The Weekly, Volume 4, Issue 1

VOL.4, ISSUE 1

03.05.09

weeklyTHE

06VINTAGEVINYL

03 WICKERPARK

08GENDERSTUDIES

Out of the Wilderness,

A Sudanese ‘Lost Boy’ adjusts to a new lifein the Windy City

Into the Unknown

Hiding drugs in the Bobb bathroom, smoking pot at the Arch and getting away with it

04.02.09

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T his week, one of our editors investigates NU’s drug policy and its hidden conse-quences by talking to those who enforce

the rules and those who have broken them. To get a sense of the illegal drug scene on campus, we asked 100 students if they know any drug dealers, or if they’d know whom to contact if they wanted to buy something illicit. When we first hit up Norris, our pester-ing was met by timid no’s and reluctant shakes of the head. That is until meetings for PWild and NORML let out, at which point we were bombarded with enthusiastic responses, along the lines of “Hell yeah, meet my roommate!” Make of that what you will.

SARA PECK

THE WEEKLY MEMO

weeklyTHE EDITOR IN CHIEF

kyle [email protected]

MANAGING EDITORalex [email protected]

ASSISTANT EDITORSemmy blotnickjeremy [email protected]@u.northwestern.edu

ART DIRECTORsara [email protected]

ASSISTANT ART DIRECTORkristyn [email protected]

contact the weekly at:847.491.4901

send confirmed and denied tips to the managing editor

want to join our staff?e-mail our editor in chief

A weekly supplement to The Daily NorThwesTerN.

SURVEY AT STARBUCKS

got drugs?

NO YES

73

27

KYLE BERLIN

WHAT IF...

you transferred from your dream schoolSome students come to NU for one reason only. What happens when their perfect school is a bust?

REAL WORLD: EVANSTONHeads up, all of you low-brow reality TV fans: There is a star among us. Shane Landrum, best (and perhaps solely) known for his appearances on Road Rules: Campus Crawl and Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Battle of the Sexes Seasons 1 & 2, now works at Evanston’s recently opened Lululemon Athletica store. According to Shane’s MTV bio, his stints on the small screen revolved around gobbling platters of cow scrotum and brains, not to mention he’s both slapped and been slapped by fellow male cast members — though it seems Shane has since discovered serenity in this overpriced mecca of Spandex. When he’s not hawking expensive yoga pants and sports bras to suburban moms with camel toes, he can be found welcoming participants into Pilates and boot camp exercise classes at nearby Giordano’s Dance School. It may seem like an unlikely place to find a semi-sorta-non-celebrity punching in hours, but one Lululemon shopper remarked that he’s incredibly sweet, lovable and super nice (and also super gay). But if you’re looking to follow in Shane’s footsteps, you might have missed your chance: An open casting call for season 23 of Real World was held nearby at the Goose Island Brew Pub’s Clybourn location almost a month ago. Guess you’ll have to soldier onwards drunkenly slap-fighting, sobbing and making out with your housemates without the cameras rolling until next season. Anyway, wel-come to Evanston, Shane, glad to have you here!

AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBEREver imagined yourself partying in the Olympic-sized pool at SPAC? Members of the NPHC sorority Delta Sigma Theta, Inc. are planning on doing just that this Friday night. The “tan-talizing Theta Alpha Chapter of DST,” as they’ve billed themselves on their Facebook event page, has been handing out glossy business card-sized fliers for their upcoming event, “An Aqua Affair.” We’ve seen philanthropies held there before (Delta Gamma’s annual “Anchor Splash,” to name one) but never has one seemed like an actual soiree. Plus, the girls have thrown a “best male body” contest into the mix. Somehow these ladies managed to secure the indoor facility from 9 p.m. to midnight, though any Solo cup-fueled action and swimsuit-clad debauchery will probably be going down at the “potential” after party, location to be announced, according to Facebook. The north campus gym might be about to unwittingly host its first rager. Of course, it’ll all depend on the turnout, and judging from the event’s flier, it seems the guests aren’t just coming from NU. With CTA directions, a special Gmail address and reminder to bring a valid college ID (what, they’re not called WildCARDs everywhere else?), it sounds like the crowd will be far more interesting than your average sorority event. We’re curious about how (or if?) they’ll staff the event. Do DJs count as lifeguards on duty? THE WEEKLY EDITORS

confirmed denied&

When prospective students and their overprotective parents start prowl-ing the Northwestern grounds in the

springtime, many ask upperclassmen, “Why did you come to NU?” with bated breath, hop-ing to mentally align their child’s dreams with the response. “I tell parents this, practically verbatim: I chose NU for two reasons: one, it fit the criteria that I was looking for in all schools. Big but not too big, near a big city but still has the college campus feel, and has a good theatre department without being a conservatory,” says Larkin Brown, an NU tour guide and Communication junior. “The other reason was just my gut feeling.”

Students rarely cite one make-or-break factor. But what about the students who came to NU for one reason, such as athletics or a highly touted program? Just more than 3 per-cent of freshmen end up leaving NU — why?

Carolyn (name has been changed) was bred for one thing: to play her sport (let’s say it’s swimming), win and get a big, fat check to an elite university. She did just that, winning a substantial scholarship to attend NU. She even moved from Kansas to Ohio specifi-cally to train. However, the summer before coming to school, she says she was “already pretty burned out” and wasn’t sure if she could make it through a rigorous college career. “I was trying to get something good out of the 13 years of my life I spent doing it (by coming to NU).” After two months of trying to stick it out, Carolyn took a weekend off to go home for some clarity, and moved back home the following week.

If a student athlete wants to transfer from NU or leave the team, the student must notify his or her coach so other coaches can recruit the athlete per NCAA rules, says Mo Harty, assistant athletic director for compliance, academic services and student development.

Though some athletes might choose to remain at NU but stop playing their sport, those who leave are somewhat honor-bound to transparency about their academic plans

or tension may arise with their coaches and teammates. “I think it depends on how honest and upfront the student-athlete is,” Harty says. “If they don’t tell anyone or do it over the summer when there’s not enough time to replace them on the roster, there might be some animosity. People tend to understand.”

Now a sophomore at Kansas University in her old home state, Carolyn says she leads “a balanced life” — a full course load, a full-time job and an active social life, things that were impossible with her athletic commitment at NU. “In an ideal world, I would have come to NU and swam,” Carolyn says. “If I could have stayed (at NU) without the scholarship, I would have.”

Athletes aren’t the only ones who find themselves second-guessing their dream universities. Edie Wellman came to NU as a freshman solely for musical theater, eager to stand out in a program ranked sixth in the nation by U.S. News and World Report. The side-effects of prestige, Wellman learned, are what she calls a sometimes toxic, unsupportive atmosphere for student actors who are taught to bitterly out-step one another.

Wellman remembers the exact day she decided to migrate south to Duke Univer-sity — May 29th. Though she maintains that “there are no words to describe how happy (she is),” a more concrete measure of success is her performance in a principal role in Duke’s production of Sweeney Todd this fall – whereas at NU, she wasn’t even called back when she auditioned for the same show. “I just kept choking,” she remembers. “I knew I was good enough to get the roles, I just was unhappy and intimidated by the people around me. I found that (theater) people at NU were so nasty to each other and so competitive.”

Despite having left a nationally acclaimed department, she has finally gained confidence. “I don’t want to sound bitter,” Wellman says. “I did learn a lot at NU and wouldn’t give last year up for anything. But I’ve learned that nothing in the world is worth your happiness.”

It’s spring and The Weekly has just finished its first year of publication. And with a sense of the great changes spring brings, the editors decided it was time to make a few alterations. Confirmed & Denied, still your one-stop shop for hot gossip, has a new home, snuggled up tight to the survey. The move makes room for a weekly graphic feature, which in this issue will show you the best places to visit in Wicker Park (pg. 3). We’ve also introduced a new feature called “Why We Like…” — an exegesis on a piece of art or culture that has been particularly influential in the life of one of our writers (pg. 8).

As for the rest of the magazine, Jer-emy Gordon has a funny and fantas-tic cover story that takes an in-depth look at the drug scene at NU (pg. 5). And make sure to catch Sara Peck’s eye-opening examination of the day-to-struggles of Sudanese refugees in Chicago (pg. 7). But I’ve forgotten the best part! By now you’ve seen the rede-signed cover, which is a radical depar-ture for The Weekly, but one, I believe, befitting the sense of renewal that spring brings each year.

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social diary [of a Communication junior on an ASB trip]24 tuesday

Today was a holy day in memory of the thousands who were kidnapped by the government in the ‘90s. I woke up at 8 to tour some famous markets in La Boca and San Telmo. Bought some presents for my family (and myself, whoops) and had an Argentine steak dinner at midnight. After eating an entire cow I fell into a food coma and got a full six hours of sleep.

25 wednesday

In the afternoon I played with beautiful Argentine toddlers at “Baby Help,” a day-care center for lower income Jewish families. Visited the Holocaust museum in the afternoon. We drank lots of good, cheap wine at dinner, then went to a nightclub and danced with locals. Decided Americans don’t know how to dance. Re-alized that I don’t know how to dance either.

26 thursday

Painted with elementary school kids, visited syna-gogues, then headed back to the hotel to shower and eat. I made a beeline for my diminishing Luna Bars stash and promptly passed out. Went to a tango lesson and show. Confirmed my previous realization that Ameri-cans can’t dance. New realization: People in Buenos Aires are beauti-ful human beings.

27 friday

Woke up and downed un-godly amounts of bread, pastries, and coffee in five minutes before finishing our project at the school. As we we cleaned up, I got sick. It was one of the more disgusting vomiting experiences of my life. Decided that turpentine, alcohol and about three hours of sleep per night isn’t the healthiest life style. Decided it was spring break and I don’t care.

28 saturday

Did some last-minute shop-ping and got ice cream at Persico. I was running late and felt like a fat American because nobody there eats in the streets. At the airport I spent my last pesos on a dulce de leche cookie and a shot glass. Cute guy sat next to me on the plane, but was too tired and covered in paint to try out my new eye-fucking tactics on him. Instead popped a pill and fell into uncomfortable airplane sleep.

29 sunday

Parted with the most of my group in Houston and found out my connect-ing flight was cancelled. Read Chekov to pass time until the next flight. The airport was totally chaotic – flights getting cancelled left and right, angry people everywhere. I finally succumbed to alcohol and went to get a drink only to be told the bar had just closed. Finally caught a flight and got home at 3:30 a.m.

Went to class, met up with friends, then spent my life savings at Target. Facebook-stalked every-one else’s spring breaks. At night I went to a friend’s apartment for margaritas, then to an open bar at Bill’s Blues. Vowed I wouldn’t go to the Keg. Hours later I was pushing, shoving and lying my way to the front of the line in freshman-year fashion. I think I need a vacation.

30 monday

04.02.09 3

WICKERPARKSTAYCATION

This week, hop on the Metra for a Weekly-approved jaunt around Wicker Park.

N Milwaukee Ave

W Division St

W North Ave

N D

am

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Ave

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Smoke Daddy1804 W. Division St.Carnivores can fill up on great barbeque and cheapskates will appreciate specials like $2 Coronas on Tuesdays and half-price burgers on Thursdays. Everyone’s bound to be down for the nightly live jazz and blues shows at this beef and beer joint.

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Lovely Bakeshop1130 N. Milwaukee Ave.Ambrosia may have closed, but you can still hop on the Metra and make an afternoon out of going to the Lovely Bakeshop. Expect a refreshingly small-town feel—no hipster pretensions here—coupled with delectable treats. From mini peach cobblers to fist-sized brownies, the hardest part about visiting Lovely is picking a confection.

evilOlive1551 W. Division St.Over Monday nights at the Keg? Head down to REHAB Monday nights at evilOlive. With DJ darlings like the Hood Internet, this weekly dance party is a social cocktail of hipsters and trendsetters. evilOlive’s extra-late last call will let you go drink for drink until 4 a.m. As for that merciless hangover, well, that’s your problem.

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U.S. #11460 N. Milwaukee Ave.Vintage duds are a dime a dozen in Wicker Park, but a stellar boot selection and a plethora of plaid set U.S. #1 apart. Prices are steep, but don’t be too polite to haggle here. With a bit of tactful bargaining, it’s possible to knock off 15 or 20 percent of your bill. Hey, it’s a recession.

The Boring Store1331 N. Milwaukee Ave.This branch of 826 National, a free writing and tutoring program for local youngsters started by novelist Dave Eggers, fronts as a cheeky spy shop filled with whimsical gadgets and cheap knick-knacks. Since all proceeds go straight to 826CHI, treat yourself to that faux soda can or a candy necklace. Not the same karmic return as actually volunteering for the center, but it’s a solid start.7

Empire Liquors1566 N. Milwaukee Ave.

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Quimby’s Bookstore1854 W. North Ave.Borders and Barnes & Noble are fine, but Quimby’s does much more in the way of intellectual stimulation. This zany bookstore boasts an old school photo booth and peddles locally created comic books and graphic novels alongside “comprehensive miscellany,” conducive to hours of bemused browsing.

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Piece Restaurant1927 W. North Ave.If you’re over Giordano’s gluttonous pies, check out the “New Haven”-style thin crust at this pizzeria and brewery. With an award-winning brewer on staff and a seven barrel brew-house in plain sight, Piece takes its yeast — in all forms — pretty seriously.

ALLIE GROSS & ALEXANDRA ILYASHOVPHOTOS BY BENJAMIN HAAS

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4 the weekly

the nextbig sound

Ah, those beginning-of-quarter resolutions. You promise yourself that this really will be the quarter you start reading for class, make a to-do list and get more than five hours of sleep per night. Whether or not those resolutions last past week two, the beginning of the quarter is the best time to at least think about organization and efficiency, especially when it comes to technology. Two of the co-creators of TheNextBigSound.com, David Hoffman (SESP ’09) and Samir Rayani (McCormick ‘10) offer their favorite Web sites to get you organized.

STAY ON TOP OF E-MAILMost of us made the switch to Gmail when Northwestern began using it as our email provider last year, but did you know that Gmail offers way more tools than just email? The lab section of Gmail offers tons of extra tools and can streamline all your different email accounts, says Samir Rayani. Check out these extra applications at https://mail.google.com/mail/#settings/labs.

ORGANIZE GROUP PROJECTSBackpack, an online program created by Chicago-based web app company 37signals, is great for organizing solo or group projects, says David Hoffman. “It handles to-do lists, groups notes, and organizes information. I just recently started using it and I really like it so far,” Hoffman says. According to its Web site, backpackit.com, Backpack can create group calendars, send email and text message reminders, and host documents, similar to Google docs. Though a basic account on Backpack costs $24 a month, it could be worth it for huge end of the quarter projects.

BE IN THE KNOWUnless you spend most of your time in lecture classes glued to your Blackberry (which you might…), it’s hard to keep current with all your favorite websites and blogs. David Hoffman recommends using Google Reader to organize and display all your most-visited websites in one place. Import websites’ RSS feeds into Google Reader and the application automatically updates whenever your favorite sites post new content. It also allows you to share interesting items with your friends. “This is a totally valuable asset. You can read all your sites easily, and you can keep up with the news you’re interested in,” Hoffman says.

Barack? No, I don’t think he ever partook in shrooms.”-Sorority Quads, Tuesday 1 a.m.[ ]

OVERHEARD AT NU

Cool, calm and collected: You won’t see the members of The Next Big Sound with their backs against a wall. From left: Samir Rayani, Alex White, Jason Sasnovsky and David Hoffman.

After tinkering with the music industry’s business model, The Next Big Sound takes on an even bigger task: helping you get your shit together.

04.02.09 5

The $50,000 Joint

Weed smells. It’s the toughest thing to deal with if you’re trying to keep your stash a secret – you can lock it in a box, put it in a drawer, vacuum-seal it or put it in an airtight mason jar and it’s still going to stink. No matter how many CVS bags Simon wrapped his product in or how deep he shoved it into his closet, the odor of wet grass, burning rope and pine continued to fill the room. At least he thought it did. He couldn’t be sure. Though his friends said they never smelled anything, they weren’t the ones who had to leave the room and hope a gaggle of cops wouldn’t be standing in front of it when he came back.

One day, when his roommate wasn’t home, Si-mon dug the bag out of his closet and made sure it was sealed tight. He peeked his head out of his door to make sure no one was walking through the hallway. Bag in hand, he quickly stepped out and walked toward the men’s bathroom.

No one was inside. He walked over to a stall and stepped in and locked the door behind him. He quickly stepped on top of the toilet seat, still holding the bag, and looked up. He put his fingers to the ceiling tile above him and propped it up. Then, he took his massive Ziploc bag — covered in one wrinkled plastic bag after another — and put it through the hole in the ceiling he had just created, resting it on top of an adjacent tile. He replaced the tile, stepped down from the toilet and went back to his room. From then on, whenever a customer came calling, Simon would go into the bathroom, get back on the toilet, take his weed down, distribute it and put it back.

“You know, I never found my piece or grinder at the end of the year when I moved out,” he laughs hard, after taking a break from his bong to talk. “Do you think if I went back, it might still be there?”

If you didn’t know already, let an expert tell you: “Dealing out of a dorm is very risky stuff.”

James Kowalsky, the president of Northwest-ern’s chapter of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), has just finished talking on end about the school’s drug policy, and he looks a little incredulous when I say I’ve talked to a few people who used to sling marijuana right under their CAs’ noses. “The smell of marijuana is very potent. If you have one CA who doesn’t like it and walks by, you’re fucked. You have a scale? A smoking apparatus? A large amount of weed? You are in trouble, especially if you have over an ounce. Then you are really fucked.”

As the local NORML liaison, Kowalsky is a textbook of drug policy, dropping casual facts about the side effects of using marijuana (they’ve been gravely overstated, he says) and talking up NORML’s efforts to expand local student consciousness about drug laws and the conse-quences for students caught using drugs. NU’s drug policy is short-sighted and narrow-minded, he says. “It’s trying to make moral claims and take the most P.C. stance they possible can.”

But what is NU’s drug policy? If you look in the Student Handbook, you’ll see a few basic rules under a section labeled “Drugs”: Students are subject to criminal laws, NU is not a sanctu-ary for students caught using drugs, University Police has the right to investigate, and so forth. A section entitled “Sanctions and Outcomes” delineates the possible consequences for being caught, including housing probation, expulsion, fines and reduction of student privileges.

The key word is “possible.” On record, there’s no specific consequence for any violations, creat-ing a gray area of possible sanctions. “We don’t

After a couple of months of dealing pot out of his room in Bobb-McCulloch Hall, Simon was getting a little paranoid. His clientele, which at first had just been a

small circle of friends, had expanded to include friends of friends, kids down the hall he didn’t know, and sometimes, visitors from outside Northwestern. His CA didn’t care about kids drinking as long as they didn’t do it in the hallways, but dealing was an entirely new offense. The giant gallon Ziploc bag full of carefully divided eighths of marijuana, each sepa-rated in its own little baggie, started to smell more and more to Simon as the grind of winter quarter wore on.

“ If you have one CA who doesn’t like it and walks by, you’re fucked. You have a scale? A large amount of weed? Then you are really

fucked.”JAMES KOWALSKY

text by JEREMY GORDONdesign by TREVOR SEELA

25 million U.S. citizens have smoked

marijuana in the last year

14 million U.S. citizens regularly

smoke marijuana

Since 2000, 200,000 college students

have lost financial aid under the Aid

Elimination Penalty

More than 872,000 people are arrested

every year for marijuana use

Taxp

ayer

s spe

nd $

10 b

illion

a ye

ar o

n th

e

cost

of m

ariju

ana

proh

ibitio

n

In 2005, 86% of eighth graders reported

it would be “very easy” for them to

obtain marijuana

Barack Obama smoked

marijuana, as did Bill Clinton

do anything automatic,” says Jim Neumeister, the director of Judicial Affairs. “We are going to take into account what the violation was, what are the needs of the student and whatever other factors are surrounding it.” Neumeister, along with Residential Life and the Dean of Students’ Office, forms a team that deals with every stu-dent disciplinary problem on campus, including drug-related offenses.

When I ask him what the most common punishment is, perhaps for a student caught smoking pot in his room, he doesn’t give a definitive answer. “It’s going to depend on what the student’s history is,” he says. He talks about prior disciplinary actions, the severity of the incident and how the punishment is likely to be a combination of multiple sanctions. Clearly, he doesn’t want to be misleading. However, there are sanctions that NU doesn’t officially address at all in the Handbook.

The Higher Education Act, passed by Lyndon Johnson in 1965, contains a clause introduced by Congressman Mark Souder (R-In.) in 1998 called the Aid Elimination Penalty, which states that students who are convicted for drug-related reasons while in college lose their eligibility for federal student aid for one year. According to Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), more than 200,000 college students have lost financial aid since 2000 under this law.

“What happens for most students is that after a year you can re-apply for financial aid, but by then you’ve dropped out of school because you couldn’t af-ford it,” Kowalsky adds. “Northwestern is saying, ‘We want people to be good and well-educated productive citizens. But oh, you smoke pot? And someone caught you? Well, don’t go to college.’ What sense does that make?”

“It’s not that they don’t care about the conse-quences, it’s that they’re not fully aware of the ramifications,” Kowalsky says, dismissing the notion that people who smoke marijuana aren’t afraid of jail time. “Most kids who are arrested don’t know about this. People hear about this and go, ‘That’s what CAs do when they smell pot? That’s what they do?’” His voice crests in exasperation. “I don’t understand why they’re purposely vague about it. If you really believe in these penalties, you would get your point across.”

A former CA in Bobb-McCulloch who never called the cops on anyone — “my sense of smell sucks,” he says — thinks the university has to be consistent in its approach to federal law. “If they did that, then why wouldn’t they have to explain every other federal policy? The gov-ernment doesn’t go around telling you all the policies explicitly. I’m not saying they should or they shouldn’t, but they should be consistent and either explain one or explain all.”

Were NU administrators to single out federal drug laws as something to be specifically ex-plained to students, they would either be admit-ting that it’s a problem that needs addressing – a public relations nightmare, for sure – or they would be trying to shield students from being prosecuted. In either case, any policy changes would definitely not be anti-drug, a mindset that could offend donating alumni or prospective applicants.

Kowalsky says what the university chooses to do is a matter of fear. “They’re afraid one rich person might get mad if they change their stance on marijuana and then they’d have to justify it. And you know what’s easier than justify-

ing it? Saying marijuana is bad.” He points to a proposed solution called the Marijuana-Alcohol Equalization Act, which would make the proce-dure for dealing with suspected marijuana use the same as alcohol use: Having the CA knock on the door, confiscate any marijuana or parapher-nalia and destroying it. He shakes his head after explaining it and says even if it got ratified by the student body, the administration would shoot it down. “The campus policy is parallel to federal law,” he says, “which is why they wouldn’t con-sider something obvious.”

The official stats on marijuana-related arrests at NU don’t reflect reality – according to Univer-sity Police, a total of zero people were arrested for marijuana-related reasons in 2007 or 2008. Prior to 2009, there were no citations issued for drug-related offenses. Police officers had two op-tions: referral to Student Affairs or arrest.

Generally speaking, if a student has a small amount of marijuana on them or a small smok-ing apparatus and is cooperative with the police, they’re not going to be arrested, according to Lt. Ron Godby. While there are a number of drug-related arrests on record — four in 2006 and

2005, five in 2004 — the majority of these cases do not show up in the statistics.

“I have no clear way to search and obtain summaries for incidents involving students in pos-session of drugs,” Godby wrote in an e-mail. “Some incidents involv-ing referral to Student Affairs may not show on

the statistics I was able to obtain.” By chance, I sat down with Sarah, a girl who

was accused of smoking pot when she was living in a dorm. As the arduous process of meeting with Judicial and Student Affairs was a “nerve-wracking process,” she wanted to make sure that none of the information could point to her.

As University Police questioned her and her friends, she says they were aggressive. The police hurled curse words — “I’m not fucking stupid! Don’t fucking mess with us!” — tried to get them to implicate each other, and went around the dorm floor asking other residents whether or not the students were “huge pot heads,” she says. After taking everyone’s name and student ID, they left.

Over the next few months, Sarah met with the residential coordinator of her dorm and Mary Goldenberg, the director of University Residen-tial Life. Goldenberg, she says, tried to get her to give up other students, mentioning expulsion and probation as possible consequences, to no avail. Eventually, the charges died down and after months of waiting, she received an e-mail saying there was insufficient evidence to charge her.

Simon, the dealer from the beginning, doesn’t deal drugs anymore. The pressure of having to keep his stash hidden, along with the paranoia that he would eventually get busted, made him stop selling once his supply ran out. His decision to just be a regular smoker leaves him more op-timistic about not getting in trouble. “NU doesn’t want to kick out students who are paying them lots of money to attend,” he says. “If someone gets caught smoking in a dorm, that isn’t really correlating to them being a bad student. I think the university realizes that to some extent.” He pauses and sits back in his chair. “I hope.”

Reporter’s note: The names of any interviewed students who have used or sold drugs have been changed.

What you don’t know about drugs at Northwestern - and how the consequences are more dire than you think

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VintageVinyl

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A CLOSER LOOK AT...

Vintage Vinyl owner Steve Kay looks like a record collector. He wears average glasses (no square frames a la alt-bro music store clerks), wears his hair long like a character in Dazed and Confused but with a lot more gray, and looks serious enough to be in record collecting for the long haul. You know the type – crate after crate of LPs in the living room, a partially scratched off list of sought-after treasures stashed away somewhere and more obscure knowledge than a thousand Internet fan pages.

Or maybe you don’t know the type. Only recently has vinyl has re-emerged as a popular medium, meaning you may not know any record collectors at all. In 2008, vinyl sales doubled from the previous year as 1.9 million wax records got pushed in music shops around the country, according to Nielsen Soundscan. If you’re interested in why anyone cares about a once-dead and cumbersome format, there are few better places to dive into the vinyl arena than Vintage Vinyl, which is located close to campus on 925 Davis St.

Kay’s made a living out of his record collecting for a long time; the store’s been open for 29 years, and with its massive inventory doesn’t even include any of Kay’s personal records for sale. “None of them were from my collection,” he says. “They were all things I bought with the idea of opening a shop.”

He’s bought a lot, on buying trips to Europe and being contacted by other dealers looking to sell. Vintage Vinyl stands out from a lot of record stores, and this is no descriptive hyperbole: The store traffics in more rarities than a typical record shop, a one-stop for Holy Grail finds and out-of-print relics from a long-gone era. There’s a $200 promo copy of a reissued David Bowie record, a limited-edition recording of a Joy Division concert, bootleg CDs of never-published Neil Young concerts, walls lined with antique posters and, of course, a lot more. Vintage Vinyl is a treasure trove of cool things – it’s easy to flip through a random box and marvel at the selection.

When asked how often he sees a Holy Grail record, he smiles a knowing look and says, “Every day,” citing a recently purchased copy of the first Beatles record, released on little-known label Vee Jay. “At this point, personally, I have all the things I’ve always looked for. Those have come my way at various points in time. But for the shop, people

ask for specific things we don’t have. They know we’ve been around a long time.”

The store’s attracted its amount of fame in pop culture as well – it was used as the inspiration and namesake for John Cusack’s record shop in High Fidelity, and is extensively featured as a location in the novel The Time Traveler’s Wife as the source of new music for the characters. Kay attributes the rise in business more to the surge in interest in the vinyl more than these pop culture references. He also sees it as a natural direction of the music market.

“I think it’s the way record labels are trying to stay in business,” he says. “I also think it’s a great idea because it’s the best of both worlds. It allows people to explore the idea of owning a record and also have the electronic medium.”

To record labels, the vinyl resurgence might be a business and a grasp to remain relevant, but it remains Kay’s life as it has been for almost 30 years. “I still actually don’t realize that,” he says when asked about the moment he realized his record collecting wasn’t just a hobby. “This is a day and night job.” The introduction of the Internet has added an entire new element to record-collecting; now, buyers can purchase a record without having ever seen it in person. “For a large percentage of people, they don’t have the access, so the Internet makes everything accessible. It brings it to your door. For us, it opened up a whole world of people who are like-minded and were never able to reach them.”

While the stuff that Vintage Vinyl pushes is a little higher end and takes more consideration to buy than a ratty used Van Halen LP, the store is an excellent resource for vinyl aficionados, would-be aficionados and those with a lot of money to drop. You can also peruse the store’s catalogue on their Web site at www.vvmo.com to see if they have anything that tickles your fancy.

JEREMY GORDON

Getting grooves at a priceless record store

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Overcrowded, Exhausted and Drained

04.02.09 7

Chicago unable to accomodate Sudanese refugees despiteongoing genocide

Luol Deng, a Sudanese forward for the Chicago Bulls, had an immediate fan in Onam Liduba when he came to the United States as a refugee in 2001. He also assumed the mascot was representative of the city, and fervently searched for the famous horned animals for weeks. “I asked one of the people who was showing us around ‘Chicago is the place of bulls, right? I want to see the bulls’ and he just laughed and said ‘no, man.’”

He did, however, get to see the forward play, by Deng’s own personal invitation, perched in a coveted courtside seat as a steady flow of free eats passed through his hands, which Liduba says he never took. “Everything always costs money in America,” he says. “I wanted to be careful so I just said, ‘No thanks.’”

Liduba is one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, one of thousands of Sudanese children who fled their home-land on foot to Kenya or Ethiopia in search of safety. More than 150 Lost Boys currently reside in Chicago, most in the Rogers Park/Ravenswood area. More than 4,000 Lost Boys came to the United States, settling mostly in Illinois and Michigan, according to Lost Boys Chicago, an advocacy group created to support the refugees after their relocation.

When he was nine years old, Liduba and a group of ragtag children walked more than 1,500 miles to Ethiopia, where they found more war where they expected shelter. The only option was to walk onward to Kenya, where they had heard refugee camps were accepting runaways.

Though Liduba had relative comforts in Chicago — a paycheck, clean sheets and a case worker — his life was still fragmented from his childhood trauma. For six years, Liduba knew his daughter, Acheng, only

by infrequent phone calls home to Kakuma, Sudan, during which the now 8-year-old kept asking, ‘Daddy, why did you leave me?’ Acheng was born on the same day her father was relocated to the United States as a refugee after four years in a Kenyan camp. Liduba first met his daughter when she was 6 years old, when he finally became a U.S. citizen and was able to travel back to his home country. Now that Acheng lives in Canada with her mother, Liduba joking beboans the long drives to visit her, punctuated only by snow and bad country music.

In 2001, just a few months after Liduba’s arrival in Chicago, the Sudanese Community Association of Illinois, based in Naperville, was formed to support these new arrivals. However, the conflict in his homeland is far from waning, yet fewer refugees are coming to the United States. The United Nations estimates more than 1.2 million Sudanese were displaced in 2008, though the United States accepted slightly more than 2,000 refugees and asylum-seekers from the country.

The Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in 2005, was a for-mal end to the war between northern and southern Sudan, and has decreased the quota of Sudanese refugees enter-ing the United States, according to Refugees International. There is also little infrastructure for displaced per-sons in Sudan — according to Amnesty International, the Sudanese govern-ment has expelled more than 10 aid agencies including Save the Children and Oxfam in March alone.

“Since the (Sudan) Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed, refugees have stopped coming because of the so-called peace,” he says. “It’s so diffi-cult for the kids there; it’s not the 100 percent peace they say it is, and with the tension in Darfur, people tend to forget about the rest of Sudan.”

Even during the height of Sudanese immigration, Liduba says only 4,000 of

the 16,000 Lost Boys who survived were relocated to the United States; the rest were left in camps or were scattered throughout Africa. Liduba has finally found stability in Chicago: a studio apartment that he shares with another Lost Boy, a plasma television and a steady job at a nursing home. Still, he is the exception to the harsh refugee process, not the rule.

“Chicago as a city is really overloaded,” says Chris-tine Deyerler, a Communication senior who interns at World Relief-Chicago, an immigration and refugee aid association that helped Liduba. “Right now they’re taking a lot of Burmese and Iraqi refugees, but not a lot of African ones.”

For those who reach the United States, the first person a new arrival might see is someone such as Deyerler, who often meets refugees up at the airport by prearrangement. The U.S. State Department dis-seminates highly specific set of services refugees must receive within their first 90 days in the United States, down to the smallest details, such as the number of dishes and mattresses per occupant. The case worker will ferry them to their apartment, the Social Security card office and the grocery store. Within the first week, their children are administered vaccines so they can enroll in school. However, these ready-made ac-commodations cannot negate the emotional shock of the move.

Though each refugee is filtered through the same homecoming process, they have enjoyed very different lifestyles in their home countries. Some Sudanese, for example, have lived in multiple refugee camps for up to 20 years. Others were upperclass Iraqis who then find themselves in two-room apartments and working minimum wage jobs.

“Your status has been ripped,” says Keri Lucas, director of educational services at World Relief. “You are nothing. What’s valuable is handed to you, and you have no concept of the future.”

However, the State Department does not mandate any additional assistance after the first 90 days. More personalized services such as job training, English classes and psychological counseling are often “re-ferred out” to community-based organizations, Lucas said.

“The first thing my boss said to me was that Chica-go is really exhausted,” Deyerler says. “(World Relief) is running out of donations and jobs slowly. Right now they have no furniture and are trying really hard to get more donations. A lot (of refugees) have to keep going off and on public aid to get by.”

The Auyal Community Development offers such assistance. John Maluk Yak, a Lost Boy who joined the organization as vice president in 2001, had his first harsh lesson in American culture soon after enrolling in a public high school. “I didn’t know who was a man and who was a woman since I had never seen (Cauca-sian) people like that,” he says. “But everyone around me was in pairs, so I went up to someone and said ‘Hey, you’re beautiful!’ He wasn’t a woman, I found out later.” Yak doesn’t reveal exactly what happened next, only that he learned quickly that, “In America, we don’t call boys beautiful.”

Though he says he has acclimated to the United States and is finishing his graduate degree at Lehigh University, Yak says the United States should do more for his homeland. Many other Lost Boys, he says, have had difficulty obtaining loans for college or finding jobs, although they are now U.S. citizens. The as-sociation, he says, tries to raise money for refugees to attend college and find jobs. Right now, the organiza-tion’s primary goal is to send Lost Boys back to Sudan as relief workers and to revisit their torn pasts.

“They may be dead, I don’t know,” says Yak of his family still in Sudan. “Right now (ACDA) isn’t quali-fied for the grants to send us back to Sudan, but I will keep trying. If nothing else, I want to see the land where I was born — maybe then, all of this will make sense.”

As of early February, all of their grant applications had been denied.

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?OLDLOGO

NEWLOGO

Off with your head, dance ‘til you’re dead! Karen O’s siren call begs you to dance on Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ sparkly new al-

bum It’s Blitz! A tasty departure from its brand of basement rock anthems, this album is a blast of disco dance beats. While fans of YYY’s signature guitar riffs might question the band’s deci-sion to tone down the axe in favor of stronger synth sound, the decision works. Gem tracks like “Shame and Fortune” and “Heads Will Roll” cover all the bases, drawing from old school YYY yet booming with electronic rhythm. A sense of immedi-acy not seen from the band since Fever to Tell runs through the album, though fresher and not as devilishly avant-punk.

I ’m always a little wary when listening to a new album from one of my favorite artists. I fear “Weezer syndrome” – when

an otherwise dependable band just decides to blow. The De-cemberists’ new record, though, doesn’t disappoint. The al-bum’s musicality embarks on unfamiliar territory, ranging from metal to waltz to folk and exploring everything in between. The strongest cuts on the album, “Annan Water” and “The Hazards of Love 1” are no match for the vocal prowess of guests Becky Stark (from Lavender Diamond) and Shara Worden (from My Brightest Diamond). The album is breath-taking and stunning, a true work of musical genius.

THE BROW critical reviews on the week's new releasesMID BROW The DecemberistsHazards of Love

COCO keevan angelICa jaIme

Books were the first thing I had on everyone else. In kindergarten, when other kids were making friends, doing math problems, I sat in the corner and read all the books, even the most advanced one about a golden retriever, as a screw-you. Reading was always something that I did alone. My own mother didn’t realize I knew how to read until a neighbor told her that was the reason I would go over to their house every afternoon. Books were the first things that were my own, that I cultivated a relationship with outside of my family; that’s probably why I have always been so possessive of them, like a jealous girlfriend. I started to hate my fifth grade teacher when she claimed that pang was a word. How similar it sounded to pain – mine! – so I immediately doubted its existence. Words were my property. I remember reading Lorrie Moore and her stories in “Self-Help” for the first time. I follow writers like her through these capsules I’m sent: “In your dorm you meet many nice people. Some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life.” Her sometimes unsavory wit, her almost masochistic sentimentality: No one had ever talked to me like that before. After reading, I thought to myself, “Yes! She gets it! I am normal!” It’s much the same as how I feel when I make new friends in a strange place, and it is the beginning of the lasting trust and confidence that is love. I feel safe in a room full of books. I feel better knowing my copy of “Self-Help” is on my shelf and not off with someone else. I will always collect and keep books. Unlike the nameless children of the kindergarten classroom, they are forever, to discover and return to.

WHY We lIke...

self-help

alI peCHman

8 the weekly

man On THe BeaTkaty Weseman, gender Studies program assistant

What’s your favorite part about working in the Gender Studies program? I think it’s the variety of things that I get to do. I get to help with

events and meet famous people who come to speak. And, of course, interacting with faculty and students, which is really fun.

Is there anything you wish more people knew about Gender Studies? I think Gender Studies as a field often gets overlooked because it

isn’t one of these dominant fields like History or English or Biology; it’s something people don’t have exposure to in high school. Our introductory classes are really important in drawing people in.

Have there been any recent changes to the Gender Studies program?Our directorships are on a three-year rotating basis. Ann Orloff,

who is a professor in Sociology and Gender Studies, just took over this fall. The great thing about having this rotating appointment is faculty and classes are interdisciplinary. Our previous director was in English and Gender Studies, and Ann brings a different skill set.

What else are you involved with on campus?Pretty much since I started working here, I’ve been a volunteer

member of the LGBT Support network. One of our great successes, which can’t be attributed entirely to the Support Network, was the university, after much petition, agreed to include gender expression and identity in their non-discrimination policy. Still, there are a lot of issues that transgender students have to jump through, like the registrar’s office won’t change your name unless you have a legal name change. So, if they haven’t legally changed their name, on all of their paperwork and rosters they have their name that they don’t go by popping up all the time. So there’s still work to be done, despite the success.

What’s the craziest thing that’s ever happened in this office?We had a visiting professor in the fall, Holly Hughes from

University of Michigan who is also a famous performance artist, who has a really boisterous laugh. And she’s hilarious, and greatly enriched the program. Having her presence in the office toward the beginning of the program provided for constant entertainment. A Gender Studies major, Mugsie Pike, was enrolled in Hughes’ class and has a similarly boisterous laugh. The two of them laughing together in the office was like a comedy sketch.

HIGH BROW Yeah Yeah YeahsIt’s Blitz!

‘the two of them laughing together was like a comedy sketch.’

katy Weseman, program assistant for Gender Studies and volunteer member of Northwestern’s LGBT support network, has seen some big changes this year. Weseman, who has worked in the Gender Studies program office since September 2006, will get her masters degree in higher education administration and policy when she graduates from the SESP program this June. The part-time student and full-time staff member discusses policy adjustments, a fresh office and a new director.

W ho is sitting down and listening to Dan Deacon records? Turning his famous concert experience into a listenable

record ain’t easy and Deacon doesn’t entirely succeed. There are a lot of great sonic elements in play – a thick bass line at the beginning of “Woof Woof,” the chip tune squawk and beat of “Get Older” – but with an average song length of more than six minutes, there is just too much going on. Most of the al-bum feels like the sound track to a Mega Man game, and just what the hell is “Wet Wings” supposed to be? Get baked, put Speed Racer on mute and blast this – a reason to listen to this dance record by yourself. Don’t get lazy and put it on at par-

LOW BROWDan DeaconBromst

jeRemY gORDOn

By LORRIe MOORe

amalIa OulaHanPhoto by Amalia Oulahan/The Daily Northwestern

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The Weekly, Volume 4, Issue 1

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