When I was growing up, I thought that all babies came from the airport. Which was true, at least for me. I was born Jang Hye Ryeong on June 15, 1988, but Jessica Hobson was born at the airport on Dec. 16, 1988. The picture of a six-month-old child coming into the arms of her parents is one that hangs proudly in my parent’s home, indicating the start of our family. It’s as if I sprang to life at that moment, Athena-like. As Jessica, maybe I did begin a life there at the MSP airport when the social worker brought me off the plane, 6,000 miles away from the country of my birth. Though Hye Ryeong had to go somewhere, didn’t she?

I am one of 200,000 Korean adoptees around the world, and our numbers are still growing. I am not an orphan. My biological mother still lives, and I can see that my smile mirrors her own in a translation of genes. My voice and hers are unidentifiable in all that is similar. When I look in the mirror, I see frustratingly straight hair and lashes that refuse to curl in the way that magazines do. However, when you look at me you might see thick, Asian hair and slanted Asian eyes. This is my reality – a dual identity of non-belonging.

I try not to speak for all adoptees, but the truth of the matter is adoptees face similar situations wherever they grow up. Two-thirds of all Korean adoptees find their way to the United States. Interestingly, 10 percent of all adopted Korean Americans come to Minnesota, meaning that there are approximately 15,000 of us roaming around the state. We make up the majority of all Korean Americans. We are not Koreans by culture although, looking at us, most people can’t tell the difference. And because families don’t come cheap, the majority of adoptees come to middle class or upper-middle class couples. This means that many adoptees end up in generic, homogenously white suburbs and communities that subtly infuse racism in a way that seems integrating and diverse.

Growing up in a suburb of the Twin Cities, I was one of the few people of color in the city. I was often, if not always, the only person of color in the classroom. It was a relief to be able to go to Korean Culture Camp for a week once a year. I giggled with my peers as we sat in the bleachers and watched our parents search in vain for our faces, not being able to rely on identifying us by our black hair or Asian features. Once a year, I felt as if people weren’t picking me out of the crowd.

But that week of Korean kimchi and rice, folk dancing and language classes left me feeling less like a Korean and more like an outsider. I could never be as graceful as the real Korean dancers. No matter how hard I tried, I liked macaroni and cheese more than bulgogi. I knew that this was a vacation and a reprieve from the constant racial consciousness that had been growing since my adoption day.

Before going to school, I had been surrounded by people who loved me, who saw beyond (or failed to see at all) my skin color and accepted me as a part of the family. My adoptive parents, with the best intentions possible, taught me how to be their daughter. But my blond, Norwegian mother couldn’t teach me about being an Asian woman. Neither could my father, for all his well-meaning attempts.

Being an Asian raised by typically white, Scandinavian parents was more difficult than people imagined. The adoption agency had taught them how to love a child as their own – a replacement of the biological child they were incapable of conceiving – but they were not taught how to raise a child that was not their own. It was not a love they lacked, but an understanding of the consequences of reality. In their home, I felt like myself. It was outside that I realized I was different.

In a world where I was just another member of the Hobson family, I didn’t know how to cope with the racist insults that the other kids naively quipped without realizing that I was just about as American as them. Yes, legally, I am only a naturalized citizen, but I have no knowledge of my ethnic background – just like most other American kids. How should I react to a kid screaming, Go back to where you came from, you Communist bitch! I didn’t even have the slightest idea who Kim Jong Il was, or why a Minnesotan girl should care about atomic bombs. Give me a break, I thought that the Axis of Evil had something to do with the losing team in World War II.

Returning “home” to Korea did not provide the answers I had hoped. Adoption agencies, protected by self-created ignorance and preventative measures, would not allow me to look at the Korean documents that had shaped my life for more than a few seconds. My lack of Korean skills frustratingly forced me to realize that no one was ever meant to see these files again, especially not when I was supposed to be assimilated into American culture. I didn’t need to see these papers again.

At the same time, I was constantly mistaken as a Japanese tourist. The Koreans didn’t know what to do with me. I looked Korean, certainly; I even dressed like them. My upbringing demonstrated the loss of what was my birthright: Korean identity. The Korean people did not understand the term ibyang, adoptee, and were furious that I was culturally ignorant as I attempted to explain that I was Korean American.

My biological mother did not know me. She recoiled at my refusal to go to a public bathhouse and cried over my refusal to eat things that still had their head on. I was not Korean anymore and had taken on the more ignorant, cruel aspects of American ideology. But that was what I had gone away for, wasn’t it? To have a better (American) life? Another mistake was in letting her think that I was angry at her for sending me away. Yet, how could I not be? Children belong with their mothers. If she had loved me, societal pressures on an unwed mother should not have mattered. Right? It is unthinkable in the United States that a child born out of wedlock would be sent through international adoption. Yet this is my (and thousands of others’) reality. I know now that she does love me, in the detached way that only a biological mother who has been removed from her daughter for 20 years can.

The dual marginalization of my experiences both in the United States and abroad draws into sharp focus the fact that adoptees truly belong to neither place. While we desperately look at magazines for fashion and make-up tips, Korean adoptees find that the world is not made for them. We can’t make our eyes look European, no matter how hard we try. We can’t blend in. Yet, we are not welcome in our country of birth because we are culturally different.

The adoption agencies fail to address these issues. We are adopted and forgotten. Adoption is what makes them money, not post-adoption services. Adoption agencies only search for biological parents if it will boost their image. As thousands of transnational and trans-racial adoptions occur every year, we must come to question what it truly means for these children and the adults who have already experienced the pain, suffering, loss and confusion of adoption. We are not what meets the eye – Asians in an American world. We experience bits and pieces of different lives – American, Korean, individual lives. It is the responsibility of each citizen to realize that the United States truly is a diverse nation and that even given information can’t be seen just by looking at my face. I am not a Korean by culture. Nor am I a true American. I am ibyang.

Make no mistake about it, folks:America’s biggest banks are the bogeyman of the American economy. They engineered the economic collapse for profit, and they passed the bill on to you, the taxpayer. They refuse to lend to underwater consumers. With one hand, they shower their employees – the very same ones whose schemes almost collapsed the economy – with seven figure bonuses while looting public coffers with the other. They actively battle legislation and policy aimed at preventing another crash.

But how did this happen? In 1977, the well-intentioned Community Reinvestment Act went into effect. Designed to prohibit discrimination in lending, Wall Street quickly realized its potential for profit.
Bankers realized that they could now make loans to unemployed crack-addicted felons with no income, package those loans with honest debtors who had less chance of default, and sell these packages to investors. Housing prices were on the rise, and interests rates and the cost of lending were low. As long as they stayed this way, underwater lenders could pay off their mortgage by selling their house. Rating agencies signed off on these subprime loan packages, because they were making money off them too.

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies… the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” –Thomas Jefferson

Wall Street also offered “credit default swaps,” essentially insurance on anything. They profited by selling junk loans and then profited again by insuring them. The money they made allowed them to make more inadvisable loans. It was genius. They thought they had it all under control. But they didn’t.

If we truly had a free market, all those banks would have failed. Market evolution would have struck them down to make room for new, more competitive, and more careful institutions that wouldn’t make the same mistakes. But when the feeding frenzy came to an end, Wall Street’s agents in public office orchestrated the biggest heist of public funds in history to keep them afloat.

Now, those banks are reporting record profits. They’re expanding. They’re handing out huge bonuses. The banks are buying up huge amounts of the debt the government is incurring cleaning up the bank’s mess, again, playing every angle.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies…the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” This is exactly what “too big to fail” entails; Wall Street control of the economy. While they reap record profits, the unemployment rate has breached 10 percent and small businesses are starving for cash while financiers roll in it. Small, local banks – the true dynamos of job growth – didn’t get a bail out. They’ve been allowed to fail in record numbers.
Does this piss you off? Because it should.

The distribution of wealth is stacked against the American public. But as a citizen, there are some things you can do to strike back.

MOVE YOUR MONEY! In a capitalist economy, businesses respond to market signals. If you keep your money in big banks, you send the message to them that you’ll continue to patronize them regardless of their behavior. Your money is used as capital to expand corporate and bank power instead of funding jobs and consumer loans. The concept is gaining nationwide momentum. Two of the biggest banks in the United States, Wells Fargo and U.S. Bankcorp, have a heavy presence in Minneapolis. Wells Fargo has an especially bad history of shady business practices. Check out the Independent Community Bankers of America at www.icba.org to find a community bank to move your money into. One excellent option, convenient to campus, is Franklin National bank, which has a branch located at 200 University Ave W. They offer all the services of bigger banks, including online banking and check cards.

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS! As a consumer, you have many legal protections from unethical banking practices that you may be unaware of. For example, you must explicitly tell your bank that you wish them to allow transactions over your credit limit that could lead to fees. Read up on your consumer rights at www.federalreserve.gov/consumerinfo. If your rights have been violated, the Federal Reserve has a complaint system that can be accessed on their website.

SPEAK UP! Use www.leg.state.mn.us/leg/districtfinder.asp to locate and contact your local, state and federal representatives and let them know you support new regulations for banks that will protect consumers and prevent future shenanigans. Sign the Wall Street: Pay Us Back petition at
www.uspirg.org/action/financial-privacy/pay-us-back. Make a sign and stand outside big banks and convince people to move their money. Be heard!

10 Albums that I loved:

Agoraphobic Nosebleed – Agorapocalypse

Who would’ve thought ANb would put out an album with an average song length of over two minutes? The world’s fastest grind band slows down a little, with mindblowing results. Absolutely fucking insane thrash trades off with insanely heavy riffs, with the best drum programming in human history. This record has the perfect grindcore mood: pissed off and wild and gross, offensive just for the sake of it, and ultimately lighthearted, playful, and carefree. But what matters most is that this band has finally become more about the music than the spectacle, though they’re still further over the top than just about anybody else.

If you had to decide whether or not this is an album you are interested in based on only one track:
“Question of Integrity”

Andrew Bird – Noble Beast

The most peaceful and pastoral record from the Bird, and also his best-produced. Every track is a lush and constantly-shifting mix of layered instrumentation; each verse and chorus of each song is tracked differently, and though the initial draw of the album is the vocal hooks, it is this diversity of instrumentation that draws you back again and again. An intelligent and skillful album—a treat for longtime Bird fans and first-time listeners alike.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT:
“Tenuousness”

Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

The first AC record to be even in the same ballpark of good as their fans think it is, though it’s not the best album of the decade, or even of the year. The Collective have pulled off a complicated balancing act, creating an album accessible enough to find a wide audience while staying bizarre and complex enough to satisfy their extant fanbase. The album combines organic psychedaelia with partystopping electronics, peppered with field recordings and deep, writhing sounds. This music is thick, wet, and full of life.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT:
“In the Flowers”

Black Moth Super Rainbow – Eating Us

The feel-good album of forever, a huge and bright and primary-colored sound that overwhelms whatever you’re feeling: sublimity by force. The album is sticky and sweet, weapons-grade happiness. Way better than a SAD lamp.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT:
“Born on a Day the Sun Didn’t Rise”

Dälek – Gutter Tactics

Standing on the blacksand beach that is a rap record: beats pound in the ocean like waves beneath which lies a churning underbelly of anxious sound, undulating and nebulous. You can see dimly through the water the shapes of words shimmering like fish. The wave of static breaks, the sky whitewashed with noise.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT:
“Gutter Tactics”

Krallice – Dimensional Bleedthrough

No other black metal album is so virtuosic, so guitar-oriented, so consistent. Possessed of both clarity and rawness. Mick Barr’s guitar melodies are catchy without being like anybody else’s. Absolutely mesmerizing, so constant in its energy and speed that it becomes meditative. The record is balls-out no-punches-pulled epic, eschewing the usual gloom and overwrought melancholy of the genre to provide an hour and a quarter of downright ecstatic music, an entire album of huge closing tracks.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT:
the last two minutes of “The Mountain”

The Mountain Goats – The Life of the World to Come

This record is the first unqualified success of TMG’s hi-fi sound, their first studio-recorded album that is completely unembarrassing in instrumentation and orchestration; the production of this album is spacious and engaging, with huge drums, warm electronics, reverberating piano and subtle violin textures. But as always with this band, the reason to care is the writing. As we’ve come to expect, each song on this record displays beautiful language and emotional subtlety and depth. The record is also a rarity in TMG’s extensive catalog: a well-crafted and coherent unit from the prolific but inconsistent John Darnielle, known for making good songs but not good albums.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT:
“Matthew 25:21”

The Paper Chase – Someday This Could All Be Yours, Vol. 1: The Calamities

A deceptive album: totally catchy but genuinely threatening; this is pop music pumped full of infection and disease, accessible hooks with bitterly misanthropic lyrics. Every instrument a little damaged, a little bent. Small touches of violence and discordance throughout every song, a complex patchwork of organic and digital sound. A fluidly-connected collection of sternly epic death marches and barely-controlled cathartics, each one seeping into the next. Producer/frontman John Congleton has come up with brand-new guitar noises, wild and screaming tones twisted out of recognizable shape. This band has a perfect sound, a gold standard for production junkies.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT:
“what should we do with your body (the lightning)”

Ulcerate – Everything is Fire

Witness the percolation of a new style; if this is death metal then all death prior can be considered proto-. This album is beyond new: it is an album from the future. An alien thing come to our planet fully-formed; a melodic system from some other world. Spider-riffs weave webs around each other creating incomprehensible and amorphous rhythms. Many of the record’s best moments are bleak landscapes, but even at its most aggressive the riffing is abstract.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT:
“Drown Within”

Zu – Carboniferous

Heavy bass, wild barry sax, pumping electronics and frenetic drumming centered around complex snare rolls. The saxophone used alternatingly for melody, for bassline, for percussion and for insane textures. A unique sound: heavy, intensely polyrhythmic, violent and celebratory, indebted to things like Lightning Bolt and John Zorn without sounding like anything but itself. This is bizarre, surprising, confrontational and meticulously constructed music; an impeccable album for a special breed of listener: those in it for the sound and the rhythm, not for a tune to hum.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT:
“Chthonian”

15 Albums that I liked a lot:

Afgrund – Vid Helvetets Grindar
Riff-heavy grindcore from Scandinavia.
Anni Rossi – Rockwell
Newsom-y chirping and viola.
Antigama – Warning
Avant-grind. Interesting drumkit.
Augury – Fragmentary Evidence
Prog/tech/death.
Behemoth – Evangelion
The best Nile album of 2009, by just a smidgen.
Bergraven – Till Makabert Väsen
Weird, abstract, quiet black metal.
John Zorn – Alhambra Love Songs
Continuing Zorn’s listenable streak.
Khanate – Clean Hands Go Foul
Their most subtle, least cheesy; very menacing.
Mochipet – Master P on Atari
Dance music that is also listenable.
Ocean Chief – Den Förste
Best traditional doom since pre-hiatus YOB.
S.K.E.T. – Depleted Uranium Weapons
Excellent powernoise, punishing but danceable.
Shining – VI/Klagopsalmer
A real rocker from the suicidal Swedes.
St. Vincent – Actor
Catchy enough for you, bizarre enough for me.
Sunn O))) – Monoliths & Dimensions
Without a doubt the best ever Sunn O))) record.
Why? – Eskimo Snow
The (more) bizarre, poppy(er) flip-side to Alopecia.

5 Albums that other people liked:

Roy Montgomery & Grouper – Split
by Eric Brew

I admit my love for Grouper makes the mention of this album borderline self-serving. I could go either way with the 18-minute track by Roy Montgomery on the split, but Liz Harris’ tracks (playing as Grouper) always captivate me—usually late at night, when I’m on the edge of drowsiness with a small degree of disgust from the day still in my gut. The tracks are (as is most of Harris’ music) brooding, crackling and deep. Her voice, though often indecipherable, is like a drug that, once swallowed, catches onto some part near the inside of your left lung and never leaves—a sort of damage you accept and forever carry.

Akron/Family – Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free
by Pete Noteboom

This album will make you feel like you’re giving birth to magical multi-colored eggs filled with hope, truth, miracles, and everlasting friendship. Akron/Family sounds like a couple indie kids took mushrooms and wandered off into the woods to roast some marshmallows and talk about how seriously intense it is to grow up. On the band’s epic quest to Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free, they wander through the land of dancetastic party plucking and have a gander at the American dream while their collective brain swells with appreciation of The Beauty Inherent In All Things in a breathtaking cacophony of electric light.

The Flaming Lips – Embryonic
by Kevin Tully

It’s hard to believe that the same guys whose last album featured a song called “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” and whose stage show is filled with giant balloons and confetti cannons recorded Embryonic. My first impression of the album was that it sounded like if robots with fuzzy guitars soundtracked a James Bond movie. Then I decided that it sounded more like if robots with fuzzy guitars and an evil wizard soundtracked a James Bond movie where the entire thing was just James Bond panicking for no reason. Then I remembered that it was, in fact, The Flaming Lips.

Nomo – Invisible Cities
by Zach McCormick

Those floating, ethereal, percussive tones that drift mystically throughout Nomo’s music are the product of an amplified Kalimba, an African thumb piano. The Ann Arbor, MI band runs such simple instruments through a slew of effects pedals to craft everything from dulcet marimba chords to searing, distorted guitar lines. Calling Nomo an Afro-Funk group seems a woefully inadequate way to describe the band’s incredibly diverse range of influences: thick, complex horn arrangements recall 70’s funk, while reverb-drenched fuzz guitar gives the album a psychedelic edge. Truly one of the most unique and compelling records of 2009.

Ke$ha – Animal
by Sam Johnston

When Ke$ha was done puking in Paris Hilton’s closet, she turned around and puked into my heart, and I’m not sure if I should thank her or not.

The last thing crossing most consumers’ minds in a recession is: It would be awfully nice to fill some wall space with a nice piece of locally-produced art. Hmm…

But why is this? Galleries won’t stay afloat on their own – most continue their humble existence on donations and sales of the artwork they feature. Between Minneapolis’s free museums and innumerable art galleries, we’re an art-spoiled crowd – sometimes we need to be reminded of the careful world these galleries exist in.

Franklin Art Works

To your right hang a cluster of old cell phones. Occasionally one will start to buzz, which will grow into a low trembling roar until the entire suspended pile is in a frenzied vibration. But other than that, it’s a bare white room. If you go late enough in the day there might not even be anyone at the reception desk – the whole place might feel abandoned. A slide projector someone forgot to unplug is in a side room with dark wallpaper showing pictures of a woman’s face from various angles, and the pages of a book turning.

Franklin Art Works was built as a silent movie theater in 1916, but eventually served as an adult movie theater, a bicycle shop, and an underground venue before being purchased by Franklin Art Works. The current exposition, primarily of works by Chris Baker (with the exception of Alex Fleming’s projector piece) uses only the main floor, but Baker’s selections are rich enough for his two main works – Murmur Study and Hello World! or How I Learned to Stop Listening and Love the Noise – to leave you satisfied. However, on the second floor is a large performance space, unchanged since the building’s debut as a movie theater.

Chris Baker, a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s MFA program, uses the space excellently, with Murmur Study taking up the bulk of the lobby. Strips of evenly spaced and gracefully hanging printer paper are attached to computers at the roof that feed down into an endless, overwhelming pile of already-printed receipt paper. The computers are programmed to pick up, in real time, tweets from the website Twitter that contain particularly emotional keywords. The result, as in his other piece, is a cacophony of highly personal background noise, in this case beautifully cast into a massive pile of junk on the floor. Hello World! features hundreds of personal video confessions, each tiny and each with an audio track playing. The volume swells but the individual speeches remain indistinguishable. Occasionally an image on one of the individual video squares will catch your attention, but it will quickly change. The works inhabit the bare white space of the gallery well. The small exhibition space packs a lot of interesting material and – being fairly easy to walk through – is an excellent gallery for a quick visit.

Art of This

Like any respectable gallery, Art of This morphs itself to the needs of their featured artist. Within its white walls and behind an unassumingly pale red door, Art of This exists as a small dynamic entity in the midst of an otherwise lackluster region of Minneapolis. The gallery is a small, cryptic presence among the bleak housing and petrol station that draws traffic to this tragic region of Nicollet Ave.

But Art of This’ latest featured artist, Bruce Tapola, has created a barrier between the gallery and its outside world. A lengthy white wall rests between the gallery and its front windows, blocking most of the view the audience has to dull architecture across the street and the delurid glow of passing cars.
Tapola’s work features an eclectic mixture of mediums – from paintings to elaborate structures resembling branches. Photos impaled by smaller bits of wood dangle from the floating structure. It’s a melancholic expression of what the outside world is reticent of. As the audience paces about the space they are subtly reminded of that fateful petrol station outside by a circle hacked out of the white barrier at the front of the gallery. The Au Natural exhibit will be displayed through December 6.

As a non-profit, artist-run space, Art of This depends on art sales, grants, and private donations to continue to feature new media and experimental artwork. The gallery also features unique one-night music shows every other week as part of an Improvised music series.

The Gallery @ Fox Tax

Located along First Ave. in northeast Minneapolis lies a gallery with an identity crisis. Fox Tax, located one block from the bustle of Central Ave., feels just a little hidden. While the name implies it, you might not realize you’re in a tax preparation and advising office when walking into the sleek gallery space.
The Gallery @ Fox Tax is rather business-chic. Its modest sign, huge front windows and minimal furnishings also add to its mystique. White and brick walls frame a collection of black leather couches that look small and ornamental, making the surrounding artwork look even more outrageous.
The current exhibit on display at The Gallery @ Fox Tax is Heavy Petting, a collection of paintings by Rob McBroom that draw on images from the Edward Lear poem, “The Owl and the Pussy Cat.” The pieces each feature a selection of the text incorporated into a vibrant painting of bright, almost garish, colors, along with glitter, plastic jewels, and found objects. The paintings are displayed in sequence, but arguably each portrays a whole story of its own.

Around the corner, another smaller gallery space sits empty, patiently waiting for the next exhibit.
While a small, one-room gallery might not be enough to draw you over to Fox Tax, it might make a nice addition to a day trip to northeast. Neighboring establishments like the Red Stag Supper Club and overwhelmingly cute gift shop I Like You are reason enough to linger around the block and serve as a striking reminder that this part of Minneapolis has threatened for years to become the next Uptown.
At the very least, Fox Tax is quite possibly the most aesthetically pleasing place to have your taxes done. Somehow that alone makes it seem like a good idea.

News aggregators are the middlemen in an Internet filled with producers and consumers. You want news about horse races? Grisly murders? Escaped orangutans? News sources create and aggregators provide. The purpose of a news aggregator is to consolidate news content in one place, much like a newspaper with its multiple unrelated sections. However, most aggregators display the content instead of producing it. Ideally, a news aggregator scours the web for the quality content and leaves the junk to rot. In practice, the process often breaks down into a jelly of mediocrity.

For a crash course in aggregation, let’s head over to one of the reigning barons of news aggregation: Google News (a.k.a. news.google.com). The place is clean, but not sparse. I can see section links to my left, a pillar of print stories down the middle, and headlines to my right. Links to video are interspersed among the text when available, but print is the brunt of the information presented. Maybe it’s my devotion to Google as a search engine that makes me feel at home here on Google News. Maybe it’s this sensation of being at home that makes me want to leave as quickly as I can.

Google News is one of many news aggregators that offers content but not the zing. The content is there, truckloads of it, but news content on the Internet isn’t worth the fiber-optic filaments that it travels through. We can get our Internet news from anywhere; a major media site, an analyst’s blog, a journalist’s twitter and other, hipper places besides. We can even get off the Internet entirely if we dare to be so contrarian. News is everywhere for the time being and cheap to boot, so while Google News may provide a decent service, the sustainable economic model simply isn’t there. As a tentacle of the greater Google Inc. octopus, Google News gets along fine. However, Google News is unsustainable without the name. Zing is what sells, and Google News has no zing. It’s the dull-looking kid who’s the son of illustrious parents but has few prospects of his own.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, some news aggregators have the necessary zing but not the panopticon scope of a service like Google News. Newsy.com takes one such novel approach. Rewrap coverage of the same story by different news organizations to produce an arguably more balanced piece of journalism in a broadcast format. For instance, the Newsy.com story “GM Opts to Keep Opel” cites six different sources: the BBC, Russia Today, Der Speigel, CBC News, The Wall Street Journal, and Deutsche Welle. The con, however, is the same as the pro in Newsy.com’s case: One three-minute story thoroughly covers each topic. It’s fast and efficient, which Newsy.com founder Jim Spencer touts as a key element for news consumers, but it’s also rigid and fundamentally limited. At its core, it regurgitates the coverage of other news organizations into a headline news format. The site itself looks good while it’s doing this regurgitating, but the site slogan “The News With More Views” simply doesn’t lend itself to a three-minute headline news format. Imagine reading three stories about University of Minnesota campus arrests in three different publications: The Wake, The Minnesota Daily, and the Star Tribune. Each story may have a different perspective and a different way of analyzing the arrests. Will these different perspectives and analyses retain their uniqueness when a website like Newsy.com aggregates them into one mass? The results will be hit and miss, but if the uniqueness disappears, then the novelty of news has disappeared as well, replaced with something akin to the dullest of Associated Press briefs. Note, however, that speed over depth is the purpose of Newsy.com, though not of all aggregators. We in American society are told that people are busy these days, so perhaps speed over depth is marketable. Only time will tell.

Let’s shift the focus to something that offers both the necessary content and the fabled zing, albeit without a shred of the English language for the discerning monolingual American to read. 2424actu.fr has a dark, sports-car sleek design uncommon in most mainstream news sites, perhaps to draw in that younger crowd who’s already getting sick of the black on gray with a little bit of white around the edges style that the reigning French news sites already offer. In addition to the design, though, 2424actu.fr has content—and not just content, but depth of content. Say I want to know more about the story of Michael Jackson’s death. I click on the video link for the story and I’m brought to an AFP (French equivalent of the Associated Press) video news brief. However, I also have the choice of hearing the story through video or radio from ten or fifteen other sources, plus scores of print sources besides. In American terms, this would be the equivalent of being able to see, hear, and read CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, the AP, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the LA Times all in one place.
The problem? The site only streams video for those with a French IP address. But an American version may come someday soon; and the news aggregator landscape may develop yet another wrinkle because of it. After all, entrepreneurship steals from many places.

Aggregators are one more answer to the challenge of making journalism more accessible and more profitable. Everyone in the Internet news biz takes a different approach. Some get as many sources as they can, some simplify as much as they can, and some seek to make their site a one-stop shop for every conceivable development. MSNBC tries for the latter with their “Spectra Visual News Reader.” Imagine a Nintendo Wii game where all you do is read news; that’s what this is. Choose your feeds and watch the stories come and go. As hip and trendy as the Spectra Visual News Reader seeks to be, it’s still a profoundly inelegant piece of software—a Segway in the world of news aggregators. Spectra would make a great screensaver, but to think that anyone would use this thing as their primary news source is unlikely.

The issue with news aggregators overall is this: Whether they have the zing, the content, both or neither, there’s still little demand for them. Aggregators today are a niche product. Who needs ten different sources for the same story? If I want to listen to Fox News coverage of something, by golly, I’ll go to Fox News. If I want to listen to MSNBC coverage of something, by golly, I’ll go to MSNBC. If I want both, I’ll go to both—why should I go to a middleman first?

Speaking not as a student or a consumer of news but as the average hypothetical layman, what does a news aggregator offer me? Not much that I don’t already have. Aggregators may provide varied coverage of an event or offer coverage of something that would otherwise have gone unheard had I gone to a major news site instead, but, for better or worse, these are things that laymen have afforded themselves to lose. Aggregators don’t break the big stories and they don’t nab enough small ones. Some aggregators like Newsy.com and 2424actu.fr are certainly pretty things in pretty packages, but do we need our news to be pretty? Or is news supposed to remain what it is today, whatever it is today? We, the people, whether we realize or not, will decide with our wallets and our habits.

The Saint Paul Union Depot stands tall with the charm of 1923 neoclassical architecture – at its entrance are huge columns and large glass doors, the grass inside the half-circle driveway contains tasteful, well-trimmed shrubbery, and when it’s not a wintry abyss across the metro area, flowers line the rim of the drive as well. Inside, the Headhouse is complete with beautiful shiny marble floors, huge windows both on the walls and overhead. A bridge over Kellogg Boulevard connects to the concourse where the station meets the tracks. It’s a good looking train station. It’s just too bad there are no trains running through it. The last passenger train through the place was in 1971. Nowadays all that people do there is eat Greek food and send letters. But that may soon change.

Plans are developing to bring back commuter rail services to Minnesota. On Oct. 14, parts of these plans were unveiled at the Saint Paul depot itself when the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) held its second round of open houses to present new analyses of the state’s rail needs and to get input from citizens. The open house in Saint Paul was one of seven meetings that took place in different parts of the state, including Duluth, Rochester and Saint Cloud. The subsequent step will be to finalize plans and release them by the end of the year. The plans will then be used as a comprehensive framework around which individual projects can be oriented.

MnDOT, working with Cambridge Systematics, prioritized different train line projects according to the amount of usage they’d get. Cambridge consults offices of the U.S. Department of Transportation as well as a variety of other federal and state agencies having to do with transportation, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Transit Administration.

Ridership forecasts for various routes are “certainly the crux” of the decision making, says Marc Cutler, a planner with Cambridge Systematics. Lines that come first on the list of priorities are as follows: a line from the Twin Cities to Saint Cloud and then Moorhead , a line to Duluth, a line to Mankato, and a high-speed line through Red Wing and Winona over to Milwaukee and Chicago. The first phase of the project would give the high-speed line a top speed of 110 miles per hour, and the other lines a top speed of 79 miles per hour. The rails would however be upgradeable to 150 miles per hour speeds, at a significant additional cost.

Planners think the lines would get a lot of use – Cambridge Systems predicts that the Chicago and Saint Cloud lines would see over a million annual trips by 2030, and there could be 400,000 to 600,000 riders on routes to Duluth and Rochester.

Assuming funding for this massive undertaking can be found, the time could be now for a revamp of Midwest transportation infrastructure.

“This is a unique moment in time” for rail transportation in Minnesota, says Cutler. Federal funding “has suddenly appeared before us.”

Federal funding appears in the form of an $8 billion dollar chunk of February’s $787 billion federal stimulus package designated for high-speed rail via projects with the National Environmental Policy Act. To understand how high the competition is for this money, imagine 8 slices of pumpkin pie vied for by 50 pie-craving diners. According to Reuters, 24 states filled out 45 applications for a piece of this $8 billion train pie. The amount of money requested totals $50 billion. Though officials had expected to be able to begin doling out grants this month, they now expect they won’t be writing any checks until later this winter, due to the overwhelming number of applications. The New York Times reports that the only Minnesota project in the White House’s top ten rail priorities list is the track between Chicago and Minneapolis. MnDOT also lists an additional $40 billion in federal funds for the state to potentially glean, mostly in the form of loans, for various -to-city and intercity rail projects.

MnDOT announced its application for $382 million from federal stimulus money in August. This amount would go towards a Saint Cloud extension of the soon-to-open Northstar line from Minneapolis to Big Lake, as well as a high-speed rail system from Chicago to the Twin Cities up to Duluth.

The state has predicted that the project costs for their rail plan would cost about $8.4 billion, or $7.2 billion if the upgrades were done as one system. The projects outlined in the first phase would cost about $5.3 billion.

Cutler cautions that the rail plan is an “incremental, multi-generational task.” He uses the example of the interstate highway system – it didn’t appear overnight, and the early highways were not as good as the later ones. Each train line will be treated as an independent start-up project, meaning there will be different timelines for each project.

Cutler also stressed the importance of learning from other transit systems’ mistakes, referring to the New York City’s Penn Station and Grand Central Station. There is currently no direct connection between these two major transportation hubs. While the original plan for Twin Cities rails would’ve only put a depot in St. Paul, the state has since changed directions to include large commuter train depots in both St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Some lines are certainly coming along more quickly than others. The Northstar commuter rail, for example, is on its way. The line’s grand opening will take place on Nov. 14 of this year, and it will begin regular commuter travel on Monday, Nov. 16. The route will run from downtown Minneapolis out to Big Lake, a bedroom community of the Twin Cities that’s not far from Saint Cloud. The $320 million cost of the project is shared by state and federal governments, as well as by Anoka, Hennepin, and Sherburne counties, the Metropolitan Council, and the Minnesota Twins. It is estimated that 3,400 people a day will use the train on weekdays from the get go.

The Northstar can travel at a maximum speed of 79 miles per hour, and with six stops, the duration of the route will be about 50 minutes. It connects with the Hiawatha light rail by Target field and then goes on to Fridley, Coon Rapids, Anoka, Elk River, and finally Big Lake.

Dave Christianson, the project manager from MnDOT, also says that the train corridor between the Twin Cities and Duluth, dubbed the Northern Lights Express, is also far ahead of most other corridors. He says the project is one step away from final design, and that it has seen full support along the line. While there is the question of funding, he says the route could be in operation by 2015 or 2016. Christianson also alludes to additional rail corridors with grassroots support, such as a line to Eau Claire, Wis.

When looking at the future of the Minnesota railways, it is important to note that there was a time when the Saint Paul Union Depot was truly a bustling transportation hub. At one time there were 18 tracks serving the place, which 282 trains and 20,000 passengers used daily. This fact was brought up at the Question and Answer portion of the Rail Plan meeting on Oct. 14 when an audience member recalled a time in the 1950’s when there were three daily trips from the Saint Paul depot directly to Union Station Chicago that took little more than six hours.

Today, the Amtrak web site lists two daily trips that take eight hours – Google Maps estimates the drive time between Saint Paul and Chicago at 6 hours and 14 minutes. The Amtrak ticket costs $96 if you buy it within a few days of your trip, or $56 if you buy it in advance. The same trip by automobile would cost $47 in a car with a poor fuel efficiency of 20 miles per gallon.

The Union Depot is currently owned by the U.S. Postal Service and private owners. In June 2009, the Ramsey County Board approved the purchase of the depot’s concourse and the 9 miles of land connected to it from the U.S. Postal Service for $49.6 million, and is trying to purchase the Headhouse from private owners for another $8.1 million. The mailmen will be relocating to a space in Eagan in 2010, at which point the county will begin a $237.5 million project to revamp the space to once again be used for its original purpose. Dave Christianson says that Amtrak signed a letter of intent to operate out of the Saint Paul Union Depot in 2012.

Minnesota’s rail plans are in conjunction with a larger Midwestern rail plan which would bring high-speed trains to a number of major Midwestern cities. The Midwest Rail Initiative is proposing 110 mile per hour trains from Chicago to Milwaukee, Green Bay, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinatti, and Saint Louis.

Buying books used is no secret among the university crowd – college is expensive. When book lists exceed ten novels or one textbook is $100, used, at the University of Minnesota bookstore, the budget gets tight. While Amazon and eBay lure consumers with low sticker prices, high shipping rates and two week turn-around times turn “great deals” into “minor inconveniences.” Not only that, the true condition of the book is subjective, especially when buying online. A book listed as “Used – Acceptable” that has “some minor highlighting” could have full pages colored in with pink highlighter; the book should instead be listed as “Slightly Used Coloring Book.”

Fortunately, great deals can still be found right here in our own neighborhoods.

If Dinkytown is on the list of daily sights, there are a couple used bookstores that cater to most course needs. The Bookhouse and Cummings Books can be found on 14th Avenue SE. Their proximity to the Minneapolis campus of the U of M make them prime shops for students to sell their books to, creating ample opportunity for future students in the same courses.

Both shops keep a variety of books – fiction, non-fiction, anthologies, recently released, old editions – that cover a wide range of topics, perfect resources for those research papers and midterm essays. Even better, a large portion of the books in The Bookhouse come from professors who have cleaned out their own libraries. One of the employees also noted that older books have better bindings and have an overall better quality than books printed today.

Mayday Books can be found on Cedar Avenue. just off West Bank campus. The books here tend to be politically swayed and can prove useful in CSCL, Politics, Gender Studies, History and Sociology classes. Even if your academic career doesn’t center on progressive banter, the slew of books, periodicals and zines is enough to pique and enhance general, political interest.

Magers and Quinn Booksellers is an absolute must check for used books. This shop is a bibliophile’s heaven. The depths of the store are inconceivable upon entry. Popular fiction and various book club books sit in the front and acts as a gateway to the expansive fiction collection. The back room opens to an array of genres and books written and almost anything you could ever want a book about. There are sections dedicated to Minnesotan authors, local authors, employee selections and popular titles. The trick in Magers and Quinn is once you find the book you are looking for, check to see if there are other copies stuck behind it – they are usually rougher in condition, but cheaper as well.

As for used bookstores in St. Paul, Sixth Chamber Used Books is a neighborhood shop to check out. Just off Grand Avenue., Sixth Chamber has a growing and varied selection of books in great condition. It has a quality guarantee that their books will be in nearly new condition. The store is neatly organized, and if you don’t find exactly what you are looking for, the store will put your name on a list and notify you when a copy of the book surfaces in the store.

Buying books used is not just about the bargain or getting a required book, however. John Sand, a student at the U of M and used bookstore frequenter, said “I like knowing someone else has read the book I buy, and it is great when they’ve written in the margins. I just bought a poetry book and someone had written their own poem in the back.” Journalism student Kara Nesvig also admitted, “Sometimes I don’t find the book I set out to buy, but I still find other books that are interesting to me.” Leaving any of these bookstores WITHOUT making a purchase is nearly impossible.

The wide variety of locations across the Twin Cities provides even more options when searching for course texts in a less antagonizing manner. In fact, the bookstores can make the task of book hunting enjoyable. You might not know exactly what you are walking into, but you certainly will be able to find a book or two that suites your fancy and your budget.

Actor, comedian and author, Amy Sedaris is Sony’s ambassador in its venture into the world’s next frontier of digital media: the book. In her ad on Sony’s web site Sedaris jokingly says, “People always are asking me: Amy Sedaris, how is it that you’re so amazingly well read? And I say first of all it’s true, thank you very much. But I like to think that it’s because my reader touch edition.” Which begs the question: How long have “reader touch editions” been around?

As a student at this University, you will run into a class that relies on WebVista and PDF versions of necessary texts. It’s expensive to print off a 19th century theatre critique when every page contains a picture of a set design or a frowning playwright. So you don’t print them off, and neither does your teacher. Instead you flip, zoom and scroll through the article on a computer screen. Books are going digital incrementally. Since the printing business is too profitable, and the devices are still, well, divisive. The transition into full digital literature is imminent yet progress is sluggish.

E-Ink

There are four major companies involved in the race towards a marketable digital reader: Sony, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Apple. There are ancillary products such as the Bookeen Cybook and the Interead COOL-ER. Three of the four frontrunners on the market rely on digital paper technology or E-Ink: the Sony Reader, the Amazon Kindle 2, and the Barnes and Noble Nook.

An M.I.T. scientist named Joseph Jacobson is responsible for developing the E-ink product, Vizplex. This screen is what all three of the aforementioned companies utilize in their readers. The technology involves two transparent electrodes that house millions of hair-sized capsules containing positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles floating in a “clear fluid.” When a site on the electrode becomes positively charged, the black particles move to the surface, creating a piece of a letter or a picture. When a site becomes negatively charged, white particles move to the surface to create the page’s negative space.

In the ads for their readers, all three companies emphasize the importance of E-Ink in creating a “natural reading experience.” The ad for the Barnes and Noble Nook claims, “It looks just like a printed page. There’s no glare or backlight, so I can read comfortably for hours.”

Comparisons

All of the Sony Readers use the E-Ink technology I have mentioned before. What sets Sony apart is the touch screen, which seems to allow for a more intuitive motion for turning pages. Both the Kindle 2 and the Nook use buttons to turn pages, but the Nook also has a touch screen on the bottom of the device that accesses the menu. The Nook’s menu allows the user to browse the library of dailies and books that s/he owns. It also allows for quick shopping and downloading through AT&T’s 3G network. Kindle 2 also has 3G capabilities but uses a clunky keyboard to search and navigate, while the Sony Reader uses a USB cord to import new content. They are all about the same size (6” diagonally) and all have the same text displaying capabilities (enlarging images, changing fonts, adjusting contrast, storage). Each of the three devices accesses a different online store to purchase titles. This means that a book bought from Sony’s E-Bookstore is not compatible with Kindle 2 formatting.

It is cheaper to buy a digitized book online than to purchase a physical copy, but of course this is without factoring in the cost of buying a device, which is set at $299 for both Kinldle 2 and Sony Reader Touch, while the Nook is priced at $259. Aside from their ad campaigns, not much is different from one device to another. Kindle’s ads target technology-illiterate seniors, the Sony Reader is for cynics who read their e-books in private (“but it’s so convenient”) and Nook is an iPod for books.

But Wait!

It turns out that the iPod touch and iPhone are both iPods for books. Both have “reader” capabilities with the Kindle application. The Kindle application provides the same service and the same library as the Kindle 2, but on a significantly smaller screen. Of course the iPod’s swiss-army knifelike convenience and its compact size will be enough for consumers to stray away from buying another specialized electronic device. The versatility of the Apple products definitely threatens the marketability of the “E-reader” revolution. With the iPod reading looks more like texting, which looks like checking your email, which looks like making a playlist, which looks like playing a video game and less like reading a medical chart from Star Trek. Also, Apple’s version of the Kindle comes with a backlight and a full color touch screen.

The iPod does not use the same E-Ink technology as its competitors, (who aren’t really competitors) so the iPod version of Moby Dick looks less “natural” than the Kindle 2 version (while “unnaturalness” is conceivably one of the top reasons why people show reluctance in investing in E-readers in the first place). The iProducts are also capable of accessing multiple databases, including Stanza, a database that is compatible with Sony Reader containing 1.25 million more books than the Amazon database.

Who Benefits

Princeton University was the first university to use e-readers in the classroom when they adopted the Kindle DX last May. According to an article by Hyung Lee, a Princeton student reporter for the Daily Princetonian, 50 students were given free Kindle DX’s (a bigger version of the Kindle 2 with an axis sensitive screen allowing wide screen viewing for viewing images) as a part of the university’s paper conserving initiative called “Toward Print-Less and Paper-Less Courses: Pilot Amazon Kindle Program” or TPLPLC:PAKP for the 2009-2010 school year. The Kindle got mixed reviews at Princeton where some students complained of the device’s lack of page numbers, its battery life, and primitive annotating capabilities. These problems made studying more difficult for some students, which seemed to outweigh the convenience of having all of their readings on the amiable little plastic tablet.

Am I Still Digital?

The simple answer is yes, but you’re waiting for a product to come, to save your back and your environment from the 569-year war that is analog duplication of the printed word. Yes, the printing business is still a highly wasteful industry, but until we find a sustainable, affordable, and sensible solution to the problem, people are going to continue to buy products that too quickly make their way into the garbage.

Perhaps in the future the “e-reader” will be seen as a failure from its inception. It’s the word. It suggests that something else is doing the reading for me. It’s the device that reads, not me. And I can’t have that. Maybe I’m too territorial about my reading. Ironically, I feel like saying what Amy Sedaris said perfectly at the end of her commercial for the Sony Reader: “When you touch great books, great books touch you back.”

University of Minnesota freshman Clark Rahman considers himself to be something of an intellectual and successful individual. At age 18, speaking proficient French, well-traveled and with 35 college credits already in the bank, he is perhaps justified in making those assumptions.

Aside from his middle class financial status, a person may wonder what other factors could possibly limit this gifted student, aspiring publicist and former male model from quickly reaching his full potential.

But Rahman isn’t white (At least that’s not what he listed on his U of M application).

His given ethnicity, “other,” while all but guaranteeing entrance into this racially [self-]conscious university, has, in his opinion, also put him at a great disadvantage upon arriving here: in short, mandatory participation in a one year social program, ironically dubbed “Access to Success.”

Access to Success, or “ATS” for short, is one of those programs that was designed with students’ best interests at heart, but has fallen somewhere south of that position. A catch-all category for many of the underrepresented groups here on campus, individuals selected for this program are forced to endure all or part of its moving pieces: specialized ATS advising, a computer lab, peer-to-peer mentoring and tutoring support are made available to all students. (Sounds terrible, right?) But there’s more: select students are also required to take 6 credits—two semesters’ worth—of ATS’s own breed of College of Liberal Arts classes.

CLA 1005, or “Liberal Arts Learning,” is the first of two courses taken by ATS students at the U of M. (The second is called CLA 2005, or “Introduction to Liberal Education and Responsible Citizenship.”)
In this course, designed to provide a “continuing orientation” to the greater U of M portfolio, they learn study skills, the liberal arts, finances and other life issues, and four-year planning, which are pretty generic, standard things that all students should learn—whether as part of a class or just as life lessons. What’s more interesting, however, is the kind of racist garbage that often works its way into the curriculum.

In a recent talk delivered by ATS Coordinator Andrew Williams and a colleague, one Dr. White from the University of Michigan, students learned about the “Psychology of a Black Male,” strangely racially charged in its intent. A companion video to the lecture, streamed from YouTube, painted whites as an enemy. It said “[a] healthy suspicion of whites” was indispensable to the black man’s strength.

This may all be well and good, if not downright empowering, to a group of Black Power enthusiasts, but what of the less culturally angst-driven? What of the Caucasians and members of other ethnicities also present in the class? (After all, we have an African-American president, the North won, segregation is over, and in many, many other ways the “glass ceilings” around us are continually being broken.) One student interviewed put it this way: “Imagine if someone had written down ‘healthy suspicion of blacks’ as a component of white male success.” (Many of the students interviewed for this story did wish to remain anonymous, either because they feared jeopardizing their full ride, multicultural, ATS-affiliated scholarships or other types of reprisals for speaking out).

Finally, required reading materials for the class, specifically The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie and A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind, are not college level books—the latter is written at a ninth grade reading level—and do little to prime students of any race for continued academic success.

“Disparate Impact”? –or “Disparate Intent”?

In the legal world, there are two very different types of racism: one is intentional and the other unconsciously perpetrated. HR professionals working toward EEOC compliance in the corporate environment have for years referred to these as “disparate impact” and “disparate treatment or intent.” Disparate treatment occurs when members of a protected class are treated differently from others, such as when a lecturer speaks to the differences between blacks and whites. Per LawMemo.com, disparate impact “is the idea that some employer practices, as matter of statistics, have a greater impact on one group than on another.”

Ironically, Access to Success has given this high achieving student a one-way, one- year ticket to a deleterious remedial education.

Obviously, the relationship between an employee and his or her employer is different than that of a student at an institution of higher learning; we pay them, instead of the other way around. But the same principle applies here, especially if we think of ourselves as being full-time students. An example of disparate impact is the student makeup of Access to Success. By all accounts, persons that would be considered “white” on a U of M Admissions Application populate less than 10 percent of the class. If disparate impact is fought with statistics, it is safe to say that these discussions and lectures are not representative of the true proportions of students from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds attending this school. This situation would be inherently problematic to any would-be racial auditor.

A Tale of Two People

Rahman is close friends with 18-year-old Hannah Schuelke, a freshman, of Revillo, S.D. Like Rahman, Schuelke was selected for enrollment in the Access to Success program. Schuelke claims that a letter was sent to her, prior to starting school here, which explained she was to be in ATS because of a two-year CLA foreign language requirement that had not been satisfied with her high school transcript.

Unlike Rahman, however, the U of M never followed through on its promise to remediate Schuelke. Rahman, who boasts a higher ACT score and far, far more college credits transferring in, was welcomed with a “College Advisor Approval Hold” on his record and condescension and micromanagement in every single one of his fall semester course choices. And what’s more: He has to take CLA 1005 & 2005, whereas Schuelke does not.

Naturally, Rahman has tried to appeal the decision and will try to appeal it again next semester, but isn’t too hopeful. Instead of learning about his “talents and abilities,” with a side of general liberal arts education, Rahman feels his time (and money) would be much better spent taking upper division classes, or perhaps another trip abroad—both things ATS has made quite literally impossible for him to do this year. Ironically, Access to Success has given this high achieving student a one-way, one-year ticket to a deleterious remedial education—in the hopes that, given the necessary resources, he will thrive in the future.

At the core, Rahman is concerned that because he is originally from the “inner city,” isn’t white ( in fact he’s part Iranian), and isn’t wealthy, he has been singled out, along with every other student that fits and/or closely resembles his description, and has been given this unwarranted-yet-mandatory “special” treatment. This is the opinion, of course, of one man—but many of the people this reporter spoke to in the program shared his sentiments.

In this country, we are told we can be whatever we want to be. The sky’s the limit. But what happens when the [glass] sky breaks, only to reveal another glass sky directly above it? People have alternately crucified and praised programs like Affirmative Action, so it makes sense that a program like Access to Success evokes in us a mixed reaction.

If anything, Access to Success should be opt-in and not something that some people are forced to take in order to reach graduation. Hell, this writer could probably use some of the worthwhile things taught in CLA 1005 and 2005. But it’s complete bunk to think that the people in that class are required to be there, perhaps because of their ethnicity, perhaps because of where they went to school, perhaps just because of their social class, ET CETERA—and some of those individuals have clearly been misplaced!

The Access to Success program should exist, but the disparate impact it has on minority students at this university needs to be addressed. Having the program be opt-in would be better; de-stigmatizing even the idea of receiving help, and then providing those resources to all students who sign up for it would be ideal. This would curb the unconscious tendency our society has toward racial and socioeconomic marginalization, and may actually end up benefiting students. The classes could certainly be more rigorous too: after all, six credits of “A,” no matter what college you’re in, should actually mean something. But this reporter doesn’t want to end up too much of an iconoclast at such a young station in life. We’ll save that one for now.

Let the debate continue.

Take a walk through the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in Minneapolis. Amid the shops and sidewalks, around the Brian Coyle Community Center, you’ll find large congregations of Somalis and Somali Americans, whose move into the neighborhood en masse, due to almost two decades’ worth of trials and tribulations, is still creating excitement today. Yet despite being another group within Minneapolis’ vast racial spectrum, the Somali community deals with some of the most negative press around, due to the issues that plague their homeland, issues which still affect them half a world away.

Somalia has been mired in civil war since 1991, when militant factions and clans overthrew decades’ worth of dictatorial government under the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party; it was granted its independence in the 1960s after decades of semi-colonial control by Europe. Since 1991, infighting between rival factions and widespread panic and fear has left the country in a precarious position among African nations. The U.S. and U.N. have tried multiple times to send food, aid and even troops to the East African nation over the past 18 years, with little results and even less good news received. The biggest news to come from the region before 2004 was the infamous Black Hawk Down incident, where 18 U.S. soldiers were killed during a joint U.S. and U.N. attack on militias in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, in October 1993, which left a lasting impression on the minds of American society.

The Somali community in Minnesota, here since the first refugees and immigrants came in 1993, is the largest population of Somalis and Somali Americans anywhere in the U.S., with population estimates ranging from 60,000 to 80,000. Since that time, there’s been news aplenty about Somali issues, whether it’s Somali cab drivers refusing to serve people who carry alcohol, or the current hot-button issue of Somali youth violence.

“It’s really exposing people to only one side of the story,” says Fadumo Ali, a finance and accounting sophomore at the University of Minnesota. “I feel like people are only seeing the negative aspects of Somali people. There is a lot of positive aspects of Somali culture.”

Those positive aspects can seem hard to find in a 24-hour news cycle. Common perceptions abound that the news only reports on crises, tragedies and breaking scandals. Somali-related news is no exception. The recent spate of news within the Somali community in Minnesota was the September 2008 shooting death of Ahmednur Ali, a 20-year-old Augsburg College student who volunteered at the Brian Coyle Community Center and, unfortunately, was the fifth young Somali man killed in the community over a 12-month span. This unfortunate story illustrating the issues of Somali youth violence in Minneapolis was soon replaced by the stories of Somali piracy off the Gulf of Aden and the news of as many as 20 young Somali men leaving Minnesota to fight in their homeland as part of the Al-Shabab organization, considered by the U.S. to be terrorists with ties to Al-Qaeda.

It is no small wonder to see what happens from here. Stories of Somali piracy, of Somali terrorism connections, and of Somali investigations spread throughout the local media circuit through the summer, with the Star Tribune reporting in July that at least four of the 20 or so young men had died in Somalia during the infighting. Yet the recent tone in news concerning Somalia shows a positive shift as most, if not all, media outlets in the Twin Cities reported on Somalia’s president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, and his recent 3-day tour in Minnesota, meeting with Somali families, elders, and even giving a highly publicized, packed speech at the U of M’s Northrup Auditorium. Ahmed, widely seen as the man who could unite the country in peace, was himself driven out of Somalia just a few years earlier, when as head of the Islamic Courts Union he lost power when Ethiopia invaded Somalia in late 2006 to try and restore order to an Islamic militant-held Mogadishu. Since his inauguration in February, Ahmed’s attempts at a moderate Islamic government have been met with large praise and support, making him the most viable president of Somalia to give it a bit of stability and peace since the beginning of the current conflict.

Other mixed news flows out of the Somali community recently, as The Minnesota Daily reports an increase of youth violence in the past month is causing Cedar-Riverside residents to call for more action in educating newly immigrated-citizens on the use of 911 and reporting crimes as well as educating Minneapolis police on the cultures and practices of the community at large. While the increase in youth crime is worrying, the calls for more understanding by both citizens and police signifies a good, improving climate and a way to shift misguided perceptions about the Somali community, among other communities of color in the area.

Yet the biggest problem is the sporadic attention Somalia receives. Although there is more news coverage now over Somalia’s troubles, the call to pay attention was first brought about by the piracy and terrorism coverage Somalia has received. According to Ali, a group of Japanese students recently came to the U of M in order to learn more about Somalia since the only information they had about the Somali culture was the recent news coverage on Al-Shabab and piracy. “I was really shocked,” Ali says.
Such misunderstandings have been at the forefront of the editorial pages of The Daily recently, as many have commented and debated about a recent opinion column questioning what the author perceived to be certain sexist tendencies by “East African males,” who may or may not practice Islam. This furor only echoes the negative perception Muslims face nationally, as even Ali admits her identity as a Muslim woman wearing a hijab or a burka is challenged more than her identity as a Somali American.

The answers to how the Somali community can garner better attention are beyond the scope of this article. Certainly, more dialogue between the Somali community and outside communities needs to be established. Ali hopes the more positive aspects of Somali culture can be seen, that both the Somali community and the communities in Minnesota can come together to discuss these issues. It will help to see more articles about Somali officials visiting the state, as well as Somali success stories like the New York Times article on Mohamed Aden, a Somali leader who has managed to bring stability and functioning government to about 5,000 square miles of land around Adado in the middle of Somalia. In time, this coverage may help in addressing the critical structural problems inside the Somali government. For now, identifying the problems and opening a dialogue may be the start of an answer.