A fire at the residential building on 2209 Ridge Ave. on Sunday evening has displaced three Northwestern students, according to a statement from the Evanston Fire Department.

EFD has yet to determine the cause of the fire, which was limited to the kitchen area on the third floor of the building. It also caused extensive smoke and heat damage throughout the third floor unit. No injuries were reported.

At about 7:35 p.m. on Sunday, graduate student Eric Schickli heard someone pounding on his door and yelling that there was a “giant fire!”

When he went to check his neighbors’ kitchen, he saw “giant flames leaping from the stove.” He grabbed some of his possessions, locked his door and called 911. Within about five minutes, the fire units arrived. An hour and a half later Schickli and the other residents were let back into the building. His unit wasn’t damaged, but the one next door was.

“The entire thing was burnt,” he said, referring to his neighbors’ kitchen.

The EFD received several 911 reports of a fire at the building at approximately 7:26 p.m. on Sunday, the EFD statement said. Heavy smoke and fire were reported in the rear of the third floor as the fire company arrived at the site. Approximately 20 firefighters were deployed to the scene, according to Division Chief Tom Janetske.

The blaze was contained within minutes after the arrival of the first fire units, according to the press release, and the three displaced Northwestern students have been able to find alternative housing.

Fire investigators turned the building back over to building management after completing the preliminary investigation.

It was experiences like these that prompted Shepard, a Communication Studies major, to explore in film if he is the only African American student at Northwestern to feel racism. A day after the United States elected its first black president, Shepard showed his documentary to about 40 people who had gathered in Harris 107.

Created, filmed, edited and produced by Shepard, “Divorcing the History” is, in the words of its creator, a “snapshot of where African Americans are currently.” Shepard interviewed 54 people in the Northwestern community, including President Henry Bienen and a number of faculty members.

“It is really the environment here at Northwestern that detracts students from attending NU,” said Shepard, who said he experienced racism for the first time after coming to Northwestern. “It’s sometimes the glances — people looking at you and whispering, or what people will say or won’t say in front of you because they are afraid of how you react.”

Produced in a question-and-answer format, the documentary gives voice to many but boils down to a few recurring concerns: Separation, low enrollment and insufficient financial aid for minority students are driving many African-American and Hispanic students away.

Five hundred African-American students were admitted to Northwestern last spring, according to Tyris Jones, president of the Freshman Advisory Board. Eighty-one enrolled.

“Some of the main factors are the lack of the numbers that are already present and the financial cost,” said Jones. “If we have more people doing [what Shepard is doing], then this change will be brought about.”

In the film, President Bienen called diversity “a complicated business.”

“When we talk about diversity, we are talking about race, ethnicity, religion, gender,geography, profession and, I think, in many ways [Northwestern is] diverse and in some ways it’s less diverse,” Bienen said.

“We as a university have come far but we still have a ways to go,” Shepard added. While he sees a “lot of racial hostility” at Northwestern, he recognizes that the university has one of the top African-American programs in the country — one of the eight programs that offer a Ph.D — as well as an African-American Student Affairs building, which many Ivy League schools don’t have. “Our university has made strides, but I feel we still need to cross the line. We are almost there.”

Despite the divisive issue, lighthearted laughter predominated for the near-hour that “Divorcing the History” played.

According to Jones, the audience laughed because many of the characters in the film were their friends.

“Some of the comments you can really relate to. Some of the comments you could really feel,” Jones said. “I mean, they may have been said in a comical way, but they are truthful.”

But laughter might have had a deeper meaning as well.

“That’s something that you are forced to do, compelled to do at times because if you let your situation or the things that happen to you weigh you down, then it only affects you, it doesn’t affect the person who did it to you,” Jones added. “So it takes you, as a mature student, to blow it off in order to cope with it. Because if you let it engulf you, then you’ll fall subject to it.”

Jones, who identified with many of the themes of the film, was wearing a Barack Obama t-shirt, like other students in the audience. He was also one of the hundreds of thousands who gathered at Grant Park on Election Night to see America’s first African-American president.

“We are celebrating because America is attempting to break down the segregation,” Jones said. “I was downtown last night and you could tell that it’s not a race thing. Everybody is partaking in the excitement.”

While Shepard believes Obama’s qualification and not his race marked the vote, he recognized the election as a “step in the right direction.”

”I feel that it is opening,” he said. “You are always told as a child that you can do anything but until you see someone doing it yourself, you really don’t believe that.”

The university released “probably the biggest” long-term plan in its history Thursday, proposing to tear down prominent dorms and buildings for new structures and reshape the lakefill, to be completed over the next 50 years.

The Campus Framework Plan, proposed by a university-wide committee of students, faculty and staff, calls for the demolition of a large portion of campus, including five fraternity houses on North Campus, the Foster-Walker Complex, Sargent Hall, Bobb-McCulloch Hall, the Frances Searle Building and the South Campus parking deck. The lakefill-enclosed pond would become smaller to make way for new buildings.

The changes would bring “more cohesion, harmony and functionality” to campus over the coming decades, said James Webster, a School of Communication professor and member of the Campus Planning Advisory Committee.

The plan would also remove parking lots from the center of campus, open up green space and “take advantage of the proximity to the lake” while preserving “certain sacred spaces that everybody is devoted to,” Webster said. It envisions building sites that could accommodate as much as 7.46 million gross square feet of additional space in the coming decades.

The draft does not address specific timing or the cost of the recommended changes. Starting next week, the proposal will circulate around the Northwestern and Evanston communities for an open discussion in order for the committee to finalize it later this year. It will then be sent to the university administration for consideration and evaluation.

“We don’t want this to be a straitjacket; we want it to be a vision, a framework that allows a good deal of flexibility, some degree of freedom,” Webster added. “And it is a vision that, if we buy into it, will unfold over several decades.”

A key part of the plan is the restoration of the “historic crescent” of open space bordering Harris Hall, University Hall and Deering Meadow. Lunt Hall would move farther south to consolidate the academic departments in a new Social Sciences Quad. A new crescent that curves around the pond toward Lake Michigan would provide more green space while managing pedestrian traffic more efficiently. A bridge would connect the Norris University Center with the University Library to create a physical and social hub on campus — what planners describe as a “great civic square.”

But the plan also maintains areas that have formed the identity of the university — University Hall, Annie May Swift Hall, Harris Hall and the oak grove — Webster said.

“This campus has very few really old historically significant buildings,” he said. “Because we have so few historic buildings of character, we have to preserve them.”

The southwestern area of campus along Clark Street would be redeveloped to include a residential district, which Webster said would create “a live interface with the city.”

The committee consulted with the architecture firm Sasaki Associates during the 18-month planning phase. “In a university setting, where expansion occurs over many years, it’s essential to have this type of framework,” said Ricardo Dumont, Sasaki’s principal, in a statement. “We’re not suggesting all of this should be built. We are saying, consider future growth as an opportunity to strengthen what you already have,” he added.

“As we build out the campus, as we inevitably will do, we are going to do so consistent with the concept of how we ought to grow the campus and not have a mish-mash of buildings here and there,” Webster said, adding that so far the Northwestern community has been built piece-by-piece without big-picture planning.

”Because we have this limited footprint and because we continue to build, we just can’t continue to do so without some sort of a master plan about where things ought to go and what things in the fullness of time ought to be removed,” he added.

Students are invited to look over the plan and send in their thoughts via e-mail, the university said.

The university will give three presentations to the Northwestern community in McCormick Auditorium at Norris and will be held at 7 p.m. Sept. 30, and at noon and 5:30 p.m. Oct. 1.

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After a four-hour session, ASG senators approved a code amendment to reform the governing body, but postponed a vote on related constitutional amendments — upon which the code changes depend.

The code amendment outlines the powers and position of the Vice President, who would take on some duties previously held by the President and Executive Vice President and serve as a liaison to administrators, according to the proposal.

The new code would also make nominal changes: the Executive Committee would be renamed the Student Advisory Board; the Treasurer would be the Director of Internal Operations; the Financial Vice President would be the Director of Finance.

The 24-7 vote surpassed the two-thirds majority necessary for the code amendment, and took place ten minutes before the meeting’s end. A number of changes to ASG President Neal Sales-Griffin’s proposed code amendment were approved in the discussion before voting took place.

The new position and name changes are the only would-be additions to the constitution, which would remain “mostly intact because it is sacred,” Sales-Griffin said.

Sales-Griffin’s proposal from last week spelled out all amendments under the Constitution, but students at a forum on the subject last Thursday raised concerns over the integrity of the document.

Similar arguments were made Wednesday, as opposition emerged — in contrast to earlier voting on the agenda, when student group de-recognition appeals and allocation of senate seats comfortably passed the two-thirds-majority barrier.

Senior Cassie Witten stepped up a few times to argue that instead of adding bureaucracy, changes to ASG’s work “can happen within the framework we already have.”

“I didn’t hear in there any reason to add the positions that were added in the code,” said Witten, who has been a senator for the last two years and a half. “Every year as soon as a president gets in, they look at the constitution and try to revise it. It never goes to effecting any change and I think it’s unfortunate that once again ASG is going to continue to remain irrelevant because they can only look within themselves.”

Executive Vice President Vikram Karandikar described the amendments as “a call for help” to the overwhelming functions of the president and the executive vice president, while Sales-Griffin said that the “opportunities” they create are “way greater than the costs.”

“I’m just passionate about this school and what’s best for it,” Sales-Griffin concluded. “We clearly know what’s best and we trust Northwestern and we trust the students to believe in us.”

The bands will join night headliner Common, The Cool Kids, and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists at Northwestern’s end-of-year music festival, which will be on the Lakefill on May 31.

Northwestern alum Will Butler from Arcade Fire will perform as a DJ, sponsored by the Office of the Provost.

“The line-up is so much stronger this year. This is our landmark year,” said Ben Stix, co-chair of Mayfest.

Mayfest’s director of concerts, Diana Richter, said the lineup was easier to put together this time around.

“We lucked it out this year. We dealt with very easy-going agents,” Richter said. Broken Social Scene, for instance, had a sudden opening in its schedule and Mayfest quickly got in touch with them. The Canadian indie rock band was booked just this Monday.

Last year, Richter said, between roughly 3000 and 4000 people attended the festival, which was inside Patten Gym because of inclement weather. This time, only lightning will move the event inside.

“This year we hope to have 3000-4000 just for Third Eye Blind alone,” Richter said.

Mayfest hopes that students will be pleased by the lineup’s variety.

“We are just looking for more than one style,” Richter said. “We think we’ve hit a larger group this year.”

Battle of the Bands winner and Northwestern group Mind at Large will also perform.

Cake, The Roots, Lupe Fiasco, Pete Francis and Office performed at last year’s Dillo Day.

More to come.

Led by President Neal Sales-Griffin, ASG’s executive board presented “Operations Manual: The unofficial guide to the new ASG,” to more than 20 students in Norris’ Lake Room in an open talk on ASG’s new grand strategy. Proposals included new positions, redistributed roles, committee changes and amendments to ASG’s code and constitution. The proposed structure replaces its “rigid,” “inefficient” and “convoluted” precursor with “the intuitive, the effective and the concise,” the preface to the manual says.

“It’s a much easier reference for all the students to understand how we function, what we can do for you, and what our purpose is,” said Sales-Griffin, who struggled to understand the current constitution but learned “a lot more about ASG than we had known” while revising the document with the executive board.

The new program provides three new positions: a vice president to relieve the president and the executive vice president of some duties; a director of human resources; and a director of research and development. The proposal introduces nominal changes to the positions of the financial vice president, the executive committee and the treasurer, and envisions a new Senate format.

But it was the role of vice president that raised most arms and triggered most questions, interruptions and hushes. According to the new program, the Vice President will serve as an “administrator liaison,” a “connector”, a “switchboard” and a “filter” for the “get it done” machine, which includes Student Services, Academic Affairs, External Relations, and Research and Development committees. But according to ASG Executive Vice President Vikram Karandikar, the new position will simply channel some of the functions that overwhelm him and Sales-Griffin.

“This is a call for help,” Karandikar said. “The job I do already is so involved and so heavy with student groups that by the time I get to fulfilling my duties as a vice president, I’m spent. I need help as much as this organization needs help.”

While the proponents of the bill maintained that the new vice president is all about flexibility and efficiency, students in the audience asked whether this “new level of bureaucracy is justified” and whether it will pass the two-thirds majority at the Senate meeting next week.

“This is not necessarily adding bureaucracy,” said Sales-Griffin, who has been working together with the executive board on the new program for the past four weeks. “Yes, you’d be adding another body, but it would be for the greater good because right now we are spreading ourselves to the point that we can’t get it done.”

A few students proposed ad hoc positions, instead, to preserve the integrity of the constitution, which they called “sacred.” Concerns over permanent changes to the document led some to suggest amendments to ASG’s code only.

“My concern has always been – is it constitutional to amend the constitution, to throw all these things out there without trying them out first?” said Weinberg junior Hari Vijay, who stayed for the whole discussion and was a candidate this year for student services vice president.

Discussion also lingered about the role of the research and development committee as well as issues that previous Boards could not get round to.

“There are so many sticky issues and we want to deal with them now,” Karandikar said.

ASG has to put the new program into place by the end of this quarter so that it can use its two remaining quarters to enact the changes, Sales-Griffin told a smaller audience at the end of the forum.

The new manual operates under the mantra “One Northwestern,” in unison with ASG’s mission to unify the Northwestern student body, which Sales-Griffin described as “segmented.”

“The root cause is not a marketing campaign, the root cause is not a logo,” he concluded. “The root cause is showing students that ASG actually works for them.”

But by the time the race was over, he had cut across the yellow ribbon to win the event, ahead of eleven other runners.

“I just decided to run a couple of minutes before it,” Asch said. The camera filmed him running a steady pace to the sounds of music, the whistles of the wind and cheers of support.

“I run for class every morning because I’m late,” he said. “That’s it. I did not expect to win.”

GlobeMed seeks to improve health around the world, and the “Food For Thought” 5K is the second race that the Northwestern chapter has organized this school year to raise money for the Health Outreach and Peer Education (HOPE) Center of Ho, Ghana.

Twelve runners made five laps around the Lakefill to close the event, which raised about $850. The Fall 2007 race earned half as much, despite more participation.

“This time we just tried to focus on people donating,” said Peter Chang, fundraising coordinator for Northwestern GlobeMed and a Weinberg senior. “A lot of people registered just to donate to the cause without intending to run.”

The money will help out a malnutrition-reduction project at the HOPE Center, which opened in April 2007 to serve more than 4,000 Ghanaians in rural communities.

Malnutrition is a key health concern in the Ho District, where 45 percent of all children younger than five years old are underweight or malnourished, according to the Ghana Health Service. GlobeMed will raise $4,000 to help cover the first 12 months of the program.

“I think it’s a great idea to combine those who have an interest in running and those who want to support non-profits, especially international non-profits,” second-place finisher and Communication freshman Jessica Lau said.

The program hopes to reduce malnutrition by two-thirds in the next two years by combining a community demonstration farm along with meal-preparation workshops and rehabilitation.

“We want to show them how to efficiently raise crops,” Weinberg junior and GlobeMed member Anand Sandhinti said. “And to efficiently tackle health problems is to efficiently tackle poverty problems.”

If your feet need a rest and you prefer to put your dollars elsewhere, check the second part of Mayfest’s Battle of the Bands at Nevin’s Pub, Friday at 9 p.m.

And while the Cannes Film Festival has spread out the red carpet for the 61st time, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese is hosting its own series of movie days. You can ensconce yourselves in Harris 107 today for Chasing the Law. The director will be there to introduce the film and lead a question-and-answer session after. Be there at 5 p.m.

If Transformers and good old Counter-Strike were not enough for you, what about a robot clash live in the Ford Design Center? Student-designed robots will compete neck and neck at the 17th Annual Undergraduate Design Competition at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. Let’s see who wins and who goes to scrap.

The World Press Photo exhibition is skipping Chicago once again! But you won’t regret seeing online this year’s winners and all Photos of The Year since 1955 only to find out that the world hasn’t changed that much at all.

As Mayfest lines up its musical constellation for Dillo Day, the Center for the Writing Arts will strew its own handful of stardust. Grammy-winning band OK Go will heat up Spring Quarter this Friday when its members perform songs and discuss songwriting at Northwestern.

“The stars were aligned. They happened to be in town,” said Stacy Oliver, assistant director at the Center for the Writing Arts, regarding OK Go’s concert in Chicago’s Grant Park later the same day. A&O Productions also brought the band to Northwestern at the end of Fall Quarter.

The Northwestern event, which will be held at noon at the McCormick Tribune Center, will replace OK Go’s typical concert with a more-academic performance in an attempt to celebrate writing of all forms. Band members will perform some songs, and talk about their sources of inspiration, how they bring songs to life and how they nourish their musical creativity.

The center kicked off its first songwriting event last year with regional artists Krista Detor, Alice Peacock and Dylan Rice, a Northwestern alumnus. With OK Go, Oliver aims to confirm songwriting as a regular topic in the center’s spring schedule.

Although she plans to invite a varied line-up of artists, she picked OK Go because of its pop-and-rock style, as well as their age, which puts them in Northwestern students’ peer group.

“What I like about them is their playfulness with phrasing, their cleverness. Their music is so catchy, hard-driving and funky, but when you really listen, you catch the thoughtfulness of that, the fun of it,” said Oliver, who likes OK Go’s treading the boards as the touring band for National Public Radio’s This American Life.

Yet, while OK Go are not to be sneezed at, it’s the songwriting that the Center ultimately celebrates.

”Writing is such a crucial part of the environment and culture of the Northwestern campus,” Oliver said. “Our goal is to bring writing to the forefront — the importance of it and the beauty of all types of writing.”

Refreshments for your spring fatigue! You can celebrate spring at the Block Museum, if you go to Block In Friday: Spring Rejuvenation at 6 p.m. When you are done making origami, you can stay for Block Cinema’s free screening of two parts from the documentary Planet Earth, starting at 8 p.m.

And… *sighs* here we go again — love is in the air, or at least in the spirit of Thai Night 2008! “Field of Love”, which will feature a myriad of Thai cultural performances, including Thai classical and country music, traditional dances, and Thai kickboxing. Be at Tech Auditorium at 7 p.m.

It’s NCAA tournament time for women’s lacrosse, and we get to see them on our home turf. It’s this Sunday at one o’clock against Notre Dame, and it’s five bucks to get in to Lakeside Field. There’s apparently something commercial about tournaments, because Saturday’s noon Big Ten Tournament softball game is $5 too. Go figure.