down to a gravel quarry,

careful to over-step

the lilies all around and

dodging between patches

of the speckled yellow light

falling through the trees,

I could feel the air turning

softer, a blur beckoning back

to the sleeplessness of the night before.

You tumbled down those bright hills

and I watched you catch yourself

in puddles at the bottom

stumbling all up until we

kissed by the river,

my hands still in my pockets.

We spend such agony labeling the blush,
Imposing guilt behind those ruddy cheeks.
Embarrassment, we say, and its sudden rush
Of crimson to the face must (we suspect) speak

Out some vital secret, the moment when
Confession lets loose a woman’s awkward sin,
And hearing it aloud, her skin goes red, more thin.

But really all this business over flush
Stems from the wind; I’m cold, then hot; I blush.
Embarrassment, all this talk of emotion,
It’s nothing but a simple contraction
Of capillaries which dermatologists
Who – I remind you – are not psychologists
Call vasodilatation. There, the reason.

* * * *

And now: “Deepest Drink” by Rachel Koontz.

A ponder house
a horizon-line truck stop
a cloud smoking a-ways off and
tin-roof triangles that point to nowhere but up.

Red rust bargains stand
in a man-less land, bright
by squared off horizon lines and
the undercover grass shadows like tufts of sour jade,
little jagged emeralds reaching upward.

Two seas staring
each other down by raw,
green distance; shade turned over into light, the
small pockets only seem right when reflected by

a flung-off sky,
a piece of pocket-sun
running away up and out of
strung-out clouds sitting on the edge of the undercurrent,

the border line
breaking point between now
and then, here and red, forever
stretching away into a cobalt-fever sky.

Stop a second,
breathe for two; can you feel
the whole scene flipping over itself,
flimsy, as it peels into a refractory reality,
as it reels into you?

blur
   and that feathered V of the boot
   hiding under a ninety-degree angle
same as the angle the world imposes on lone cowboys
life burned into sepia-tone layers
modern-day Marlboro men forced to leather up and traipse about inside of it,
walking without quite letting the world touch them

the shadows and the shirt-coverings blur the same color
western roles bled into each other and into wood-grain memories,
bar stories loping away,
nights spent at the race track before betting became such an unlucky habit,
weighted lorries, evenings before anyone else seemed to mind cigarette smoke
chest coat pocket hidden smolderings,
hazed chest coughs wheezed in the evenings at home
now serving as a reminder to those days.

lonely homes long-since forgotten to wrangling
and empty picture frames
the glass given in to blank space,
wondering where time goes, how it manages to redefine,
to undermine this place

abandoned boots like an abandoned photo
y’all walking on, treading on frayed edges
    out-blur disgrace

Members of Mosaic line up for dinner. Left to right: Emily Ripsom, Mykell Miller, Jennie Zhao, Amalia Ouhlahan and Rachel Gross. Photo by Rachel Koontz / North by Northwestern

Pots and pans clatter in the kitchen. Emily Ripsom, a junior undergrad nursing student from Loyola, stands at the kitchen sink. She sings along to an Andrew Bird song and chops garlic, swaying back and forth to the music. Mykell Miller, a junior NU computer engineering student, adjusts the temperature on the stove, murmuring, “Oooh, excellent,” as he peers into the pan of sauce. Light from the windows hits the goldenrod walls and catches the mirrored edges of a disco ball hanging in the living room. Hardwood floor panels creak under the footsteps of strangers, acquaintances and friends-turned-housemates brought together by a house on Sherman Avenue called Mosaic Co-Op.

“There is this hovering around 7 p.m.,” says Amalia Oulahan, a Medill sophomore living in the co-op for the first time this year.

“Everyone knows it’s dinner time,” says Jennie Zhao, a second-year psychology graduate student who has been at the co-op for five years.

Members gather under the dining room chandelier, a backdrop of a construction-paper night sky behind them. Some sit on the mismatched furniture, chatting quietly. The smells of a home-cooked meal — garlic and spices — waft through the house.

“Dinnnnnnerrrr!” Mykell shouts, his voice reverberating through the halls and stairways as people meander out of their rooms.

A line of people forms behind the stacks of dissimilar silverware and plates — small three-pronged forks clash with wider engraved spoons, while the bright colors of shiny, decorative plates collide with their simple ceramic counterparts. As the members of the co-op slowly move down the row of dishes, scooping orange tofu satay and salad and vegetables onto their plates, it becomes clear that they, too, form a patchwork.

The plates at Mosaic don’t match. Photo by Rachel Koontz / North by Northwestern

Like the piecemeal sets of dinnerware from which they eat, the individual members of Mosaic make a varied group, a human mosaic of sorts. Together under one roof, their collage of personalities and ages, academic majors and interests forms a single culture —one unlike most you’ll find at Northwestern.

“We’re a family, and not the dysfunctional kind,” says Ripsom. She smiles, grabbing a plate. “And whatever you’ve heard about us, that’s what we’re not,” she says, and starts down the line.

“It’s a vibe,” Oulahan says of the co-op’s atmosphere. “It’s an environment of people who are committed to community, and you don’t find that a lot in a living situation where you don’t know people previous to moving in.”

Especially at dinnertime, this friendly and open environment draws people to the co-op, whether they live in the house permanently or just join the meal plan. Conversation flows comfortably — between creative writing and chemistry majors, grads and undergrads, close friends and people who have met for the first time.

“This is a place of tolerance and a safe place for people to be,” says Sam Kleiman, a first-year graduate chemistry student who moved into the house this year. “[It’s a place] for people who society might view as different to live. A place to build positive relations, and that’s what it’s about.”

Oulahan agrees that the welcoming environment here has had strong appeal to its residents since the co-op formed nine years ago.

“It is a contrast from the rest of campus,” she says. “A lot of times you can feel cut off and like you’re in your own little bubble, or in a bubble of a certain group of friends, and this is a place to break out of those barriers. You can make yourself at home pretty easily here. You’re not as isolated.”

Since it’s an off-campus housing option, the co-op has stayed more under-the-radar to Northwestern students than the dorms and residential colleges on campus.

“I think there’s ignorance on campus,” says Remegio Torres, a senior history and international studies major and third-year co-op resident. “People don’t even know we exist at all. [People don’t say,] ‘Oh, that co-op, that’s where all the liberal hippies are. Instead, it’s, ‘Oh, that co-op, what is that co-op?!’”

So… what is the Co-Op?

Co-op member Rachel Gross keeps an agenda at a Sunday house meeting. Photo by Rachel Koontz / North by Northwestern

Rule by consensus: Members vote house policy up or down. Photo by Rachel Koontz / North by Northwestern

“It’s a great community and a family-unit, really,” Torres says. “It’s not just the stuff; it’s more the people. It’s definitely the people in the house that make me feel that this is my home.”

Because the people in the co-op change every year, the atmosphere in the cozy ten-bedroom, three-bathroom split level house also changes a little bit — socially, politically and collectively.

“Something that they tell you right away when you move in is that the house is whatever you make it,” Oulahan says. “So the dynamic begins immediately — even as soon as everyone moves in. It’s kind of this environment right now of looking toward the future, looking forward to what we’re going to do this year.”

Torres says that the prospect of finding a group of politically-aware housemates was part of his attraction to the co-op. He says he heard the house was a “hotbed for activism.” Although the intensity of this activism has shifted from year to year, some traditions remain constant: vegetarian and vegan meals served in the house, a commitment to conscientious living and especially a history of developing meaningful friendships in the co-op.

“There’s not really a legacy within the institution, but there is a legacy with the people that you live with,” Torres says.

Weekly meetings held in a consensus style provide a structure for co-op members to share a voice in the community there. A mediator presides over each meeting, but the agenda is open to input from everyone. Members discuss everything from shopping reports on groceries to upcoming parties to how they are feeling – what they call the “glums and glows” of their week.

“The meetings usually last between one and a half and three hours,” Kleiman says. “It depends on how much there is to be discussed, and how controversial [the topics] are.”

Throughout the meetings, members snap their fingers in approval of what their housemates are saying so that it begins to sound a little bit like rainfall in the room.

Everyday interactions, conversations at meals and time spent together on weekends also help friendships develop and contribute to the general cohesion of the co-op.

“Everyone does contribute their own life stories,” Oulahan says. “Even just in passing, you run into someone in the kitchen or the hallway and talk. All of our daily lives collide in different ways.”

“The common room area and the dining room table is… a black hole,” says Torres. “Don’t sit down there for more than five minutes, unless you want to be there for more than two hours. We just get trapped in conversation most of the time.”

Ripsom says that the house is never too quiet, and the atmosphere tends to draw people back more than once.

“There is always some sort of noise or interaction going on,” she says. “And once you come by the co-op, you come by forever. People stop by and they come back. You’ll come back. You’ll see us hoola-hooping on the porch or something.”

Their program showcased seven unique dances involving a variety of stomping, shouting, and customary movements to go along with a mixture of different rhythms.

The show also included a guest performance by musicians from Boomshaka as well as an energetic warm-up which audience members were encouraged to join.

• Julie Kaplan, a first-year law student, earned her undergraduate degree at NU. She majored in theater but found it “unfulfilling.” Law school remained “on the back burner” of her thoughts during junior and senior year, but eventually she realized that she wanted to take the LSAT and apply to law schools. Kaplan says she is “very glad” she ended up at Northwestern.
• Kristina Kallas is a second-year law student who majored in creative writing as an NU undergrad. She said that after working for Teach for America in a Dominican neighborhood in Manhattan, she realized returning to school would offer the opportunity to use law to help in the struggles of immigrants, women, children and those in poverty.
• Greg Bassi, a second-year law student, was a Georgetown undergrad who majored in government and worked for three years as a paralegal in Washington, D.C., before he applied to Northwestern. Bassi said he always knew he wanted to be a lawyer and is originally from the suburbs of Chicago, so he was happy to return to the city he loves.
• Daniel Hodgman, a third-year law student, started at Chicago Kent College of Law and transferred to NU after his first year. He previously studied archaeology as an undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania and spent several summers digging in Central America as well as working as a paralegal in New York City before deciding to apply to law school. Part of his decision to return to school was to acquire more marketable skills for better job opportunities, he said.

These four students offered their perspective on what undergrads should think about before applying to law school, and why their experiences have been worthwhile. Here are some of the lessons they offered.

Think about the costs before decide to go. Know you want to do it. Give it your all.

Greg: Really think it through and make sure that’s what you want to do.

Daniel: That debt is serious. There aren’t a lot of scholarships. They should be aware of the reality of it. I’m all for people going for it. It opened my eyes a lot when I was a first year.

First year is a challenge. You’ll be busy studying and learning a new way to think.

Julie: The reading takes forever. In law school, I feel like everything that you read is important. So your class might assign you only 10 pages of reading, but it will take you almost an hour to read 10 pages because it’s just so dense and hard to understand.

Greg: First year was really study-intensive. Learning new material, stuff you’ve never seen before. It’s all focused around studying, learning these new concepts. I was always at the library or in a coffee shop, studying. That was my year.

Learn to balance your time.

Julie: You have about four to five hours of homework every day, which doesn’t always get done depending on what else it is you want to do

Second year and third year are still hard, but in a less frantic sense.

Kristina: You become a lot better at time management, out of necessity. I think if you had asked me [about law school] a year ago I would have said, ‘This is a disaster. I have no life.’ But now I’m pretty much fine.

Daniel: I would say that first year and second year were similar as far as time commitment, but second year I did more work. You become more efficient because you learn what’s important and what isn’t.

Greg: Second year has been generally busy but there are other things going on… you have interviews; you are more active. Second year hasn’t been as intellectual as first year, but more work-intensive.

There are many areas of law; find out which interests you.

Julie: I’m really interested in alternative dispute resolution. [It’s a form of law where] instead of going to trial, you go to mediation. You have the parties sit in a room with a non-biased third party and their lawyers and they talk out the problems and try and reach a settlement… It seems like a more hands-on way to solve a problem.

Kristina: I’m very concerned about my exorbitant loan commitment to law school, so money is definitely a concern — making a salary. But my ideal job would be something in asylum and refugee work.

Think about balancing career with a family life.

Julie: I’ve been at some job interviews where they ask you, ‘Where do you plan to be in 10 years?’ and it’s really hard to know. In 10 years I would love to maybe have children, but I always feel like that’s not a correct answer. I feel like [employers will think] you’re not actually serious about the law and they won’t want to hire you because they’re afraid that you’ll work for two years and then quit. Somehow I feel like I might be sacrificing some of my happiness for something that’s socially acceptable as a response. But that could also all be in my head…

A law career isn’t for everyone.

Daniel: I feel like everyone [in law] can be [cut-throat]. One of the canons of being a lawyer is being a zealous advocate for your client. If ‘zealous advocate’ means make the other side miserable, I think a lot of people will say, ‘So be it.’

Daniel: [The time commitment] ebbs and flows but I think most lawyers average… 60 hours a week minimum. The people that are stars and make partner and go on to do great things, they bill 2,500, maybe 3,000 hours a year. So, do the math, that’s a lot of hours. They’re hard-chargers, they’re type A, they thrive on success, they thrive on ascension. Whatever it takes — 100 hour weeks. They’ll do whatever it takes.

Early internships aren’t always great.

Daniel: As a paralegal, I was doing the kind of things you could train a drunk monkey to do — shuffling paper, carrying boxes… I felt like my brain was turning into toothpaste, like slowly oozing out of my ears.

The social side of law school can be interesting, in both positive and negative ways.

Daniel: You form a bond with each other. First year, everyone makes an ass of themselves and everyone does well. You stop being embarrassed — the professor calls on you and you just have no idea what to say. It happens to everyone; it’s not a big deal. So I remember after the first final just looking at people, and we were like, ‘We just finished our first year of law school. We’re done; we just did it! None of us are dead.’

Daniel: Law school is like high school. It’s clique-y; everyone’s in the same building all day. You have lockers. You’re in the same class with the same people all the time. It becomes really incestuous: You start relationships, you hook up with other people… this is the social side. People try to reinvent themselves between schools; they come into a new place and try to go through ‘nerd rehab,’ like ‘I’m the cool party guy now.’ You see a lot of that.

Northwestern’s Law School offers students great opportunities both during and after their three years there.

Greg: I participated in this program called International Team Project. Since we have a two-week spring break, you study a country in the fall and then you go to that country for two weeks during vacation. It was really cool. You break into groups and study specific topics. We studied judicial independence in Ecuador. It all fits into your spring break and you get credit for it. I haven’t heard of other law schools that have something like that.

Greg: Being right here in the city is great. We have a great clinic. It gives you more real-world opportunities. There’s more for actual real-world law here than there would be in a college town.

Daniel: I loved Kent. The only difference between Kent and Northwestern is job opportunities. I think the top five students [in each class at] Chicago Kent get the kind of job I wanted, and at Northwestern, 88 percent get the kind of job I wanted. So, it was sort of a no-brainer.

Northwestern attracts people of different backgrounds. Most NU law students are older and have some work experience when they come here. The atmosphere is more serious, intense and rewarding.

Daniel: Dean Van Zandt has placed a pretty heavy, extreme focus on having work experience, which is really helpful. I worked for three years and felt a huge advantage [over] these people who had come straight from college: They didn’t know the stakes. [You also acquire more] maturity and refresh your appetite for learning. Work at a firm; do something where you see what it’s like to be a lawyer because it’s not all like the courtroom.

Greg: When I started looking at law schools, I focused on places where I heard good reputations about what kind of people were there. I didn’t want to go to a place where it was a real cut-throat atmosphere. Northwestern had the reputation of [a place where] everyone is pretty collegial. I knew I was going to be a little older and Northwestern tries to recruit students who have worked for a little while. I liked that.

Greg: I think that Northwestern does a good job of trying to get good people. It’s got its problems, just like any other school, and there are things about it I don’t like, but for the most part I’ve met a lot of really cool people and I like it. I’m happy here.

Serrin Foster knows that sex is a popular conversation topic on college campuses. But, in a lecture Thursday night, the spokeswoman for Feminists for Life said most sex talks omit one important thing.

“How many people talking about sex are talking about pregnancy?” Foster asked.

“Usually, the two go together,” she continued, producing a chuckle from the more than 35 people listening in Swift Hall. If people talk seriously about sex, they should talk just as seriously about the consequences of having sex, Foster said.

Northwestern Students for Life brought Foster to talk during Northwestern’s first-ever Sex Week, a campus-wide program of events and lectures sponsored by the College Feminists promoting awareness, education and communication about sex.

Foster’s presentation, “The Feminist Case Against Abortion,” centered around the abortion debate, but she spent no time discussing the arguments for each side. Instead, her message focused on a proactive approach toward women’s rights, and on why pregnant women should have adequate resources and information at their disposal.

Regardless of whether individuals are pro-choice or pro-life, she said, we should all be able to put our differences aside to “find solutions, and areas of agreement.” Instead of going back and forth saying, “What about the woman!” and “What about the baby!” she encouraged that we “spend the energy to produce change, not argue.”

In the first half of her speech, Foster presented a history of the feminism movement, highlighting the actions and beliefs of figures like Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Betty Friedan. She also spoke about lesser-known feminists such as Victoria Woodhull and Sarah Norton. Foster spoke of their accomplishments to further the feminist cause — a cause which she characterized as pursuing the principles of “nonviolence, nondiscrimination and justice for all.” She said that cause is still important today, both for women and their children.

“There is too much suffering for women out there,” Foster said, “and I am really interested in ending misery.”

Both those supporting and opposing of abortion should be concerned with ending this misery, she said.

“Don’t look at each other as the enemy,” she said. “The only enemies we have are the status quo and accepting failure.”

Foster’s second half of the lecture concentrated on proactive approaches to increase the number of resources available to pregnant women in higher education — whether they be students, teachers or staff. Women on campuses should have options other than abortion, she said.

She encouraged students to support the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Pregnant and Parenting Student Services Act of 2007, which would help provide services for pregnant students.

“You guys have got to get the administration to change,” Foster also said. “Have you heard of revolutions on campuses?”

Foster also offered specific ways in which Northwestern can improve its system of support for pregnant women on campus.

“Where can pregnant women go?” she wondered, sparking a discussion with members of the audience about what resources are available.

Several women from the Women’s Center who were in attendance spoke up about what’s already here: several lactation centers available on campus (both in Tech and the Arthur and Gladys Pancoe Pavilion), affordable housing for couples in Evanston, subsidized childcare for staff and faculty, student healthcare, and maternity and paternity leave for professors.

But Foster and some members of the audience agreed: Although all of these services are helpful to pregnant women, they are still not enough. Among the suggestions for improvement:

• Creating an “ongoing mechanism” for communication, such as a web site which would provide information to pregnant women and their partners, and allow them a way to share their thoughts with others in similar situations.
• Integrating education about pregnancy into orientation programs on campus.
• Starting a volunteer babysitting co-op where students and teachers can get free or lower-cost childcare services.
• Forming a support group for men who find out their partners are pregnant. “He’s in a crisis, too,” Foster said of men who find out about unexpected pregnancies. “He’s in a crisis of conscience, a crisis of economics, a crisis of mind-reading and knowing what to say to her.”

While being a student or a professor makes parenting harder, Foster said it doesn’t make abortion the only choice — but schools must be sure that appropriate resources are available to women in order for them to be able to make a decision that is pro-life.

“We have to be sensitive to birthmothers,” Foster said. “We have to find out what they need.”