The Wake

Can’t you just taste the sunscreen melting down your face? Smell the hot dogs sizzling on the grill? Feel that summatime paycheck burning in your pocket? It’s April 12 and you know what that means. There are officially 18 days of school left, plus finals. Well, unless you’re thinking of taking summer classes, in which case April 12 just signifies the second day of registration—to sign some sunshine away.
“With summer classes you either have to have the interest in the class … or you have to be forced,” says neuroscience, physiology (pre-med), and French major Rami Assadi. Assadi has taken three summer courses at the university, and lived to tell the tale.In 2003, Assadi, then a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, took Arabic 1001 and 1002 at the university while home for …

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For almost ten years, Witt’s Liquor has been tucked snugly into the Park and Shop parking ramp on Seventh Street near Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis, offering off-sale libations to the patrons that walk the streets and work the businesses surrounding it. To be certain, any business dealing in the trade of “intoxicating liquors” is in for its fair share of bumps and bruises. It’s something the staff at Witt’s is quite familiar with. A lot of the customers are people fumbling with their luck. Many are homeless, quite a few are veterans living in the outskirts of society, and still more are just punks. They pour into the store in an interesting mix with the professionals who keep their offices downtown and the custodians and secretaries who also look for relief in a nice …

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With the growing independence that accompanies going off to college, students find themselves learning more than what’s taught in the classroom. Most people nowadays are spending more and more time operating in a world that they don’t truly understand—the World Wide Web. It can probably be safely said that most students don’t really know the nitty-gritty technical aspects of the Internet, but they have figured out how to instant message, create a Facebook profile, download songs, order textbooks and register for class.Of course, while an extensive knowledge of technology isn’t necessary to send an email, not really knowing what you’re working with can leave you vulnerable—especially when you’re giving away important information such as your credit card number online. It’s also a legal dilemma: how can you tell the court you had an expectation of …

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Questions of race, relationships and rage on campus were recently raised through hip hop inside Dinkytown’s Varsity Theater when The Hip Hop Committee, an unofficial student group, put on the dialogue and spoken word based production, “HOW IT IS: The Space Between You And Everyone Else,” at the end of March.The production, based on interviews with college students from all over the country, touched on many “gray areas,” says senior Toussaint Morrison, writer, co-director, actor and head of the Hip Hop Committee. Scenes include: a frat rejecting a biracial student and accusing him of carrying drugs; a theater professor allowing students to laugh at racist jokes in class; and a male student beating his girlfriend outside of a party, after which she protects him from getting beaten up by someone else. “The scenes are really …

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Stephanie Miller doesn’t have delusions of political grandeur. She really just wants to entertain you. But if she can change your mind while she’s at it, then that’s even better. Miller, radio’s highest-rated female progressive talk show host, is a comedienne and daughter of former U.S. Representative William Miller, running mate to Republican Barry Goldwater in the 1964 Presidential election. A long-time radio host, she launched the nationally-syndicated The Stephanie Miller Show in September 2004 and will be coming to the U on April 6 for a live broadcast. “We’re really looking forward to it,” she says. “In radio, you’re sitting in a little glass room and you don’t know if everybody’s enjoying what you’re doing, so the live shows are always really fun because there’s just a great energy to be there with people.”She’s …

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We poison the air with every flick of the light switch. Whether we know it or not, we each are guilty of pouring tons of toxic materials into our environment by using the modern marvel of electricity. Our society depends on it. Our planet suffers for it. But the Twin Cities’ power providers are seeking to change all of that.Xcel Energy, the Twin Cities’ major power provider, has begun a project to clean up their power plants’ emissions. Dubbing the plan the Metro Emissions Reduction Project (MERP), the billion dollar renovation project is already in the third year of its six-year schedule. Through MERP, Xcel Energy will refit two of its existing power plants—the High Bridge plant in St. Paul, and the Riverside Plant along Minneapolis’s riverfront—with a new fuel source: natural gas.“We at Xcel …

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Minnesota Student Association elections begin April 11, which means that Emily Serafy Cox, current MSA president will be out of office on July 1. Freshly home from an International Women’s Student Leadership Conference in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, she sits down with The Wake to discuss her term, her future and politics at the U.Cox’s first words as MSA president-elect were “You’re shitting me.” She received a phone call from Margaret Cahill while riding her bike. Cox thought she had lost the race when Cahill told her, “Thanks for running a great campaign.” But then Cahill started to read off the numbers. “It took me a second to realize my numbers were bigger than everyone else’s,” she says. “I was incredibly happy. I think it was a mixture of excitement and …

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After black student leaders took over Morrill Hall demanding better academic and student services in 1969, the department for African American and African studies was born. Almost 40 years later, on March 7, over 55 people gathered to discuss the past, present and future of the university’s departments of ethnic studies in the face of strategic positioning.At the “Transformative Education: Ethnic Studies for the 21st Century” forum, several undergraduate and graduate students raved about the university’s ethnic studies programs, before a panel of faculty and chairs voiced concerns about the future of the departments. “Ethnic studies can help the university more broadly conceive itself as a part of the community,” explains Joseph Bauerkemper, graduate student in American Indian Studies.Unfortunately, “there are an enormous amount of issues on the plate” when it comes to ethnic studies, …

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“Culturally sensitive housing” is a term that evokes both curiosity and skepticism from much of the university community. Interior design professor Tasoulla Hadjiyanni and her students aim to change that. “Building Ties: Culturally Sensitive Housing Designs for Hmong and Somali Refugees,” an exhibit of housing designs by Hadjiyanni’s students, runs until May 2 at the Hennepin History Museum. The drawings illustrate plans for affordable housing units that cater to the cultural needs of specific immigrant populations here in the Twin Cities. “Just having a roof over your head doesn’t mean you’re not homeless,” says Hadjiyanni, an immigrant herself. She wants people to recognize that design plays a major role in making a house a home, and a home can make or break an immigrant’s sense of belonging in a new place.Hadjiyanni studied the effects of …

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On a gray, cold day, anything on campus can look ugly. The brick buildings, the dirty grass in the mall or those rascally squirrels. But even on a sunny and bright spring day, the Science Classroom Building is still “the worst looking building in the universe,” as University President Bob Bruininks says of the white building found at end of the Washington Avenue Bridge on the East Bank campus. Thankfully, university students won’t have to tolerate the insufferable eyesore much longer—the building will be demolished and rebuilt to house a science teaching and student service center for chemistry and physics classes as well as a consolidated academic services center. The building in its current condition was not worth additional investment, says Orlyn Miller, the director of plans and architecture for the project. “It’s better to …

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David is a 20-year-old native of Switzerland and has been making his way via buses and trains from Las Vegas to San Francisco, but needs to be in Los Angeles in a couple of days to catch a flight back to Zurich. John, 21, is a philosophy major from Arizona State University Tempe who is sightseeing in San Francisco before heading to his father’s house, an hour and a half away. Phil is a recent Pharmacy graduate who found a job in San Francisco but not an apartment—as of yet. The one thing these three men have in common is that they were all roommates of mine at my most recent stay at a hostel in San Francisco.Some people may approach the idea of staying at a hostel with some trepidation. Aren’t hostels mainly meant …

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Everyday, Chelsea Votel straps on a big black vest attached to a 17-pound machine. Air pumps through the connecting tubes and into the vest’s hollow lining, producing vibrations that shake free the mucus clinging to her lungs. She ingests four to eight enzymes (proteins that help digest food), eats breakfast and swallows eight or nine pills before heading to class at an all-girls high school in Mendota Heights, where her roster of extracurricular activities includes battling opponents on the lacrosse field, editing the yearbook and singing in a select choir group, to name a few. Before finally sliding beneath her red comforter at night—in a bedroom decorated with dried flowers and pictures of her boyfriend, sister Lindsay, and friends—she’ll have taken at least 26 pills and spent 15 minutes being jostled by The Vest.Chelsea has …

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If you’re ever wandering around Coffman trying to kill time between classes, meander your way up to the second floor and go into the American Indian Student Cultural Center for a place to relax, hang out and grab a bite to eat. “Everyone’s welcome,” says Marisa Carr, director of the center. The AISCC was established in 1978 and has moved to several different locations since then, but the center made its last move to Coffman when the union was remodeled a few years ago. In 1999, the AISCC merged with the American Indian Student Association “to make a bigger community,” says Amy Ojibway, secretary of the AISCC. “It’s more solid to have one organization that tackles everything,” says Kate Beane, vice president. According to the Student Activities Office website, the mission of the …

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On March 20, 2003, a coalition of nations (mostly composed of troops from the United States and United Kingdom) marched over the Kuwait-Iraq border into the hostile territory of Iraq. Two and a half years and a lot of unanswered questions later, U.S. veterans have a big one for The Man: Where’s my money?The GI Bill of Rights, officially named the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944, was established to help veterans coming back from World War II get their lives back together. Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the bill, which included provisions providing, among other things, a college education for U.S. veterans. The GI Bill has gone through various changes in the past 60 years, but it has remained true to the goal of the original piece of legislation: to help veterans make the transition from …

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Martin Luther King III was 10 years old when his father was shot while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968. The civil rights leader was in Memphis to help lead sanitation workers in a protest against low wages and intolerable working conditions. “We did not know how we were going to make it but we knew that somehow we would survive,” said King. “I’m thankful for the spirit of love that existed in our home and in our family. Those kinds of experiences made an indelible impact on our lives as youngsters and taught us to follow nonviolence. Our mother [the late Coretta Scott King] taught us to dislike an evil act but not hate the person.”Since that time, King, his three siblings and many others …

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