Corboy Law Center renovationsMundelein Center renovations
Halas construction10 new majors
22 new graduate programsLaunched Institute for Environmental
SustainabilityPurchased Rome CenterStarted Vietnam Center
Cuneo Hall additionInternational House Renovation
Damen Student Center
Additions from the Strategic Plan
Courtesy of Loyola University Chicago
continued from page 1
Departments receive 56 per-cent of the student developmen-tal budget. Special events, student groups and club sports and trans-portation each receive 12 percent, while athletics and facilities receive 4 percent each.
Students had mixed reactions upon hearing these statistics, re-flecting great diversity of student opinion on the issue.
“I wish more money was spent on the athletics program so that we would have something to cheer for and to give us school pride,” said 19-year-old sophomore Danny Reardon, a political science and economics double major.
Other students said that Loyola’s academics are not receiv-ing enough priority.
“I think, overall, the admin-istration is spending our money wisely, but I think more of the budget should be allocated to ac-ademics,” said sophomore Kelly Bryant, a 20-year-old internation-al studies and economics double major. “This makes sense to me, considering the fact that many students don’t end up going to Loyola-sponsored events.”
Students also expressed con-cern about research availability and funding. Research opportu-nities, which pair students with faculty, received about 60 percent satisfaction rates in the latest sur-veys taken by recent graduates, according to Pelissero, which con-stitutes a relatively low approval ratings each year.
Pelissero added that the uni-versity has responded in recent years by implementing the Loyola Undergraduate Research Oppor-tunities Program (LUROP). LU-
ROP provides fellowships, travel grants and guides for outside op-portunities for students interest-ed in research.
“We’ve just expanded [it] to include summer research, so there will be more summer one-on-one opportunities for students with our faculty,” Pelissero said.
Despite new research opportu-nities, some students still feel that not enough is being done.
“Participating in research as an undergrad is becoming almost essential in order to get a job af-ter college or to get into graduate school, so Loyola should definite-ly allocate more funds to research opportunities,” Bryant said.
Despite continually rising tuition costs and high room-and-board rates, the panel expressed its dedication to responsible money management.
Pelissero said that Loyola was one of only a few schools left relatively unharmed by the re-cent recession, as it avoided lay-offs and furloughs. He also noted that Loyola’s new energy-efficient buildings will have lower utility costs, which in turn will help to minimize tuition increases. Since 2008, energy use has dropped 18 percent at the Lake Shore Campus, saving the university $6.2 million.
Munson stressed the university’s goal of maintaining tuition increases at the 2.5 percent level per year.
“We try to be good stewards of the money — and I believe we are. But we’re also not trying to, say, increase the tuition by 5 percent,” he said.
Not everyone was convinced about the administration’s com-mitment toward financial account-ability, though. Senior Sean Han-sen said that not all of the students at Loyola are receiving adequate fi-
nancial aid. For the 2013-2014 aca-demic year, financial aid is meeting 79.2 percent of full-time under-graduate students’ financial needs, according to Loyola’s Common Data Set 2013-2014. Aid includes scholarships/grants,self-help aid, and other forms of aid including athletic awards –– essentially ev-erything except for PLUS loans, which are unsubsidized loans and private alternative loans.
“I’m sitting here asking myself, if the mission is ‘We are Chicago’s Jesuit, Catholic University — a diverse community seeking God in all things and working to ex-pand knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice and faith,’ how is any of what I just said remotely ethical in light of that mission?” said Hansen.
With serious concern about the rising expenses of private ed-ucation and skyrocketing student debt, the event prompted a re-newed dialogue between students and the administration regarding financial responsibility.
Jessica Chitkuer, a finance ma-jor and SGLC’s chief financial offi-
cer, spearheaded the event. “I hope that students left the fo-
rum with a better insight as to how a Loyola degree has remained com-
petitive throughout the years, as well as how a Loyola degree has had in-creased value throughout the years,” said the 19-year-old sophomore.
4 NOVEMBER 19, 2014 | NEWS
A panel of various administrators, including Vice President for Student Development Jane Neufeld and Provost John Pelissero, discussed Loyola’s budget. The event was hosted by the Student Government of Loyola Chicago.
merly known as the Unified Student Government Association, officially changed its name to the Student Gov-ernment of Loyola Chicago [SGLC] on Nov. 12.
Flavio Bravo, 20, student body pres-ident, said student senators and cabinet members wanted name that was more representative of its role at Loyola.
“What’s a way to stay simple, say true to who we are, and say that we’re the student government of Loyola Chicago?” said the junior political science major.
“[Students] say they go to Loyola University Chicago, they don’t say ‘I study at Water Tower Campus or ‘Lake Shore Campus.’ We do see it as unified, and we felt there was no need to have [unified] in the name any more.”
The organization initially came up with the name Student Govern-ment of Loyola University but then decided Chicago should be includ-ed in the name.
“Chicago is such a big deal in ... culture here at this university… all the initiatives we take on are only possible because we’re a jesuit uni-versity and we’re in Chicago, so why not have [Chicago] in the name?”
It is 11:58 p.m. You are attempting to submit an essay on Sakai before the midnight deadline, but suddenly it seems you cannot log in. You desperately try to refresh the connec-tion, but it’s too late. The deadline has passed.
At least you can console yourself with some Netflix, or rather you could, if the In-ternet wasn’t down.
Across both campuses, internet users have dealt with slow internet and lost Wi-Fi connec-tions. Student Government of Loyola Chicago (SGLC) President Flavio Bravo said students and faculty are vocal about the problem.
“Students definitely notice it, not just on [social media], but in the classroom. Pro-fessors even struggle with the Wi-Fi when they’re trying to upload a video and it hasn’t buffered yet,” said the 20-year-old junior po-litical science and philosophy double major.
However, Loyola is working to fix the issue. On Nov. 2, an upgrade to the uni-versity’s bandwidth was made, according to
Information Technology Services (ITS) Net-work Services Manager David Wieczorek.
“[ITS] doubled the Internet bandwidth, which is what goes out and connects to the Internet,” said Wieczorek. “We upgraded a piece of equipment that increases the speed of the Internet and which would remove some of the bottlenecking when many users are connecting to the Internet.”
When too many users are using the In-ternet and there is not enough bandwidth to support them, bottlenecking happens. This means that there are too many re-quests for data at once and the Internet cannot handle it, leading to dropped con-nections and slow speed.
Wieczorek said that most universities upgrade their systems every 18 months to keep up with current bandwidth trends. He said it has been 16 months since Loyola last upgraded, so the update is ahead of sched-ule. Bandwidth demand is so high that it needs to double every time it is upgraded in order to maintain Internet use.
“After looking at the traffic and utili-
zation of the Internet, we understood the need for an upgrade,” Wieczorek said. “The student feedback we got from [SGLC] just solidified that idea.”
Video-on-demand services such as Netflix and YouTube are a major factor contributor to bandwidth use. Wieczorek also said that there is an increasing num-ber of students coming to Loyola with multiple Wi-Fi enabled devices running at the same time, which eats up even more bandwidth.
Wieczorek made sure to differenti-ate between problems with the Internet bandwidth and problems with the Wi-Fi system. The problem was with the infra-structure of the Internet, so the school did not have to upgrade the Wi-Fi itself, Wieczorek said.
Sophomore Matthew Dawood said that he has not noticed an improvement in the Internet service in his room in Seat-tle Hall and still has many issues with the school’s Internet.
“It’s quite awful. When I’m trying to
do work, it keeps cutting out,” said the 19-year-old public relations major. “It’s not just in my dorm, but also at Water Tower Campus as well. I hope it’s fixed because it’s really getting annoying.”
Sophomore Emma Kautz said that she has not noticed a difference but has heard that people are having problems with Loyola’s Internet.
“We had an online accounting test and everyone complained about it crashing, but I personally haven’t noticed a differ-ence yet, either positive or negative,” said the 19-year-old finance major.
While Wieczorek was not at liberty to share the cost of the upgrades, he said that when ITS planned this upgrade it looked at competitive pricing and made the best choice for the university and its students based on that.
Wieczorek said if students continue to experience problems with the school’s Wi-Fi, they should relay the instance to the IT Help Desk in the Klarchek Infor-mation Commons.
Why-fi?: Slow connection leaves students refreshing
Have data, will tweet
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Interested in writing for the news section? Email [email protected] for more information.
Even though students might not have reliable Wi-Fi, they find a way to tweet their complaints using their cellular data plans
6 NOVEMBER 19,2014 | NEWS
PHOENIX 101
How do Uber and Lyft services work?
Uber and Lyft work similarly. To ride with one of these compa-nies, customers must download the app and choose their pick up point and destination. Once a ride request is submitted, a driver will arrive on location, which is provid-ed to the driver through location services on the app. All payments are processed electronically.
When a customer requests Uber or Lyft, they do not hail for it outside. Uber also allows its cus-tomers to choose the type of vehi-cle they prefer. Vehicles range from the cheap uberX to the uberSUV
Students may find riding the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) inconvenient because of safety concerns at night or extra time spent at different stops. Alternatives to riding the CTA include taxi, Uber and Lyft rides.
UBER/LYFT/CABS 101
RAMBLER RESPONSEHow do you get around: Uber, Lyft or
traditional cab companies?
SOPHOMORE SHANNON FIGUEROAAD/PR, 19“I prefer Uber because the whole process of it is very easy ... Plus if someone new registers, you and the new rider get a free ride.”
SOPHOMORE REBECCA SAWATZKI INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, 19
“I prefer traditional cab driv-ers ... In my experience,
many Uber drivers have sec-ondary sources of income ...
for many cab drivers, it’s their sole income.”
JORDAN MALAVOLTILAW STUDENT, 24“I prefer using taxi ... I just feel like Uber has ripped me off a few times unexpectedly, and the drivers aren’t that friendly from what I’ve experienced.”
JEFF ERNEYLAW STUDENT, 25
“Uber, definitely, because it’s usually cheaper. I also can
get picked up right at my door [and] don’t have to wait
for a taxi cab outside.”
— the most expensive option. The Uber app also connects customers to taxis with a $2 booking fee.
Is one service cheaper than the other?
To ride from Loyola to Union Station, a Lyft ride would cost about $17, uberX would cost be-tween $14 and $20, and a taxi ride would cost about $21. However, during “Prime Time” — when the demand is high — prices increase for Lyft customers, as they do for Uber’s “Surge Pricing.” Unlike taxi companies, Uber and Lyft provide numerous coupons for rides. How-ever, Uber and Lyft rides are also
subjected to surge fares, which significantly increase the cost of a ride when these services are in high demand.
How much money do drivers make?
The median pay for taxi drivers in 2012 was $22,820 per year — less than $10.97 per hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statis-
tics. The median income for Uber and Lyft drivers who live in Chicago is more than $16 an hour.
Which service is safer?Both Uber and Taxi companies
require drivers to complete back-ground checks prior to hiring. While there have been incidents of assault by both taxi and Uber drivers in the past, riders of Uber are provided
with the profile of their driver, which includes the name, picture, license plate number and rating. Uber rid-ers are generally more aware of who they are in the car with. Through the rating services of the Uber app, drivers are held accountable for their behavior. The risk of being alone at night is also minimized through Uber rides, as customers can wait indoors until their driver arrives.
SOPHOMORE SHANNON GALVINCRIMINAL JUSTICE, 19“None, because I prefer taking free public transpor-tation because it’s already been paid for. It’s a good way to people watch.”
SENIOR DYLAN BISSONETTE AD/PR, 21
“I prefer Uber just because I feel like sometimes in cer-tain areas it’s really hard to
find a cab.”
When riding the CTA isn’t an option, students have several other ways to get around the city such as taxis, Lyfts and Ubers.
Courtesy of Unsplash // Pixabay
7PHOTO BRIEFS | NOVEMBER 19, 2014
Rent | $1700
PHOTO BRIEFS
that don’t stinkAfter seeing the first snow of the season over the weekend
and experiencing a massive temperature drop, it’s safe to say winter is finally here for the long run. While many of us are already experiencing the winter blues and have the urge to skip class for no other reason but to stay inside, it’s good to keep in mind that the season change doesn’t always have to be misera-ble. Here are seven reasons the arrival of winter doesn’t have to be a reason for our demise:
Ice skating — Yes, indoor ice skating is fine, but ice skating in Millennium Park amidst the hustle and bustle of the city and under the city’s beautiful holi-
day lights is so much better. And the cold weather is completely necessary for it, as real ice sure beats the synthetic ice al-ternative that feels the same as trying to ice skate on cardboard.
It’s not summer —Yeah, I said it. Let’s be honest, as great as summer seems from the out-look, a lot of us end up spend-ing our summers working
full-time jobs, internships and/or taking summer classes. And then there’s the battle royale of summer photo albums on Face-book, which consists of everyone trying to prove that they are the ones having the best
summer (Look at all these concerts I’ve been to! Look at my tan legs ly-ing out by the pool! Look at all these friends and me drinking on a boat!). In
the winter, everyone has the same mindset that staying in and watching movies is to-tally OK.
Snow — Sure, maybe it gets old when March comes around and we’re still stuck in our snow boots and parkas, but at the get-go, it’s the best. The first
few snows are priceless, because you get to enjoy the beauty of the cityscape covered in a white blanket and go sledding or make snowmen before a wave of warmer weather hits and the snow becomes a slushy, muddy mess. And while coming inside after being out in the hot summer sun just makes you feel better for five minutes before the air conditioning feels icy, coming in to a warm building after walking through the snow will never feel uncomfortable.
4Bye-bye spiders — Perhaps you remember reading “The not-so itsy-bitsy spider,” an article The Phoenix ran in September that addressed the large and plenti-
ful spiders around campus. Well, one obvi-ous benefit of the cold weather is the van-ishing of these spiders, meaning you will no longer have to hold your breath and sprint under doorways or refuse to wait inside the
sheltered bus stops. Since spiders are cold-blooded, they can not regulate their temperature when winter hits, so
they either find a place to essentially hiber-nate until spring or they die out.
Holiday your heart out — Chicago is one of the best cities to be in during the holiday season. Attend-ing the Thanksgiving Day Parade on State Street, shopping on the festive Magnificient Mile, seeing
holiday-themed shows at Broadway in Chi-cago’s historic theaters, tracking down the CTA holiday train and attending the Christkindlmarket downtown are only a few activities this city has to offer.
Layers — Fashion is not first and that’s OK. Let’s face it, in warmer weather, we feel a lot worse when we don’t put effort into our appearance than we do in winter. In winter, it’s simply
a matter of staying warm (yes, the leggings under the jeans under the sweatpants was necessary!) Better yet, we are able to con-ceal the little extra holiday weight we gain from the nonstop carbs of winter until it’s
back to the fresh fruit and veggies of the warmer weather. Embrace it, be-cause the only season that sneaks up
quicker than winter is swimsuit season.
No shave ever — Why stop at No-vember when the wintertime means you have a viable excuse to keep your hair growing? Cold weather is the perfect time to
rock a beard or perhaps some fuzzy legs underneath your layers for some extra insu-lation. Who can even judge you when you justify extra warmth?
Divestment from fossil fuels is making its rounds again. The Phoenix recently reported that the Student Environmental Alliance will be presenting to the uni-versity senate at its Dec. 5 meeting in an effort to persuade the senate to vote to divest from the university’s fossil fuel holdings. This is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea.
To begin with, divesting would do nothing to the companies that are being targeted. The stocks will still be on the market and eager investors will snatch them up within seconds of their availabil-ity. If divesting won’t have any tangible impact on anything, why bother to do it? The answer lies in the symbolism of
the act. The real goal of the divestment movement — the realistic one — is to stigmatize fossil fuel companies until they collapse under their own weight.
Stigmatization is the only thing that such a symbolic move can accomplish at this point, but what begins in symbolism will, in the minds of divestment propo-nents, eventually end up dismantling the fossil fuel empire.
Don’t get me wrong — fossil fuels will one day be replaced by renewable energy. That is undeniably a good thing. I am not opposing the goal of the movement (the im-plementation of clean energy), but I am op-posing the means and the timing of it. The here and now are not conducive to making a change from fossil fuels to a promising yet small renewable energy sector.
Fossil fuels have produced 87 percent of all energy in the United States in the last decade, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. In 2011, re-newable resources such as wind and solar energy contributed less than 2 percent of our energy. Energy that is not from fossil fuels or renewable resources comes from
third party sources such as nuclear power, hydroelectric power and even wood.
In other words, pulling out of the fos-sil fuel industry now would wreck more than the energy sector — it would wreck our entire economy, from top to bottom, and leave no one unaffected. I, for one, quite like the things fossil fuels make pos-sible and don’t want to involuntarily live like it’s the 18th century.
All of the above assumes Loyola divests in collaboration with other schools. Like a chain of dominoes, a concerted effort by institutions of higher education could actually change minds and win people over to “the cause.” But this won’t hap-pen. The profit motive is a strong one, not to mention that divestment is poor eco-nomic policy in its own right and would produce even worse results if it actually worked. Surely our administrators can see that.
Perhaps the strongest argument in favor of divestment is that they want to create a “socially just” investment port-folio and divesting is one step closer to that goal. Fair enough. But the goal of a
socially just portfolio does not absolve the movement of the consequences of its actions. Everything I said above would re-main true, and if proponents think other-wise, they owe us all a pretty good expla-nation why.
Finally, the concept of divesting is in-herently flawed. I’ll accept for a minute that Loyola’s hands are dirty with the fos-sil fuel stocks we own. But washing our hands of the stock will only transfer the immorality to someone else, whose hands will themselves become dirty. Even if we cleanse ourselves, someone else gets dirty. No one is clean or can ever be clean — so what’s the point of ditching the stock if someone else will be corrupted by it? That’s just as bad, if not worse, than hanging onto it. Wouldn’t it better to af-fect change from the inside out, while we own the stocks, than from the outside looking in? Common sense would say so.
I hope our administrators see through the rhetoric and see divestment for what it is: bad policy.
Dominic Lynch is a contributing columnist
University should think twice before adopting policy
New Year’s always brings new things. Most people will make resolutions in hopes of be-coming a better person than they were the year before. But for the U.S. Senate Commit-tee on Environment and Public Works, this new year could be one giant step backwards.
Oklahoma Republican Senator James In-hofe is poised to take over as chairman of the committee in January, and, to be frank, he is not the man for the job.
Inhofe previously held this position from 2003 through 2007, the last time the Repub-lican Party held the Senate majority. In addi-tion to being a senator, though, Inhofe has also delved into literature, publishing the book The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspira-cy Threatens Your Future in 2012.
In the book, Inhofe discusses why “en-vironmental activist extremists” (including President Barack Obama and the Democratic members of Congress) are continuing to per-petuate “the hoax” of global warming when “the public has caught on and believes the global warming issue is dead.”
Since 2003, Inhofe has been one of Con-gress’ biggest opposers of the Environmen-tal Protection Agency (EPA) and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
In his book, Inhofe discusses how regula-tions put in place to combat global warming “are set to destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs and significantly raise energy prices for families, businesses and farmers, basically anyone who drives a car, uses heavy machin-
ery, or flips a switch.”In 2009, when the EPA attempted to reg-
ulate carbon emissions by industry, many Re-publicans shared Inhofe’s concerns and said that these regulations would hinder the Unit-ed States’ ability to compete with countries that had weaker regulations.
In 2003, as chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, Inhofe wrote a paper titled “The Facts and Science of Cli-mate Change.” In this paper, he asserts that rising temperatures may be beneficial and says some parts of IPCC’s process “resembled a Soviet-style trial, in which the facts are pre-determined, and ideological purity trumps technical and scientific rigor.” At a Christian Right conference in 2006, Inhofe said that the United Nations invented global warming “to shutdown the machine called America.”
This line of thinking is based primarily on a disturbing trend among many Republicans: a rejection of science. Nowhere is this more evident than with regards to the environment and climate change.
Pew Research Center recently released the results of a survey that showing that 79 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of in-dependent voters believe there is “solid ev-idence” that the earth has been warming. Meanwhile, only 37 percent of Republicans said the same. Additionally, 68 percent of Democrats and 44 percent of independents said that global climate change is a major threat to the United States. Only 25 percent of Republicans agreed.
One source of this thinking is strict Chris-tian beliefs. Inhofe said about as much in a vis-it to a Voice of Christian Youth America radio program, saying, “God’s still up there. The
arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.”
Inhofe isn’t the only Republican to hold an important scientific position who rejects man-made climate change though. Ralph Hall, the former chair of the House Com-mittee on Science, Space and Technology, dismissed humanity’s impact on the changing climate, saying, “I don’t think we can control what God controls.”
While it has been seven years since Inhofe previously held the chairman position and the advancements in science and data collection during that time have been immense, the senator insists on talking about old data and outdated conclusions.
Just last week, Inhofe told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “when you say that science has settled [that climate change is real], and the over-whelming scientific analysis comes to that conclusion, frankly that is just not correct.” Inhofe went on to assert that in 2002 and 2003 he published the names of thousands of scientists dissenting against this idea.
The fact of the matter is that Inhofe is stuck in the past.
In 2004, 75 percent of published studies supported the idea that global warming is caused by hu-mans, according to a study out of Harvard University. Nearly 10 years later, a group of 10 scientists ex-amined 4,014 p u b l i s h e d works on cli-mate change and found that
97.2 percent assumed that humans play a role in global warming.
Inhofe, however, continues to assert that there is no “consensus” that global warming even exists, much less that it is at least partly man-made.
The world is changing, but the soon-to-be chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works is perfectly content with living in the early 2000s.
The problem with this is that Congress needs to pass environmental legislation that is relevant today, not that was relevant in 2002. With a man who is so clearly stuck a decade in the past at the helm of one of the Senate’s ma-jor committees, this will be nearly impossible.
Luckily, Inhofe is not yet in the chairman-ship position. There is still time for the Senate Republicans to put a qualified senator in the post. Someone who is open to accepting the clear scientific consensus. Someone who is receptive to working with the rest of the Sen-ate. Someone who will take action to limit
the harm mankind is doing to the environ-ment. That someone is not James Inhofe.
Democrats have to face the facts: They lost the midterm elections, and now Pres-ident Barack Obama faces an uphill battle against a united Republican Congress for his final two years in office.
Moving forward, it remains to be seen if Obama can pull through and fulfill his 2008 campaign promise to institute im-migration reform. If the past six years are any indication, Obama could be making his most controversial decision yet. He lost the midterms, he lost the Senate and now his only hope is to regain the support of Hispanics and immigrants nationwide by taking executive action on immigration.
But is executive action the best answer to our nation’s burgeoning immigration prob-lem? Hardly. The answer is still comprehen-sive reform. The problem is the Republican Party and its refusal to compromise.
Anyone who has examined last year’s version of comprehensive immigration reform, a bill known as the Border Secu-rity, Economic Opportunity, and Immi-gration Modernization Act of 2013, which was co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of eight senators, can tell you that this bill is a far cry from a victory for Democrats.
Almost all the benefits allotted to un-documented immigrants center on the cre-ation of a new kind of legal status, called “Registered Provisional Immigrant” (RPI). This designation would create a legal path to citizenship for undocumented immi-
grants already present in the country. If granted RPI status, immigrants would be able to work, receive in-state tuition at col-leges and eventually apply for citizenship.
However, the caveat lies in the fact that these benefits are entirely contingent on other provisions of the bill, including but not limited to the completion of nearly 700 miles of new fencing along the Mex-ico-United States border, as well as the implementation of a multi-billion dollar revamping of our border security and re-moval processes. Since Republicans fail to see this as a good compromise and have publicly declared their refusal to even ad-dress immigration, there truly is no other option besides executive action.
Our nation’s immigration system is con-voluted and nearly impossible to navigate. Unless you have an incredibly high-paying job offer or have a direct family member here, it is nearly impossible for you to immigrate. Even if you do have a family
member or job offer here, you could face a wait time anywhere from one to 20 years depending on the kind of visa you are eli-gible for. There are almost no accessible or permanent options for those who live in the United States undocumented, regard-less of how and when they arrived here.
Deferred Action for Childhood Arriv-als (DACA) grants temporary status to those who arrived in the United States as children and meet specific qualifications. Although this is a positive step, DACA is a temporary measure, and legislators have yet to address if applicants will be allowed to apply for legal permanent resident sta-tus. For those who qualify for immigration relief, the process can be extremely con-fusing and costly.
Applications carry large fees, and re-quire mountains of proof and documen-tation. Heavy bureaucracy slows down almost every application and creates frus-tration on all sides. Because of these vari-
ous factors that make the system so difficult to navigate, people are advised to hire an immigration attorney to guide you through the process. Unfortunately, that is simply not financially possible for many families.
The limited scope of our immigration system is inconsistent with our competi-tive globalized economy and damages the possibilities of our nation. Our current system offers no solutions to undocu-mented immigrants, and the incredibly low number of visas available prevents thousands from entering the country. Not only do we have nearly 12 million undoc-umented workers residing in our nation who could positively impact our economy, but we also have thousands of skilled work-ers patiently waiting behind red tape, each hoping for a shot at a visa.
The result? We are missing out. We are missing out on billions of dollars in po-tential economic benefits, we are missing out on remaining competitive in scientific, technological, engineering and math mar-kets, and we are entirely missing the main issue at hand: Immigration is about people.
There are families across the world who wait and depend on the hope that the Unit-ed States will wake up and realize that im-migration is beneficial, that we shouldn’t be scared to accept immigrants of all na-tionalities and that our country simply cannot continue to function with a broken and convoluted immigration system.
So, do we need executive action? We need any kind of action. It may have taken six years, but any kind of reform is long overdue. Who knows what this executive action may entail, or if it will even work. All I can hope is that it brings to light the real issues here: a lack of compromise and a lack of compassion.
Megan Shannon is a contributing columnist
Over the past four months, the media have been covering the protests taking place in Ferguson, Missouri. For those who are unaware of what has happened, Officer Darren Wilson of the Ferguson Po-lice Department shot and killed unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown when Brown and a friend were walking down a residen-tial street on Aug. 9.
Initially, the event caused a spree of peaceful protests by Ferguson community members to bring attention to the injus-tice that surrounds the ever-present prob-lem of police brutality, especially in highly segregated cities such as St. Louis, located just miles from Ferguson.
In response to these protests — which involved picketing and laying roses along the road Brown was killed on — the St. Louis Police Department sent militarized police officers to do “crowd control.” How-ever, the police acted violently, using tear gas and other brutal methods in an attempt to control what were, for the most part, calm and peaceful protests.
Ferguson community members who par-ticipated in these protests have said the po-lice’s actions were unwarranted and likely a result of an ever escalating problem of racial tension between white officers and the black citizens of the St. Louis area.
Research pertaining to the history of police brutality in Ferguson and the Unit-ed States as a whole, conducted by the U.S. Justice Department, proved that these concerns are not unfounded.
Attorney General Eric Holder took a trip to Ferguson on Aug. 20 to look further into the issue. While there, he told CNN re-porters that “people consistently expressed concerns stemming from specific alleged incidents, from general policing practices and from the lack of diversity on the Fergu-son police force. These anecdotal accounts underscore the history of mistrust of law enforcement in Ferguson that has received a good deal of attention.”
Police brutality is not unique to Fergu-son. In cities such as Albuquerque, New Mexico, the use of excessive force by the police department has been repeatedly looked into as more and more incidents create cause for alarm.
Last March, James Boyd, a 38-year-old homeless and mentally ill man, was shot multiple times in the back by the Albuquer-que police, which launched an investigation of the city’s history of police brutality. This investigation revealed prior incidents of the Albuquerque police using excessive force
and “shoot-to-kill” tactics in unwarranted situations, such as an incident in 2010 when the Albuquerque police shot and killed a war veteran suffering from PTSD.
In addition to these fatal shootings, the peaceful protests spurred by the death of Boyd were met with brutal crowd control methods and riot gear, as we see in Fergu-son now.
When we compare these findings to the events that took place in October during the Pumpkin Festival in Keene, New Hamp-shire, it becomes increasingly clear that the United States is still very much suffering from an issue of authorities overstepping their line of power.
At a yearly autumn celebration in Keene, a small town that is home to Keene State University, a group of college students be-gan to go wild, overturning cars, setting fires in the streets and throwing bottles and other objects at the police. In order to con-trol the situation, police immediately went to using extreme tactics such as tear gas to calm the group down.
But just as in Ferguson and Albuquer-que, the authorities’ excessive use of violence resulted in further violence by the rioters.
The police department in Keene had purchased a militarized vehicle with federal funds back in 2012. For a small town, this kind of purchase certainly raises an eyebrow. I believe that the department’s use of milita-rized vehicles and methods of crowd control
only lead to more violence from those they are trying to control.
Similarly, recent small incidents of loot-ing and rioting that have been taking place alongside the peaceful protests in Ferguson has began to cast the protesters in a bad light. However, these kinds of violent behav-iors from the citizens of Ferguson had not begun until the police had enacted forceful measures to keep the peaceful, but demand-ing, protests for the release of more details into Brown’s death.
We can infer, then, that violent crowd be-haviors are only enhanced when the author-ities use violence as well. If we continue to allow the police to overstep their boundaries as officers of the law and use tools such as tear gas and dogs, we can only assume that protesters will respond with more violence and turn into rioters.
We need to hold our police depart-ments accountable for their actions, and this starts with the trial of Officer Wilson. His violence toward an unarmed teen re-sulted, ultimately, in more brutal action from police officers, and then from com-munity members of Ferguson.
The U.S. justice system needs to step up and take responsibility for the areas in which it has failed. Only then can we move forward toward having justice that is free of violence from the police and, thus, free from violence from the citizens.
Shanna Johnson is a contributing columnist
Country needs action on immigration
Pete Souza//Wikimedia Commons
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (left) and President Barack Obama.
Excessive police tactics fuel cycle of violence
T here aren’t any clocks in Clarke’s.In fact, the entire diner feels like someone hit the pause button.
The mauve, vinyl-covered booths are held together with duct tape that’s two shades too dark, and the fluorescent ceiling lights bathe the 24-hour restaurant in a cheap, yellow light.
It’s impossible to take a good picture in there, but drunk 20-some-things try anyway.
Everyone at Clarke’s seems like they’re on their way somewhere else. Tipsy friends stop in before or after a party. Couples bundled against the cold chat over heaping plates of eggs after a show. For a moment, they’re stuck in the late-night limbo, waiting for the server, the food or the check.
For a Friday night, the diner was full but calm. I was there with a few friends hoping to catch a glimpse of after-hours Chicago in its full, eccen-tric glory.
Clarke’s sits less than a block east of the Belmont Red Line stop. You can see the diner’s huge sign with one flickering light from the station platform — there’s even a ‘50s-era woman smiling placidly on it, pin curls and all. There are three other locations in Chicago, but this one has the best dingy diner feel thanks to its off-white tile floor and lacquered wood table tops.
The first thing I noticed when walking in was a sign taped to the win-dow that said, “We have the right to refuse service…” The next thing was a big black-and-white photo of John Lennon hanging on the wall. Our server couldn’t explain why it was there.
From our half-circle booth, we could hear shouts of laughter from the
back near the kitchen. One booth of four talked about everything from Star Trek and Battlestar
Galactica to women in chainmail. At almost every table, there was a smile or a laugh.
The place swelled around 2:30 a.m. when parties begin winding down and some tire of the bar scene. That’s when we met Kale Ewing, who in-sisted on giving all of us fake names. Mine was Samantha.
He’d been at Stanley’s, a Lincoln Park bar, with his five friends before walking into Clarke’s. It took him roughly 20 minutes — thanks in part to his near constant joking with his friend Kayla — to finally order what he called “The Full Tiff,” a chocolate chip waffle smothered in strawberries and whipped cream.
Ewing is pretty representative of the kind of person who comes into Clarke’s in the middle of the night: young and most likely drunk — although that second one is up for debate.
But Clarke’s isn’t Ewing’s usual haunt. If he stays up late, he’s watching Netflix or reading. He works at Nielsen, a market research company best known for its TV ratings.
Between taking selfies with one of his friends and cracking jokes, Ew-ing tried to keep up a conversation with our table. We were hoping for some nighttime wisdom.
“I don’t have any good advice,” Ewing said, leaning over the side of his booth. “I’m 24. I don’t know anything.”
By 3:15 a.m., the music switched from the “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” kind to
the “Baby Got Back” kind. The crowd thinned as the drunks called it a night. Ewing and his friends left.
Then the diner went back to a sort of stasis. Most of the wait staff lined the wall where the bar used to be, keeping an eye out for custom-ers in need. A few others wiped down the linoleum tabletops, shuffled Cholula hot sauce from booth to booth and rinsed out the red plastic glasses that every pizzeria in Chicago also has.
The coffee was terrible — I dumped two creamers and roughly a pound of sugar into it — but the food was filling. It’s hard to complain about waffles, onion rings and Diet Coke. Fried food isn’t pretty, but it’s exactly what you need in the middle of the night. You don’t go to Clarke’s when you’re watching your figure.
At least the wafts of burnt coffee cut through the smell of onions frying in butter.
Around 4 a.m., our server, James Cummins, finally had a moment to sit down. He’s 23, tall and lanky with mousy hair. He had on the Clarke’s uniform: a black, short-sleeve button-down with the diner’s white logo on the left side, black pants and a pair of black shoes.
During his nine months working at Clarke’s, a good portion of it on the nightshift, he’s learned the key to dealing with eccentric, often intox-icated customers.
“Kill them with kindness,” Cummins said. “Be the nicest guy in the world.”
He is nice. Behind his wire-rim glasses, his eyes show an earnest ea
gerness. I can easily see him keeping his cool as an angry, drunk woman throws her receipt in his face. The nightshift doesn’t surprise him much any more.
“I saw more extravagant costumes in May than I did on Halloween,” said Cummins, recalling a man wearing 10-inch heels and a 4-foot head-dress walking through the door last summer.
Clarke’s is just a rest stop for Cummins. He moved out to New Lenox, Illinois recently and is saving up money to go to Joliet Junior College for business management and marketing. He has four sisters and comes from a big family, but he said he wasn’t always as outgoing.
“If you asked me 10 years ago, I wouldn’t be sitting down talking to any of you,” Cummins said.
At 4 a.m., the music switched back to ‘90s rock with the Counting Crow’s “Mr. Jones.” Clinking glasses and silverware mixed with the low murmur of close conversation, and the night crowd dispersed at the first hint of morning.
Cummins still had two hours until he was done with his shift. He usu-ally catches the sunrise during his 40-minute drive home.
Once I finally peeled myself off of the vinyl booth and paid for my breakfast at the front, I got the sense that the place hasn’t changed much in the 28 years it’s been open.With its faded, peeling paint and shoddy bathrooms, it’s the kind of place that has a humble timelessness. The faces around the booths change, but Clarke’s stays at a standstill, a place to stop on your way to somewhere else.
LOOK
1. Right off the Belmont Red Line stop, Clarke’s is a 24-hour dinner that serves breakfast and dinner at all hours. The menu includes one burger named after DePaul University and another after North-western University. 2. Kale Ewing, 24, visited the diner with five of his friends after a night at the bar. Their loud joking attracted a few stares from other tables. 3. Waiter James Cummins, 23, waits on a table. 4. The neon sign in Clarke’s points to a board-covered window where there used to be a bar. The diner is currently remodeling it, according to Cummins. 5. Clarke’s serves all kinds of breakfast foods, including chocolate chip waffles. The strawberries cost extra. 6. Like most diners, Clarke’s keeps the coffee brewing at all times. A cup might require a little extra milk and sugar. 7. Cummins poses for a picture after sitting down for a short interview around 4 a.m. He had two more hours of work left.
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7Elizabeth Greiwe//The PHOENIX
11CLOSER LOOK | NOVEMBER 19, 2014
12 NOVEMBER 19, 2014 | A&E
Like a boss: Horrible Bosses 2 stars talk with The Phoenix about upcoming sequel
The cast that showed you just how horrible some bosses can be is at it again.
That’s right — Jason Sudeikis, Jason Bateman and Charlie Day are taking on their bosses once more in Horrible Bosses 2, which hits theaters Nov. 26.
In a phone conference with the three comedians, The Phoe-nix learned all the ups and downs of filming the sequel.
“Hi, I’m Charlie Day … I don’t think I have an answer, I just wanted to say my name,” said the actor after being asked the first question.
The three joked throughout the interview, but when it came time to talk about the quality of the sequel, they were certain of its soon-to-come success.
“You get asked to make se-quels when it makes enough money to warrant it,” Bateman said. “[The first movie] did really well overseas, which is not ter-ribly common for a comedy. We were certainly open to [making a sequel] because we had such a
good time doing the first one.”According to imdb.com, Hor-
rible Bosses made a total of more than $209.7 million world-wide, almost half of which came from abroad.
“There’s always the fi-nancial side of [filmmaking] where if the studio doesn’t make enough money on the first one, they’re not going to spend money to make anoth-er one — because it’s a busi-ness,” Day said.
Although Horrible Bosses ended on a good note for all three characters, the second movie takes up a new plot where the three start their own business. When things go askew, they find them-selves reverting to their old kidnapping and murderous ways shown in the first film.
“There’s the creative side of it where it does take big steps to do a second story,” Day said. “Jason and Jason and myself had a lot of lengthy conversations of what the story would be, and we weren’t going to do a movie if we couldn’t find a story that for us
didn’t make sense.”The humorous cast includes repeat-
ers Jennifer Aniston and Kevin Spacey,
and newcomers such as Chris Pine.“We have a fourth… musketeer,”
Day said. “Chris Pine brought a lot to [the cast] in terms of what we did differently… he brought the looks.”
Oscar-winning actor Christoph
Waltz (Django Unchained), comedian Jonathan Banks (Beverly Hills Cop) and Chi-cago’s own Second City’s comedy troupe actors also make appearances in Horri-ble Bosses 2.
“It’s really flattering to have the first [movie] and then have the second one and have people say, ‘yeah, I want to be a part of that,’” Sudeikis said. “There are a lot of Second City people in this movie, and [I] love the fact that they wanted to come on board.”
Bateman felt the same, and added that it was nice to have Oscar winners on board for a big studio comedy.
“It was really cool to work with all those different peo-ple, and everyone under-stood what we were making and it made for a good thing,” he said.
Along with new characters and a new plot, the sequel in-troduces special effects such as green screen work.
“[Green screen work] was
a kind of interesting thing of the filmmaking process that we didn’t get to do in the first one,” Bateman said. “It’s usually more relegated to the big special ef-fects movies.”
Despite adding the new el-ements, the comedians had the same amount of fun putting to-gether the sequel three years af-ter the release of the first film.
“It was really fun for the three of us to get back together again because we enjoy each other’s company and we had such a good time making the first one,” Day said. “As characters, it’s terrible for these three to get back to-gether. They keep getting them-selves into some serious trouble here.”
With the intense humor that made Horrible Bosses a success, the pressure of creating a better sequel seems to loom over the returning cast. Yet according to Sudeikis, Bateman and Day, the second will be just as good as the first.
Horrible Bosses 2 is rated R and will be released in most major U.S. theaters Nov. 26.
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment
Horrible Bosses 2 comes out Nov. 26 and rated R.
Courtesy of Cathy Taylor PR
Body Doubles runs through April 19, 2015 at the Museum of Con-temporary Art (220 E. Chicago Ave.) Tickets for admission to the museum are $7 without ac-cess to David Bowie Is.
Body Doubles:Paralleling body and identityBY MARISSA [email protected]
In the shadow of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s (220 E. Chicago Ave.) sensational exhi-bition David Bowie Is lies a hid-den gem. A few floors beneath the high-profile Bowie display, a collection of eclectic pieces have been curated to form the Body Doubles exhibit, open until April 19.
Body Doubles includes artwork from various forms of media with the goal of studying the parallels between the body and identity. As I entered the exhib-it, I was confronted by a gold sculpture. The elegant figure vaguely resembled a mannequin.
I made my way over to the plaque nearby and discovered this was French artist Jean Arps’ “Torso,” made in 1931. The or-ganic curvature of the figure was achieved through sleek, ambigu-ous appendages.
The dynamic nature of the piece seemed reminiscent of oth-er sculptures from the Italian fu-turist art movement, specifically Umberto Boccioni’s, “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space.”
One piece was especially shocking — a ruddy, mud-col-ored clay square that was more isolated than most of the oth-er works. The space that sur-rounded this square was vast compared to others, implying its significance, so I moved
closer to investigate.Out of the contours of the
sculpture appeared what seemed to be rope. When I stepped back, I realized the clay square depicted a man’s hands tied behind his back. Upon reading the plaque, I found the artist was none other than the neon god Bruce Nauman.
Nauman is well known for his thought-provoking statements spelled out in the form of neon signs. The murky color palette of this piece was starkly different from any of his previous neon works, which have a synthetic appearance. But I appreciated its witty title: “Henry Moore Bound to Fail.”
Henry Moore, a renowned Brit-ish sculptor, was considered one of the greatest sculptors of the 20th century. Because of this, many younger artists lashed out against Moore because of their inability to succeed in his shadow. This piece was Nauman’s response to the harsh criticisms from other artists, and was one of his first pieces that ex-perimented with physical represen-tations of ironic sayings.
Another interesting element of the exhibit was a short film frag-ment playing on a TV that sat upon a pedestal. I could not make out the figures on the screen, but as I came closer, I noticed a fingernail shape appear.
The film had a kitschy quality to it, and was reminiscent of Da-vid Lynch’s short films. The clip was of a person’s nails pressing into
their fingerprints of each digit on their hand. The ritualistic pattern continued as I began understand-ing the piece. The fingerprint, an anatomical part of the body, holds more meaning than its physiology. It is unique because it defines the identity of each person. Each time an indent was made on a digit, it disrupted the biological pattern and therefore altered the identity of the person. This piece, called “Identity Transfer,” was made by multimedia artist Dennis Oppenheim in 1970.
In another section of the room, I noticed a piece mounted alone on a wall farther back in the ex-hibit. It was the base of a kitchen chair with two breasts attached near the bottom half.
I approached the plaque and noticed that behind the seat of the chair, nestled in cross-support of the shortened legs, was a nest with a few robin’s eggs.
The piece, produced in 2007, was by American sculptor Rob-ert Gober, and was ambiguously named “Untitled.”
The artist is a gay man who was born into a strictly Catholic fami-ly. The work was autobiographical and an emblem of what Gober was born to be attracted to, according to his family’s religion. Every as-pect of the piece displayed feminin-ity, yet the construction and posture of the materials were uncomfort-able and odd. This conflict served as an abstract interpretation of the artist’s confused childhood identity.
Lastly, I approached a fairly nor-
mal-looking portrait of a woman in ‘50s attire. She resembled Jackie Kennedy, and the picture was black and white with a light birch veneer frame. I recognized the retro, por-trait style immediately. The pho-tograph was titled “Self Portrait as my Mother, Jean Gregory,” done in 2003.
When studying the details of the photograph, I was caught off-guard by the eerie appear-ance of the woman’s eyes. The off-putting superficiality of the subject was characteristic of British artist Gillian Wearing.
Although I had seen another one of Wearing’s pieces from this collection, I was still un-comfortably mesmerized by the concept. The ar tist used pros-thetic masks to recreate images
of her family members, and in each piece only the eyes of the mysterious person behind the mask can be seen. The identi-ty of this person is never re-vealed, although the exterior facade is blatant and typical of a portrait.
The juxtaposition of the two en-tities — the identity of a being and the body of another — truly high-lighted the theme of the exhibit.
In a world ruled by online iden-tity and self-crafted autobiogra-phies, I found it interesting to see pieces that can relate identity back to the physical form of the body. Body Doubles is a show that people in any stage of life will appreciate, because of its universal message: Personhood is both physically and mentally construed.
Imagine a weekly program that combines the audio of talk radio, the addictive nature of TV and the convenience of your iPod.
Believe it or not, this medium already exists and is as awesome as it sounds. I am referring to, of course, the podcast.
For those who have never heard of podcasting, here are the basics: Podcasts are essentially au-dio or video Web shows that fo-cus on specific topics or themes.
Unlike other media, pod-casts are almost always free to listen to. While they are cer-tainly nothing new, podcasts have hit a renaissance of sorts in the last few years.
The increasing popularity of the format can be attributed to the staggering amount and variety of content podcasters are producing.
There are thousands of pod-casts to choose from that cater to every interest such as tech, sports or literature; if you can think of a topic, there is proba-bly a podcast for it.
Of course, you can’t possi-bly listen to every single one, so I found the best of the best that you should be listening to every week.
So whether you’re picking your first podcast or trying to find your next obsession, here’s the cream of the crop:
premiered in Octo-ber), but has already developed a dedicat-ed fan base.
Created and nar-rated by journalist Sarah Koenig and produced by WBEZ, Serial serves as a spinoff to WBEZ’s wildly popular radio program This Ameri-can Life.
In this thrilling weekly show, Koenig investigates the 1999 murder of a Balti-more teen. As she digs into the case, she finds murky de-tails and questionable testimonies that suggest that the case isn’t as simple as it seems.
Serial is true crime at its fin-est, with Koenig’s self-aware narration and impeccable story-telling showing off her skills as a podcaster.
Each episode is so good that the wait for the next one is un-bearable. Koenig plans for each season to cover a different story, so this one will stay on your lis-tening list for a while.
Pop Culture Happy Hour (Fridays, iTunes or npr.org/blogs)
NPR blogger Linda Holmes leads a weekly rotating roundta-ble of pop culture commentators who discuss the latest in music, movies, TV, etc.
The show is a must-listen for pop culture nerds (like my-
self) because of the intelligent, thoughtful and often hilarious conversations in each episode.
If you’ve ever wanted to think more critically about the media you consume, Holmes and her fellow contributors will help you ask the right questions about pop culture and challenge your pre-conceptions about why you like certain pieces of media. Plus, the group provides excellent sugges-tions for what to watch, read or listen to in the future. The show is light, fun and a perfect listen for a Friday night.
Comedy Bang Bang (Mon-days and Thursdays, iTunes or earwolf.com)
Fans of irreverent and absurd-ist humor should already be famil-iar with the television show of the same name based on this podcast.
Hosted by comedian Scott Aukerman, CBB is a wackier, more improvised version of a late night talk show. Twice a week, Aukerman sits down with some of the fun-niest people in show biz, such as SNL alum Andy Samberg and Community star Gil-lian Jacobs, to talk about their latest projects.
The show sports a more relaxed for-mat that incorporates wild improvisation, strange characters
and odd games that ultimately result in some of the most sidesplitting comedy you’ll ever hear. A warning to those lis-tening in public: You will laugh out loud and people will stare at you.
Welcome to Night Vale (twice monthly, iTunes or commonplacebooks.com)
Welcome to Night Vale is a true callback to the old-time radio plays of yore. Night Vale is present-ed as a radio show broadcasting from the titular fictional town. The story is told through the char-acter Cecil Palmer as he describes the strange events that occur in Night Vale, such as floating cats, “glow clouds” and PTA meetings.
Created by book publishers Jo-seph Fink and Jeremy Cantor, the show strikes a balance between Lovecraftian horror and gallows
humor with Palmer delivering the narration with conviction to the material, making the often ridic-ulous stories sound eerily believ-able, but still maintaining enough sly wit in his voice to keep things darkly funny.
The podcast’s instant popular-ity spawned a series of live shows and a dedicated following all over the Internet.
Sound Opinions (Thurs-days, iTunes or soundopin-ions.org)
Produced right here in the Windy City, Sound Opinions is the perfect podcast for music aficio-nados. The show is hosted by Chi-cago music critics Jim DeRogatis of WBEZ and Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune.
Each week they pack the show with news, reviews and inter-views that are a delight to listen to because of Kot and DeRogatis’ ability to speak critically about music while still remaining huge music nerds. The show also plays live performances from groups such as Broken Bells, Tweedy and many more.
The banter between Kot and DeRogatis is playful and engag-ing, and their years of experience as rock critics give everything they say a certain validity.
With these top-tier podcasts to get you started, you’ll be a podcast fanatic in no time.
Check out The Phoenix web-site for our own podcast, The Super Ciolli Bros, hosted by Dom-inic and Jack Ciolli.
It’s radio... it’s television... it’s a PODCAST
Photo courtesy of Big Machine Records
Fifth time’s the charm: Swift makes full transition to
With her fifth studio album 1989, which dropped on Oct. 26, Taylor Swift has managed to com-pletely redefine her sound while staying true to herself as an artist. Keeping with her recent switch from country to pop, the acoustic guitar ballads where she sings of past lovers are gone. In their place are synth-driven pop songs where she still sings of romance, but with a new vigor.
Producers Jack Antonoff (lead guitarist of alternative rock band fun.) and Max Martin (whose previous work includes Britney Spears’ “…Baby One More Time”) have crafted sleek sounds that draw inspiration from pop artists of the late ‘80s, such as Madonna, Annie Lennox and Roxette.
It’s hard to listen to 1989 without a sense of nostalgia. The album definitely succeeds in emulating the sound of the mu-sic that inspired it. It sounds re-markably classic while still being fresh compared to today’s pop music scene.
What’s interesting about 1989 is how this change in sound has
impacted Swift’s songwriting. In the past, her songwriting often seemed immature — a teenage girl with her acoustic guitar, singing about a boy who broke her heart.
Every song seemed like a pity party, but now that her songwriting is supported by an upbeat, synth-pop sound, the songs seem more empowering. Swift’s 1989 is a lot less “oh I miss him” and a lot more “eh, forget him.”
In contrast to her previous work, fans will listen to 1989 when they are out on the town getting over a failed relationship instead of when they are sitting in their room heartbroken.
This is especially evident on songs such as “Blank Space” and “Bad Blood.” In “Blank Space,” Swift sings, “Got a long list of ex-lovers they’ll tell you I’m insane,” with an attitude that tells you she does not care what they actually think. In “Bad Blood” she sings, “you made a really deep cut and baby now we got bad blood,” in an aggressive, almost angry tone. No more pity parties for Swift.
One aspect of Swift’s previ-ous album, Red, that was irksome
was that the singles didn’t really sound like the rest of the album. “I Knew You Were Trouble,” “22” and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” are upbeat pop songs, and the rest of Red is composed mostly of slower country/sing-er-songwriter ballads.
However, with 1989, the lead single “Shake It Off ” fits in much better with the rest of the album. It has a similar sound to the rest of the tracks and doesn’t stick out when listening through the album, makeing the album more cohesive.
Something that has steadily im-proved with each album is Swift’s vocals. When her self-titled debut album was released in 2006, Swift was a young teenager becoming accustomed to fame and fortune. Now in her fifth album, Swift is a young woman who has been in the spotlight for years. She is one of the biggest names in the music industry, and the confidence that comes with this shows in her vocals.
Swift’s vocals on 1989 sound effortless, even when she is singing big, long notes such as in “Style,” “Shake It Off,” and “How You Get the Girl.” It never sounds like she is straining her
voice or that she needed the help of her producers to make her sound great.
Overall, 1989 does a great job of acting as an homage to classic pop songs of the ‘80s while at the same time being incredibly fresh and chic.
If you weren’t a fan of Swift be-fore, listen to this album and there is a good chance it will change your mind.
Now that Swift is focusing on pop music, she has firmly planted herself as one of today’s best pop acts, and the change in sound in no way detracts from her previous appeal as an incredibly relatable songwriter for anyone who has ever been in love.
1989 introduces Swift’s new elements while keeping the charming, warm qualities of her old music.
Photo courtesy of Commonplace Books
Welcome to Night Vale airs twice a month on commonplacebooks.com
14 NOVEMBER 19, 2014 | A&E
is the season to make those must-see lists and check them twice because
Hollywood is poised to present its final batch of Oscar contenders.
Over the next six weeks, we will see flicks and performances from the likes of Paul Thomas An-derson, Clint Eastwood, Angelina Jolie, Meryl Streep, Tim Burton and Bradley Cooper.
Academy Award nominated writer, director and producer Paul Thomas Anderson has the innate ability to capture truth and consequence with quiet ease. With films such as Boogie Nights, Magnolia and There Will Be Blood, Anderson uncovers the essence of humanity with a prowess unat-tainable by most directors.
This year he has reunited with actor Joaquin Phoenix (who he directed in The Master) for Inher-ent Vice.
The film is a departure for Anderson as he slides into the arena of slapstick film noir with the adaptation of Thomas Pyn-chon’s acclaimed crime novel of the same name.
Phoenix portrays Doc Spor-tello, a bumbling private eye sent on a mission by his “ex-old lady” to rescue her billionaire boy-friend from being thrown into the loony bin.
The backdrop is the fictitious town of Gordita Beach, Cali-fornia, in 1970, when white su-premacist bikers clashed with black power ex-cons, and former hippies meandered the streets in search of a fix.
Sportello’s comedy of errors eventually lands him into the heart of a conspiracy bubbling between a flamboyant land developer (Eric Roberts) and a saxophone-play-ing surfer (Owen Wilson), but the gang of misfits doesn’t stop there.
An all-star ensemble cast that includes Josh Brolin, Reese With-erspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Martin Short, Jena Malone, Maya Ru-dolph and Michael Kenneth Wil-liams bolsters Phoenix’s eccentric performance.
‘T
Courtesy of Ghoulardi Film Company
Courtesy of Killer Films
Courtesy of Legendary Pictures
Courtesy of Silverwood Films
Courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures
Courtesy of Village Roadshow PicturesCourtesy of Fox Searchlight
Oscar season is slowly migrating to a screen near you with tempting tales of murder, passion, fame and battlefield pride. Here’s a preview of the winter flicks with all the right tricks:
Fresh off his success from Dallas Buyers Club (2013), director Jean-Marc Vallee returns to the screen to tell the astounding true story of writer Cheryl Strayed. Vallee has teamed up with screenwriter Nick
Hornby (An Education, About a Boy) to adapt Strayed’s memoir, Wild: Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail. After years of living dangerously — heroin addiction, a destroyed marriage, desperate promiscuity – Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) at-tempts to escape her past by hiking more than 1,000 miles on the Pa-cific Coast Trail.
Without any experience on the open trail and saddled by haunting memories of her moth-er and inner demons that refuse to subside, Cheryl’s only re-source is her ruthless fortitude. Witherspoon delivers a raw per-formance that exposes the purity of a tortured soul scavenging for her lost innocence.
By all accounts, Alice How-land (Julianne Moore) is in the prime of her life: she’s a re-nowned linguistics professor at Columbia University, happily married and the mother of three
grown children (portrayed by Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth and Hunter Parrish).
However, Alice suddenly finds herself in a perpetual state of confusion.
After a trip to the doctor, she is hit with the diagnosis of early-on-set Alzheimer’s. Alice is forced to abandon any semblance of her previous life and battle her fate. The push and pull of her progno-sis causes rifts in her marriage as her husband (Alec Baldwin) resists the necessary adjustments to their new life.
Moore returns to the power she demonstrated in The Hours, Far from Heaven and The Kids Are All Right with a performance likely to strike Oscar gold.
Director Angelina Jolie’s latest film has the seductive traits Os-car finds irresistible: World War II, passion, sports and terror. Joel and Ethan Coen the writing/directing duo of such films as Fargo (1996) and
No Country for Old Men (2007) adapt-ed the film from the biography about the life of war hero and Olympian Louis “Louie” Zamperini.
Lieutenant Zamperini (Jack O’Connell) is a part of a bomber crew in the United States Army Air Force in 1943.
After surviving a plane crash over the Pacific, he and two crew-men are adrift in a raft for 47 days before being captured by the Japanese Navy. Zamperini is transferred between various pris-oner-of-war camps before landing at the Naoetsu camp, where he suffers under the tortuous hand of prison guard Mutsuhiro Watanabe (Takamasa Ishihara), nicknamed “The Bird,” until the war’s end.
Director Tim Burton (Big Fish, Ed Wood, Edward Scissor-hands) has joined forces with the writing duo of Scott Alex-ander and Larry Karaszewski (Ed Wood, Man on the Moon, The People vs. Larry Flynt) to present the real-life story of Margaret and Walter Keane, who rose to international fame in the ‘50s and early ‘60s with Walter’s
(Christoph Waltz) enchanting portraits of skinny youngsters with big eyes.
With his wife Margaret (Amy Adams) at his side, the duo rev-olutionized the wheelings and dealings of the art industry.
The film is centered on the fame that catapulted Walter to the highest echelons of celeb-rity and the crushing lie stran-gling Margaret’s identity.
Actor Bradley Cooper stars in the true story of a Navy SEAL sniper. His wife is played by Sienna Miller. And the film is directed by Clint Eastwood… I don’t need to say more, but I will.
Chris Kyle (Cooper) serves
four tours of duty in Iraq on a mission to protect his brothers-in-arms, and in doing so, be-comes the most lethal sniper in U.S. history.
Steely nerves, pinpoint accura-cy and acts of heroism earn him the nickname “Legend.”
Eventually, his reputation bil-lows among the enemy, making him a prime target of the insur-gents. Chris is forced to maintain grace under pressure in the field while his life back home begins to destruct from within.
His role of husband and father begins to play second fiddle to his duty as a trained fighter.
The Navy has conditioned this warrior to “leave no one be-hind,” but to which family does this mantra apply?
Rendered childless by a curse from a wicked witch (Mer-yl Streep), a baker and his wife (James Corden and Emily Blunt) venture into the woods to secure
four magical objects — a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn and a slipper as pure as gold — required to reverse their spell.
Fairy tale characters Jack (and his magic beans), Snow White, Rapunzel and Cinderella are inter-locking characters within the film. The story investigates responsibil-ity, the problems that come from wishes and the legacies we leave for future generations. Complete with captivating musical numbers adapted from the Broadway play, this tale is born of innocence be-fore melting into a story rooted in those tempting desires of agony and ecstasy.
Following her film’s premiere at the American Film Institute Film Festival, director Ava Du-Vernay (Middle of Nowhere, I Will Follow) has critics buzzing about a best director nod, which would
be the first ever for an Afri-can-American woman.
DuVernay has recruited a clas-sically trained stage actor from England, David Oyelowo (Lincoln, Interstellar), to portray Martin Lu-ther King Jr. during the civil rights marches that changed the course of history.
With Oprah on board as the film’s executive producer, Tom Wilkinson (The Grand Budapest Hotel, Batman Begins) in the role of Lyndon B. Johnson and sup-porting roles from Giovanni Rib-isi (Ted, Avatar), Tim Roth (Octo-ber Gale, Pulp Fiction) and Cuba Gooding Jr. (Jerry McGuire, Men of Honor), the film is sure to entice the Academy.
Courtesy of Cloud Eight Films
For more Oscar Watch picks, go to
loyolaphoenix.com.
Inherent Vice - Dec. 12
Unbroken - Dec. 25
Still Alice - Dec. 5 (limited release in New York and LA)
Courtesy of What’s Your Rupture? RecordsContent Nausea is rock band Parquet Courts’ fourth album, following Sunbathing Animal (both 2014 releases).
Parquet Courts packs in modern message with fourth album
If you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like to be on drugs without actually taking any, go to an FKA twigs show.
The musician’s Nov. 13 show at the Met-ro (3730 N. Clark St.) was a surreal expe-rience filled with flashing strobe lights and bass that rattled the audience’s bones.
FKA twigs (Tahliah Barnett) is a British singer who is pioneering a sound known as ethereal R&B, which is a mixture of R&B and electronic music — most of the time featuring slow tempos and unusual productions, meaning the sound does not come from any traditional instruments.
Instead, her songs generally have indus-trial sounds such as clicks as well as dis-torted, rhythmic bass lines, such as in the song “Pendulum” from her debut album LP1, which dropped earlier this year.
The song begins simply with a couple clicks, but slowly builds by adding in vo-cals and bass. The clicks themselves could be described as a creaking floor but more rhythmic. The best way to grasp what the production sounds like would be to sim-ply listen to the songs.
FKA twigs’ vocals are whispery and sometimes sound like chants — to be blunt, the music is weird, but not in a bad way. It probably wouldn’t find itself on a top hits radio station. The live show, though, perfectly showcased the musi-cian’s unusual side.
FKA twigs opened with “Preface” from LP1. During the song, the venue filled with smoke from a smoke machine, which allowed the minimal lights onstage to eas-
ily fill the whole venue. The smokey fog became illuminated by the lights, which brought a warm glow to the venue.
The beginning of the song sounds like a hymn with a lot of echoed, overlapped vocals, like a church choir but with FKA twigs’ own twisted style thrown in.
After the intro, the singer went through four songs with no breaks be-fore finally taking a moment to address the crowd, which began a surprising shift in tone.
The minute FKA twigs stopped performing to greet the crowd she almost seemed to shr ink. She was soft-spoken and a little timid. But when she was performing onstage, she commanded the stage along with everyone’s attention.
She had three members in her band, but they were mostly tucked away on the sides or the back of the stage. The rest of the stage was owned by FKA twigs and her dance moves, which are influenced by “voguing.”
Voguing is a dance style that star t-ed in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in the ‘80s that later gained mainstream attention due to Madonna’s song “Vogue” as well as the acclaimed documentary Paris is Burning (1990).
The dance features a lot of rigid movements and a form of miming. Fash-ion poses often serve as inspirations for the dance moves.
After the break, FKA twigs performed “Pendulum.” This song features a lot of in-dustrial clicking sounds, which are accent-ed by the singer’s stage dressing and strobe lights that flashed in sync with the clicks. The
strobe lights together with the smoke created a trippy environment that could not be better suited for the music.
The atmosphere of the venue was chaotic due to the flashing strobe lights and very heavy bass, but also very sooth-ing due to the slow, calm music.
In a way, this was a reflection of FKA twigs’ music itself, which features un-orthodox production with soothing vo-cals.
Both the live performance and the music feature contradictions, but they still manage to be cohesive and unified. All of the components create a balance that is at the forefront of FKA twigs’ sound.
After “Pendulum,” FKA twigs per-formed non stop for six songs until right before the last song, “How’s That,” from her second EP, EP2.
She then thanked the crowd for com-ing out and spoke about how she loved that she could feel that everyone in the room was there for the music alone and nothing else.
“How’s That” was an interesting choice to end the setlist. The song is fairly slow with a lot of ambience and some more of the clicks thrown in.
There are also not a lot of lyrics in the song. Most of the time FKA twigs is singing “How’s that?” over the beat, with no clear verses or chorus. This made it an unexpected follow up to the previ-ous song in the setlist, which was “Two Weeks” from LP1.
“Two Weeks” is arguably her biggest hit so far. It is also the most likely of all the songs to become a crossover main-
stream hit since it is fairly upbeat and features a more traditional lyrical struc-ture. It seemed like the setlist would’ve been more appropriately closed if “Two Weeks” had been the last song.
Overall, though, FKA twigs gave a performance that suited her music per-fectly. It wasn’t over the top — instead it was understated, much like her music.
FKA twigs may not be a household name, but she is quickly gaining pop-ularity after being labeled an artist to watch in 2014 by Billboard and Spotify.
Even though the music is not very mainstream, take a chance and allow FKA twigs to take you on a surreal journey.
New York City rock band Parquet Courts released its fourth studio album, Content Nausea, on Nov. 11. The album was released under one of the band’s three name, Parkay Quarts (the third being PCPC when it plays with PC Worship).
The band recently released its third stu-dio album Sunbathing Animal this past June, which reached No. 55 on the Billboard Al-bum Chart. Now the band has come out with Content Nausea, an album that heavily strays from its previous work. While Sun-bathing Animal focused on pure guitar riffs and melodic vocals, Content Nausea comes rough and packed with a larger message: We are being eaten alive by technology.
The album highlights frontman Andrew Savage’s luring vocals and allows the rest of the band, consisting of Austin Brown (guitar), Sean Yeaton (bass) and Max Savage (drums), to transform their sound musically. The group abandoned its “too-nice” indie rock sound and began to sound like a true rock band whose music is complemented by jagged punk edges.
In the album’s title track, “Content Nausea,” the band, especially songwriter Andrew Savage , shows distaste for technological dependency with the lyrics, “This year it become harder to be tender/ Harder and harder to remember/ Meeting a friend/ Writing a letter/ Being lost/ Antique ritual all lost to the ceremony of progress.” Savage bellows out his indignation in abrupt harmonies that are sporadic enough to mesh into a cohesive, beating sound.
The album’s first track “Everyday It
Starts” consists of a mere 12 words (“Every day it starts / Anxiety / And I never got to sleep but I go to bed”). The song lulls listen-ers into a daze of unvarying vocals by Savage and Brown, and the repetitive nature of the single is the perfect way to begin an album focused around routine.
The message continues in “Pretty Ma-chines,” track six on the album, when Savage sings, “And you think you’re a modern person / You think that you can’t ignore / Silent isolat-
ing, my emancipation.” “Pretty Machines” is one of the better tracks
on the album. Though repetition depicts the al-bum’s message, a little variation in Max Sav-age’s drumming adds much-needed aesthetic to the album’s sound. Savage drums energetic beats while Yeaton begins to add energy that carries the song.
“Psycho Structures” has a vague resem-blance to a slowed-down American punk band Misfits single, and features the band’s
own take on a fast-paced bass-driven rou-tine. These bursts of unexpected melodies are what carry the album far past any of the band’s previous work. There’s a new range to the band’s talent, and it seems to have figured out that sometimes going against the grain can lead to better results.
The technological theme that encompasses Content Nausea continues on through its track listing, often featuring robotic keyboard addi-tions behind the band’s beating bass drum. The eighth track on the album, “The Map,” brings out Yeaton’s chugging guitar, and adds rhyth-mic details that complement the overarching idea the band was attempting to embody.
The static, flat-sounding songs on the al-bum come together eloquently — and sur-prisingly so. It’s easy to get lost in Savage’s deep voice and to succumb to the organized madness that’s represented in the band’s mu-sic — the modern day technological plague it’s attempting to fight its way through. In essence, if scruffy garage-rock punk band The Men wrote angst-filled songs about how much it hates society’s desire to become the most “liked” person on the Internet, Content Nausea would be the result.
While most songs in the album are made up of breathy, heavy vocals on Savage’s part and tight, whiny pleas from Yeaton’s guitar, tracks such as “Uncast Shadows of a South-ern Myth” bring listeners back to the band’s smooth roots from Sunbathing Animal and its debut album American Specialties (2011). With the release of Content Nausea, Parkay Quarts, PCPC or whatever other name the band decides to go with next will remain a band to follow.
16 NOVEMBER 19, 2014 | A&E
Gray Mountain is the newest novel in author John Grisham’s collection. The story is surpris-ingly gripping — even for readers who wouldn’t typically pick up a book riddled with legal jargon.
Set in 2008, the story focuses on 29-year-old Samantha Kofer, a Columbia University graduate and third-year associate at a law firm on Wall Street.
Samantha’s dream is to survive the 100-hour work weeks and se-cure a status as partner by the time she’s 35. The worst thing that could possibly happen at this point in her life would be getting furloughed (a fancy way of saying temporarily fired) and being forced to work for some sort of nonprofit and desper-ately cling to the hope she’ll have a job in a year.
Grisham’s style of writing drops his readers in the middle of Saman-tha’s worst nightmare without any introductions or boring character
Gray Mountain gives readers thrills in the Appalachian MountainsBY RACHEL [email protected]
Photo courtesy of Penguin Random House
descriptions at the beginning. The first chapter opens in a
flurry of concerned lawyers all watching their backs and praying they won’t be the next to be fired. Unfortunately, Samantha becomes one of the few “furloughed” em-ployees and though she can keep her benefits, she must find a tem-porary nonprofit job until the re-cession turns around.
The plot follows her to Brady, a town located in the depths of the Appalachian Mountains. Used to being a large law-firm lawyer in New York, Samantha feels very much like a big fish in a small pond in town.
In Brady, Samantha works for Mattie Wyatt (my favorite charac-ter in the novel). Mattie is an Ap-palachian native who runs a small legal aid clinic where the main pri-ority is to help those who need it, even if they can’t pay for it. She has all of the spunk and bite needed to win her cases, and teaches Saman-tha a thing or two about what law-yers really do in Brady.
Since most of the cases that come to the legal clinic are against big coal companies, these lawyers have to learn to play hardball, find-ing loopholes in every law or dig-ging up incriminating documents against the bad guys in order to win — something Samantha knew nothing about as an associate in New York. In her eyes, “playing hardball” is equivalent to having a death wish, because the coal com-panies they go up against are not afraid to do whatever it takes to silence the little guys.
After meeting Mattie’s nephew, Donovan Gray — who actually en-joys the thrill of butting heads with some of the biggest and baddest guys in the courtrooms — Saman-tha learns that these coal compa-nies have all the power.
Donovan devotes his entire ca-reer to fighting these companies that not only destroy the Appala-chian Mountains but also the lives of those living and working there.
Reckless and dangerous, he sucks Samantha into a dirty legal
game against some of the largest companies, where whoever plays the dirtiest wins.
My favorite parts of the story are the plot twists. They happen so suddenly that you almost have to reread the sentences again slowly to make sure they actually hap-pened. Samantha faces being fol-lowed by thugs and gets targeted by the FBI, and we are left won-dering how it’s all going to end.
As you read, you find out if Sa-mantha will retreat back to New York where she belongs or stand and fight in this tiny Appalachian town amid the horrible events un-folding around her.
Though I had never read any of Grisham’s books before, I couldn’t put Gray Mountain down. His cap-tivating writing style includes mo-ments of love and sexual tension, but the real thrill is in the legal fight, not the romance.
The focus is on telling the story of coal mining in the Appalachian Mountains, which I found to be more interesting than the charac-
ters’ lives, and like in any good dra-ma, there is a murder, which both broke my heart and fired me up.
Overall, I would recommend this novel to anyone interested in courtroom dramas, and even if that isn’t your cup of tea, pick up the book anyway.
If you like shows such as Law and Order, you’ll love Grisham’s thrilling new release.
While walking through Lakev-iew, looking for somewhere to grab breakfast and passing a dozen coffee shops, I found City Harvest Cafe (2931 N. Broadway) a few blocks away from the Wellington Brown Line stop. With a small sign placed in front of the win-dow reading “Organic Healthbar,” I knew I had to drop in.
With the word “Healthbar” in the window, I expected to see a large array from raw juic-es, healing elixirs and teas — all organic and hand-crafted — and that was exactly what I got. As I stepped inside the small wooden interior, I imme-diately noticed a black chalk-board menu hanging behind the register with superfood blends (smoothies) and raw juices.
Out of the numerous options, owner Angela Maicki told me the fan-favorites are the house green, a raw juice including kale, cucumber, celery, carrot, apple, parsley and lemon cold-pressed ($10) or made in house ($8.50), and the Incan warrior
Harvest City features items such as superfood blends, smoothies, bowls and fall items such as date caramel & gala apples ($5) and a pure pumpkin blend ($8.50).
smoothie ($8.50) featuring co-conut oil, raw cacao and house-made almond milk.
Along with the regular menu options I noticed two featured fall items near the cash register: date caramel & gala apples ($5) and the pure pumpkin blend ($8.50) with raw pumpkin, hemp seeds, house made almond milk, cinna-mon, ginger, dates and bourbon vanilla bean.
Despite these seasonal op-tions, I wanted to try one of the two goji bowl selections. Goji bowls are a blend of superfoods and fresh fruit, topped with goji berries — a tiny immune-sys-tem-boosting berry from West-ern cultures that contains 18 amino acids, iron and vitamin C. They taste similar to raisins.
I’ve had acai bowls in the past (a thick blend of acai berries with granola and fruit toppings), so I assumed that the goji bowl I ($10) would have a similar thick consis-tency. Maicki recommended the goji bowl I to me, describing its texture as similar to thick yogurt due to the almond milk. The sec-ond bowl option, the goji bowl II, in contrast, was lighter from add-ed water. After ordering goji bowl I, within moments another work-er behind the counter handed it to me. To my surprise, it came in a cup and had an extremely thin consistency, which made it diffi-cult to eat with a spoon.
The goji bowl included Thai coconut meat, house-made al-mond milk, chia seeds, banana and goji berries.
With each goji bowl, cus-
tomers have the option of add-ing two extra superfoods, such as medjool dates and raw Sicilian almond butter, for no added cost. Despite a small portion size and the texture not being as thick as I would have liked, I was pleased with my choice of hemp seeds and trail mix as toppings. The trail mix featured exotic berries and nuts, while extra dried goji berries added a nice squishy bite to each spoonful. If you’re a banana fan, you’ll love this bowl because of the creamy texture brought out by the coconut and fresh milk.
What I enjoyed most about City Harvest Cafe was the “healing elixirs” portion of the menu. Sure, most juice joints such as Jamba Juice have wheatgrass shots, but at City Harvest, you can purchase a 2-ounce shot of liquid chlorophyll and young Thai coconut.
Liquid chlorophyll is known for rebuilding red blood cells and boosting energy, and with the fla-vor of coconut to balance it out, it is definitely worth stepping out of your comfort zone for. If you’re not interested in grabbing one of the drinks, City Harvest also offers homemade truffles ($2.50 each or $8 for four) made of raw cacao, dates and nutrient-dense snacks.
For being open only six months, City Harvest Cafe is slowly but surely sneaking into the lives of juicers across the neighborhood. As I finished my goji bowl, three customers had stopped in to grab boxes of juice. I look forward to coming in again to try out one of the many juice and superfood options.
If you’re interested in juice
cleanses, you can decide between three options: the juice ($48 per day for five juices), the reboot ($48 per day for five superfood smoothies) or the detox ($60 per day for three juices and two superfood smoothies). Cleanses can be scheduled for pickup with
a 48-hour advance notice. But if you’re in the Lakeview area and need a superfood boost, be sure to stop in and treat yourself.
City Harvest Cafe is open Mon-day - Friday from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sun-day 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
17SPORTS | NOVEMBER 19, 2014
SPORTS
Montel James stole the show. In his first ever NCAA Division I basketball game on Nov. 14, the 6-foot, 7-inch, 220-pound for-ward on Loyola’s men’s basketball team statistically led all players on the floor.
“For the most part, I’m just very excited,” said James, 21, be-fore the game. “I’m excited to play my first Division I basketball game. You’ve got to admit you’re gonna be nervous, [but] once the game starts and you get your jitters out, then it’s time to roll; it’s time to get going.”
And get going he did. James started the Ramblers’ first game of the season as forward against Rockhurst. The junior scored 19 points and grabbed eight re-bounds, leading all players on the floor in both categories.
But James doesn’t see himself as the primary scorer on the team, and he is willing to assume any role to help the team succeed.
“I wouldn’t say I have an exact role on the team, but I just want to bring what I can to make my team successful. But at the same time, I want to be successful,” James said. “So whatever that is –– rebound-ing, scoring, being a great team-mate and defender –– whatever that is, I want to do it.”
Sometimes that means stepping in as a leader on the team.
“We’ve got people that have been here before me, but you can’t really consider a newcomer to not be a leader because even though you’re a newcomer, when somebody older than you does something wrong, you’ve still got
the authority to correct them even though you’re younger or less experienced,” James said. “I just think everybody on the team should be leaders.”
James played his first two years of college ball at Cof-feyville Community College in Kansas. He transferred to Loyola this fall, but there is still one fa-miliar face on the team: fellow junior Earl Peterson, who played with James the past two seasons at Coffeyville.
“Knowing Earl for two years and being the close friends that we are, it’s great,” James said. “We’ve got so much in common and to play with him for two years, it’s pretty good.”
James and Peterson met their freshman year at Coffeyville, but weren’t always sure they wanted to transfer to the same school. Loyola’s men’s basketball head coach Por-ter Moser attended many of Cof-feyville’s games and spoke with James and Peterson afterwards.
“After the games he’d talk to us and he had this enthusiasm all the time,” James said of Moser.
James had several other offers to consider aside from Loyola, though. He had interest from big-name teams such as Oklahoma, Wichita State and Creighton, but he suffered an ankle injury while at Coffeyville and his stock went down as a result. After the inju-ry, Louisiana Tech, Murray State, Tulane and Missouri State all ex-pressed interest. But, in the end, James chose Loyola.
“Earl committed first and I was still deciding, and then coach Mos-er and the whole coaching staff and Earl, they were trying to get me to go [to Loyola],” James said. “It was
just trying to get me to join the family and I decided to.”
James was introduced to the Loyola community at Midnight Madness this year in the dunk contest, in which he beat out teammate Donte Ingram for the crown with a between-the-legs dunk.
“It was great. It was just great,” James said. “The first dunk I did, it kind of got a low score and they kind of cheated me on that, but after that I was just thinking, I got to do something to get my score
up. I was actually saving that for last, it was last, but I thought we got three dunks, but I just went for it and it was a great feeling. I watched that video like a million times, back to back all night.”
Basketball wasn’t James’ first love. As a kid, he wanted to play football, but his dad would never let him, so he decided to give bas-ketball a shot.
“I used always to see my broth-er out playing on the streets all the time, so I was like, ‘I might as well play basketball too.’ So that’s when
it started,” James said. “I was in el-ementary school; I was like nine. I didn’t start officially playing bas-ketball until eighth grade.”
From starting on the streets outside his home in Lousiana to playing Division I ball at Loyola, James isn’t sure what’s next for him, but right now he’s focused on his game.
“That’s down the road,” James said. “I haven’t put much thought into [what I want to do after school]. My main focus right now is on ball.”
Forward Montel James is off to a strong start, averaging 12.5 points and 6 rebounds after the first two games of the season.
JUCO no mo’ for forward Montel James
Penzenstadler keeps running to new heights
With just 1,000 meters remain-ing in the 10,000 meter Midwest Re-gional Cross Country Championship race in Peoria, Illinois, four runners began to pull away from their com-petitors. Among the frontrunners was Loyola’s own Sam Penzenstadler.
On a frigid Friday last week, the athletes were giving all they had to make the prestigious NCAA Nation-al Cross Country meet. All 208 run-ners in the race fought for the four available spots at nationals.
With 800 meters to go in the race, sophomore Penzenstadler momen-tarily surged ahead to take the lead. But moments before reaching the fin-ish line, he was passed by two other runners. However, Penzenstadler’s third-place finish was enough to clinch an NCAA national berth.
The cross country standout, who first gained national notoriety last track season by achieving first team
All-American honors in the mile and 1,500 meter races, is the first Loyola runner to qualify for the NCAA Cross Country National Meet since 2005.
Penzenstadler said all the hard train-ing paid off and the achievement meant a lot to him. Because he normally runs much shorter distances for track and field, having success at a 10-kilometer event is particularly meaningful for him.
The Oshkosh, Wisconsin, native was one of four competitors from the midwest regional meet to qualify
for cross country nationals. His third-place finish is a 38-place improve-ment from last year, when he placed 41st overall in the regional race.
“It was only my fourth ever 10k [event] so I didn’t really know how it was going to go,” Penzenstadler said. “I hadn’t really [run] a good 10k race before this, so it meant a lot to me.”
Although Loyola entered the race unranked as a team, the Ramblers finished 10th overall. This 10th-place finish marked Loyola’s best finish
since 2005. Mitchell Baum was the sixth Loyola
runner to cross the finish line at Peoria. “I would say we did pretty well.
Given the fact that we were seventh in the conference and 10th in the re-gion, coach was happy,” said Baum. “We always strive for better, and it would’ve been awesome to be top four, but that wasn’t realistic at this point, so 10th was good.”
Even though he has been Penzen-stadler’s teammate for three years, Baum still remains in awe.
“Sam just as an individual and a human is so impressive, and he nev-er ceases to amaze all of us. As his teammate, it is always inspiring to see someone come out in their junior and senior years of college and real-ly shine,” Baum said. “Sam is a miler and then he goes and kills it in the 8k and 10k. That is inspiring because that shows us that we can’t limit ourselves.”
In his last collegiate cross coun-try race, Penzenstadler will travel to Terre Haute, Indiana, to compete
against some of the best distance run-ners in the nation. His goal is to be-come the first All-American in cross country at Loyola since Jim Westphal achieved the feat in 1989.
“I want to get a top-40 spot to be an All-American,” Penzenstadler said. “That would be a win in our book.”
Terre Haute is a familiar scene for Penzenstadler, who has already run the course on two separate occasions.
“The goal is to stay from 40th to 60th place. Just like regionals, it’s only going to be a couple seconds apart. So just stay there through [the first] 5k and move through [toward the top] there,” Penzenstadler said.
With his advancement into the national meet, Penzenstadler continues to add to his many ac-complishments from his storied Loyola career. Bringing back more honors from Terre Haute would undoubtedly place Penzenstadler among the best of a long list of historically accomplished Loyola distance runners.
Penzenstadler will compete in the National Cross Country Championship Saturday.
18 NOVEMBER 19, 2014 | SPORTS
Women’s basketball back to full healthThree key players return to roster after injuries last seasonBY MADELINE [email protected]
Coming back from an injury is no easy task, but three members of Loyola’s women’s basketball team are facing exactly that hard-ship this season.
Tiana Karopulos, Taylor John-son and Simone Law are all re-turning from last year’s injuries determined to make up for what they missed. However, Head Coach Sheryl Swoopes said com-ing back to the court after an in-jury can be difficult, both mental-ly and physically.
“It is always scary in a way when you come back from an in-jury and don’t really know exact-ly what to expect,” Swoopes said.
One of Swoopes’ biggest goals for the team this season is to keep the players on the court and out of physical therapy.
“I believe [the goal that] is the most important is just to stay healthy,” Swoopes said. “We struggled with that last year, and although that is not really some-thing we can control, that is definitely our number one goal, to stay healthy and to get every-one back.”
Swoopes also said that all three athletes have been working hard in the off-season with rehabilita-tion to get back in shape.
Redshirt freshman Karopu-los tore her ACL in her left knee last season in Loyola’s game against Minnesota on Nov. 26. The 5-foot, 10-inch guard from
Tinley Park, Illinois, was coming down from a jump stop when she landed wrong.
“I just felt it,” Karopulos said, recalling the incident.
She underwent surgery in Janu-ary, and then battled through a six-month rehabilitation program, which included physical therapy.
Swoopes spoke highly of Karopu-los’ ability to push through her injury.
“[Tiana has] worked exceptionally hard in the offseason with rehab and physical therapy to get back out on the court,” Swoopes said. “[She] is a hard worker.”
Johnson, a redshirt sopho-more, also suffered an ACL tear in her left knee during the Ram-blers game against Western Illi-nois at the end of November.
The Frankfort, Illinois, native said her love for the sport and passion for the game was what aided her to overcome this injury.
“I want to make my family and myself proud,” Johnson said. “I want to make an impact on the school and hopefully get remem-bered for something I love doing.”
Swoopes also recognized John-son’s hard work in the offseason.
“[Taylor] came out since [prac-tice started] and gave every-thing she’s got every single day,” Swoopes said. “We’re expecting her to come in and play point guard and shooting guard for us a little bit.”
Senior forward Law is coming into this season with a history of knee problems.
“My first injury happened in
the summer when I had [an ar-throscopy] just to clean up car-tilage in my knee from wear and tear,” Law said. “Later, during the Minnesota game, I landed wrong and we found out that my knee cap was sliding in and out of place.”
Law dislocated her left knee cap and underwent surgery at the end of January. Her rehabilitation program lasted eight months.
All three teammates agreed that physical therapy was just as much of a mental challenge as physical.
Johnson felt that her recovery had more downs than ups.
“There were days when I just didn’t want to do my rehab,” Johnson said. “And then there were days where it would seem like I would never play again. Re-hab can be really mentally tough ... but once my knee started feel-ing good in rehab, that’s when I started regaining my confidence again. And I knew I was ready to play again.”
Karopulos said physical therapy was definitely challenging, but she is coming back on the court fearless.
“Physical therapy was tough, probably more so tougher men-tally than physically,” she said. “But you just kind of have to push through it and you’ll get there … [Coming back] I have no fear. I just don’t really think about in-jury. Stuff is going to happen and you just kind of have to face it. [My biggest challenge now is] probably just getting fast again.”
Law, on the other hand, thought
the physical damage was just as hard as the mental recovery.
“Physical damage was proba-bly the hardest part and just get-ting back mentally and rebuilding back that muscle because you get so weak after you undergo sur-gery,” Law said. “So it’s just really hard coming back from that, but I think it’s just a good testing point
This time of year is supposed to be a Chicago fan’s sports heaven.
The Bears should be position-ing themselves for a deep playoff run with a prolific offense and a “Monsters of the Midway” defense.
The Blackhawks should be off to an undefeated start and on their way to yet another Stanley Cup.
Despite the fact that Rose, Butler, Gasol and Noah have all spent time out with injuries, the Bulls should still be piling up early-season wins because, as Coach Tom Thibodeau would say, they have “more than enough to win with.” And Derrick Rose should be making version num-ber (insert number here) of what Twitter users call #TheReturn.
The Cubs should be planning for yet another “next year is our year” season with their best-in-the-majors farm system. And the White Sox should be… Well, does anybody re-
ally care about the White Sox?With all those expectations, noth-
ing could possibly go wrong. Right?The Bears are arguably the big-
gest disappointment in the NFL. They gave up more than 50 points in consecutive games for only the second time in NFL history, with the other team being the Roch-ester Jeffersons in 1923. You may have heard that stat on NBC’s Sun-day Night Football telecast when the Packers embarrassed the Bears, but it’s such an unbelievable thing that it was worth repeating.
The offense looks inept, Coach Marc Trestman looks clueless, and Smokin’ Jay Cutler just has the “I don’t care” look on his face. Oh, and Brandon Marshall is chal-lenging fans to boxing matches on Twitter. Of course he is.
All right, so the Bears are a disas-ter, but what about the Blackhawks?
The Blackhawks are off to a bumpy start. They win two games and you think they’re back to being the Blackhawks we know, then they lose 4-1 to the hated Red Wings. Jonathan Toews and
Patrick Kane make magic every time they’re on the same line, so of course Coach Joel Quenneville keeps separating them. Patrick Sharp is out for an extended pe-riod of time due to a knee inju-ry, and Andrew Shaw and Bryan Bickell are struggling to consis-tently play at a high level. The Blackhawks just can’t seem to get things together for more than a couple of games at a time, and the usually high-scoring team can’t find the net often enough.
OK, but what about the Bulls,
for us just to push through that.”As of now, none of the three
players needs to wear braces. Law and Johnson wear the basic knee sleeves, but that is just to protect their knees from getting scraped up.
You can catch the three re-turners in action against North-ern Kentucky on Saturday, Nov. 22 in Gentile Arena at 3:00 p.m.
Courtesy of Steve Woltman
Sophomore guard Taylor Johnson is back after last year’s season-ending ACL tear.
who are supposed to be champion-ship caliber?
What about the Bulls? They’ve looked good, but questions follow them everywhere they go. It’s the same story, just a different year. Is Derrick Rose going to stay healthy? Is the Bulls’ plan-B free agent sign-ing going to pan out? Is there going to be a legitimate second scorer? Is Coach Thibs going to run his players into the ground before the playoffs even start? Only one of those questions has a sure answer, and I’ll give you a hint: It’s not one of the first three.
Maybe we just need to listen to Joakim Noah and “chill the f*ck out.”
The Cubs hired Joe Maddon, and they’re expected to get fancy in free agency. The Bulls have been on a different level than the rest of the Eastern Conference thus far, and they should make a deep playoff run barring injury. The Blackhawks al-ways find a way to turn it on come playoff time, and this year shouldn’t be any different. The Bears… well, they’ll have a high draft pick in April.
So nothing could possibly go wrong. Right?
(But, really, does ANYBODY care about the White Sox?)
Bears’ quarterback Jay Cutler has been criticized for his poor performance this season, including a 55-14 loss to the Packers.Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Loyola’s women’s basketball team fell to Georgia Tech 92-57 in its home opener on Nov. 14. For-ward Simone Law, who returned from a season-ending knee inju-ry last season, was the Ramblers’ highest scorer with 16 points.
Georgia Tech was in control most of the game, going on a 13-2 run midway through the first half, that left the Ramblers down by 22 at halftime.
In the second half, the Yellow Jackets went on unanswered sev-en- and eight-point runs, leaving the Ramblers down by 35 at the end of the game.
This game marked the return of three Ramblers — Law, redshirt sophomore Taylor Johnson and redshirt freshman Tiana Karopulos — who all suffered knee injuries last season. [See page 18 for more information on these players and their returns].
“With it being our first game, and their first game, I know there were some nerves,” said Head Coach Sheryl Swoopes in an in-terview with the Athletic Depart-
ment after the game. “To me, the score doesn’t really tell how the game went. I thought there were some moments in the game where we played well and we played to-gether as a team.”
Swoopes said she felt good about the effort her team put forth in its first game.
The Ramblers also fell to Mar-quette University on Monday, Nov. 18 with a score of 86-71.
The team is next scheduled to play Northern Kentucky on the road on Saturday, Nov. 22. Cover-age of this game will be featured on ESPN3.
Loyola’s men’s basketball team started its season strong with a 71-58 win over Rockhurst in the home-opener on Nov. 14. Three Ramblers scored in double-digits, with junior Montel James scoring 19 points to lead the team. James also led the team in rebounding, grabbing eight total.
Though Loyola finished the game strong, it started off slowly, allowing Rockhurst to score on its first four shots. The Ramblers pushed back later in the first half, but still went to the locker room down 30-29.
Loyola took the lead in its first possession of the second half, as senior forward Christian Thomas capitalized on a Rockhurst turn-over. This sparked a 13-0 offensive push by the Ramblers from which the Hawks could not recover.
The game gave the Ramblers their first win.
The team’s second win came on Monday, Nov. 17 at home against McKendree, when Loyola out-scored the Bearcats 78-68.
The Ramblers had an excellent
offensive game, shooting 60 per-cent from the floor. Thomas and redshirt sophomore guard Milton Doyle led the team with 21 points apiece. Senior Joe Chrisman also added 10 points.
The defensive effort was also impressive, forcing the Bearcats to commit 23 turnovers. This was answered by the offense, who con-verted those errors into 25 points.
The Ramblers will be back in action on Friday, Nov. 21 against Michigan State in East Lansing. Coverage for this game will be fea-tured on the Big Ten Network.
Men’s basketball starts season 2-0
Photo courtesy of Steve Woltman
Senior forward Simone Law was the highest scorer for the Ramblers on Friday with 16 points. Junior guard Bec-ca Smith also scored in double-digits, but the Rabmlers’ offense struggled to produce points against Georgia Tech.
Photo courtesy of Steve Woltman
Redshirt freshman Tiana Karopulos
Photo courtesy of David Joseph PhotograpySenior guard Joe Chrisman shooting.
Photo courtesy of David Joseph PhotographyChristian Thomas has scored 35 points this season — 14 against Rockhurst and 21, tied for a team high, against McKendree.
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