Spring 2012 www.chron.org

Independent News & Commentary

The Chron meetsCain

The Chron sat down with former GOP primary

candidate Herman Cain to talk politics, tax plans and

prejudice.Page 6

Fighting Illiteracy in Chicago

Page 8

Meet Northwestern’s First Video Game

Music ChoirPage 16

Addressing the Threat of a

Nuclear IranPage 13

The Northwestern Chronicle

2012 Staff

Editor-in-ChiefCharles Rollet

Opinion EditorDane Stier

News EditorAdrianna Rodriguez

TreasurerSage Schroeder

Staff WritersJane Janeczko, Paul Jackson, Megan Wood, Kimberley Eyers, Dane Steir, Dhwani Jain, Stephanie Auditore, Jor-dan Minor, Tim Reilly, Ryan Fazio

ContributorsAlex Entz, Paul Cozzi

BloggersJane Janeczko, An-nalise Frank, Andrea Schmitz, Amanda Shepherd

CartoonsAndrea Schmitz, Chris-tian Keeve

About The Chronicle

The Northwestern Chronicle is an independent, non-profit journal of news and opin-ion at Northwestern University. Founded in the spring of 1992, The Chronicle is one of Northwestern’s longest-running publications and a campus source of student opinion, renegade journalism, and honest reporting on daily life at Northwestern.

In 1998, The Chronicle garnered national attention when it fought the student government’s derecognition and won the right to publish. Since then, the paper has resumed its old challenge of covering the broadest range of topics at NU. The Chronicle prides itself on an independence that allows it to print hard-hitting articles and columns that break the mold of student journalism.

Contact UsInterested in advertising? Please e-mail ads@chron.org

Interested in writing, edit-ing, or blogging for the Northwestern Chronicle? Please e-mail Charles Rollet (charlesrollet2014@u.north-western.edu).

NewsA Fad Slowly Fading

Adrianna Rodriguez

Filling the Art VoidJane Janeczko, Kelsey Galles, Kylie Gilbert, Harry Swartout

Fighting Illiteracy in Chicago

Megan Wood

Featured News

Opinion

Off the Blogs

The Fighting Methodist

Fifteen Minutesof Cain

Charles Rollet

Queeves and Steves

Andrea Schmitz and Christian Keeve

Markwell for President

Tim Reilly

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Front page photo credit: Gage Skidmore on Flickr. Licesned under Creative Commons.

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The “Anti-War” Movement’s Hypocrisy

Stephanie Auditore

Forming a Collective Psychosis

Paul Jackson

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Irrationality Sweeps Northwestern

Dane Stier

White People to the Rescue

Charles Rollet

Addressing the Threat of a Nuclear Iran

Dane Stier

The Daily’s FailDane Stier

Paul Ryan’s Modest Proposal and Obama’s Social Darwinism

Ryan Fazio

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FeatureThis Article is About Mad Men

Jordan Minor

Meet Northwestern’s First Video Game Music Choir

Megan Wood

Food-Based Performance Art: A Review of “Feast”

Jane Janeczko

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Dorm Cooking: Baked French Toast

Andrea Schmitz

Why TV Rating Are Obsolete

Amanda Shepherd

The Nonsense Industry of Health Food Journalism

Annalise Frank

The Avengers: A (Nearly) SexualExperience

Amanda Shepherd

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NewsA Fad Slowly FadingBy Adrianna RodriguezNews Editor

After the short film “Kony 2012” was re-leased on March 5, 2012, young adults across the world have made the issue of Kony relevant through social media. Kony 2012, as a campaign, has ignited a fire in the souls of many, prompting ac-tion. The first step in this plan was Cover the Night on April 20, 2012.

A Facebook event for Cover the Night was made by Rebecca Oken, a sophomore in Medill, in an effort to bring Kony 2012 to Northwestern students. Although the event boasted 629 students going, only a few showed up at the Rock at 5:30 that night.

“I was a little disap-pointed,” said Oken. “I felt enthusiasm for the campaign. There was a lot of criticism of the video and enthusiasm dropped.”

Not too long ago, this cause dominated the nation, sending kits to young adults and troops to Uganda looking for Kony himself. However,

of late, the campaign has been met mostly with silence at North-western. One would think that an involved university like North-western would keep the cause alive as time passes. Is this a sign that marks Kony 2012 as simply a fad and the not grassroots social movement that the short film pinned it to be? And if so, has this fad already reached its expiration date?

“I haven’t heard peo-ple talk about it,” said sophomore Ray Stuart. “The campaign was re-ally good and so are the intentions, I just think there is a lot of flawed logic and idealistic as-sumptions made.”

After time had passed and the initial excite-ment had subsided, questions were raised on the validity of the video. Some say that the video masks what it actually takes to bring down a warlord.

“It’s so easy changing your Facebook status,” said Stuart. “But taking action, you don’t know what you’re getting into.”

Another issue raised

Photo by Adrianna Rodriguez

was that of the chil-dren. The video puts emphasis on taking Kony down; however, it doesn’t explain how where the “invisible children” go after be-ing freed. When Kony took children into his army, he destroyed their homes and made the children kill their own parents. What would they go back to after that?

Still, the campaign was universally ac-claimed for its market-ing capabilities.

“It was really fantas-tic advertising,” said Northwestern Com-munications student Alejandro Valdivieso. “I believe in the cause of helping the world, I

don’t believe of painting a figure… it’s a larger issue.”

Some students in-terviewed were more concerned with domes-tic issues such as the economy and the job market, especially those who are graduating soon. Other students were more worried with our nation’s history in interfering in the prob-lems of other coun-tries. However, while these concerns are still evident, a few students still have hope.

“Even though it had a lot of criticisms,” said Oken. “I hope [Kony 2012] creates a discus-sion and people want to create change in what-ever way they can.”

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NewsFilling the Art Void

This article was co-written by Jane Janeczko, Kelsey Galles, Kylie Gilbert, and Harry Swartout

On the fourth floor of Ravenswood’s Lake View High School, Cate Mascari’s Wednesday morning choral class breezes through a difficult piece with the aid of a teacher from Chicago’s Music of the Baroque who is on loan to Lake View for private, pro bono voice lessons. One of the class’s objec-tives is to help students add some “softs” their resumes. “By pursuing music and other extracurriculars, you show your college and your future employers that you can handle a lot of things in your life,” said Mascari. Extracurricular activities are indeed becoming increas-ingly important to enter higher education around the country. With increases in applicants, schools – especially the top colleges and universities – have to make tough selections between equally qualified students. Take Northwestern Uni-versity: their total number of applicants increased 12 percent last year, making the university even more selective. Northwestern accepted only 18 percent of applications in 2011, compared to 23 percent in 2010. In its 2010 College Admis-sions Survey, the National Association for College Admis-sion Counseling, NACAC, rated extracurricular activities higher in importance than other credentials, including SAT II scores, state graduation exam scores and employment. And with arts programs nationwide facing the axe in recent years due to budget woes from the Great Reces-

A student peruses her copy of “Libertango,” a chorus the class is working on with Mascari. Photo by Jane Janeczko

Beverly Anderson at her desk at Amundsen High School. Photo by Jane Janeczko

-sion, the needed art education and related activities are harder to come by. Some areas, like the Ravenswood neighborhood of Chicago where Lake View is located, offer opportunities for outside enrichment, but the schools are still generally lack-ing in funds. For her part, Mascari at-tempts to provide her students with music education and expo-sure through outside programs. The school’s outsourcing, she says, has been instrumental in providing students with fine arts experience – encounters she says her students “would not otherwise have.” Chicago’s public school system (CPS) serves 106 high schools, not including charter schools, and works with a total of 113,873 high school students. Unfortunately, 86 percent of CPS students are considered low income, on the basis of receiving discounted student lunches, and cannot afford to pay for supplemental art classes. Chicago’s public schools, like Lake View High School, are able to fill the art void with programs like Gallery 37, an offshoot of After School Mat-ters, a not-for-profit organiza-tion that partners with CPS to provide fine arts education. The program, started in 1991 to use a long vacant – but prime – downtown commercial property along East Randolph Street (also known as Block 37), got a heavy boost during the tenure of Mayor Richard M. Daley, whose late wife, Maggie, helped run it.Beverly Anderson, a guidance counselor at Amundsen High School in Ravenswood says

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News

Graphic by Kelsey Galles

the creative alternatives to classroom exposure like Gal-lery 37 have been paying off. During her 25 years of work in the Chicago Public School sys-tem, Anderson has worked with thousands of students and has seen specialty teachers come and go. And in that time, music, woodshop, art and culinary art classes have all experienced “light to heavy cuts” according to Anderson, but her efforts are maintained in providing students “as much exposure to the arts as [she] can.” Elliot Eisner, professor of education and art at Stan-ford University and a former instructor of Art and Education at the University of Chicago disagrees. “High schools do not place enough emphasis on arts,” he said. In his 2002 lecture given as the John Dewey Lecture at Stanford University, “What Can Education Learn from the Arts

About the Practice of Educa-tion?,” Eisner argued that artistic training helps students develop problem- solving skills as well as creative practice and should be woven into all parts of the curriculum, “The sense of vitality and the surge of emo-tion we feel when touched by one of the arts,” he says, ”can also be secured in the ideas we explore with students, in the challenges we encounter in doing critical inquiry, and in the appetite for learning we stimulate.” Or rather, having the ability to think creatively makes art education invaluable to and inseparable from all other “academic” pursuits from essay writing to critical thinking. The growth of the Lillstreet Art Center is emblematic of Chicagoland’s declining high school art budgets. It provides over 200 classes ranging from glassmaking to pottery to paint-

-ing, and attracts a high volume of students who would other-wise be missing out the bulk of arts education in Chicago’s schools, weakening their resumes. Melanie Brown, a teacher at Lillstreet, says the center recognizes the limits of art programming in public schools and works to fill this void by opening up more adult classes to high school students. According to Brown, art provides a way for students to build their independence and sense of self, two qualities that colleges certainly look for during the application process. The work students create “is not something that can be measured quantitatively. “It’s very open-ended,” she said, explaining the process of creat-ing is a critical experience that students are lacking in tradi-tional classes of math, science and literature.

Brown acknowledges that Lillstreet and other alternative programs may not be a viable option for some students. “Our classes are expensive,” she says. Consider: Most Lillstreet classes run between $100 and $300. For example, their five week glass flameworking class offered for students ages 14 to 18 is $165, a price most low-income students simply can’t justify. Gallery 37 offers totally free classes and provides oppor-tunities for students to learn under world-class artists while padding their art portfolios for their college applications all at no extra cost to the student. It is programs like Gallery 37 that make art education a reality, but art education is still diminishing. Only a growing economy will help recover cut funds for arts programs across the United States.

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I interviewed former GOP presidential candi-date Herman Cain before his speech this evening in Fisk Hall. He struck me as a very gregarious and relaxed fellow, joking about his past experiences as a businessman restructur-ing Godfather’s Pizza and telling various anecdotes. Here is our exchange, with some pictures as accompa-niment.

Obama is still leading on the youth vote. Do you think the Republican Party can ever change the Democrats’ strangle-hold on youth voters?

I think the GOP can change that. We have to take our conservative mes-sage to the youth, that’s why I’m going to college campuses, rather than waiting for folks to find that message, wherever it is. Democrats have tradition-ally done a much better job of taking their message to the youth. And when they do that, people go: “hmm, that’s something to think about.” And that’s why I try not to be overly partisan in my speeches, I just try to talk about solutions to the issues.

Let me give you one ex-ample of how we are taking the message to the youth:

I did a rally at the College of Charleston, back before the South Carolina primary, with Stephen Colbert. We had 5,000 students show up for the rally- it was incredible. And I’ve been on the Jon Stewart show. And today, flying up here, one of the flight attendants said: “Mr. Cain, it’s so nice to meet you.” So I asked, “How did you learn about me?” And she said it was by watching Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert.

That’s what I mean by taking the message to them. And believe it or not, through humor and skits you are able to make some real points about some of the big issues that we face.

Has your experience running for president left you more cynical or hopeful about politics?

It has left me more cynical about politics, but more hopeful about how the people are going to be engaged to change politics. You can get cynical about it when you discover some of the more dirty politics, some of the things people will do for the sake of win-ning. So I’m a little cynical about that, but optimistic about the American people. I’m optimistic about the voters.

One of the things that keeps me centered is Thomas Jefferson’s saying that when people have the

right information, they will make the right decision.

I’m optimistic about people making the right decision when they have the right information.

Many college kids these days are graduat-ing and having trouble finding work. Why would a tax plan like 9-9-9 help them?

9-9-9 starts with throw-ing out the current tax code, which is holding this economy down. And if you put in 9-9-9, it is going to unleash economic growth like we haven’t seen in a long time.

There’s uncertainty about the tax code and about regulations. If you provide businesses with the lowest tax rate they’ve ever had, they will get in an expansion mode. I am confident the unemploy-ment rate would probably be back around 4 to 4.5% percent, which is virtu-ally full employment. It will

unleash economic growth because businesses would be confident to expand, they’d be willing to take the risk.

Do you think the Tea Party has changed the GOP for the better? Why?

Yes- and they are not done yet. Working with the Republican Party off and on for decades, it becomes an institution within itself. This is true with both Democrats and the Republicans: they call it the “good ol’ boy” network. They are now becom-ing less institutionalized, opening up to new ideas, to new candidates, so the Tea Party has changed the party for the better. Without the Tea Party the Republi-cans would not have taken back Congress in the last midterm elections.

The Tea Party is very influential. I don’t consider them extreme at all.

How do you feel about

Featured NewsFifteen Minutes of CainBy Charles RolletEditor-in-Chief

Shaking hands with the Hermanator Photo by Jordan Minor

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Featured Newsthe latest Obama cam-paign ad saying Mitt Romney would not have taken out bin Laden?

I think that is a very shallow attack. We’ve got 14 million out of work. Un-employment is still over 8 percent. The national debt is almost 16 trillion dollars. Gasoline is still fluctuating around $4 a gallon – in Il-linois, it’s already over $4 – and you’re going to tell me talking about what some-body might have done is important? It’s a very shallow attack. The reason he’s attacking Mitt Romney on that is that he doesn’t have a record to run on economically. The only thing that he can run on is saying that he ok’d taking out Osama bin Laden. And in Elizabethan terms, “one right decision doth not a

presidency make.”He made one right

decision! Give me a break! *Laughs*

Are racism, prejudice, and the like still major barriers to opportunity in America?

No. They’re major bar-riers in terms of politics because unfortunately and unexpectedly this president has not been a uniter- he’s been a divider. Particularly relative to class warfare. And he’s used class warfare in order to divide this country. He used this class warfare rhetoric in his narrative to tax the rich, saying everybody should pay their fair share, as if people aren’t paying their fair share. He’d go give another speech and talk about how everybody

needs to play by the same rules. Well, guess what? Most of us are playing by the same rules. It’s some of the same people that he’s supposed to represent that aren’t playing by the same rules. So it’s a double nar-rative.

People are unnecessar-ily tense about race rela-tions in America. They are unnecessarily tense about taking risks in order to build their business, or to grow their business. And it is because of the atmosphere that’s been created by this administration.

Will you be running in 2016? Do you have any non-presidential political ambitions?

I have no other ambi-tions or aspirations right this minute to run for any

of the positions, including the presidency. I never say never, but at this point I don’t have plans or secret organizations already trying to put a machine together. *Laughs*

Two years before I made the decisions to run for president, I had no inten-tion to run for president. Now the reason I made the decision is, quite frankly, because of my radio show. I was doing a fulltime radio show three hours a night, five nights a week in Atlanta. That forced me to be familiar with the issues and listen to the people about what some of the solutions are. So I became very frustrated with this president over some of the policies he did put in place, over some of the policies he didn’t put in place, and over all the spending.

The one issue that was the straw the broke the camel’s back was when he signed the Obamacare legislation against the will of the people. If you go back and look at the polls on that issue the day that he signed it into law, March 23rd 2010, they showed that nearly 55 percent of the American people did not think that was the solu-tion to bringing down costs and increasing access. He did it against the will of the people. And so when I saw that he wanted to pass legislation that he wanted rather than what the people wanted, that outraged me and I asked myself what I could do. So I decided to run for president.

Herman Cain addressing the crowd at NU’s Fisk Hall. Photo by Jordan Minor

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NewsFighting I l l i teracy in ChicagoBy Megan WoodStaff Writer

Preschoolers circle eagerly around a group of theater students from Northwestern University at Evanston Public Library. A fourth-grade girl collects more than 4,000 books for the nonprofit literacy organization, Book Worm Angels. A group of students teach a writing tutorial for their college peers. Adults stroll through a nonprofit literacy bookstore in down-town Chicago.

Illiteracy can affect any-one, and anyone can join the fight to eliminate it. Un-derstanding the undeniable tie between reading and writing, organizations in the Chicago area are creat-ing engaging programs to promote literacy.

About 23 percent of Americans have low-litera-cy skills, according to the National Center for Family Literacy. This means that they can’t demonstrate a basic level of reading and writing proficiency, for example filling out appli-cations or reading direc-tional signs. An alarming 53 percent of the Chicago population has low-literacy skills according to Chicago Literacy nonprofit organi-zation.

“I think that illiteracy of-ten follows socioeconomic status, and we have a lot of poverty in our city. I also think we haven’t built in a really great way to bring resources to the commu-nities that need them the most,” Anna Piepmeyer, Open Books literacy non-

profit Program Director, said.

Open Books among them, the Chicago Literacy Alliance banded together about two years ago as a collaboration of more than 20 literacy organizations. Each group has its niche, specializing in an aspect of literacy, from writing workshops to book drives. More than 330,000 pre-kindergarten to high school students and more than 500 adults seek help from these organizations.

“All of us have a joint goal of improving literacy. We want to have 100 per-cent of the people in the Chicago area reading at grade level or better,” Mike Ban, a founder of the CLA and Book Worm Angels President, said. “Literacy is really the key to success, not only in school, but in life.”

But it’s not just about reading. Many organiza-tions are finding creative ways to excite a younger generation about the written word. Brit Hvide is Northwestern Univer-sity’s PROMPT Literary Magazine’s fiction editor. PROMPT hosts weekly writing workshops and bi-monthly tutorials to help college students sharpen their writing skills. Hvide also related the fulfillment of seeing younger students excited about writing when she volunteered at 826CHI, a nonprofit writing organi-zation.

“Seeing kids put togeth-er these books, sentences even, and being like I’m funny, read this thing, I’m funny, and just realize their

potential is so gratifying. Kids, when given the op-portunity, love to read and love to write. There’s just something about the way our society’s built that fo-cuses their attention away from it,” she said.

Upon entering 826CHI, students have to answer a creative writing prompt before they can attend workshops or tutorial ses-sions. Danielle Littman, a Northwestern English and theater double major, is working to form a relation-ship between the North-western theater community and 826CHI. This partner-

ship allows the Northwest-ern students to create a series of writing workshops with an involved theater aspect.

“826 is really different because they approach literacy from a creative and imaginative mindset, rather than an academic approach. [The students] see words in the way they want to and the way they feel is most honest to them,” Littman said. “On a very basic level, words are the way we communicate and in a city especially, it’s really easy for kids to get off track.”

Kevin Elliott, the manager of Open Books Bookstore Photo by Megan Wood

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OpinionThe “Anti-War” Movement’s HypocrisyBy Stephanie AuditoreStaff Writer

Last month, Attorney General Eric Holder hon-ored the Northwestern Law School by gracing us with his most illustrious pres-ence. The purpose of his visit was to deliver a highly publicized speech outlining the legal framework that the Obama Administration be-lieved supported the killing of American-born al-Qaida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Ye-men in a drone attack last year. The policy implications of his speech are important and dramatic (at least in the eyes of us legal nerds). This speech would state the Administration’s clear support for the use of lethal force in targeted killings of Americans overseas. Given our rights as Americans to certain Constitutional rights, this position is highly controversial. Targeted drone killings seem just a bit in conflict with the right to a trial, the presumption of innocent until proven guilty. You know, those silly rights.

Holder’s justification for the overlooking of these rights was one of practi-cality. When an American involved in terrorism is involved with an organiza-tion posing as an imminent threat to the United States, a strategy of capture and the traditional criminal legal system process would un-necessarily put our country at greater risk of another attack. Holder explained, “Given the nature of how terrorists act and where

they tend to hide, it may not always be feasible to cap-ture a U.S. citizen terrorist who presents an imminent threat of violent attack. In that case, our government has the clear authority to defend the United States with lethal force.” By clear authority Holder is referring to the resolution passed shortly after September 11th granting the executive the power to hunt down al-Qaida and prevent subse-quent attacks.

The ACLU described Holder’s position as a “chill-ingly broad” claim of author-ity to kill American citizens without legal process, and has sued to obtain Justice Department documents on how exactly one might find themselves on one of the government’s “kill lists.” Of course, this entire theory is dependent on the ambigu-ous definition of the word “terrorist,” and places us seemingly at the mercy of the Administration’s defini-tion, but I digress. What I found even more shocking was the community re-sponse to Holder’s appear-ance at Northwestern Law, in the heart of downtown Chicago. Having spent my undergraduate years in the city, I became well acquainted with the anti-war movement’s proclivity to-ward absurd protest activi-ties. Having observed some of these activities myself, purely for research and entertainment, I can recall some of my favorite mo-ments including a plethora of signage calling for the im-

peachment, indictment and imprisonment of the Bush Administration, a protestor dressed as a caricature of Bush in prison garb with a sign asking “who would Jesus bomb?” and a man dressed in a cow costume displaying the most rational foreign policy perspective yet: “Pillow fights only!” The point being, anti-war pro-tests in Chicago during the Bush administration were frequent, well-attended, and full of spite.

With this experience in mind, I was excited to see what the Chicago protest community had in store for Mr. Holder. However, my excitement quickly turned to disappointment when I ap-proached the school only to find one lone soul standing outside the school, draped in the Ameri-can flag and holding a sign ques-tioning when we lost our Constitu-tional rights. Whether I agree with this man’s views on war or not, I had to admire his consistency. Where did all of his fel-low protes-tors go? Where was the call for war crime charges against

President Obama? Per-haps, I wondered, it is indicative of the free pass Obama has received on a number of foreign policy issues, policies which President Bush also pro-mulgated and for which he was constantly berated by activists and the media. When Obama assisted in overthrowing the Libyan government, where was the outrage we’d seen so fer-vently demonstrated when Bush did the same in Iraq? The vanished protestors either stopped watching the news, or selective memory is at play.

It seems with the election of Chicago’s favorite son, these anti-war activists lost not only their constitutional rights, but also their prin-ciples.

The gates of Northwestern Law Photo by eszter

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OpinionForming a Collective Psychosis

By Paul JacksonStaff Writer

The following is an excerpt from Paul Jack-son’s larger article The Insanity of the American Imagination. For the rest of the text, feel free to visit www.chron.org

The reality that George Zimmerman admitted to shooting a boy that he stalked with a deadly weapon and was not even charged, first there was shock and then there was the question we are taught to ask by society: what race is he? He’s white, we’re told, and then “He’s not white! He’s hispanic!”

Two things are funda-mentally wrong with this reaction: 1.) White Ameri-cans who are interested in preserving sociopolitical whiteness can now com-plain that “people who assume that white people are racist are racist” so as to neutralize any discus-sion of whiteness as a non-ethnic, non-cultural distinction of political pow-er and 2.) if someone isn’t white, but actually Hispan-ic, it’s OK for him or her to kill non-whites because our society is comfortable and OK with that.

This discussion of Zimmerman’s race mutes the important point that anyone can perform and preserve white domina-tion – because domination doesn’t have anything to do with having European

heritage or culture. When Barack Obama was run-ning around arguing about oil prices, commenting on the shootings in France, expressing solidarity with our colonial cousins, inten-tionally ignoring the Tray-von Martin case and any other ‘racial issue’, he was preserving and ‘perform-ing whiteness’ as a power role to fit into his role as president, a role which has been dominated by white-ness figuratively until his face came into the picture. Now we realize he’s still beholden to the structure of power.

White domination has nothing to do with white folks or people of Euro-pean heritage, it has to do with countries who have a history of suppressing non-white people within their borders and around the world; it’s when peo-ple, identifying with a race, say “this country is ours”; it’s when people hear rac-ism being discussed and white supremacy being criticized and get angry and defensive; it’s when we think non-white im-migration is a problem but think that white immi-gration doesn’t exist; it’s when a black candidate is made to look “un-American” after he’s been elected; white domination is when minimally descrip-tive criminal descriptions refer to “African American males” consistently be-cause the victim appar-ently only saw race and not height, weight, facial

hair or anything else that is obvious and 8 different, totally unrelated black men end up detained for the same crime.

White domination is the new delusional White Victim Complex wherein some white folks reimag-ine themselves as being under attack in “our own country” by a growing presence of minorities, by increasing black progress and success, and feel as though criticizing white domination and racism is to criticize them personally – this is just another form of ‘the guilty conscience’.

It is when white people

become incensed about affirmative action (flawed though it is) but not about the affirmative action that wealthy people get, that legacy applicants get, or the fact that schools never represent the national demographic proportions – yet they claim to champion equality, because they be-long wherever they apply.

White domination is when wildly unjust and fatal tragedies happen to non-whites and not to white people, when non-

whites get more years in prison for the same crimes, and when vio-lence against non-whites is not quite so shocking; white domination is when it’s normal or acceptable just to be white – when non-whites are not just demographic minority as a group, but when each non-white individual is ‘a minority’. This has nothing to do with white individu-als, this has to do with a society committed to apply a sense of belong-ing to whiteness, a politi-cal structure committed to endowing whiteness with power, and a collective

psychology committed to ignoring racism everyday.

When brutality is di-rected senselessly at a non-white people, religious others, or against soci-ety itself in the name of ‘white supremacy’ we look for a card-carrying white supremacist – that’s how George Zimmerman got away. We look for a white supremacist because we don’t want to look at our-selves as a nation as the potential culprit behind the trauma.

A Disorder of National Personality

The shooting of Trayvon Martin sparked a nationwide debate about racism

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OpinionIrrationality Sweeps NorthwesternBy Dane StierOpinion Editor

For those of you who have been locked up in your rooms studying for the barrage of mid-terms that hit this week and next, you may be the lucky few who avoided NU’s recent unnecessar-ily dramatic and inane diversity movement. If you did miss out, this should get you up to speed: incidents of racial insensitiv-ity this year and the Trayvon Martin shooting have sparked a campus-wide demand for a top-down attempt to rid the campus of this insensitivity.

As students of one of the greatest universities in the coun-try, I had assumed that logic was a key feature of the student body. I guess I assumed wrong… Instead, the student body has grabbed the torch of ignorance and irrationality with unyielding determination to carry it to the finish line.

Before I delve into the specif-ics of this controversy, I’d like to take a moment to defend myself against those who will use this as justification for labeling me a racist. As a conservative, I am used to being automatically considered a xenophobe and a white male supremacist. I assure you I am neither of those things. I do not support prejudice. I do not support racism. I do not sup-port preferential treatment of any group of American society.

But I also do not support ir-rationality.

First, and most important, what is diversity? I have yet to see anyone define the idea that is being demanded. As far as I can tell, the student body is focusing on anyone who isn’t white. How is that fair? Or unprejudiced?

Diversity is a matter of per-spective. To a student from Chi-na, someone from the beaches

of California is just as diverse as from Egypt. So when there are calls for increasing the non-white population of Northwestern, it’s just as prejudiced as calling for increasing the white population. Let’s remember the definition of equality, and that it applies to everyone. Not just minorities.

How is the university sup-posed to increase the enrollment of minority students in the coming years anyway? There have been absolutely no specifications about how this would be done, but, then again, there are only a few options from which to choose. In scenario one, a quota is set, in which a certain percentage of incoming students must be from “diverse” backgrounds. This would entail overlooking the more highly qualified non-”diverse” students to fill the minority quota. The alternative is to lower North-western’s admissions standards so that a larger number of minor-ity students would be eligible for admission. However, this again would lead to overlooking more qualified students and in so doing negatively affecting Northwest-ern’s academic reputation.

Let’s be serious. All of the other demands being placed on the university – such as estab-lishing a “Chief Diversity Officer” and adding a cultural distribution

requirement and increasing re-sources for the Multicultural Stu-dent Affairs office – won’t make a bit of difference. All it amounts to is adding bureaucracy and rules to the system in an effort to feel good about ourselves as young, moral, and conscious-driven col-lege activists.

Instead of giving in to the impulse to throw money and resources at the problem, how about we take a step back and consider the issue from a differ-ent standpoint. If there is a lack of “diversity” on campus, why is that so?

Consider this: Northwestern is one of the most expensive schools in the nation and world, and it just keeps getting more and more expensive (tuition is expected to double by 2025). With the perpetual construction projects tearing our beautiful campus to pieces, it’s not really that surprising…

But now, take a look at this chart from the US Department of Labor Statistics (below).

Wouldn’t it make sense that if Northwestern was less expensive, more minorities could afford to attend? Even with the generous financial aid, invoices still drain the bank for many households each quarter, and high tuition costs drive highly-

qualified minority students to less costly universities. So if those calling for increased minority enrollment were actually thinking logically, they wouldn’t be asking for more funding for the Multicul-tural Student Affairs office and the hiring of a Chief Diversity Office; instead they’d be telling Northwestern to lower its costs and increase financial aid. Let’s stop trying to change the result, and instead fix the cause.

Additionally, we need to aban-don this notion that a top-down university initiative could teach or force students to appreciate cultural diversity. Northwestern is full of students from different backgrounds – religions, cultures, and ethnicities. People will naturally gravitate towards what seems most familiar and comfort-able to them. There is nothing wrong with that.

As a result, there will be racial friction. There will be incidents of racial “insensitivity.” The idea of eliminating all prejudices and misunderstandings is nothing more than wishful thinking, some-thing students at Northwestern need to learn.

It’s time to pull ourselves away from hypersensitivity and ignorance, and put our North-western-worthy brains to use for a change.

11

Seemingly overnight, the internet has exploded with posts, tweets, and links related to rebel warlord Joseph Kony. As one of those people who actually knew of the man be-fore my newsfeed was overrun with Kony 2012 posts, I was surprised. For those who don’t know, Joseph Kony is a thoroughly despicable man. He’s the leader of the LRA, or Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel group from Northern Uganda which has kidnapped tens of thou-sands of children to become child soldiers in its rebel army. He has been active for over 20 years, and has evaded capture since then. Cue Invisible Children. The non-profit just released a maudlin 30-minute video, calling for Kony to become a household name in a world-wide effort to capture the man and get the United States to “do something” about Kony by 2012, hence the campaign’s title. Along with wrongly label-ing Uganda a “central African country,” the video gets pretty much everything wrong. It makes the LRA seem like it is currently on a genocidal rage, which it is not. In fact, Kony is not even in Uganda

OpinionWhite People to the Rescue

By Charles RolletEditor-in-Chief

Screenshot from the KONY 2012 video courtesy of Invisible Children

anymore, and his rebel forces have been greatly reduced after they were chased out of the country by the military. The stage during which the LRA made its most damage is fortunately over, and this is not thanks to Invisible Children’s efforts. It is largely due to the Ugandan military’s punitive expeditions- and the Ugandan Army is plagued by corruption and human rights abuses as well, a fact Invisible Children conveniently leaves out of its campaigning, along with current Ugandan ‘president’ Museveni’s poor human rights record. The “Kony 2012″ video itself is a merry-go-round of buzzwords and social media hyperactivity, a triumph of meaningless words and vague truisms about “changing history forever” over reason. Most shameless of all is the fact that the poster boy for the entire campaign seems to be a white boy (the director’s son), simply because he is cute. Ugandan or any other independent voices are largely muted. It is portrayed as an affair that only Caucasian Western students between the ages of 17 and 24, and celebrities from Jay-Z to Bill O’Reilly who obviously have no real knowledge of

African issues, can solve. Ignored again in this video is that Invisible Children has done this sort of thing be-fore. In 2006, 80,000 youths convened in 130 different cities across the world, chanting the same truisms being chanted today. Did they concretely change anything on the ground in Uganda? No. “Awareness” was raised, whatever the hell that means. Invisible Children does argue its pressure was instrumental in Obama sending 100 advisors to Uganda help defeat the LRA in 2011. The truth is that this was largely done because Uganda helped in the ongoing war effort against terrorists in Somalia, so the US returned the favor. Ultimately, the effort to get Western countries to involve themselves in times of great danger is not wrongheaded. Too often in history, most infa-mously during the Holocaust, great powers have stayed silent or done little to directly end the slaughter. But the Kony 2012 campaign does a great disservice to this kind of intervention. Clearly Kony must be dealt with. But the reality is that no one knows actually how to do this, least of all Invis-ible Children. The non-profit warps facts, condescends to

Africans, and quite frankly has no idea what it is doing. It is not protesting for a purpose, but rather for the protest itself; it is a movement for the sake of a movement. Meanwhile, Invisible Children’s top admin-istrators make about $90,000 a year and use less than 30% of its donations to actually help people on the ground in Africa. Some critics have ar-gued that Invisible Children’s campaign harkens back to the “White Man’s Burden” world-view. In many ways it does- you could cut the sentimental paternalism with a colonial Coldstream Guard’s sabre. But those colonialists’ feel-ings, epitomized in Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem, often realized the difficulty of build-ing peace and prosperity in distant lands. Invisible Children seems to think all the world’s problems, given money, “action kits,” and a couple tweets from Bono can go away. All this lofty talk in lieu of concrete action epitomizes our postmodern predicament: a society in which words like “awareness” and phrases like “changing the course of human history” have, through overuse, become meaningless.

12

Opinion

The Daily’s FailBy Dane StierOpinion Editor On Wednesday, April 11, 2012, College Republicans and Wildcats for Israel collaborated in hosting Congressman Bob Dold (R-IL 10), one of Illinois’ 5 new freshman congressmen ushered in during the 2010 election. Rather than giving a formal speech, Dold presented the attending audience with an informal discussion and answered questions from the students, ranging from the economic and fiscal status of the United States government to the threat of a nuclear Iran. With an attendance of nearly 30 Northwestern students, Congressman Dold drew a larger audience than the (in)famous Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL 9) who

visited campus the previous evening in an event hosted by College Democrats. Northwest-ern University resides within Schakowsky’s district. Dold’s visit with students found coverage with two of Northwestern’s news sources. The Northwestern Chronicle both reported the event and interviewed Dold after the discussion ended. North by Northwestern hosted a live blog of the evening for inter-ested students who could not attend. But where is Northwestern’s primary news outlet? Where was The Daily Northwestern? For the past week, we have been waiting for cover-age of the event to appear in

the publication, but nothing has materialized. The Daily reported on Schakowsky’s visit and posted it the following day. So why would a legislator who drew a larger audience escape the eyes of The Daily? This is not the first time The Daily has given College Republicans the cold shoulder. Last fall when NUCR hosted late conservative pundit An-drew Breitbart, the publication evidently decided the event would be worth covering. The result was less than satisfac-tory. Earning a spot on the front page was nothing more than a biased rendition of the event, using Breitbart’s “trademark confrontational style” and his most controversial statements to paint him negatively. Then, on March 1, 2012, the death of Breitbart prompted NU College Republicans to honor

him for his contributions to the conservative movement. Both The Daily and The Northwest-ern Chronicle were asked to publish the result. While The Chronicle was quick to post the tribute, The Daily, after being contacted three times and re-ceiving the article as an opinion piece, the College Republicans were ignored. The piece never made it beyond The Chronicle. Alas, the Daily Northwestern seems to be on an anti-College Republican tirade. For three weeks starting May 2, the organization will be holding three major events, so hope-fully at least one of those will be reported fairly, or at least acknowledged. Nothing wrong with dream-ing big, right?

Ed.’s note: Dane Stier is President of the NU College Republicans. He has been The Chronicle’s Opinion editor

since late March.

As the school year comes to a close we feel it incumbent upon ourselves to address an issue of extreme importance to both our parties: the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran. While the Arab Spring has taken out several severely weakened dic-tatorial regimes in the Middle East, the Iranian government’s stranglehold on its own people has only grown stronger. Despite international sanc-tions, the Iranian regime has continued to enrich uranium far beyond the level needed for fuel, and almost 90% of the way to nuclear-weapons capa-bility. As the world’s premier state funder of terrorism, Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons is the largest threat to American interests in the world today, and serious actions must be taken to prevent the realization of an Iranian nuclear super-

Addressing the Threat of a Nuclear Iran

Bi-Partisan Editorialpower. The Iranian threat goes far beyond the use of a warhead on American soil. Already one of the most volatile regions in the world, were Iran to acquire nuclear weapons the Middle East would erupt into a nuclear arms race the likes of which the world has not seen since the end of the Cold War. Furthermore, were Iran to obtain nuclear-weapons capability, their puppets across the region, Hamas, Hezb’allah, and the Assad regime, would reap the benefits of a “nuclear umbrella,” deterring the use of force against them. While the Iranian regime continues to claim that its nuclear facilities are for “civilian purposes” alone, there can no longer be any doubt as to the falsity of this claim. Iran has for years now been bunkering

their nuclear facilities deep underground to prevent attack, and recent reports show exten-sive Iranian research opera-tions dealing with a neutron initiator using uranium deu-teride (UD3), the only known purpose of which is to trigger a nuclear reaction in a warhead. In addition, Iran has been sup-plying weapons and resistance training to insurgents in Iraq, prompting Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to state, “We’re very concerned about Iran and the weapons they’re providing to extremists in Iraq. We can-not sit back and simply allow this to continue.” Thankfully, in an era of intense partisan bickering, both of our parties understand the magnitude of this impending threat. Over the past two years the United States Congress has passed comprehensive sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank in an attempt to deter Iran’s regime from continuing its dangerous agenda. Just last week the United States

House passed House Resolu-tion 568, a resolution express-ing the sense of the House regarding the importance of preventing the Government of Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability, with an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 401-11. While these actions have been important steps in effort to avert the Iranian threat, more must be done to make sure that the most dangerous regime in the Middle East does not acquire the tools it needs to establish its hegemony. We to-gether call on the United States Congress, the Administration, and all its citizens to work to-gether with the rest of the world to do all it can to prevent the Iranian nuclear realization and to keep all options on the table to ensure the safety of Ameri-can citizens and our interests.Lauren Izaak, Co-President of College

DemocratsAdam Roth, Co-President of College

DemocratsDane Stier, President of College Re-

publicans

13

In a recent speech, Presi-dent Obama scolded Repub-licans for their “thinly veiled social Darwinism.” For those keeping score, that’s the same Barack Obama lecturing about “social Darwinism” as the State Senator who rejected legal protections for babies born alive during botched late-term abortions. But, of course, that moniker is just what liberals label conservative ideas when they don’t have any substan-tive arguments to make. So its no surprise that the President dusts off the ole epithet to de-monize his intellectual foil, Paul Ryan, and the House budget. The President continued to vilify the Ryan Budget as “a Trojan Horse” that attempts “to impose a radical vision on our country.” He also described it as “antithetical to our entire history.” All of which begs the question: what is President Obama talking about?SPENDING: By any measure—historical or otherwise—the Ryan Budget is a modest proposal. The post-WWII average for federal spending is 19 percent of the total economic pie and held steady for 60 years. All the Ryan Budget does is reduce spending from the current 24 percent of GDP back down to 20 percent—still above the post WWII average—by 2023 and keep it at that level for nearly two decades. It doesn’t even project spending to fall below the post-WWII average until 2040. If anything, this budget does not go far enough to nor-malize the size of government. For all Obama’s accusa-tions of “radicalism,” lets not forget that we have a federal

Paul Ryan’s Modest Proposal and Obama’s Social Darwinism

By Ryan FazioStaff Writer

Opinion

Paul Ryan Photo courtesy of sojo.net

government whose share of the total economy is greater today than it was during the War of 1812, the Civil War, WWI, the Great Depression, the Great Society, Vietnam, or any point during the Cold War. The

responsibility for this lies with none other than Barack Obama and the Democrat-controlled 111th Congress, which in-creased the size of government by 22 percent in just one year. Since then government spend-ing has barely shrunk relative to GDP, and moreover, it’s projected to grow.MEDICARE: Paul Ryan deserves enor-mous credit for his Medicare reforms in the face of unending vitriol, including ads liter-ally portraying him killing old ladies. The first fact the left often ignores is that the Ryan Budget does not affect Medi-care for any citizens 55 or older whatsoever, period. Citizens currently under 55 years of

age will be given a choice of staying on current Medicare insurance or choosing from an array of private plans when the reach seniority. This is a model endorsed by prominent Democrats, including Senator Ron Wyden, former Sena-tor John Breaux and former

Clinton Budget Director Alice Rivlin. Not to mention, the premium support alternative is very similar to Medicare Part D and Obamacare’s insurance exchange program. “Our budget’s Medicare reforms make no changes for those in or near retirement"Another claim is that the budget forces future seniors to pay more for their health costs out of pocket. But this attack is also bogus because those projections compare the Ryan alternative to a budget “ baseline” that is unsustainable and essentially imaginary. The “baseline” is the same one that leads to Medicare going bank-rupt by 2024 and debt levels greater than that of Greece

when it required its first bailout by 2030, but no one can truth-fully claim that Medicare will not bankrupt the country in its present form and that the pro-jected levels of future benefits are fiscally possible. Thus, there are only three alternatives to address Medi-care’s impending bankruptcy: do nothing, centralized govern-ment rationing, and individual choice and competition. Doing nothing, as we established, bankrupts America. Govern-ment rationing creates shortag-es and destroys quality of care, in the same vein as healthcare in Canada or the UK. The third reform strategy is greater individual choice and competition, which can limit out-of-control costs, while preserving quality. Decentral-ized solutions allow patients to chose which medical care is most important to them, and providers to indicate which care they are able to supply at certain costs. Paul Ryan’s pre-mium support program gives seniors the choice of health plans while forcing providers to compete to provide seniors with the best plan. Far from throwing grandma off of the cliff, Paul Ryan empowers fu-ture seniors to make decisions for themselves.TAXES: Ryan’s tax proposals are not quite complete because he leaves many of the details to the House Ways & Means Committee, whose responsibil-ity it is to write tax bills. The Congressman proposes sim-plifying the current income tax code from six brackets to two brackets, whose rates will be 10 and 25 percent. The Ways & Means Committee is charged with the task of choosing which

14

Opinion

Barack Obama Photo courtesy of fanpop.com

tax loopholes to close in order to offset the tax rate reductions proposed in the Ryan Budget. Considering tax loopholes amount to over $1 trillion an-nually of lost federal revenue, closing just a third of them over ten years should pay for Ryan’s tax cuts.* For all President Obama’s inane talk about how President Reagan could not win a pri-mary in today’s GOP, the exact same thing was done in his second term. Revenue neutral tax reform, in which tax rates are reduced by an equal aggre-gate value as the tax loopholes that are stripped out, was signed into law in 1986. The reform lowered the top income tax rate from 50 percent all the way down to 28 percent, with-out losing a dollar of revenue in static terms (i.e. not accounting for economic growth). To put that in perspective, similar tax reform to 1986 (low-er the rates, broaden the base as Paul Ryan proposes) could raise anywhere from $628 to $767 billion (2011 dollars) over the next ten years just from increased economic growth.** And before Barack Obama calls this “social Darwinism” he should recall that the 1986 reform was passed by a Demo-crat House and sponsored by former Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-MO) and former Sen. Bill Bradley (D-NJ)—not exactly card-carrying members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.WELFARE REFORM: Finally, Ryan’s budget also reforms several social welfare programs in the same spirit of the 1996 welfare reforms that garnered vast bipartisan support. The effect of Ryan’s welfare reforms will in some cases save programs headed for bankruptcy and in most reduce the permanent state of dependency that welfare can promote among its recipients.

The Clinton welfare reforms promoted personal responsi-bility and at worst did nothing to harm the material needs of the poor–in fact they probably improved standard of living. From 1995 to 2001, the num-ber of hungry children fell from 887,000 to 467,000. From the expansion of the welfare state until 1995, black child pover-try remained almost constant above 40 percent (40.4 percent

in 1971 and 41.5 percent in 1995), but by 2001 it fell to 30 percent and even remained be-low 35 percent in 2009 amidst the Great Recession. If anything the 1990s reforms did not go far enough because it only applied to cash welfare. Ryan’s budget carries on the legacy of reform signed into law by President Clinton. Strangely, Barack Obama has never called Bill Clinton a “so-cial Darwinist.” By now we have all seen the charts showing us the growing number of Americans dependent on the federal government for their standard of living. Today, 49 percent of Americans receive some direct benefit from the government.

According to the Heritage Foundation’s comprehensive Index of Dependence on Government, about 30 per-cent of Americans are deeply dependent on the government for their material needs. De-pendency has been increasing steadily for the past decade, and jumped 23 percent in just the first two years of the Obama administration. One of our most “radical,”

“social Darwinist” presidents once said: “The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued de-pendence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegra-tion fundamentally destruc-tive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit…It is in violation of the traditions of America.” That right-winger was Franklin Roosevelt. If Obama has been called a socialist once, FDR was labeled such a thousand times. Yet even he understood the dangers of a welfare system run amuck.

For a country built upon and exceptional for its rugged individualism, it is impossible to see how modest reforms promoting personal responsibil-ity could be “antithetical to our entire history.”CONCLUSION: It cannot be understated how unusual a fiscal cross-roads we stand at today. De-spite the 25 percent increase in federal spending in the first year of the Obama administra-tion, the President is trying to dupe Americans into thinking that his policies are somehow moderate. He also wants you to think Paul Ryan is a radical, whose budget bears no resem-blance to any point in modern history. But all the budget does is bring spending back in line with recent historical norms. Despite its modesty, Paul Ryan’s budget deserves enor-mous credit for presenting a plan to save America from cer-tain fiscal calamity. The presi-dent calls the congressman names, but Barack Obama has yet to present anything to dent the unsustainable growth of spending and debt. Indeed, the president has chosen to act rather unpresidential, while a 40-year-old congressman from Wisconsin works to fill the void. No matter how often Obama tries, demagoguery won’t save our government from its pres-ent path to bankruptcy. The Ryan budget, however, can. And for that reason its more than worth enacting into law.* – (I assume that the loophole costs grow at 4.5 percent annually–a modest nominal GDP estimate–and that the static costs of the Ryan rate reduc-tions without loophole reductions are $4.6 Trillion–a high-end estimate being touted by many liberal outlets.)** – (To calculate this, I used data for projected Income Tax revenue in Figure 6-3 of the Supplemental Data for the CBO’s Long-Term Budget Out-look. I multiplied the projected income tax revenue to GDP under each of three scenarios by the CBO’s projected Real GDP (2011 dollars) for the years 2013-2022.)

15

FeatureThis Article is About

Mad Men

AMC’s Mad Men, currently airing its fifth season, is a good show- since its premiere in 2007 it has received boundless praise from fans, critics, and award shows. Netflix even paid up to $100 million to bring the show to its streaming service.

By Jordan MinorStaff Writer

Photo courtesy of madmen.wikia.com

SuperSonic Ensemble, a video game themed music group, had its first rehearsal last weekend. Sam Barker, a Northwestern University junior, started the group this spring quarter. The ensemble of about 20 performs music related to different types of video games. Barker heard of the idea from his sister who was part of a video game choir at the Berkeley School of Music. The English Literature major put together some pieces and planned on pitching them to a capella groups on campus last year; however, he never got around to it. With the help of students Amanda Shep-

This is not just an article about Mad Men the show. In this writer’s opinion, it’s an incredible work that deserves all of the praise it gets from fans of both indoor smoking and rich character develop-ment. No, what this article is

No, what this article is about, ironically enough, is the inundation of Mad Men articles on the internet. The echo chambers created by the social media ecosystem always have a habit of making things seem more prominent than they really are. But what is it about this show in par-ticular? It’s one thing to post reviews and analytical essays or even create a clever fake Twitter or two. But what other show would inspire legions of Tumblists to freak out when Bugles show up for a few seconds or when Mitt Rom-ney is not-so-casually name dropped? Some of the answers are pretty obvious. First of all, white people love Mad Men. Why else would AMC bother putting out Jessica Paré/Megan Draper’s cover of “Zou Bisou Bisou” on vinyl? I would explain more but this glorious website does a far better job than I ever could. There is more to it than that

though. Part of it is due to the 17-month gap between this season and the last and patient fans have now finally been given the chance to unleash their pent up enthusiasm all at once. However, that still doesn’t fully explain the sheer vol-ume of articles on Mad Men we’re currently facing, espe-cially if one looks at the show’s consistent but relatively low ratings. The real answer, at least in this writer’s opinion, is that the small yet devoted following is mostly made up of young, media-conscious, tech-savvy, urban liberals, a.k.a. the people who dominate our cur-rent social media landscape. Literally everyone who watches is writing about it. Even conser-vatives have jumped on the bandwagon to complain about the show’s “liberal bias.” It’s a fascinating situation that inadvertently puts a spot-light on collective media bias, even in its most subtle and ultimately harmless form.

Meet Northwestern’s First Video Game Music Choir

By Megan WoodStaff Writer

-herd and Jason Lederman, he decided to take the leap and create the group. Although auditions weren’t extremely competitive, all members had to meet a certain skill level. The instrumentalists came prepared with a one to two minute music segment to play. Vocalists were required to sing a one to two minute music segment and were also tested on their range. A pianist, a flautist and two percussionists play the primary instrumental roles. There are also two pianists, three clari-nets and two ukuleles among the vocalists, who make up the “eclectic group.”

“Being able to get a group of like-minded people together to play video game music and sing video game music and just be awesome is great,” Barker said. “I really want to let people know about video game music, so I hope that that’s one of the effects of the group.” The group is hosting auditions in the fall hopeful that, by the end of the quarter, the group will have at least 30 people. Shepherd, a sophomore Radio/Television/Video/Film major, controls the logistics of the group, helping with rehearsal and performance scheduling. Her main goal right now is to attain ASG recogni-tion, which is very time-inten-sive. The group must establish that they have staying power before ASG approves their organization. “I am musically inept, but

I’m really enjoying hearing it all come together,” Shepherd said. Lederman, a sophomore RTVF major and sound design minor, helps Barker with the musical direction because of his experience with a capella. “It’s a great way for some people who wouldn’t normally have the ambition to join an a capella group to try it out and explore their love for music,” he said. “I would love for it to expand, as long as people are passionate about the music and want to be involved I don’t think there’s any reason why they shouldn’t be.”SuperSonic Ensemble’s first performance was a benefit concert for Northwestern Unite for Sight on May 20. The Ensemble hopes to have its own full-length concert by fall quarter.

16

FeatureFood-Based Performance Art: A Review of “Feast”By Jane JaneczkoStaff Writer & Blogger

After a few moments of blending, Alison Knowles went around and checked her concoctions before saying, “We’re going to have one more round before we serve.” The “soup” was then served to the audience.

On Saturday, May 5, the Smart Museum of Art hosted a symposium related to the topic of their current exhibit, “Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contem-porary Art.” This symposium, aptly (if not blandly) named “Symposium: of Hospitality,” consisted of several panels: a performance piece called The Identical Lunch Symphony, per-formed by Alison Knowles and a group of musicians, and a food truck presentation, which included culinary artists from Enemy Kitchen (Food Truck) and E-Dogz Mobile Culinary Community Center. All of these discussions partnered beautifully with the exhibition. The Identical Lunch and Enemy Kitchen both had displays in the show, which brought another interactive ele-ment. A majority of the perfor-mance pieces documented in the show are also performed at the Smart on a regular basis to encourage an air of community, which inspires the concept of hospitality. According to Amy Mooney, a professor at Colum-bia College, these performance collaborations are shifting the moods of Chicagoans, “That’s what social change actually is – it’s the duration of a public arts project,” said Mooney in a panel on the Radical Domestic. According to a student docent at the show, Feast has been one of the Smart Mu-seum’s most popular shows of late. It could be argued that the strong performing elements and the un-traditional style of the exhibit is bringing in more patrons. For example, Alison Knowles’ performance of the Identical Lunch Symphony was done during the May 5th sym-posium. Knowles, in conjunc-tion with a group of musicians, combined the ingredients

formally portrayed in the show by six silkscreen panels of Knowles’ friends enjoying the lunch and a small covered reproduction of the Identical Lunch: a tuna fish sandwich and a large glass of buttermilk. The concept behind this piece is that no object, even an identical lunch, is truly the same since the human experi-ence is constantly changing. According to Knowles, the project did not originally occur to her as art, it was simply her

Lunch: a tuna fish sandwich on wheat toast with lettuce and butter, no mayo, and a large glass of buttermilk or a cup of soup was and is eaten many days of each week at the same place and at about the same time.” Another popular perfor-mance piece in Feast is Tom Marioni’s “The Act of Drinking Beer With Friends Is the High-est Form of Art.” Marioni invites a crowd of people who bring their guests and they simply

enjoy each others’ company, listening to jazz and Marioni’s stand up routine, while enjoying the relaxed atmosphere and dim yellow lighting. The performing pieces in the show are interspersed by photography, video, sculp-ture and mixed media works following a timeline, which reaches back to the 1930s to an analysis of the Manifesto of Futurist Cooking. This timeline, which incorporates one of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ well-known “Untitled” candy sculptures, ends with a display of Michael Rakowitz’s “Enemy Kitchen” and “Flying Feast” gives a thor-ough, multicultural analysis of the radical hospitality exhibited by humans and all of the social, and at times political, ramifica-tions of sharing a meal. The only work that the cu-ratorial team chose to display at several different locations throughout the show is a series of photographs by Laura Letinsky. Letinsky photographs collaged still lifes of images bothered from housekeeping, fashion, and food magazines to create sights of slightly desolate tables, which usually appear to be post-meal. These semi-melancholic pieces broke up the show while leaving the viewer to question what exactly happens when the hosting and hospitality is over. Feast turns everyday mo-ments of simple nutrition and socialization into more than art, but a celebration of everyday life. The artists in this show use meals as a synecdochic ex-pression of society. In the end, we all have to eat- but only Feast invites you to consume. Feast closes June 10, 2012.

required to make her identical lunch in a variety of blenders. Knowles conducted the musi-cians as she would a sym-phony in their blending of the lunch, which was then served to the audience. The performance, which has no clear origin other than a start date of 1969, is also

routine to attend the same Chelsea diner for lunch. Al-though soon, one of her friends Philip Corner, a composer, suggested the lunch could be a performance and soon Knowles began documenting the lunch. The score for the perfor-mance states, “The Identical

17

Off the BlogsDorm Cooking: Baked

French ToastBy Andrea SchmitzBlogger & Cartoonist

As someone who watches too much TV for my own good and takes a large number of classes focusing on television theory, I take a fairly large stake in the ratings success of my favorite shows. But even if you don’t watch much televi-sion, I’m sure you’re aware of this peculiar invention called TV shows and the success of said shows being measured through a mysterious series of numbers referred to collectively as “ratings.” But what exactly do those numbers mean, and where do they come from? The ratings system is the product of the Nielsen Com-pany and was founded in the

Why TV Ratings Are Obsolete

By Amanda ShepherdBlogger

Spoilers

Fooding Around

For the backwards-and-proud-of-it college student, breakfast for dinner is often a product of last-minute des-peration. An Eggo waffle in the wee hours of the morning can spare you a costly call to Papa John’s and leave you with the satisfaction of a full and happy

Ingredients:1 lb French bread, cut diago-nally in 1 inch slices8 eggs2 cups milk1 1/2 cups half-and-half cream2 tsp vanilla extract1/4 tsp ground cinnamon3/4 cup butter1 1/3 cups brown sugar3 tbsp light corn syrup

Directions:1. Butter a 9 x 13 inch bak-ing dish or spray with cooking spray (you could also use a slightly longer pan if neces-sary). Arrange the slices of bread in the bottom. In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, milk, half-and-half, vanilla and cinnamon. Pour over the bread slices, cover, and refrigerate overnight. (Make sure the bread slices are soaked, but do

Photo courtesy of alvxyz

stomach. But, when the glamour and glitz of dorm life fades and you find yourself maturing into a real-ass adult, you may find Eggos a bit below your new, elegant standards. Should you have to give up your nighttime breakfast pursuits because you’ve hit the second level double digits and are moving on up in the world? Not at all. Turn those late-night scaven-ger hunts into a well-planned, classy dinner course. Here’s a recipe for a fashionable, fancy French toast that will leave you and your esteemed colleagues feeling super sophisticated.

not put a lot of excess liquid in the pan; you may have a little left over. Make sure the edges of the pan are at least about left over. Make sure the edges of the pan are at least about 2-3 inches high because this expands when it bakes.)over bread and egg mixture.

2. The next morning, preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a small saucepan, combine butter, brown sugar and corn syrup; heat over medium heat until bubbling (keep stirring to keep it from burning). Pour over bread and egg mixture. (You can also spoon it on so that each slice of bread is covered; or you can pour it and use a spatula to spread it around.)

3. Bake in preheated oven, uncovered, for 40 minutes.

1950s to measure television viewership among different demographics and at different times of day, and make this information available to both networks and advertisers who stake a claim in the success of a show. Quite frankly, it’s also one of the most dated systems of measuring television viewer-ship and doesn’t take in to consideration forms of viewer-ship that have evolved in the last 60 years. Nielsen operates on the statistical concept of a sample population acting as represen-tation for the entire popula-tion. This sample , referred to lovingly as “Nielsen families,” theoretically consists of equal

(or at least similar) demograph-ics to the actual population of television viewers (for ex-ample, if the actual population of television viewers is 52% female, the Nielsen families will also have 52% female view-ers). Originally, families would record their own viewing habits and provide this information, along with their family demo-graphics, to the Nielsen Com-pany by mail (this is flawed for very obvious reasons). In the modern day, Nielsen installs meters in homes that measure the network, time stamp, and amount of time watched, and each member of the family presses a button on the me-ter’s remote to “log in” as they begin viewing. From this data, analysts at Nielsen are able to calculate the number of viewers watch-ing various networks during certain hours of the day, and which age and gender de-

-mographics are drawing the most viewers. The first flaw with the system is that Nielsen has only about 5,000 participating house-holds—this, from an estimated 99 million homes with televi-sions, this is not an accurately representative sample of the US population as a whole. The system also hinges on all 5,000 households accurately “logging in” to report their viewership. It doesn’t account for someone logging in then falling asleep, it doesn’t account for some-one pressing the wrong log in button, it doesn’t account for a child playing with the remote—a whole list of very real pos-sibilities that Nielsen cannot account for.

Read the rest of this blog post and more at www.Chron.org

18

Off the BlogsThe Nonsense Industry of Health Food Journalism

By Annalise FrankStaff Writer & Blogger

I just saw The Avengers in theaters a second time, and I am not ashamed to say that I will probably see it at least one or two more times on the big screen before buying the DVD and watching it on infinite loop. Leaving the theater left me as close to bliss as any movie can possibly hope to. Fans of Joss Whedon will recognize his trademark motifs in the writing—witty one-liners, shining moments of extreme character depth, and, of course, an earth-shattering character death that gives the new team the motivation to live up to its name. In addition to an amazing script, we’re faced with amazing performances

The Avengers: A (Nearly) Sexual Experience

By Amanda ShepherdBlogger

from an extremely talented cast, supremely beautiful special effects, and incredible fight choreography. The score of this movie alone will send so many shivers down your spine that you’ll think you’ve been frozen for the last seventy years. However, you shouldn’t go in to this movie hoping for something paralleling the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight trilogy. While Nolan tends to shirk off comic book conven-tions in favor of turning the costumed hero into some-thing artistic, deep, and gritty, Whedon embraces the beloved bright colors and quippy dia-logue typical of the Silver Age

comics of the 1970s and 80s. If you’re looking for something artistic, then The Avengers is not the right movie for you. If you’re looking for a movie that will have you laughing one minute, crying the next, and sitting on the edge of your seat the entire time, then definitely go see it. While not extremely neces-sary, I would recommend see-ing at least Thor before going to see Avengers. Obviously, seeing all of the films would help set up a more complete picture of each character’s back story, but Thor provides the most pertinent information about the source of the conflict between Loki and the planet Earth as a whole. However, Avengers manages to stand on its own: it provides enough information in the exposition that seeing the other movies is not compulsory. The Avengers experience

is nothing short of sexual, and not just because of the ex-tremely attractive cast. When you go in to it the first time, you’re not really sure what to expect—sure, you’ve heard your friends talk about it, may-be even seen pictures or read about it, but you’re still not one hundred percent sure what to expect. And as it’s happening, suddenly you’re not sure if you can handle all of the feelings. You weren’t sure what this was going to be, but you didn’t expect it to be anywhere near this, you weren’t equipped to handle something of this level of greatness. The second time, you think you know what you’re getting in to, but you really just have a general idea of what’s going to happen, but you catch on to subtleties and have a whole new range of emotions and are enjoying the little things. It can only get bet-ter each time it happens.

Spoilers

Fooding Around

Food journalism is strange. It straddles a hard-to-manage line between science writing and the “Life and Style” sec-tion. Food’s effects on the body are obviously science-based, but its consumption (or lack thereof) has become such an industry that writing about food requires a knack for scientific jargon, a flair for flowery writ-ing, and an ability to combine the two categories without sounding like a complete ass.For people like me, food is more than sustenance. It’s a pesky thought in the back of my mind, constantly worm-

-ing its way to the surface. It’s prevalent in my life- more so than TV, even (maybe). Alright, they could be about equal. But that’s still a big chunk of where my brain power goes on a daily basis. The point is, people looking to learn about food want to be entertained. However, when it comes to food journalism concerning health, they need to be informed. Food and health journal-ists always need new things to write about; unfortunately, restaurant reviews alone won’t cut it. Apparently, any new way to eat healthy is news

and food journalists have a fascination with food studies. These studies change all the time so it’s no surprise many of these studies and articles aren’t speaking the gospel truth, but some readers do take them seriously. That’s a problem. Magazines promise weight loss and disease prevention based on questionable re-search or trends. For instance, recently in Women’s Health a featured article titled “The 10 Best Fitness Foods for Women,” which proclaims ber-ries are great for eating after you work out. No shit, one look at the new version of the FDA Food Pyramid, MyPlate, could have told you that. Most of the rest of these revolutionary ideas were high-protein, which is what you need after working out, that’s true, but I think most people could have known on their own that

chicken has protein and is good for them. Take health and food articles you read with a grain of salt (ha!) before basing your diet off of them. A recent Los Angeles Times article pro-claimed green coffee beans as a new way to drop weight fast. Maybe these uncooked beans really are a miracle food. But probably not. Nevertheless, The Seattle Times, U.S. News & World Report, NBC Chicago, and the International Business Times, among others, ran articles declaring that a new study on these beans holds the secret to weight loss. So, all those unroasted coffee extract mak-ers out there should definitely be seeing a substantial boost in sales right about now. Good for them- but not necessarily for us.

19

Markwell for PresidentBy Tim ReillyStaff Writer

Photo: iagreewithmarkwell.com/UpstateNYer

As we come closer and closer to the 2012 presidential election, I have finally decided to give my support to a candi-date. A man who is able to en-joy elegant praise and worship as well as he handles criticism and hatred. A man who stands by his beliefs, and makes sure everyone else believes them too. I, of course, am talking about the only man I would trust my country to: Matthew Markwell. As a recently converted Markwellian, I have learned quickly the amazing power and leadership qualities this man contains. Since the beginning of this campaign, I’ve wanted to be surrounded by Markwell wherever I was. As I enter the dining hall? Check. Seeing beautiful orange shirts gliding through crowds in between all my classes? Check. Hell (!), I even started to worry I wasn’t getting to see him enough. Luckily, he was gracious enough to give me a large pic-ture of him for me to hang right by my bed, so he’s the first and last thing I see at night.

And his message! Oh, his message! Have more wonder-ful, magnificent, intelligent, and original words ever been enun-ciated on this campus? “Good is not good enough?” Abso-lutely brilliant! What better mes-sage for overachieving college students worried about a finan-cial crisis and a never-ending job hunt than to tell them that they are not good enough? I’ve always told my friends that their double major, two jobs, four exec board positions, and club sports team were not enough if they really wanted to be good. That’s why I just added a fourth major, third job, and started the Northwestern Kazoo and Vuvuzela Club. Still not good enough, but maybe Markwell will give me a pat on the head for my efforts. And who cares that his mes-sage is mostly Sunday School level information that has been ingrained into me since I was in third grade. People just seem to forget that everyone is a terrible, sinful person, and the only way to gain forgiveness is through the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And orange t-shirts. This message is not prominent enough in the world we live in. Sometimes, after a great night out of debauch-ery, I have to go back to their site and remind myself that I am a sinner who will never be good enough. After that, I do my prayers in the direc-tion of Markwell (he’s usually north of me), kiss my picture of Markwell, and go on with my sinful life. And I really cannot get enough of the site. Black back-ground, depressing people, glitchy video players, anything you could possibly want to

really get you pumped up for a campaign. Sometimes, when I watch the videos, the video player slides to the next video while the other is still playing. In my mind, I believe that is Markwell, just guiding my eyes and ears onward to the next great testimony. It’s almost like he’s holding my hand, leading my life along the path of righ-teous listening, and absolving my sins along the way. When I look at the site, I think to myself that if Markwell can design such a great website, imagine how well he can design our country. I think what really just brought it all together for me was his advertising campaign. What a genius slogan. “I Agree With Markwell”. It just seems to bring up questions that could drive a person’s curiosity crazy. Questions like “Who is Mark-well?”, “What am I agreeing to?”, and “Do those people who have worn those orange shirts ever do laundry?”

Queeves and Steves

Some people may claim it is trickery and deceit to use such a misleading campaign slogan, but they are just following in the footsteps of over 70 other uni-versities who have run similar “I Agree With” campaigns since 1999. That’s just a commitment to excellence in my opinion. He’s willing to take what works and implement it here. But better, because he’s Matthew Markwell. So, with that in mind, I formally give my full support to Matthew Markwell for Presi-dent of the United States of America. Who would be better at dealing with this country’s financial crisis two wars, and a health care dilemma than a man who claims to have a per-sonal relationship with Jesus Christ? So bring your orange shirts and “not good enough” attitudes with you, because we are bringing this campaign all the way to Washington!

By Andrea Schmitz and Chris KeeveCartoonists