At the university’s Lobby Day, two students meet with lawmakers who may determine their financial future.

The school bus behind Coffman Union slowly fills with those primed to go to the capital. Some are dressed up in suits; others opt to wear their maroon and gold. But all have intentions of having their voices heard at a time when tuition at the U seems to be in a never-ending upward spiral, and the end of the debate over whether or not the Gophers will get their own stadium seems as far away as the time students can expect to pay off loans.

MSA President Emily Serafy Cox, standing at the head of the bus, reveals what to expect upon arriving at the state capital. Students need to meet with the student leader assigned to each district and pick up a packet of information that reveals which representative or senator to meet with and covers key talking points about issues concerning the U.

For her part, Serafy Cox feels that Lobby Day is an important tool to raise U visibility in the lawmakers’ eyes. “Anytime you get students and legislators in the same room together, it helps the legislators know how important it is to fund higher education,” Serafy Cox says.

Freshman Amy Krumholz and Sophomore Karin Dumke, sitting together near the front of the bus, listen intently to the directions that Serafy Cox is giving, before continuing to talk in the quick but comfortable way found between longtime friends.

“I hope that there will be other people from our district,” Amy says, “Even though I doubt that there will be.”

Both students are from the Winona area. Amy is studying elementary education and Karin is studying American Sign Language, and after seeing an email advertising Lobby Day, they say they decided to go because they are most concerned with getting a Gophers stadium on campus.

The bus arrives on the windy steps of the capital and the pair climbs up the hill to the rotunda inside to gather their folders, complete with the lists of legislators they are scheduled to meet. They decide to “fudge it a bit” and go meet legislators according to Amy’s schedule—Sen. Steve Murphy at 1 p.m.

They head outside to the steps of the capital where many people are congregating and holding up district numbers on paper plates. They strain around to look for their district leader, the wind whipping their hair. No one is to be found holding up a 28 or a 31, their respective district numbers, so, after consulting with someone wearing an “ask me” sticker, they decide to head up to Sen. Murphy’s office by themselves, and soon find themselves sitting in a side room, waiting for the senator to arrive.

Karin whispers to Amy, who’s perusing the talking points in her folder, “I have no idea who he is!”

“Yeah, we’re not wearing business suits,” Amy whispers back, noting several well dressed interns darting in and out of the office, “So this is really awkward.”

But then, Sen. Murphy quickly comes in, shakes their hands and sits down, looking comfortable in a tweed jacket and green tie and prepared to answer any questions the students may have.

“We’re here to talk about the University of Minnesota,” Karin says, “And to see if you’re in favor of more funding, new buildings and a Gopher stadium.”

The senator then describes how he thinks that a Gopher Stadium is a “good thing” for the University but that it’s “not the most important thing the U does.” He adds that higher education is a very important issue, and his plan to help that, which he admits is an unpopular one, would be to “lop off” the last year of high school, and add a year to college to give students a “good solid base” of education.

With the cheers of the rally echoing through the cavernous corridors of the capital during their session, Amy and Karin thank the senator for his time, and rush off to meet with the next legislator on their list, Rep. Gene Pelowski, Jr., representing district 31A in Winona.

Rep. Pelowski not only fulfills a position in the House of Representatives, but also teaches political science courses at Winona High School. As a former student of his, Amy and Karin are eager to head over to the State Office Building, where Pelowski’s office is.

In an instance that describes the diverse communities that lobby at the capital on any given day, while quickly walking through the tunnel that connects the capital to the State Office Building, the students pass a group of people wearing Viking’s football jerseys, undoubtedly lobbying to their respective legislators for a new Viking’s stadium. “We’re Packers fans,” Karin guiltily whispers as they walk by.

Finally, they reach Rep. Pelowski’s office, and decide to write him a note because he is away at that moment. Just as they are leaving, the representative warmly greets the students in the hallway, and ushers them into his office, inviting them to take chocolate from his Winona State University jars.

After exchanging pleasant inquires about the students’ families, the representative asked them the purpose of their lobbying today. When the students talk about stadiums and new buildings on campus, Pelowski gently interrupts them. He says that he would like to see the growing amount of student debt as the only issue students should fight for right now, adding that he wishes students would walk around with T-shirts stating how much they were in debt, and how long it would take for them to pay it off, adding “a face to the numbers” instead of adding new stadiums and buildings.

After recommending to his former students that they head over to the capital and observe him and the other representatives in session at 3 p.m., Karin and Amy again traverse the tunnel among the well-dressed lawmakers heading to session. The students remark that it appeared to be a good day for them at the capital. They sit down in the gallery overlooking the House of Representatives, with other students from the Twin Cities campus, while below them, bills and budgets are being debated.

The U Lobby Day brought only about 200 students to the state capital in an effort to, as Rep. Pelowski said, put a face to the laws and budgets the legislators create that affect the welfare of students statewide. If the remarks of Sen. Murphy and Rep. Pelowski are of any indication, more must be done. After all, as Sen. Murphy remarked with a sense of urgency to the students, “It’s your generation” and it’s time to make higher education a priority in Minnesota.

One of the most popular activities during the summer in Minnesota is to hop on a boat and go to any of the more than 10,000 lakes. People will spend the day on the boat lounging, drinking beer and maybe doing a little bit of swimming to get some exercise. Not the Water Ski and Wakeboard team. They head to the water four days a week to practice intense jumps and high-paced skiing and boarding, regardless of the weather.

“There is nothing like being on the water, and the adrenaline rush is amazing,” says civil engineering junior Jonathan Raduenz, practice captain, former president, apparel chair and Web director.

Most members of the team have been doing water sports since they were about four or five. “It is simply a part of my life. I cannot live without it,” says aerospace engineering sophomore Heath Marnach, practice coordinator.

The water-skiers have three tournaments per season, spring and fall. “Tournaments are by far the most fun weekends I’ve had in college life so far,” says president and mechanical engineering student Corey Bergendahl. In this tournament, there are three events: slalom, trick and jump, in which five people compete. “Wakeboard tournaments are wakeboarding, sometimes combined with barefooting,” says physiology student Cole Bond, tournament director and wakeboard captain. “I joined the team to slalom and I have found an even greater love for wakeboarding and jumping,” Raduenz says.

One obstacle of the team is that it includes two sports. While both require a boat and the water, they are also unique. “With skiers and boarders it becomes very difficult since both want practice time and they both require different setups,” Raduenz says. “Everyone gets to ski, but we usually pick an emphasis for each day and that’s who’s going to get the most time.”

“There are occasionally days where we only run ski practice in preparation for a three-event tournament, or wakeboard-only days in preparation for wakeboard tourneys,” Marnach says.

The team is sponsored by Midwest Mastercraft, who is helping them get a boat and gear, as well as helping them promote waterskiing as a sport. “Without them, we wouldn’t have a team because it’s such an expensive sport,” Raduenz says. The group receives no student fees funding. “Everyone pays team dues, and those dues pay for boat payments, insurance and gas to run the boat,” Bond says.

The Water Ski and Wakeboard team has been a club for five years, Bergendahl says, but this team really got going in 2003 when they became a part of the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Water-ski Team INC, a program started by Scott Coley, president of the organization. This allows them to get a brand new Malibu ski boat each season. New boats are purchased from the dealers at relatively cheap prices and are financed through the bank. The teams are required to make interest and insurance payments on the boats. At the end of the season, the boats are resold at a cheap price and the loan is paid back completely from the sale.

Once you have a boat, you still need water suits, skis and ropes. People on the team “generally have their own equipment,” Bond says. “But that’s not to say that you need your own equipment. Most everyone who has it is more than happy to share with everyone.”

Practices generally run Monday through Thursday and begin at 3 p.m. “There are many members who join simply for the water time at practices,” says Bergendahl. Practices usually begin with slaloming, followed by wakeboard practice. The team is typically on the lake until an hour after sundown and practices are on Lake Josephine, Lake McCarron and Owasso Lake in Roseville.

“The great thing is the amount of time you want to put forth is completely up to you,” Raduenz says. “It’s probably about 10 hours a week without the tournaments during the season and just a couple hours a month in the off season for fundraising.” The team generally does have meetings twice a month to handle paperwork before they leave for tournaments.

The team will take members of all skill levels. Everyone is “willing to help each other out and teach new things to everybody,” Bergendahl says. “There are plenty of people who started on the team not knowing how to get out of the water, and then ended up placing high up in the tournaments even in the next season.”

The fall season runs from the beginning of the school year to about November. The spring season usually starts in April (as soon as the ice is off the lakes!) and runs until around finals week. This guarantees the chills. They also have a long winter off of the water. “We don’t really do anything in the winter except hang out,” Raduenz says.

“Weight-lifting and off-season training are essential to being ready for the spring season,” Marnach says. The team also has an intramural hockey team so they can play another Minnesota favorite together.

Another struggle is the “lack of community involvement,” Bergendahl says. “We are a great group of people, but are looking to the University and local Twin Cities community in general for support as far as a permanent site to ski, course to practice on and some major sponsorship in order to differ our travel and boat costs.” Despite the logistics, the Water Ski and Wakeboard team has about 40 members who live to be on the water.

Last year, the team won the Collegiate Extreme Wakeboarding Championships against all of the colleges in the Midwest. The team competes with schools throughout Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, Minnesota and Iowa.

They have two upcoming tournaments the weekend of April 22 at the UW-Whitewater Wakeboard Tourney in Janesville, Wis. and a Three-Event in Dayton, Ohio. While chances are good you’re not making the trek to watch them in these events, keep this team in mind. They’re representing the U how they know best, by kicking ass and having fun.

For more information about the Water Ski and Wakeboard team visit .

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 the summer. The classes stretched three-and-a-half hours, five days a week for eight weeks—and earned Assadi 10 credits. Though he took the class for his own interest, and was excited to learn Arabic, he admits, “It got a little old by the end.”

“You have to really like what you’re doing … but I could see some other people were about to call it quits,” he says. It wasn’t too unbearable for him, and last summer—after having transferred to the university—Assadi took another course. This time, he opted for genetics (Bio 4003), so that he could take a lighter load of sciences the following semester. “To be able to just concentrate on one class, and get a good grade was really helpful,” he says.

He says it was difficult to come to class since he had a job, the weather was nice, and friends were out of school, but still he never skipped class. It’s more problematic to skip class during the summer, he says, because ditching class one day is “like skipping two or three classes in a row.” This is because more material is crammed into one class period.

He admits it can get rough and that the campus has a different, lonelier feel. “It just kind of gives you a general feeling of ‘nobody’s here, why am I here?’” he says, even if he admits it was helpful.

You don’t have to have three majors, like Assadi, to benefit from summer term. Maybe you’re getting too old for Camp Ihduhapi and should try the six-credit philosophy camp offered (Phil 4326) in a prairie in Windom, Minn., instead. Summer term also can help to finish up some general requirements, get a prerequisite out of the way, or take a general interest class (not for credit). However, many major-level courses are not offered during the summer—depending on the college and program.

The university’s entire summer term is 13 weeks, but most classes meet in a shorter time frame. Time frames are broken up into May session (three weeks), two four-week sessions, a six-week session, an eight-week session and a ten-week session. A maximum of 20 credits can be taken by undergraduates.

Undergraduate resident tuition for summer classes is $274.62 per credit, and $721.92 for non-residents. On-campus housing is also available for May and summer students (see www.housing.umn.edu/student/summerschool). Financial aid awarded for the 2005-2006 academic year that has not yet been spent by a student can be applied to summer term. Assadi got to put $92 from a leftover grant into a summer course.

May and summer terms also offer several global seminars and programs all around the world. Topics range from field study to volunteer work to taking classes for credit while abroad. Costs of these programs vary. A summer course catalog can be viewed online at www.cce.umn.edu/summer/catalog.

There is no alphabetical rotation for summer term. It’s on a first come, first served online-registration that began on April 11 for admitted students. Students admitted to a degree program but not taking classes this spring have to contact their college for registration guidelines. Non-admitted students can begin registering Tuesday, April 18.

More information about summer term can be found at .

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 glass of wine or a cold six-pack. It’s always a balancing act. Inevitably, the sale of “intoxicating liquors” ferments into some sort of altercation.

It’s been a tightrope proprietor Justin Greer has walked, after he decided with his brother Seth to open a “simpler business” ten years ago. “Don’t blame the liquor store because people like to drink,” he says. “I think for every one thing we’ve done wrong, there are probably thousands of things we’ve done right.”

His staff has compiled a lengthy list of customers who have been barred from the store for life. In fact, the average customer at Witt’s would tell you his staff does a more than admirable job of managing the stress that walks through their door. Many customers have been shopping at Witt’s for the nearly the length of its existence, and they enjoy the way they are treated, though they know their quick stop to pick up alcohol can get interesting.

While most customers are kind and courteous, sometimes they can be trouble. “The types of customers we have are so very different,” says general manager Marie Morris, who has worked for Greer the past four years. “I feel that there is no excuse for calling me a white bitch, or expecting me to pay for the rest of your drink because you’re short of money, or to allow you to steal from the store,” she says. “In this respect, it’s the hardest place I’ve ever worked.” Greer adds, “We’ve done a great job serving whoever wants to be served liquor and done it in a completely legal and forthright way, as long as we’ve been here. It hasn’t always been easy for us to do that.”

Witt’s has been a shelter to many wandering souls, a place “where we could all count on to come back home, and sort of be taken care of,” says Greer. “It’s been a source of joy for me that I’ve been able to find people that work with me so well. It’s a place that can afford everyone that works here a lot of personal freedoms to be however they want to be and work when they want to work and be away when they need to be away,” he says.

Family life at the store got tense this past fall, when a valued and trusted employee failed an age-compliance check, not once, but twice in as many months. City police, teamed with licensing officials, recruit young adults under the legal age and deploy them in bars and liquor stores in order to check whether or not the establishment is complying with the laws on the sale of alcohol to minors.

Principal author of a comprehensive manual on age compliance checks, Alex C. Wagenaar, says, “Conducting compliance checks is not an easy task, but police and beverage-control agencies now have access to proven techniques for monitoring alcohol sales to minors.”

Many who work in the retail liquor industry call those techniques suspect. Many feel it is entrapment, though the police say they are only creating an opportunity for a crime to be committed. “I know by their definition, what they’re doing is not defined as entrapment,” Greer says, “but it is. It’s a complete setup. When you set somebody up to be able to commit a so-called crime, that’s entrapment, isn’t it?”

Even after the employee failed for the second time, Greer was reluctant to let him go. He says the city forced the issue as part of the agreement he would come to in order to keep his liquor license. On top of a fine of over $10,000, Witt’s has also been forced to purchase $1,500 worth of ID scanners. Turns out the scanners, which record more than just the customer’s age, are the hardest part of the fine.

“It’s already hurting business. We have to turn away people who are obviously of age, people who have no business having to carry around an ID in order to buy some beer. We have to turn away people all day long,” Greer says. The city has also stipulated that only four kinds of ID are valid: state issued IDs, Canadian IDs, passports, and military IDs. Many of Witt’s customer’s carry anything but, whether it’s a Mexican license, a foreign driver’s license, or nothing at all because they live their lives on the street.

“Beyond that, they’re telling me that in order to keep my license, not only will I purchase this equipment, but I also have to interface it with a PC that will record all of this information and not only record it, but be able to burn it on a CD to surrender to the police whenever they want me to surrender it,” Greer says. “Maybe I’m a little paranoid, I don’t know, but why would you need all of that information?”

His fears of lost business appear to be warranted. In 2001, the MGM Liquor Warehouse in Crystal ordered the same license scanners by mistake. They had intended to order ones that simply read the customers age and nothing else from the license. When customers began noticing all the information from their ID cards appearing on the store’s computer screens, they were not pleased. They complained to MGM’s headquarters and even had a letter to the editor published in the Star Tribune, and the scanners were immediately removed and the databases erased.

MGM says it lost customers due to its scanning machines. Witt’s is one-tenth the size of the average MGM outlet and can’t afford the loss in customers, which Greer figures is probably around 20 percent.

However, according to Sgt. Travis Glampe of the Minneapolis Police License Investigation Division, no liquor licenses have ever been revoked because of age compliance failures. Instead, every business that fails it—and many do every year—are simply forced to pay similar fines.

Either way, the scanners are just another challenge the staff at Witt’s faces. “This place, love it or not,” explains manager Morris, “is our livelihood. No one here is living high on the hog and I wish that some of our customers and some the city officials could walk a mile in our shoes.”

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 privacy when you surfed the net and essentially opened your hard drive to anyone who knew how to access it? Just because most of us don’t know what’s going on doesn’t mean that everyone’s clueless.

On March 28, the Silha Center and the INMS sponsored a presentation, “Your Email is not Yours! Government Surveillance and Digital Privacy,” by three Internet-savvy speakers, including Mary Horvath, program manager and senior computer forensic examiner with the FBI; Dick Reeve, deputy district attorney in Denver and adjunct professor at the University of Denver College of Law; and Stephen Cribari from the University of Minnesota Law School.

The presentation focused on the constitutional interpretation of privacy. The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures …” But what about a search of your computer?

Would the people that wrote the Fourth Amendment have protected the hard drive? It’s hard to know since there has been no Supreme Court decision yet that precisely answers that question in relation to the constitution. The question of what the constitution says about online privacy is a tough one, Cribari says—the “jury’s still out” on whether or not your hard drive is even still solely yours once you connect to the web. “When you connect with an Internet site, do you know what’s been put on your computer?” he asked.

“The notion of what’s private when it comes to cyberspace is not an easy question,” he said. The notion of privacy that most of us have online is a sense of anonymity, but anonymity is not the same as privacy and simply being anonymous doesn’t protect private information, he says.

While constitutional protection hasn’t yet been defined, “there are federal laws, including various privacy acts, that govern where the Fourth Amendment might not,” Reeve says.

Aspects of these laws outline the steps that the government must take in order to search for information on a private computer. When examining a hard drive, forensic examiners can only look for evidence of an alleged crime and need to get a new warrant if they find anything else, Reeve said. When they’ve received a warrant, their first step is to make a “forensic copy” of all digital evidence is made. Such a copy is “a virtual snapshot of the entire drive,” including supposedly erased and reformatted data. “It takes a picture of everything, including where there’s nothing,” he said. “There’s no such thing as ‘hidden data’ in a forensic laboratory.”

There are also numerous ways to intercept and or “wiretap” for information in addition to accessing data that’s simply stored on a hard drive. For instance, “data sniffers” are programs that are designed to collect individual packets of data—each of our emails is broken into thousands of these—that are sent through servers around the world when we hit the send button.

All Internet traffic is routed through multiple servers and the routers determine the path that the information takes. Although the system tries to find the best path, the information still goes through multiple servers. “This is one of the major reasons there is no privacy on the Internet,” Horvath says.

However, there’s a great wealth of information stored on computers that is relatively easily accessed. Most of us don’t realize just how much of our actions remain recorded in files that our computer creates or moves around. “When I delete an email, it’s gone, right? When you throw something in the trash bin on your computer, does it go away?” Cribari asks. “No, it just moves to a different part of the computer,” he added. “Your emails are not private technically. Anybody can get your emails and it’s very easy to get if you know what you’re doing,” Horvath says.

As an FBI examiner, “I handle digital evidence of stored date, not the wiretaps or wireless transmissions or ‘data sniffers,’” Horvath says, although there are other examiners that work with such programs. Examiners used to go through every file on the computer over a course of several days, but now that would be impossible, so there are automated programs that do the same thing, she said. Methods of searching include date reduction by filtering out recognizable files, going through metadata that computers create about your actions in certain programs (such as Word), and looking through Web browser history files that record where you’ve been online and how frequently you visit. Sometimes even passwords or credit card numbers get stored in computer files. Nearly anything that has been “deleted” remains findable, at least in part. “When you delete a file … that information is still in the computer,” she says.

While the law oversees governmental use of these techniques (although the Patriot Act has lately been the subject of controversy in its treatment of government access to information), criminal hackers roam the Internet world and are able to do many of the same things, putting your personal hard drive at risk whenever you’re online.

Legally, the question of how much online privacy a person is entitled to remains an open-ended one. “Do you have to understand all this to expect privacy?” asks Cribari. For practical purposes, “if you’re going to use this high-tech stuff and are passing information over it,” Horvath says, “then you should understand the security risks.”

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 common, but still they’re really racy scenarios,” says sophomore Shirani Jayasuriya, co-director and actor. “Toussaint sparks some nerves and then lets the audience deal with it,” she explains.

Morrison says the production is meant to “paint a better picture of how things are, rather than how they could be.” He explains, “I don’t want to prescribe behavior or demand tolerance or some kind of bullshit like that … I just want to create a discussion that will go outside the theater.”

To introduce this discussion to audiences, Morrison spent close to $600 of his student loans on the production, after spending more than two months writing the script. The Hip Hop Committee does not receive student fees because it is technically an “expired” group, having not applied for fees on time, Morrison explains. Morrison applied and qualified for a grant from the university’s Crisis Point Theatre, but due to editorial disagreements about the nature of the production, and its posters, he declined the money.

Morrison says he is not concerned about earning his investment back, although he admits it would be nice. “The event is a lot bigger than making back my finances … it’s about getting people to come in to see it,” he says. Encouraging audiences “to come see it,” is the point of the Hip Hop Committee itself, Morrison explains.

The Hip Hop Committee is a sort of “logo,” Morrison says. Although 20 actors were in the production, the student group “is basically nobody other than me,” he admits. The group does have a few official members he says, and around 25 people are active in various events, but the title serves primarily to publicly legitimize Morrison’s own hip hop endeavors. Other hip hop ventures include his Friday night shows at the Steak Knife and last year’s hip hop production.

Morrison says having the official seal of a student group helps him bring hip hop back into Dinkytown. This show “is one of the first hip hop ventures to come back in theater.” According to Morrison, a few years ago Bon Appetit (a restaurant, now closed) was a hot spot for hip hop, until the Dinkytown Business Association labeled hip hop “un-American” and “volatile.” This motivated Morrison to start the Hip Hop Committee and shop his rap and spoken word around other venues. Morrison is also in a band, The Blend.

Though Morrison will not be at the university next year, he says the Hip Hop Committee will be up and running, and he plans to guide it and continue getting new people involved. First-year theater and psychology major Patricia Kugmeh, who acted in the play, says she got involved because “it was going to open eyes to some things going on on campus and I wanted to be a part of that.”

Opening eyes was not only a goal of the production, but also the very nature of the medium—hip hop. Jayasuriya says that “it’s a common misconception … that hip hop is just rap, spoken word … dancing … beats.” In introducing the production, Morrison quoted Tricia Rose, author of Black Noise, who defined hip hop as a way to share voices from “the margins of urban America.” The production—denied a university grant, a stage at the Rarig Center, class credit to those involved, and even rehearsal space—expresses a marginalized voice, Morrison says. Founder and President of the “one man committee,” Morrison concluded the play in true hip hop fashion, saying, “even though they may not see your stories, I’ll make sure they hear them until we wake up.”

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 also excited to be on a college campus and hopes to draw a young audience to the broadcast. “I think younger people find our show a little hipper than most talk radio. In general, younger people tend to be more progressive and so progressive radio tends to skew younger,” she says. “Bill O’Reilly’s audience, for instance, is like 65 to dead, but our audience tends to be a little younger.”

The show itself feeds off of the daily stream of sound bite-filled news reports, “talking head” interviews, and controversial blog postings that make up the country’s current political discourse. A large portion of Miller’s show is simply riffing on clips from the previous evening’s right-wing television programs or that morning’s top headlines.

“I work 24 hours a day to come up with 3 hours of show,” she says, “It’s a constant process.” In order to constantly come up with new material, “I’m on the Internet and watching television for political stories all day and night. When you’re doing a topical show, you have to keep up with everything that’s going on,” she adds.

But she emphasizes that “liberal talk radio is not an arm of the Democratic Party—it’s entertainment.” She considers the show to be more of a comedy show than an exclusively political talk show. “We do politics but we also do pop culture and entertainment,” she says.

Initially, her career was also more entertainment-oriented than politically-oriented. “I never intended to do political talk,” she says, “I wasn’t politically active in college at all—I was a theater geek.” Majoring in theater at USC, Miller envisioned herself as the next Carol Burnett and her start in radio “was kind of an accident,” she says. “I was like every kid out of college trying to figure out how to make a living with a theater degree, thinking, ‘Well, this is going to get me a job in any 7-Eleven in the country.’ So I started bits on a station in Buffalo, N.Y., one thing just sort of led to another, and I’ve been doing radio about 20 years.”

Although she’s done stints on television, Miller couldn’t leave the mic for long. “There’s so much creative freedom in radio. It really is my favorite medium,” she says.

Much like the changes in her own career, she thinks that the current political situation in the country has politicized people that haven’t always been political. “Comedy-wise, you can’t write it any better than the stuff that comes out of the Bush administration. It’s always a gift for comedy, but politically I don’t think this country can take three more years with this president,” she says. While her primary goals with her show are to be clever, funny and entertaining, she does want to change some minds and encourage people to become politically engaged. “I don’t think you get anybody by preaching, but if you entertain them and maybe you make them laugh, they might not even realize that you’ve made them think,” she says.

On April 7, Stephanie Miller and voice impersonator Jim Ward will be broadcasting The Stephanie Miller Show live from the Coffman Memorial Union Theater. The free live show will be from 8 to 11 a.m.

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 are very proud of this effort,” says Ron Elsner, an Xcel Energy representative and a MERP Project Manager at Xcel Energy’s King Plant. With natural gas, the Riverside and High Bridge Plants’ toxic emissions will cease entirely.

Despite a century of scientific and technological advancement, our conventional power plants continue to operate using the same time-tested method: using intense heat to generate steam that turns a turbine to generate electricity. Even nuclear plants operate on this principle, splitting atoms to run their boilers. But the majority of plants here in the Twin Cities still burn coal by the trainful to generate the megawattage our metropolis requires.

As anyone walking past a smokestack can attest to, coal does not burn clean. The smoke it produces holds many toxins, but the worst among them are sulfur dioxide, a chemical partially responsible for acid rain; mercury, the dense metal made famous by thermometers; NOX, a dangerous toxicant and all-around health hazard; and the denser parts of the smoke that settle back to Earth as particulate matter, or ash. These four toxins are responsible for, among other things, altering climate patterns, reducing air quality, polluting water sources, and increasing cancer rates throughout the urban population. Natural gas, by comparison, burns clean, producing no harmful byproducts and no particulate matter. This makes it ideal for urban industrial use.

Through a combination of renovation and reconstruction, both the Riverside and High Bridge plants will switch from coal-burning operation to natural gas-burning by 2008. Not only will coal become a thing of the past, but the facilities needed for coal-burning—the trains that haul tons of coal through the city and the technology needed to filter toxins from coal smoke—will also become obsolete. There will be no more belching smokestacks as a price for our power.

Price is, however, the major concern of the average consumer, and of paramount importance to students leaving the university with little more than debt to their name. And the change to natural gas comes with several key worries, not the least of which are the sheer cost of the fuel when compared to coal: generating the same amount of electricity by burning natural gas will cost roughly ten times as much as it previously did through coal burning. Natural gas is a more scarce resource than coal, and in high demand, especially in the Twin Cities. While everyone is in favor of cleaner power plants, consumers might not be willing to pay an extra figure on their electrical bills, or suffer through blackouts if Xcel’s natural gas lines run dry.

Luckily, Xcel Energy, and the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC), foresaw the potential problems a full year before the MERP began. To ensure that natural gas continues as needed at their retrofitted power plants, Xcel Energy has contracted individual gas lines to each plant individually, in accordance with the PUC’s 2003 Public Utilities Natural Gas Conference. Each contract will remain autonomous from Xcel’s other natural gas services. Additionally, Elsner is confident that the multiple major pipelines carrying natural gas into Minnesota—originating from both Canada and the south Midwest—will keep natural gas prices competitive, allowing Xcel Energy to maintain their own prices.

But competitive gas prices alone are not enough to make up for the cost difference in fuel. Because natural gas burns more efficiently than coal, the power output of each plant will rise dramatically: 80 megawatts (MW) for Riverside, and more than 270 MW in High Bridge. This substantial increase in output will allow both plants to function as Intermediate Plants, which operate about 16 hours a day for five days a week, as opposed to baseline plants, which run constantly to meet power demands. When the two plants are not in operation, the Twin Cities will rely on the local grid to make up the difference in power. Once the renovations are in place, Xcel Energy has estimated an increase of $3.50 to $4 on average monthly bills because of MERP.

Clean-burning fuels and increased power output aside, the Metro Emissions Reduction Project should in no way be seen as a final solution. As the Twin Cities grow, and power needs increase, Xcel Energy will need to look for new ways to meet the rising demands for electricity. “The resources that we need to meet the growing energy need,” cautions Elsner, “are well beyond what we’re adding with the MERP.” And as the Cities look to the surrounding power grid to make up for the growing need, the burden of providing electricity is shifted to power plants that still use polluting forms of fuel to increase their output. In this respect, conservation still remains the key in the environmental movement.

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 fear and disbelief as well as a feeling like, ‘Wow I did that.’”

“It’s a full-time job,” Cox, a half-time student says. “For me it has worked pretty well.” She adds that most MSA presidents have been full-time students, while she has only had to take six credits per semester to graduate on time. The job pays a stipend of $5,000 per year. “I worked it out to something like $3 per hour,” she jokes.

As president, Cox has been concentrating on “the relationship between both student government as well as students in general to the administration and the various levels of government,” she says. She is the “spokesperson of the student government to … administration and government and often to the press. And as that spokesperson, if the organization has taken a stance on something, [I] voice that stance,” she says. Plus, “there are a million things,” she says of her various duties.

Cox’s second in command is Vice President Colin Schwensohn, who also graduates in May. They met when Schwensohn was a senator on Cox’s committee for the student solidarity work she did with the AFSME Union strike two and a half years ago. “Our priorities were very similar and he seemed like somebody I could work with,” she says. “He’s been very brave,” Cox says of his ability to present issues in forum. “For him to get up there and field questions [during forum] … it’s not easy to do,” she says. “It can be intimidating and he hasn’t been intimidated by the task.”

MSA holds open forum meetings every other week and has committee meetings on non-forum weeks. “In weekly executive board meetings, we discuss projects and discuss agenda for forum or any problems arising,” she says.

Cox is working on her current mission is the Rental Housing Summit with the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly’s president Karen Buhr, with whom Cox traveled to Abu Dhabi. One session,held March 27, discussed building stronger communities and livable communities around campus. “There have been a lot of livability issues that have arisen from the interaction between student residents and permanent residents,” she says. The upcoming session on April 10 discusses both tenant and community grievances against landlords. “We want to find solutions and really address how we can move on from here,” she says, adding that making better housing around the university is the summit’s main objective. The session will be in Coffman Union in the President’s Room and is an open forum. “If the housing summit can get pulled off, it’ll be one of the biggest things that the student body presidents have done together since GAPSA and MSA split,” she says.

As for her thoughts on the year, “You never get as much done as you wanted to, no matter what you’re doing,” she says. “I didn’t have time to make as many of the changes and put as much effort into continuing things as I wanted to.” Even though she didn’t get to everything on her list, she says, “I hope that I have had a positive impact on the way things are run.”

Though Cox graduates in May and is “applying for jobs and internships,” she “would love to stay in Minneapolis,” she says. She would like to do non-profit work or governmental work in the service aspect of government. “There are things that I want to continue [from her MSA work] like projects or policy initiatives,” she says. But “you never know if they are going to [continue] because obviously you don’t have control over what happens next year.”

As for this year’s candidates, Cox says she probably won’t be publicly endorsing anyone because the only people she knows who are running are a fellow executive board member and her roommate. “At the moment, I need to step back,” she says. “I’m definitely ready to move on to the next stage of my life.”

For more information about what MSA is up to, visit .

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, says Louis Mendoza, professor and chair of the Department of Chicano Studies. “I will not be settled with the under-representation of our students on this campus or of our faculty,” he says. Citing a lack of tenured faculty, recognition for service-learning, and resources in general, Mendoza said, “We’ve been underdeveloped.”

Keith Mayes, assistant professor in the department of African American and African studies, says students “had to take over buildings” to persuade the university to create his department. “Are we still an oppositional discipline?” he asks. “If we have arrived, then that means that we have certain kinds of institutional support,” he says.

“The University of Minnesota has not provided the departments with the resources that they need to grow and prosper,” says Patricia Albers, professor and chair of the department of American Indian studies. She explained that the university does not provide resources, in part, because the departments “can’t argue in terms of the numbers.”

“We are constantly under the gun for not having sufficient enrollment,” Albers says. She argues that students are not introduced to ethnic studies because any class that “teaches a Toni Morrison novel” can fulfill the diversity liberal education requirement. Students on the undergraduate panel said they were not encouraged to take ethnic studies classes during first-year orientation.

“We haven’t been able to draw the kinds of numbers we need to build faculty and expand our influence,” Albers says. “I’m still totally disappointed that while we are seeing these radical demographic changes [in the student body] … the institution is not doing its job by representing these people in their decisions,” she added.

Despite apparently low numbers in ethnic studies departments, students were at the forum to show their support and to express their appreciation for the ethnic studies programs.

Alicia Steele, a senior in African American studies and a member of the student panel at the forum, says, “It was nice to be able to find a place [African American studies] where I could be angry and learn to understand my frustration with oppression, my frustration with ignorance.”

Amy Ojibway, a sophomore in American Indian Studies, agreed, saying, “It’s a really great way to learn how to channel our anger and be productive with it.” She explains that after she graduates she plans to go back to her community and bring her new skills, including the revitalization of Native language. She says the program is great for non-Native students as well. “It’s just a great way to understand … it’s a shock for a lot of students,” she says.

“It’s a safe environment for class discussion and sharing our influential experiences,” says Jennifer Lee Kelley, a senior in Asian American Studies. She explains that discussions are especially beneficial between ethnic students and students of a less diverse background to enhance and understand “interaction and perception.” Ethnic studies encourage a “non-arrogant, aware American public,” she says.

Martha Ockenfels-Martinez, a senior in Chicano Studies and Global Studies, calls Chicano studies and service her “personal passion.” The department “has allowed me to be able to incorporate that into my academic life,” she says.

“Behind all the success lies the will and enthusiasm of students,” says Josephine Lee in Asian American Studies.

While the wrath of strategic positioning effectively cut General College out of the university’s master plan, the prophecy is still unclear for the four ethnic studies programs. “I’ve been at the academy for 40 years, and I’m not optimistic,” Albers says.

The forum was sponsored by the Departments of African American and African Studies, American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies and Chicano Studies in collaboration with Más(s) Color and the Council on Public Education-Place Based Learning Committee. It was co-sponsored by the Multicultural Center for Academic Excellence, the Community Scholars Program, the Graduate School, the Immigration History Research Center and the College of Liberal Arts.