John Mirabelli, a police officer in News Affairs in the Chicago Police Department, said that the department interviewed the victim and determined that her charge was not “bona fide,” and that the case did not amount to “criminal sexual assault.”

“This is basically it, it’s a closed case,” he said.

Mirabelli declined to give the name of the student or elaborate on any more details of the case.

More to come. Read the original version of the article below.

A female Northwestern student was sexually assaulted at about 12:25 a.m. today in an apartment building close to the Jarvis Street train station in Chicago, the university said in an e-mailed statement.

The Chicago Police Department is looking for the suspect, whom the university described as a “dark-skinned African American male, approximately 25 years old, 5-6 to 5-7 inches tall, with a thin but muscular build, wearing a black leather jacket and dark jeans.”

The man followed the student from the CTA Red Line elevated train station located at Addison Street, where she boarded the northbound train to Evanston. He tried to persuade the victim to get off the train with him. After she refused, the man forced her off the train at Jarvis Station to an apartment building about one-half block away, where he sexually assaulted her. The victim later managed to escape the apartment and notified police.

The Chicago Police Department is investigating the case, the university added.

Read the university alert.

More in the Chicago Tribune.

Correction: The update of this article called Al Cubbage “vice president for university affairs.” He is vice president for University Relations. Thanks to commenter Fact Checker for the correction.

The issue came to the forefront on Monday, when the Chicago Tribune published a story that revealed the prosecution office’s subpoena in relation to an ongoing investigation by the Medill Innocence Project, which investigates wrongful convictions under the tutelage of Medill professor David Protess. Northwestern journalism students recently published a story that they say proves the innocence of Anthony McKinney, who was convicted of killing a security guard in 1978 and has been serving a sentence since.

But when, on Monday, the Cook County state’s attorney subpoenaed the students’ grades, notes and recordings of witness interviews, the course syllabus and the even the e-mail exchanges between Protess and his class, a legal issue emerged over the status of the journalism students.

While Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez compared the students to investigators, Northwestern attorney Richard O’Brien said that they are investigative journalists and as such should be protected under the Illinois Reporter’s Privilege Act. The Act gives news reporters the right to refuse to testify as to information or sources obtained during the newsgathering and dissemination process.

While Northwestern has turned over the documents as well as the copies of video and audio tapes related to on-the-record interviews, the university is battling the subpoena on the students’ academic information, which the prosecutor’s office says is relevant to the investigation.

Protess said Monday that he would not comment on the issue until Nov. 10, when the Medill case will be heard.

Meanwhile, Doppelt questioned the relevance of the subpoena.

“The irony about this particular subpoena and the information they want is that this information is so far off the field that it’s not really sources of information about the case,” said Doppelt, who is an expert on media law and ethics at Medill.

He added that the Privilege Act has historically been interpreted very broadly: “It allows anybody who is regularly engaged in the gathering of news and information, either at a school or part-time basis, to be considered a reporter who would fall under the statute. And even that provision…doesn’t require them to work for a living to be regularly engaged so that a project like this – and the students who are involved in a project like this – both the class and the investigation, are regularly engaged in doing that.”

According to Doppelt, there are number of potential next steps in this issue, and it is still unclear how the case will shape up. A hearing on Nov. 10 will most likely determine whether Northwestern and Protess will have to turn over the information demanded by the prosecution. A trial judge might also decide whether McKinney will get a new trial. The prosecution also has a number of potential scenarios based on the Nov. 10 hearing.

“I see no consequence to the students or professor Protess. I see no scenario in which there is [content] in the emails… if there are any emails, that can get them in trouble,” Doppelt said. “What I think is more likely: there’s nothing in the emails under any consequence to anyone, yet Professor Protess and the students will refuse to turn them over on principle.”

More to come.

Kaitlyn Jahelka and Lorraine K. Lee contributed to this story.

Anthony, who is Legend’s brother, will take the stage at the first show to be held at Welsh-Ryan since Kanye West performed there in 2005. The concert is part of the inauguration weekend for Northwestern President Morton Schapiro.

Meanwhile, Barry McCardel, co-director of promotions and public relations for A&O, said in an e-mail that ticket sales for the Friday concert have eclipsed all student-produced events at Northwestern since Bob Dylan in 2000.

Tickets for the show are still available for $10 for undergraduate students, and $17 for graduate students who can bring a paying guest. Online sales will cut off at 5 p.m. on Friday, but tickets will still be sold at the door.

For a preview of what’s to come, check out this video of Vaughn Anthony and John Legend performing “Another Again” live.

But to Serbian American Bojan Manojlovic, a Weinberg junior, the news was a surprise that stirred up his emotions over an old painful problem. He joined about 5,000 demonstrators in downtown Chicago as they fluttered Serbian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Romanian, Irish and Mexican flags in opposition to Kosovo’s independence.

Serbian-Americans in Chicago protesting Kosovo’s independence in February, 2008. Photo by Julija Djordjevic.

On the streets of the city in Feb. 2008, hundreds of Albanian immigrants and American-Albanians waved their country’s red-and-black flag; Serbs gathered at Holy Resurrection Serbian Orthodox Cathedral to mourn the loss of Kosovo, which they consider the birthplace of Serbian culture and identity. Later, a crowd at an Elmhurst hotel toasted the American recognition of Kosovo’s declaration of independence, while Chicago-area Serbs shouting “Kosovo je Srbija!” (“Kosovo is Serbia!”) flooded Federal Plaza to protest the secession and the American support for it. With more than 200,000 residents of Serbian descent -– the largest population outside Serbia’s capital, Belgrade –- and more than 20,000 residents of Albanian origin, Chicago awoke in a verbal tug-of-war.

Albanian-Americans in New York City celebrate Kosovo’s independence. Photo by Swifty on Flickr, licensed under the Creative Commons.

Five thousand miles away in the Balkans, when Kosovo declared independence, the Albanian majority in the new capital, Pristina, danced and enjoyed fireworks while the Serb enclaves protested for days on end. After more than 70 years as a Serbian province, Kosovo – a small region in the central Balkans with a population of just under two million, split between an Albanian majority and a Serb minority – seceded from Serbia in the style of the American declaration of independence. The piece of land just half the size of New Jersey is the Balkan Pandora’s Box and Tower of Babel, its black sheep and, recently, its newborn child. Serbs and Albanians have disputed the territory for centuries on a thin edge of compromise, hate, simmering conflict and ethnic cleansing. But in Chicago, first-generation Serbian and Albanian immigrants also work together, study together and can even make friends with one other.

*****

Nine years ago, Myzaferi and her parents moved to Chicago from Albania. Manojlovic, a native of Kosovo, has been living here since 2002. They partnered in the debate team at Lane Tech College Prep High School in Chicago, and they have remained friends at Northwestern. Deep inside, they also share memories of a conflict that has divided their countries for centuries. In the spring of 1997, when Myzaferi was huddling in her apartment’s storage closet during Albania’s civil conflict, Manojlovic was still playing with his Serbian and Albanian neighbors in Goraždevac, Kosovo. A year later, she watched as thousands of Albanian refugees from Kosovo thronged to her city of Vlorë — the meeting point of the Adriatic and the Ionian Seas — while Manojlovic himself escaped Kosovo for Lazarevac, in the outskirts of Belgrade.

No children’s tale could teach Myzaferi the moral of these stories. “There are no more dolls at that point when you see stuff like that happening. But it gave me a real understanding of what the world could be and what war is. War is very real,” says Myzaferi, who was 11 when the collapse of the pyramid investment schemes in Albania unleashed a bloody conflict between armed civilians and the military on the streets of Vlorë before spreading to the rest of the country.

“I can now differentiate between Russian-made guns by their sound. I can differentiate between grenades and RPGs. I can differentiate a Kalashnikov from an Albanian rifle,” Myzaferi says. She remembers having an AK-47 beside her bed while shooting, bombing and anarchy were reigning outside on the streets.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Kosovo, a conflict was creeping into the lives of its two ethnic groups after centuries of tense but peaceful coexistence, Manojlovic says in retrospect. By 1998, in Goraždevac – a small pocket of about 2,000 Serbs amid Albanian villages in western Kosovo – the atmosphere had irreversibly changed as he stopped playing on the street with his Albanian neighbors. At 11, Manojlovic finally sobered up when his family packed their entire house into one tractor trailer and set out for Belgrade because they “didn’t feel safe anymore.” But out of those who stayed in Kosovo, thousands have been killed and exhumed from mass graves. About 2,000 Albanians, Serbs and Roma are still missing, according to the Office on Missing Persons and Forensics in Kosovo.

*****

Once only a geographical region, Kosovo has been disputed between its two major ethnicities for centuries. Serbs call Kosovo the cradle of their civilization, pointing to the remnants of Serbian medieval culture. Albanians go as far back as the Bronze Age, when the land was occupied by the ancient Illyrian tribes with whom they identify. For decades Kosovo’s history has depended on which historian you ask.

Andrew Wachtel, dean of the Graduate Program at Northwestern University and Director of the Roberta Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies, says it is wrong to judge contemporary political affairs in the context of distant past events. “People from both sides have perfectly good things to say. The precise problem is that the stories from both sides are perfectly coherent. But you have two incompatible sets of stories,” Wachtel says.

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th century, the Kosovo province passed to the newly-formed Yugoslav Federation. According to the Serbian constitution of 1974, Kosovo was an autonomous province of Serbia, but it also maintained an ambiguous “dual status” as a federal unit of Yugoslavia. The province entertained its own parliament and government but did not have the power to secede. When President Slobodan Milošević came to power in 1989 in pursuit of a “Greater Serbia,” a group of Kosovo Albanians began to demand more political rights.

Tensions culminated in 1998 in a confrontation between the Serbian military and the Albanian guerrilla formation known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Serbia’s attempt to suppress the provocation led to state-organized ethnic cleansing. In 1999, as an American-led NATO coalition began air strikes over military and civilian targets in Serbia, Yugoslav and Serbian forces drove out hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians, who took refuge in Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro. Most Serbs also escaped the region, but KLA and Kosovo Albanians organized occasional reprisals against the remaining Serbian population. The rest of the timeline has been on our TV screens for years – sporadic violence, thousands of refugees, peacekeeping operations, international criminal trials and political disputes paved the way for Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence on Feb. 17, 2008.

For Myzaferi, independence put history back into place. It brought the “small reparation” that “made [the Kosovo War] worthwhile for those who died.” For Manojlovic, it created a sense of loss as “the core” of Kosovo has historically always been “part of Serbia.” But the events in 1998-1999 opened a wedge between the two groups that transcended historical claims.

“[They] elevated hatred to a new level to the point that people had to flee from both sides,” Manojlovic says. “And you only hear about the Albanian people who had to flee because the Serbs were so awful to them. But you have people like me and countless other people who had to move out of Kosovo. Sometimes the media portray the Serbs as the Ubermonsters who are just trying to wreak havoc to everyone around them.”

After the war, many refugees returned to their homes within months. Milošević, whom both Myzaferi and Manojlovic compared to Hitler, died in prison at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in March 2006 in the middle of his trial. Many other Serbian military and political figures, as well as KLA members, have been tried by the Hague Tribunal, and trials continue to this day. Kosovo lived in limbo for nearly a decade, while the unraveling Yugoslavian Federation became the federated union of Serbia and Montenegro in 2003. It once and for all disappeared from the political map when Montenegro separated from Serbia three years later.

*****

Sometimes people get involved in a conflict only because of their birthplace or nationality. To succeed, each side has to create a strong group identity, often by demonizing a common antagonist. Croatian journalist Slavenka Drakulić, who lived through the Serbo-Croatian conflict in the early 1990s, wrote in 1994 that war reduces people to one dimension – their nationality. Animosity in Kosovo created the generalizations of “we” versus “they,” the “Serbs” versus the “Albanians,” regardless of personalities and social backgrounds.

“It’s like oil and water. The two don’t mix very well,” says Myzaferi, who makes no distinction between Albanians in Kosovo and Albanians in Albania.

“Kosovo reminds me of two lions fighting over the same carcass,” Manojlovic says. “One of the lions caught the carcass, and there’s another one praying on it, and they are both ripping on it. Two strong lions are battling for a carcass that’s too small for them.”

This story conjures up associations with old Balkan wrangling. “Everybody is the best, everybody was there first, everybody has the greatest history,” Myzaferi says. “The Balkans are not united. It’s like a wolf – it doesn’t know its own strength.” As the conversation digresses into Albanians’ proud, “strong-headed” and “stubborn” nature, it sounds remarkably similar to the way Manojlovic describes Serbs: “stubborn, smart, cunning, stubborn,” he says, pausing for a second before continuing, “stubborn, religious, devoted, loyal.” He stops to think again. “Stubborn,” he finally says and smiles.

*****

After years in the focus of international media, however, visually powerful metaphors tend to oversimplify the Balkan dynamics. Myzaferi and Manojlovic’s generation – the generation that grew up with the Kosovo conflict – must cope with what they both think is now an irreversible process. While traditionally Kosovo has aroused notions of suspicion, radicalism and open confrontations, among educated, middle class immigrants in Chicago, conflict might be the exception.

Keli and Aida Fera arrived in Chicago from Albania in 2001. Back at home, she was a high school teacher, and he worked as an electrical engineer. Now Aida, a housewife, looks after her two young children, while Keli is a truck driver for FedEx Ground. When refugees from Kosovo arrived in her town in 1998, “every single Albanian house” opened its door, Aida remembers. The Fera family gave shelter to five people for a month and a half. Their neighbors on the second floor hosted three Kosovars, while other neighbors accommodated 12 newcomers for five months.

An old house in Pristina, Kosovo. Photo by Anna Zangrosi.

“They were in tears because even they didn’t expect that we as a nation could do such a thing for them,” says Aida, for whom “50 years of separation” between Albanians and Albanian Kosovars could not whitewash their “historical relationship” as one nation.

In Chicago, Keli has many Serbian colleagues but they never discuss Kosovo at work. No tension arises like it did “back there,” in the Balkans, he says.

“You have to distance the Serbian people from the Serbian politicians. These are two different things,” says Aida, who now feels estranged from “those politics” and much closer to the daily grind. “Maybe this has softened this anger. It is in the blood, this anger between Serbians and Kosovo. People don’t care so much here.”

*****

Manojlovic and Myzaferi discuss Kosovo with conviction and calm. The two are buddies and classmates, though they have not talked much since the independence a year ago because of their busy schedules. Manojlovic would often see Albanians and Serbs sitting at adjacent tables in Eastern European cafes in Chicago, though Myzaferi would not expect one group to visit the other’s places.

Manojlovic says the relationship is strange, but not hostile. “I am an idealist and I want to say that I can be friends with anyone, but if I try to hang out or talk to an Albanian person right now … it would somehow always be hitting me at the back of my head. I can be an acquaintance with an Albanian person, but when you have an emotional connection with someone, it’s different.”

For Myzaferi, simply avoiding the issue already affects her friendship. “It’s almost a fake relationship. It’s impossible to forget that. It’s always there at the back of your mind,” she says. For her, Kosovo means hope and restoration. For Manojlovic it evokes a sense of loss. He sees it as a dangerous precedent, she as a promising beginning. “It’s either one way or the other. And, sadly, one side is always going to lose,” Manojlovic says.

Today – a year after its independence – the world’s youngest state looks into its own backyard of uncertain identity, soaring expectations, old infrastructure, corruption and unemployment rate of about 50 percent. In the past year, 54 countries recognized Kosovo’s independence. While the United States and most of the European Union members welcomed The Republic of Kosovo as a sovereign state, the United Nations Security Council remains undecided on its status.

Ethnic Albanians comprise 90 percent of the country’s population. The remaining Serbian minority mainly populates the Serb enclaves in the north, close to the border with Serbia. While reluctant to make concessions as far as Kosovo is concerned, the Serbian government has also demonstrated pro-European, rather than nationalist, politics. But while the dire predictions for a new round of violence and Serb exodus did not come true, it will take more than a generation before the century-old tensions die away, according to Myzaferi and Manojlovic.

The old questions of this disputed land still hang over the new Kosovo republic. In the final sequence of the 1995 film Underground, director Emir Kusturica creates a metaphor of the Balkan people. As wedding guests celebrate on the shores of a river, the piece of ground on which they stand breaks apart from the mainland and slowly floats away, but guests are too engrossed in dancing to notice as the water carries them off into an unknown destination. Kusturica’s imagery of the failures to make sense of history has kept coming back from a revolving door through the centuries, as division, nationalism and uncertainty have persisted in one of Europe’s most diverse lands.

But among immigrants in Chicago, there is space for the moderate voices as well. “I’m just tired of all this hate and all this killing, and all of this devaluation of human life,” Myzaferi says. “You are going to die anyway, so just let people be.”

A note from the editor: Comments have been closed on this post due to an abundance of comments of a defamatory nature.

The forum, which will take place from 7 to 8 p.m. in the Northwestern Room at Norris University Center, will address issues such as SafeRide, Greek life, the shuttle system, alcohol amnesty and Northwestern post-graduation, according to a student government press release released last Friday.

“After a brief overview from each administrator, students will be able to ask for and receive direct answers to their questions about Northwestern,” ASG said in the press release. “Organizers anticipate that informal and fruitful discussions will follow.”

The panel discussion will be the first of two events this quarter organized by ASG as part of its first-ever Winter Campaign. The open forums will give the Northwestern community “an unprecedented opportunity to discuss student life with those who shape Northwestern policy,” and will make an “effort to bridge the gap between students and ASG,” according to the press release.

In addition to Desler, the first panel will feature Sarah Pearson, vice president for alumni relations and development, and Michele Morales, director of health education for health services.

A second event will take place on March 10, when Lonnie Dunlap, director of university career services; Carolyn Lindley, university director of financial aid; and Michael Mills, associate provost for university enrollment, will discuss topics such as career development, internships, financial aid and university rankings.

“These two forums give students a chance to talk to administrators, one-on-one, and finally put faces to names they might have heard,” said Weinberg freshman Visraant Iyer, who is coordinating the events, in a statement. “We don’t know enough about the people who run our school, and we don’t know enough about how they make their decisions.”

The Judd A. and Marjorie Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences is in the process of reviewing a proposal for the creation of Latina and Latino Studies major and minor, said Mónica Russel y Rodríguez, interim director of the Latina and Latino Studies program.

If approved, the program will mark the culmination of an ongoing process of student-faculty collaboration at Northwestern, pushing for a coherent course of study of Latino communities in the United States.

“That idea has been in the works for longer than I have been here,” Russel y Rodríguez said. “It’s probably been for more than ten years that students have wanted some sort of program or a department.”

In the middle of March, the program will go through a second read and vote in Weinberg’s Faculty Senate, after the Weinberg Curricular Review Committee sent the proposal earlier this academic year. According to Russel y Rodríguez, the Latina and Latino Studies major and minor will bring together the “bits and pieces” of the courses on Latino Studies that have been already taught at the university for years.

“For the last ten years or so, courses on Latino Studies have been offered but nothing in a very structured and organized way [so that] we can get a full sense of what Latino Studies can be about,” Russel y Rodríguez said. “Courses can exist, you can have chemistry courses without the major, but it really makes sense to have someone coherently thinking about the curriculum.”

Pending approval, the program–which can start as early as Spring Quarter–will explore the common experience of Latinos and Latinas in the United States but will also dig into the nuances in the historical and cultural expressions of the different Latino communities, Russel y Rodríguez added.

The Program

With 16 courses required to complete a major and six courses to complete a minor, the program will take an interdisciplinary approach to Latino Studies. An introductory course will give an overview of the diversity of Latino experiences in the U.S. and organize them thematically, while a set of courses with either a humanities, social science or history focus will provide a larger context.

A capstone course for seniors will then ask students to fit all previous knowledge together with view of the future of Latino Studies. The program also envisions an “immersion experience” — an internship, practicum or any extracurricular activity that addresses experiences of Latinos in the United States.

“We have a nice blending of different kinds of Latino communities [in Chicago],” Russel y Rodríguez said. “It is a really smart and interesting place to look at that very question of what Latino studies means, as opposed to Chicano studies, say in Los Angeles, or Puerto Rican studies in New York, or Cuban studies in Miami.”

But according to Russel y Rodríguez, demographics are not the only reason for Northwestern to introduce a Latina and Latino Studies program.

“Northwestern as an institution of higher learning has some commitment, as a good citizen, to bring its research back to people and not just [keep it] for our own internal consumption,” she added. “Latino Chicago is happening no matter whether Latino Studies happens at Northwestern. Northwestern should simply be smart about having a program that can really address that in an effective way.”

The Students

Even though it is up to the Faculty Senate to ultimately decide whether the program should exist, students at Northwestern have been “fundamental and critical to the creation of the program and for courses,” Russel y Rodríguez said.

“Students have been asking for courses, they have been taking courses, looking for courses, putting together their own sense of education–just really a remarkable thing,” she added.

A few years ago, Alianza, the largest Latino student group on campus, created a Latino Studies Program Chair position to pressure the administration to make the program. Northwestern students have also distributed flyers and buttons under the motto “Si, se puede” (“Yes, it can be done”), and asked the Northwestern community to sign a petition for the program.

“It’s very exciting to see that from those events we’ve had, those meeting we had, how now the program is actually coming to place,” said Jessica Lozada, an Alianza member and a senior in the School of Communications. “It’s definitely going to cater to a lot of different students who’ve been wanting to take classes on Latino studies.”

According to Russel y Rodríguez, while the program is designed to attract students from various backgrounds, it might help make Northwestern “more friendly” to Latino and Latina applicants.

“[Northwestern] is not necessarily a friendly place for Latinos,” she said. “Let’s think about a Latina student who wants to go to McCormick. She may never take a class in Latino studies, but it may make a difference knowing that she could.”

Luis Espinoza, a Weinberg sophomore, came to Northwestern to study Biology and Psychology. While he enjoys studying at the university, he helped promote the program because “it is a big step towards making the school more diverse,” he said.

“As the world is changing–Chicago is 25 percent Latino, [in] the US in the future a greater percentage will be Latino–we are going to need more people to know about [their] issues,” Espinoza said.

“Every good university is going to have a Latino studies [program],” Russel y Rodríguez said. “It’s part of coherent education now.”

Ayers, Dohrn and Nashashibi will present “Peaceful Progress: A Discourse on Affecting Change” at Cahn Auditorium on Wednesday, Feb. 4, at 7:30 p.m. as McSA’s postponed Fall Speaker event. The speakers will discuss “social activism within the context of peace and modern society,” according to a press release on Friday, Jan. 30.

Ayers, a Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, came into the limelight last year amidst a controversy in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Ayers and Dohrn, Ayers’ wife and law professor at Northwestern, were involved in the radical left organization Weather Underground in the 1970s, “but since then have become prominent educators and social activists in Chicago,” the press release says.

“The McSA encourages dialogue in the Northwestern community and understands that Bill Ayers is considered by some people to be a controversial figure, but we are bringing him because we know that he has a unique narrative to present,” Shabeeb said in the press release. “We hope that this will propel students to engage in the change that is fundamental to bringing about peace in this new era of American politics.”

Nashashibi, the Executive Director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), has given lectures across the United States on topics related to American Muslim identity, community activism and social justice issues.

“McSA hopes that this open forum will further stimulate dialogue on campus regarding issues of social change, as well as create an environment where social activism is fostered and encouraged,” the press release says.

Read the press release below.

Ayers, Dohrn, and Nashashibi to discuss Peaceful Progress

Evanston, Ill. — Former members of the Weather Underground Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and Muslim social activist Rami Nashashibi will be speaking this Wednesday, Feb. 4 as McSA’s postponed Fall Speaker event.

Ayers, Dohrn and Nashashibi will deliver “Peaceful Progress: A Discourse on Affecting Change” at 7:30 p.m. in Cahn Auditorium, 600 Emerson Street, on Northwestern’s Evanston campus. The Muslim-cultural Students Association has invited the three speakers to speak about social activism as its annual political awareness event.

Ayers, a distinguished professor of education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was a surprising locus of controversy for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers’ wife and law professor at Northwestern University, will focus their discussion on social activism. Ayers and Dohrn were involved in the radical left organization Weather Underground in the 1970s, but since then have become prominent educators and social activists in Chicago. Ayers helped shape Chicago’s school reform program and in 1997 was awarded Citizen of the Year by the city for his work.

Nashashibi, the Executive Director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), is the author of “Ghetto Cosmopolitanism: Making theory at the Margins” in a book entitled Deciphering the Global: Its Scales, Spaces, and Subjects. Nashashibi has lectured across the country on a range of topics related to the American Muslim identity, community activism and social justice issues. He was also a recent recipient of the LISC Community Hero Award and the National Housing Service Community Leaders Award.

The three speakers, each presenting a unique perspective, will delve into various facets of social activism within the context of peace and modern society. McSA hopes that this open forum will further stimulate dialogue on campus regarding issues of social change, as well as create an environment where social activism is fostered and encouraged.

“The McSA encourages dialogue in the Northwestern community and understands that Bill Ayers is considered by some people to be a controversial figure, but we are bringing him because we know that he has a unique narrative to present,” said McSA co-President, Dana Shabeeb, a junior majoring in Political Science. “We hope that this will propel students to engage in the change that is fundamental to bringing about peace in this new era of American politics.”

The event is being co-endorsed by several groups at Northwestern: Alianza, Asian Pacific American Coalition, South Asian Student Alliance and FMO.

This event is free, although tickets are required for entrance. They are available at the Norris Box Office.

In the past, the Muslim-cultural Students Association has hosted Michael Scheuer to speak on the War on Terror, Neal Katyal on the Guantanamo Bay terror tribunals, and John Esposito to speak on the Danish cartoon controversy.

According to University Relations Vice President Al Cubbage, the City of Evanston is experiencing problems with pumping water from Lake Michigan because of a freeze in the intake water pipe. Cubbage could not say whether the problem would lead to water-supply restrictions in Evanston.

Students, faculty and staff on the Evanston Campus are urged to curtail activities that require water usage as much as possible. The reduction in usage should continue until further notice from the City, according to the university statement.

Applications from Latino students are up 47.5 percent compared to last year, while the number of African-American students applying to Northwestern has grown by 20.3 percent, according to tentative data released by the university.

Overall, applications for the class of 2013 increased by less than one percent. The university registered a 32.3 percent increase in applications from students attending Chicago public high schools.

“Many people have worked very hard this year—including Northwestern students—to try to do a better job of outreach into these important communities, so this news is particularly gratifying,” Mills wrote in an e-mail.

Overall applications to Northwestern have increased by 0.7 percent. The School of Communication and Medill are the only two Northwestern schools that have registered drops in undergraduate applications — down 12.4 percent and 3.9 percent, respectively.

As of Jan. 8, the university had received 25,178 freshman applications. Last year, 25,013 students applied. According to Mills, this year’s numbers will likely grow slightly in the upcoming days and weeks, as the university continues to receive applications sent before the postmark deadline on January 1st.

“We view this year’s limited growth in applications as a major accomplishment, given the state of the economy,” Mills wrote.

Evanston’s 1800 Club, a popular hangout for Northwestern students for the past eight years, has opened its doors with a new name, a new interior and a fresh attitude.

Under new management since winter break, “Hundo” will soon be named “1800 Club – The Delta House” after the Delta House fraternity featured in John Landis’s comedy film Animal House.

“It’s a college bar with a local flavor,” said Larry Corcoran, an Evanston resident who has been helping to put the changes in place.

For the past three weeks, 1800 Club has been welcoming its customers to a renovated interior, including new tables, chairs and high-top tables. The old pool table has been replaced with two permanent beer pong tables intended for regular charity events, owner Tony Anton said. The Delta House will also host theme parties and karaoke contests.

“We want a university-friendly establishment that has competitive pricing and quality service,” Anton said. “We realize the economy is tough on people right now.”

According to Corcoran, the Delta House is more than a facelift. In addition to a new menu and a wider beer selection, the club is focusing on a more “customer-friendly,” “meet-and-greet” and “professional” attitude, he said.

The club will also have new operating hours to serve the faculty and staff of Northwestern’s History Department, which has recently moved to the 1800 Sherman Ave. building that hosts the Delta House. With 16 months left on its lease, the club will continue to take up space in the Northwestern-owned building despite the building’s academic function.

“We want the club to be an amenity to the building,” Anton said. “We plan on running a respectable place. We are going to be strict on IDs and how our clients behave.”

Three days into Winter Quarter, the club’s Northwestern clients already notice the changes.

“It definitely looks a bit cleaner,” Weinberg senior Kathleen Wolf said. “I think it represents Northwestern really well now.”