A Northwestern student was found dead inside his Foster House dorm room late Tuesday morning, the university said this afternoon in a statement.

Matthew S. Sunshine, a SESP freshman from Cold Spring Harbor, NY, passed away due to currently undetermined causes, Vice President for Student Affairs William J. Banis said in the statement, which the university has sent to “students, faculty and staff on Evanston campus.”

“We extend our condolences to all of Matthew’s family and friends,” Banis said. “We join with them in this time of sorrow.”

Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) staff and members of the University Chaplain’s office will be in Foster House this evening.

Banis said the Evanston Police Department, assisted by University Police, is investigating the matter.

Following criticism from some seniors, President Henry Bienen defended the university’s choice of Richard M. Daley as its commencement speaker in a follow-up statement Thursday, saying the Chicago Mayor’s “international stature is recognized everywhere.”

Calling him “an innovative and creative big-city mayor who has made Chicago a truly world-class city,” Bienen said that “it is particularly appropriate to have Mayor Daley be our speaker” because it is Northwestern’s 150th commencement.

“I am confident that our graduates and their families will benefit from the insights that I hope he will share with us at Commencement,” he said.

Seniors criticized Tuesday’s announcement soon after it was made, with some saying they expected a higher-profile speaker. The Chicago Tribune and local television picked up the story.

Reformers who want an ASG vice president and other changes must wait until later to see whether the required constitutional changes will pass, as opposition pushed Wednesday’s Senate meeting beyond its time limits.

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.”

Project Kindle, a nonprofit that serves and educates children and families affected by HIV/AIDS, will be the main beneficiary for the 2009 Dance Marathon, DM announced Wednesday.

Project Kindle offers a free summer camp for children living with HIV/AIDS, a scholarship fund for young patients, and two HIV educational programs which partner with schools.

The Evanston Community Foundation will be DM’s secondary beneficiary for the twelfth consecutive year. At the last Dance Marathon, more than 750 students danced for 30 consecutive hours, ultimately raising $659,711 for Bear Necessities and the Evanston Community Foundation. Next year’s event will take place from March 6-8, 2009.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Seniors expressed annoyance and ambivalence Tuesday to the announcement that Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley will speak at their graduation.

The mayor will receive an honorary doctor of law degree at the university’s 150th commencement on June 20 at Ryan Field. Lorraine Morton, Evanston’s mayor and a Northwestern alum, will also receive an honorary degree.

Citing speeches by presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama at recent Northwestern commencements, some students said they were disappointed that the university didn’t choose a more internationally well-known figure.

“Maybe at another Chicago area university, like UIC, where there are a lot of Chicago residents, people would feel some sort of affiliation with him, but here people are mostly from out of state,” Weinberg senior Gathi Abraham said.

But “Mayor Daley is someone who has been very supportive of Northwestern’s importance to the Metropolitan area,” Vice President for University Relations Al Cubbage said. In particular,Daley “provided the backing of the Chicago City government” when the university built the Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Center on its Chicago campus, which was dedicated in 2005.

On that project, “he had been supportive both in terms of helping things get done with the city, and then also just in terms of public support as well,” Cubbage said.

University President Henry Bienen said in a statement that he was pleased with the choice.

“He has served the City of Chicago with great distinction,” Bienen said, adding that “Mr. Daley is mayor of the city where Northwestern’s founders met to make plans to establish a great institution of higher learning.”

In a statement, Daley said he was “deeply honored to address the Class of 2008.”

“Northwestern is a very important part of Chicago’s history and I look forward to sharing a few ideas on how students can make an impact in their communities no matter where their careers might take them.”

Daley has seen sustained popularity throughout his 19-year tenure. He won his fifth and most recent re-election with more than 70 percent of the vote in 2007. He pioneered the construction of Chicago’s Lakefront Millennium Park, and led projects to improve the city’s public school system, housing projects and O’Hare international airport. He has also launched a bid to make Chicago the host of the 2016 Olympics.

But members of his administration has been accused – and in some cases, convicted – of corruption. In 2006, Daley’s patronage chief Robert Sorich was convicted of “scheming to reward political workers with city jobs,” according to a Chicago Tribune from the time. Crime and poverty persist in the city, and scandal has plagued its police force, particularly regarding the torture of crime suspects.

In naming him one of the nation’s best big-city mayors, TIME magazine cited his popularity and authority, saying in 2005, “He wields near imperial power, and most of Chicago would have it no other way.”

Cubbage also mentioned a personal bond between the Mayor and Northwestern officials; Daley is “someone who is good friends with both President Bienen and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Patrick Ryan,” he said.

Ever since Harvard announced it would accept more than 150 waitlisted high school seniors, the effects have been felt in many top-tier schools, including Northwestern.

The ripple effect has delayed the admission process here, as students accepted to Northwestern could decide to leave for schools where they had been waitlisted, Associate Provost Michael Mills said Wednesday.

Although high school seniors were supposed to choose a college by May 1, and Northwestern usually has a rough assessment of its incoming freshmen by now, the class of 2012 is far from finalized.

“This year’s different,” Mills said, “because all of our peers, with the exception of Stanford, are pulling heavily from their waitlist. That has downstream consequences for everybody, including Northwestern.

“When we’re actually going to have confidence in our numbers, I don’t know,” he added. “We’re not there yet, but in a couple of weeks, maybe.”

For Mills, many factors affected this year’s admissions season.

“I think kids apply to more schools to begin with than they did five or ten years ago,” he said. “Some of it has to do with the Common App.”

He added that “as it gets more difficult to get into elite schools, you’re going to have to hedge your bets.”

Mills said that high school seniors who apply to top universities tend to apply to the same ones, such as Yale, Harvard, University of Chicago and Northwestern.

“That phenomenon causes everybody’s predictions to be out of whack,” Mills said.

But Mills said he wasn’t worried that the downstream effect would cause a drop in the quality of Northwestern’s freshmen class.

“We’ll get our class, it’s just a matter of who it’s going to be,” he said. “We’re going to reach our target, it’s going to be a very strong freshman class.”

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley will speak at this year’s commencement, Northwestern announced today.

He will also receive an honorary doctor of law degree, along with Lorraine Morton, Evanston’s mayor and a Northwestern alum.

“I’m deeply honored to address the Class of 2008 at Northwestern’s 150th annual commencement,” Daley said in a statement. “Northwestern is a very important part of Chicago’s history and I look forward to sharing a few ideas on how students can make an impact in their communities no matter where their careers might take them.”

Daley has served as Chicago’s mayor since 1989. In naming him one of the nation’s best big-city mayors, TIME magazine cited his popularity and authority, saying in 2005, “He wields near imperial power, and most of Chicago would have it no other way.”

“On the occasion of the Sesquicentennial Commencement, we are extraordinarily proud to honor the mayors who represent the cities that are home to Northwestern’s two campuses,” President Henry Bienen said in a statement.

This year is the school’s 150th commencement. It will be held June 20 at Ryan Field.

Chicago DJ duo Flosstradamus will play two half-hour sets at this Saturday’s Dillo Day, Mayfest announced Tuesday.

The tandem — Josh Young and Curt Cameruci — will perform before and after Broken Social Scene, which is due to take the stage at 5:30 p.m.

The duo makes “basically party dance music, so it will provide entertainment for set breaks,” Mayfest co-chair Ben Stix said, “so people can dance while we change the sets for Broken Social Scene and for The Cool Kids.”

Third Eye Blind and Broken Social Scene will perform at Dillo Day 2008, Mayfest announced Thursday.

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.

When Weinberg senior Julie Shen realized the magnitude of the destruction caused by the recent earthquake in China, which had killed more than 50,000 people, she was horrified.

Shen’s home province of Guizhou borders Sichuan, where the earthquake hit. The news worried Shen until she called family and learned that her relatives had not been affected. Aftershock forecasts were reported to have raised panic in Guizhou, but the nearly 8.0-magnitude earthquake did not cause much damage in the province.

“It was a couple days after [hearing about the earthquake] when it really started to get to me, when more pictures of it started coming out,” Shen said. “The pictures of it were just really, really horrible.”

Shen didn’t just grimace at the photographs of victims. She didn’t just donate to current relief efforts, either: She started her own effort on campus.

Shen’s fundraising effort for the victims of the Chinese earthquake began Tuesday morning at the Arch. With the help of other students, she collected donations and passed out flyers with information on how to donate online and volunteer with their group.

Until Saturday, Shen had expected one of the Asian-interest student groups on campus to start fundraising.

“After a week, I just hadn’t heard anything,” Shen said. “So I decided to just get something started myself.”

Shen sent out numerous e-mails to friends and created a Facebook group for the fundraiser. She waited to see how many people would volunteer to help out.

“I was checking if people signed up, obsessively, and looking at pictures from the earthquake,” Shen said about her night before the fundraiser began. “After it started, my heart kind of calmed down because a lot of people have been showing up to help.”

Later, the Chinese Scholars and Students Association, the Chinese Students Association, the Hong Kong Students’ Association, and Northwestern University Singaporeans and Friends all lent support.

Christine Shiqi Chen, an international exchange student at Northwestern, joined Shen’s Facebook group and expressed her gratitude.

“I’m actually from Sichuan and my whole family is still there. I don’t know what I can say,” she wrote on the group’s wall. “Just want to thank you all for doing this and being so supportive.”

Volunteers will collect donations everyday until Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Arch, and possibly at other campus locations, such as Kellogg. The group plans to turn the funds over to Red Cross Hong Kong or Red Cross China.

Although there were not enough volunteers to cover all of the planned locations for donation collection, the group has already exceeded their initial goal of $1,000 by about $100, as of Wednesday evening. Shen also expects an increase in volunteer participation.

“In the beginning, I was just going to donate money and call it quits,” Shen said. “But after looking at the terrible images, I felt like I had to do something more.”

A proposal to introduce a vice president position to Associated Student Government became a hot-button issue Thursday, as a discussion about changes in ASG’s structure, constitution and code lingered for more than two hours in Norris University Center.

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.”

Julian Lazalde’s mother always told him, “‘If you forget why you should study, look at your father’s hands.”

“He had big, fat, sausage fingers from all the work that he was doing. His hands were covered with splinters, pieces of metal.”

On Wednesday night, Lazalde recounted his mother’s advice to 30 or so Northwestern students at Tech as part of speech sponsored by volunteer group NCDC and the International Students Association, in which he spoke about his life and his job as a community organizer for undocumented immigrants in Little Village and Pilsen in Chicago.

Lazade’s father worked five days a week in a factory in Cicero, and the remaining two days in a restaurant. Lazade’s mother had risked her life crossing the border between Mexico and the United States in 1977 to meet her husband in Chicago, before Lazade was even born. While crossing the river in the middle of the night, she dropped her three-year-old boy, who was rescued from drowning by a stranger. She later spent eight days stranded in the desert before stumbling upon a small Texas town.

After graduating from Williams College in 2004, Lazalde decided that he wanted to work with people like his parents.

In his talk, Lazalde emphasized the importance of education in helping immigrant communities, especially Latin-Americans, to move forward.

“People want to celebrate that we’re the biggest minority, but the majority of us aren’t getting through high school and aren’t getting into these upper levels of professionalism,” Lazalde said. “So why does it matter that we’re the biggest minority in the country? I’d rather be the smallest if it means we’re getting up and getting out. But we’re not.”

He said that many high-school counselors tell students that college is out of their league, discouraging many youth from attending higher education.

Lazalde has worked on the “DREAM Act,” which aims to enable undocumented youth who have attended U.S. schools for several years to gain legal status and be able to enroll in universities or the armed forces.

Oftentimes, students who have spent most of their lives in the United States will realize only once they’re filling college application forms that they don’t have a social security number, making them illegible for financial aid, Lazalde said. Lazalde mentioned an undocumented teenage girl with a 4.5 GPA who was admitted to Northwestern, but had to go to the University of Illinois instead for financial reasons.

“She should be here with you, and all because of a lack of nine numbers,” Lazalde said. “Places like Northwestern, places like Williams, they’re not finding that kind of tally. Those kinds of stories I think are so important, and these institutions are losing out.”

Another issue that Lazalde has worked on is getting people in Pilsen and Little Village to vote. The 22nd ward, in which these neighborhoods are located, has been ranked first or second in lowest voter turnout for the past seven years.

“They’re coming from places where your vote never mattered,” Lazalde said of immigrants. “We don’t vote, it’s pitiful.”

Lazalde said illegal immigration is not an issue that is sufficiently comprehensively addressed.

“It’s an election year, so no one’s going to touch [immigration] with a ten-foot pole,” he said.

Northwestern will join up with the non-profit Questbridge next fall to provide additional annual scholarships to low-income students, the university announced Tuesday.

Each year 25 students accepted through Questbridge’s National College Match program will receive full four-year scholarships, and up to 50 others will pay a discounted tuition.

“Designed for high-achieving low-income students,” the college match program looks to “maximize the admissions outcomes” for “outstanding” students who face “economic obstacles,” according to Questbridge’s Web site. Northwestern will join 20 other of the program’s partner colleges, such as the University of Chicago, Yale and Rice. More than 700 low-income students were accepted through the program into its partner colleges and awarded scholarship money in 2007, according to its Web site.

In January, the university announced that it would replace loans with grants for the school’s most financially needy, and capped federal student loans at $20,000. The university expects these changes to affect 1,400 undergraduates, or roughly 18 percent of the student population.

About 60 percent of Northwestern’s population receives financial aid, and the university spends about $70 million on grants and scholarships each year.

On Monday, metal bars encircled the Rock in a protest of the American prison system, while a handful students slept nearby.

During the protest, dubbed “Starving the Prison Industrial Complex,” fifteen people fasted and camped out by the Rock for 24 hours to protest the harshness of American prisons, especially in regards to drug offenders. Many protesters are members of NORML-SSDP, a group that advocates for legalized marijuana.

NORML-SSDP Vice President Joel Handley said the event was a different way to engage students.

“We’ve been bringing a lot of speakers, watching films, so we wanted something a little more interactive, a little more involved,” the Medill junior said.

Protesters first gathered Sunday evening for an educational panel composed of a lobbyist, a heroin user and experts on metropolitan affairs and ex-offender outreach. Sociology Lecturer Tom Durkin and recovering addict Stacy Johnson spoke Monday at noon.

Kaitlyn Patia, a member of the College Democrats who helped organize the events, said she was impressed by NORML-SSDP, which stands for National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws — Students for Sensible Drug Policy.

“I think it’s cool,” said Patia, a Communication junior. “The protesting, fasting, sleeping outside… It’s something I don’t think you see too often on Northwestern’s campus.”

The event’s Facebook page highlights the fact that the United States is home to five percent of the world’s total population, but houses 25 percent of the world’s prison population.

“We have the largest prison population of any nation in the world,” said NORML-SSDP’s president, James Kowalsky. “And a large increase has happened in the last 20 to 30 years, due to increases in the harshness of drug penalties.”

The Communication junior says that Americans should release the more than half-million incarcerated drug offenders, and give them treatment, he said.

“It’s less expensive, it would get them off of drugs, and it’ll help them become more productive members of society,” he said.

Kowalsky added that even more problems face ex-convicts once they get out of prison: Many have difficulties finding jobs because of their criminal records, increasing the chance that they resort to crime.

“Are we saying that if you broke the law once, you’re forever a criminal?” Kowalsky asked. “Or are we saying that if you serve your time, you’ve paid your debt to society, and you should be allowed to get back in.”

“We’ve tried putting people in prison to solve our problems, and it hasn’t worked,” he added.

Handley wasn’t sure how much Northwestern students would retain about the American prison system itself, but hoped that seeing the protest would have a long-lasting effect on some.

“It might stimulate some sort of student involvement,” he said. “Not necessarily our club, but just any club, any issue.”

With 680 walkers, 74 teams and 12 hours, Relay for Life raised six figures for the American Cancer Society at Welsh-Ryan Arena on Friday and Saturday.

The group has so far counted over $100,000, and expects the total to be “around $150,000,” the event’s co-chair, Weinberg senior Jessie Golbus, said in an e-mail Sunday.

In exchange for raising a certain amount of money, teams of eight to twelve students did the walking, alternating as necessary. Last year the event raised $174,000. The Relay for Life program began in 1985, and has national and international events.