When two students used blackface as part of their Halloween costumes on Saturday, some members of the Northwestern community responded with outrage, but others remained confused as to why these actions were offensive at all.

President Schapiro looks on at Thursday’s forum. Photo by John Meguerian / North by Northwestern.

In light of the blackface incident and recent instances of racial profiling, Associated Student Government, Student Affairs and the Coalition of Colors united to put on a public forum Thursday evening to discuss blackface and other racial issues at Northwestern.

The forum, which packed the Louis Room at Norris, aimed to provide a safe, public place where community members could discuss issues of race and how individual students’ actions reflect the culture of Northwestern as a whole. The event, which University President Morton Schapiro attended, also anticipated a series of steps to deal with racism and prejudice at the university.

Sandra Richards, African-American studies and theatre professor, spoke about the history of blackface and explained why it is still considered offensive today. The practice dates back to the middle of the 19th century, she said, when white comedians and stage performers began painting their faces black to create a comical, stereotypically black character. Moreover, black actors were forced to paint their faces with burnt charcoal to find work since audiences wanted to see actual blackface.

“Blackface continues to wound,” Richards said. “It continues to say ‘you don’t belong.’”

Professor Barnor Hesse of the African-American studies department took the stage to facilitate the larger discussion of the evening.

“The question of race depends on your interest,” Hesse said. “The relationship of interest to race is crucial. It does not turn on how much you understand it — the commitment is to tackling the issues and then to engage with understanding.”

Blackface became a hot-button issue when the audience joined in to discuss their opinions. Some were applauded for insightful statements, while others received groans and boos from the rest of the crowd.

Some students at the forum suggested that blackface should be considered in terms of the perpetrators’ intent. If it wasn’t malicious, it wasn’t racist, some said.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a third-year graduate student in the African-American studies department, disagreed. “Looking at intent is the wrong way to focus on the issue,” she said. “That approach leaves it up to the perpetrators to decide whether something was racist, but we should look at how it affects life for black students.”

Taylor also cited the Northwestern police reports, which according to her stigmatize black males on campus by identifying suspects of sexual assault or theft as young black men. She urged the administration to discontinue this practice on the part of the Northwestern police.

SESP freshman, Zoe Goodman spoke of her involvement in For Members Only, Northwestern’s black student alliance, and encouraged others to get involved in activities that take them out of their comfort zones.

“Before I moved to Evanston, I didn’t really know any black people,” Goodman said. “But FMO has been so friendly and welcoming to me, and I’m excited now.”

After hearing students’ opinions on the roots of racial profiling problems at Northwestern and suggestions for solutions, President Morton Schapiro addressed the audience and promised to work toward change.

“If you really love something, you’d better be critical of it,” Schapiro said. “I realize that there are a lot of things to work on. So when I hear stories of profiling, I know I’ve got to deal with that.”

He also stressed the role of the entire community in effecting change and added that the administration alone cannot solve the problems of racism for the whole university.

“Hold me accountable for a lot of things, but I’m holding you accountable as well,” he told the crowd. “If you love this community, or even if you’re just a part of it, you have as much responsibility as I do.”

In response to two e-mails from Northwestern Police last week — one to report that a Northwestern student had been sexually assaulted and another to report that the student’s claim was not “bona fide” — the Sexual Health and Assault Peer Education group organized a panel to provide “information and discussion about Sexual Assault at NU and on a broader scale,” according to an e-mail from the group.

More specifically, the forum, held in the conference room of the Black House at 7 p.m. on Tuesday evening, clarified in general terms the policy dictating “false report” of rape, and Northwestern’s interpretation of that policy. Attendees questioned the detailed nature of the e-mail’s descriptions of the victim and perpetrator, and the less-detailed nature of the second e-mail. They suggested that the way the e-mails are written reinforces dangerously over-simplified perceptions about sexual assault.

The panel members — guest Lisa Frohmann, University of Illinois at Chicago professor of criminology, law and justice; Don Misch, director of Searle student health services; Renee Redd, director of the women’s center; and Laura Stuart, coordinator of sexual health education and violence prevention — could only offer information about rape reporting practices in the abstract.

“None of us can say for sure what happened [in the case of the Northwestern student and e-mails],” said Stuart, coordinator of sexual health education and violence prevention. She said she knows as much as the students based on two e-mail alerts that were sent out to the Northwestern community last week. The first, from Oct. 27, notified students that a female Northwestern student (whose name has not been released) was sexually assaulted and the second, which appeared in many inboxes on Oct. 28, had a subject line that declared the first e-mail’s report “false.”

The second alert offered no explanation as to why the claim was dismissed, but said the decision was made after detectives interviewed the student.

Interim Dean of Students Burgwell Howard explained that NUPD is required to send the e-mails by the Clery Act, signed in 1990. The act calls for universities to “make timely reports to the campus community on crimes considered to be a threat to other students and employees.”

This year, NUPD has consistently sent out e-mail alerts right after the crimes as a way to carry out “timely alert” policy, Howard said. The potential problem with e-mails sent too hastily, though — brought to light by the case last week — is that these e-mails can broadcast a case without having all the facts. Howard said that universities are still interpreting the Clery Act, and looking for the right way to inform students of crimes in a timely, accurate and lawful way.

While NUPD sent out e-mail alerts last year that appear on their Web site, Northwestern Deputy Chief Dan McAleer said more e-mails are being sent out this year.

“We have tried to implement more e-mails to inform our community as we see the necessity to make sure a broader notification takes place,” he said.

The panelists and students in the audience also noted the unusual detail of the e-mails, both in their description of the events that occurred on the night of the alleged sexual assault, in their specific physical and racial description of the attacker, and in their insistence that the report was false.

The specific language in these e-mails — in particular the word “bona fide” — stirred up strong opinions among students who spoke out. Some said the word automatically created the idea that the victim had lied.

Frohmann said the term, which is sometimes used interchangeably by police with the word “unfounded,” can have many different meanings behind it. Reasons for labeling a case “not bona fide” can range from a victims’ stories changing to witnesses not choosing to testify because they are too embarrassed.

Weinberg senior Kirsten Powers said she was concerned about how the language of the e-mails encouraged other students to assume the student was a liar, question her choices on that night, and even wish her harm, all of which she saw in an online forum.

“I personally was enraged that [the way online commenters have portrayed the Northwestern student] is still the dominant way of thinking of assault,” Powers said.

The panelists also noted the unusual detail of the first e-mail, both in its description of the events that occurred on the night of the alleged sexual assault, and in its specific physical and racial description of the suspect. Panelists and students alike were concerned that this level of publicized detail about the events could discourage students from reporting sexual assault cases in the future.

The e-mail’s explicit description of the suspect also drew concern. The description, which portrayed the suspect as an “African American male, approximately 25 years old, 5-6 – 5-7 inches tall, with a thin but muscular build, wearing a black leather jacket and dark jeans,” provoked a discussion about race.

One student in the audience said when she first read the e-mail she was more concerned about how it might reinforce racial perceptions than how it would influence perception of gender. She said she was surprised by the specificity, when previous cases have had more blanket descriptions that could apply to people of any race.

Howard said he will meet with the chief of police to discuss issues like whether victims know that the university is obliged under the Cleary Act to report assault cases publicly as well as why the reports are so detailed.

“It’s always about improving the system,” Howard said.

Colorado State University professor Michele Betsill speaks on climate change. Photo by Kevin Short.

A sense of urgency about the hazards of climate change echoed through the McCormick Tribune Center today, as people gathered to discuss global warming at Northwestern’s first Climate Change Symposium. With just about a month left before the global climate conference Copenhagen, Denmark, a host of speakers from various universities gathered in Evanston to discuss how factors like the carbon cycle, the fossil record, renewable energy and public policy affect the Earth’s climate.

Sponsored by the Initiative for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern (ISEN), the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, the Program in Environmental Policy Culture and One Book One Northwestern, the event signals a movement within the university to bring sustainability issues to campus and to communicate the best science and policy to the community.

“We only have three options: prevention, adaptation, or suffering,” keynote speaker Dr. Lonnie Thompson told the audience.

In a speech that set the tone of the event, Thompson, a distinguished professor and research scientist at Ohio State University, addressed global warming from a paleoclimatic perspective — that is, by looking at the Earth’s climate in past centuries and millennia.

Thompson ended his lecture with a quote from the eighteen century born German scientist Alexander Van Humboldt: “There are three stages of scientific discovery: first people deny it is true; then they deny it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.”

“I don’t think human behavior has changed that much since then,” Thompson added.

While the symposium coincides with growing worldwide interest in the climate change meeting in December, it is rather a part of a long-term initiative at Northwestern to introduce sustainability issues on campus.

As part of this project, ISEN was established in October 2008 under President Henry Bienen to add interdisciplinary curricula, fund research and host events related to sustainability and energy issues. Moreover, deans from Weinberg and McCormick have appointed a committee to look at the issue of bringing a more coherent experience in environmental studies at Northwestern.

“[Climate change] is in the news…How could Northwestern not be talking about this,” said Bridget E. Calendo, director of operations and outreach for ISEN.

Meanwhile, the symposium also offered perspectives on the upcoming climate change meeting in Denmark in December, when delegates from 192 countries will gather at the 2009 United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen (also referred to as COP15) to address climate change policies beyond 2012. The year marks the expiration of the carbon trade emission targets set by the Kyoto Protocol.

Climate is expected to become a hot-button issue at the negotiating table in Copenhagen, as the world’s developed and developing economies will seek to reconcile a series of policy decisions aimed at reducing carbon emissions.

Some speakers at the Northwestern symposium remained skeptical about the outcomes of the COP15 talks.

According to Brad Sageman, the department chair of the Earth and Planetary Sciences at Northwestern, the COP15 “reflects the commitment of the European nations.” But the Obama administration has recently been criticized for not taking a firm stand on climate change.

“If the United States doesn’t become a leader in these issues, when are China and India going to follow suit?” Sageman said.

Kevin Short contributed reporting for this article.

The far walls of the second and third floors of the children’s section of the Evanston Public Library are filled with framed children’s book covers whose stories have not yet been written. Each of the 75 original paintings, drawings and sketches is accompanied by a description of what the illustrator envisioned for the story – but the story itself is left up to the imagination of the viewer.

These book covers comprise a new exhibit co-sponsored by the EPL and the Northwestern University Library called “An Imaginary Library,” open since October 9 for a three-month stay. The exhibit – visibly international, visually striking, and varied in style and content, presents children’s books in an exciting and open-ended way and is the first of its kind in the Evanston library.

The exhibit’s presence in Evanston is largely due to the efforts of Jeff Garrett, an Associate Librarian for Special Libraries at Northwestern. Garrett convinced the International Youth Library in Munich, Germany (the creator of the project) to send the exhibit to Northwestern and Evanston after it appeared in a four-day conference of the United States Board on Books for Young People in Saint Charles, IL. The exhibit has already appeared in Japan, Greece, and Iran, according to the EPL website.

The international character of the exhibit is apparent in the variety of styles and conceptions of “appropriateness” of the illustrators, said Jan Boyden, head of Children’s Services at the EPL.

On the third floor, some of the drawings are “pretty wild,” according to Brian Wilson, a librarian in the children’s section. The illustrations even created some confusion on the first day of the exhibit, when the Library did not yet have English translations for the explanations of the drawings.

“In some cases we had no idea what was going on,” Wilson said. “Some of the pictures on the third floor are pretty intense.”

The striking visuals and the variety of styles and content are at the heart of the exhibit and have attracted viewers both young and old, Wilson said.

Many children ‘take’ their parents to certain spots in the children’s area right away, he said.

Evanston resident Heather Wade took an opporunity to examine the exhibit while her sons Erick, 3, and Gavin, 1, played beneath it.

“I noticed it was up,” she said, but said that because she is usually chasing kids, she hadn’t had a chance to really look at it.

Wilson said that this is the first long-term, travelling exhibit that the EPL has hosted, but it is not the first collaboration between Northwestern and EPL, or Northwestern’s first large exhibit.

In 2000, Garrett brought an exhibit from the Bologna Children’s Book Fair to the University Library — it filled an entire floor of the library with over 450 works of art.

“That was national news,” Garrett said. “What we’ve done this time is not nearly as big as that.”

The Bologna exhibit is still at the University Library. It, along with “An Imaginary Library” was meant to be accessible in conjunction with the conference in St. Charles.

It is very cutting edge, provocative, some people have called it obscene, said Garrett. “If you’re over 18 you’re welcome to come see it.”

After “An Imaginary Library” ends its stay at the Evanston Library, there are no immediate plans to fill the spaces. The exhibit itself will travel to the University of San Francisco, Garrett said.

Following a loss to Penn State on Saturday, Northwestern football fans are not the only ones worried about the rest of the season. The peddlers at Ryan Field came close to losing their jobs last week, when the Northwestern University Police Department attempted to ban them from selling food, beverages and merchandise at Wildcat games for security reasons.

At a meeting on Oct. 26, the Evanston City Council tabled an ordinance brought by the Northwestern and Evanston Police Departments earlier in October that aimed to ban all peddlers, including those with permits, from Northwestern sporting events.

Although it has not registered any accidents, NUPD said that peddlers cause a safety hazard and that the ordinance is intended to prevent future problems. But according to Eric Palmer, community information coordinator of the Evanston City Council, the council decided that NUPD should resolve the safety issue within the current ordinances. The council added that that there was not enough concern or evidence at this point to make a decision.

The NUPD plans to pursue the issue and does not believe that the existing ordinance is sufficient, said Daniel McAleer, Deputy Chief of Police at Northwestern University.

“We need to do some more work to demonstrate the safety issue…we will continue to gather information to help the council make a decision one way or another,” McAleer said.

The ordinance was first discussed at the Evanston City Council meeting on Sept. 29 and then again on Oct. 12. In addition to safety, the ordinance also addresses the issue of ticket scalping that occurs outside the stadium. During the discussions, longtime peddlers pointed out that there was a difference between peddlers with permits and ticket scalpers, most of whom do not have licenses.

“To create the impression that it is a big problem, they tried to lump peddlers with ticket scalpers. It is not the same thing,” said Maurice Kelly, who said he has worked in the souvenir business for more than 15 years. He presented the peddlers’ concerns at a council meeting on Oct. 12.

Kelly added that the ordinance is not about safety, but rather a ploy by the official Northwestern concession stands to make more money.

“[They] had to create a reason to eliminate competition,” Kelly said. “[The peddlers] are a scapegoat, because the attendance to games has been worse than it has ever been.”

Daniel McAleer, Deputy Chief of Police at Northwestern, declined to comment on this issue, but said that the NUPD’s “main concern is the safety hazard.”

“We support the Northwestern and Evanston police to make it a safe environment,” said David Gaborek, the owner of “Let’s Tailgate,” a company that owns some of the official concession stands. He was unaware of the ordinance against peddlers until he was approached by the council to speak at the council meeting on Oct. 19.

To peddlers themselves, the outcome of the ordinance comes down to a matter of livelihood.

“We are independent small business persons who are honest,” said Paul White, a part-time CTA bus operator in Chicago who has been a peddler for 15 years. “We have children who are in college. At least mine are; I need to give them an education.”

Other peddlers are preparing for the worst. “We have a lot of inventory and merchandise, we are cutting down on buying in case [the ordinance] does go into effect,” said David Klemp, a peddler who also works for the local school district as support staff.

Northwestern biology professor Richard Morimoto is grateful for the research grants that the university science departments have received this year.

“Scientists love to spend money. We’re really good at it,” he said.

Morimoto is one of the professors at Northwestern doing research with funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. This year, Northwestern has received 179 awards totaling $91.9 million under the new federal stimulus program. The university says they will use the money to hire more scientists and further research. The funding is part of a national $787 billion initiative intended to jump-start the economy by investing in science, infrastructure and education, creating and saving jobs in the process.

The ARRA grants for Northwestern come from four federal agencies: the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Department of Education and the National Institutes of Health. Of the 179 awards, Northwestern received eight NIH Challenge Grants and two NIH Go Grants. Challenge grants are two-year grants that are intended to kick start research projects, while Go Grants fund projects that will not need further NIH funding after two years.

As soon as the Recovery Act was enacted, the Northwestern faculty “responded en masse,” said Susan Ross, Evanston director of the Office for Sponsored Research (OSR).

According to an OSR press release, the research proposal volume in April 2009 was nearly quadruple the number of proposals in April 2008, jumping from 149 to 592. Last year Northwestern received a total of $476.9 million in grant money.

The ARRA stimulus grants differ from other research grants because they fund projects that can get underway quickly and have fast impact, Ross said. With the money, scientists whose funding would otherwise have been terminated have been able to continue their research. It also funded new researchers and allowed for the purchase of new equipment.

According to Morimoto, successful proposals had to be very specific.

“We have to have a plan for how we’ll spend the money. That’s how you get the grant. Then you do what you said you’d do,” Morimoto said. Morimoto received over $1 million in an ARRA grant to study Protein-Misfolding Disorders, the causes of a number of diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s.

Northwestern’s Asian Pacific American Coalition (APAC) held a forum Tuesday evening to discuss racial profiling and discrimination in employment. The event featured four panelists who spoke of their experiences and opened the floor up for questions from the audience in the Multicultural Center.

APAC organized the forum in light of the struggle between Freddie Lee and the Northwestern University Police Department (NUPD). Lee, a Chinese-American, filed a federal complaint last month stating that he faced racial discrimination in his four years with the department. He has threatened to file a lawsuit, but has not yet filed suit.

The panel consisted of Marie Claire Tran-Leung, a 2002 graduate of Northwestern and an APAC alum; Bill Yoshino of the Japanese American Citizens League; Asian-American studies professor Diana Lin; and Jenny Lee, Freddie’s wife, who spoke on his behalf.

The panelists expressed support for Lee and explored both the particular Asian discrimination present in the case, and the way in the officers’ treatment of Lee and the university’s response overlap with other forms of racial discrimination and profiling at Northwestern.

Lee opened the discussion by explaining her husband’s situation over the past two months. Freddie has been on paid leave from NUPD since Sept. 10, she said, right after he filed the claim that, from 2006 until his departure from NUPD in September, colleagues targeted him with racial slurs and derogatory remarks.

Once Freddie Lee filed the claim, NU police banned him from campus, she said. “I’m just so disappointed he’s not allowed to be here to defend himself,” Lee said.

When the Chicago Tribune published Lee’s story Oct. 18, it generated a significant amount of interest from Northwestern students – an interest evident in the room of the forum itself. The small space was overflowing, students crammed into the corners to stand.

Several panelists said they find encouragement in an Asian victim of racial discrimination who has continued his fight despite pressure to give in, and in the visible interest and support that his story has generated.

“When I started with the Japanese American Citizens League, we seemed to be laboring alone, in the dark,” Yoshino said. “It’s been great to see various Asian groups around the country and really get a sense of activism and growth.”

“A lot of people in his situation would sweep it under the rug, not speak up, and apologize to get their job back,” Lin, who gave Freddie Lee a standing ovation, said.

“Students kept asking me what ever happened with the case of Freddie Lee,” said Abby Chu, vice president of APAC. “It was great that Jenny was able to show us that it’s a huge deal and not something to brush off.”

“A lot of students never had a venue to discuss this topic,” she said.

The discussion moved beyond the specific details of Freddie Lee’s case and towards how it fits in to the larger problems of racial profiling and discrimination at Northwestern, especially as played out in the relationship between Northwestern police and students.

“In the past there has been racial profiling of students and faculty, and the last person that victim wants to go to is the police,” said SESP senior Alex Sims.

In response to racial profiling cases raised against NUPD, a new university initiative is underway to establish a Police Advisory Board composed of students and other NU community members, according to Sims. The advisory board will provide “awareness, monitoring, reporting and communication” to the entire community, she said.

“Our goals are to improve communication between the police and students, raise awareness of sexual assault, alcohol, and racial discrimination,” said Sims, who has been working to organize the board. She stressed the inclusion of multicultural students. “And most importantly, it will serve as an advocate for students’ rights.”

“[Lee’s] case is making a statement about people who should be protecting our lives. If this pervading notion among people of NUPD is that Asians are… second-class citizens, this is a problem that directly pertains to us,” said Weinberg and Bienen sophomore and member of APAC Calvin Lee. “You could argue that it’s internal, but it’s really not. The NUPD is interacting with the campus and students all the time.”

Lee closed the forum with an update on her husband’s status. After his story was printed in the Daily Northwestern, NUPD returned Lee’s belongings that had been held for investigation after enacting his administrative leave. He also received a letter notifying him he was terminated as a member of the force as of Oct. 21, she said.

“Even though he’s a good father, person and husband, his career is over,” Lee said. “I truly believe in him and have true faith because he’s standing up against something that is wrong.”

To Prajwal Ciryam, a 2006 Weinberg graduate and member of the Honors Program in Medical Education at Northwestern, the process of applying for Fulbright grant last year through the Northwestern Fellowship Office was as important as the result itself.

“Every [Northwestern Fulbright applicant] goes through a process of identifying a [research] question, struggling with how that question relates to him or her personally and figuring out not just a mission for a project but a sense of self,” said Ciryam, who won a Fulbright grant in 2009 and is now doing research at the University of Cambridge in England.

The Fellowship Office taught high-achieving students like Ciryam to treat the Fulbright application not only as a means to an end but as an experience that itself provokes growth and self-reflection.

It is this approach and the office’s dedication to the students, 2009 recipients agreed, that accounted for Northwestern’s 32 Fulbright winners this year — more than any other university in the country — and the success these students have found with the grants.

“The people in the fellowship office don’t approach this as ‘OK, how many of these can we win?’” said Ciryam. “Instead let’s identify some really passionate people. Let’s work with them to help them better understand what they want in life.”

The people who work in the Fellowship Office often work extra hours, showing up late to Professors’ offices to make sure that they get their letters of recommendation in on time.

Sometimes, the process did not go smoothly.

“The most valuable lesson I learned from the process was to learn how to take advice,” said Alex Robins, a 2008 Weinberg graduate who is now completing his Fulbright year in Cork, Ireland. “When lots of people start editing and ripping apart your personal statement, it’s hard not to take it, well, personally.”

Stephen Hill, the Associate Director of the Fellowship Office, was one of the people giving the advice. Part of his goal was to make sure students understood and expressed the qualifications that the Fulbright program expected.

Beyond having a solid proposal, he said, students need to show that they have used their college experience to prepare to do international research. Students must have had some international experience like studying abroad or studying some foreign language, and must have done independent research.

These skills have direct value in the work that Fulbright scholars do.

The Fulbright program funds student projects abroad that span all academic fields. Students can do research during their Fulbright year or complete a masters’ degree in another country. There are Fulbright grants for arts and writing, and grants for students to teach English in foreign countries.

Ciryam is researching protein misfolding, the cause of a number disorders including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s. In developing his research proposal, Ciryam looked for an opportunity to study the phenomenon practically, in a lab. He thought this would complement and complicate the research he had done at Northwestern, which was mostly computational.

He found his chance at Cambridge, where he works in a lab studying the diseases using nematodes, 959-cell worms.

Ciryam is optimistic that his idea of combining live and computational research will bear results. “There are real opportunities to collaborate and to make exciting progress by combining those different approaches,” he said.

Meanwhile, Carrie Porter, a 2009 Medill graduate is working on a master’s in journalism at the University of Ulstern, Ireland. The experience, she said, has caused her to grow in unexpected ways.

“If ever in my life you had told me I was going to be here…I never would have believed you,” said Porter. “And that’s really the beauty of what the Fulbright year offers, the chance to do those things, to have those moments, to say ‘never would I have thought I’d be here.’”

The scene at Sheridan and Foster at around 8 p.m. Photo by Matthew Connolly / North By Northwestern.

Updated at 8:30 p.m. with a photo.

A woman was hit by a car on Sheridan Road at around 7 p.m. this evening and taken away by ambulance, according to witnesses. An Evanston police officer at the site of the accident said at around 9 p.m. that the woman is not a Northwestern student.

Sheridan Road is closed from Foster St. to Chicago Ave.

More information to come.

Update: According to the Chicago Police Department, the report of a sexual assault of a student has been deemed “not bona fide,” said Alan Cubbage, vice president for University Relations, in an e-mail. The news officer of the Chicago Police Department told Cubbage that after detectives interviewed the student, they determined it to be “not a criminal sexual assault, not a bona fide incident.”

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.

Northwestern’s endowment grew to $5.8 billion as of September 30, 2009, university officials confirmed. This is a gain of 12.7 percent in the period from January to September 2009.

After reaching a peak of $7.4 billion in April 2008, Northwestern lost a significant portion of its endowment during the fall of 2008. By February 2009, the endowment was down 24 percent from its August 2008 value.

James Hurley, associate vice president for budget planning, analysis and allocation, said that the university is projecting modest returns for the current financial year ending in August 2010 but warned that economic conditions make the success of any investment hard to predict.

“The endowment has quite a big impact on the university’s spending. It accounts for 18 percent of the annual operating budget,” Hurley said. “We have taken steps to offset the decrease by cutting down on non-salary expenses and have asked vice presidential offices and schools to keep costs low.”

Northwestern relies less on its endowment for spending than other universities. Harvard and Yale draw up to 30 precent of their budgets from their endowment funds, compared to Northwestern’s 18 percent.

According to Will McLean, Vice President & Chief Investment Officer, Northwestern has stayed invested in its long-term targets and maintained a diverse portfolio.

“We have remained in the market and hence have been able to take advantage of market rallies,” he said. “We bet big on the credit markets and our strategy has paid off.”

The university’s total endowment losses during the financial year from September 2008 to August 2009 was a smaller percentage loss than that of many other wealthy universities. Harvard and Yale, the two wealthiest American universities, lost nearly a third of their endowments between July 2008 and June 2009 (other universities measure their financial years from July to June, opposed to September to August) while Princeton and Brown lost around 25 precent.

University of Pennsylvania had the best performing endowment fund in the top 10 wealthiest private universities for the fiscal year ending in June 2009, seeing a decrease of 15.7 percent to $5.1 billion. Columbia saw its endowment shrink to $5.7 billion from $7.2 billion.

After a miserable stretch for university finances, the recent growth of the endowment could be a sign of a slow recovery.

“Our endowment has grown from January ‘09 to September ‘09,” Mclean said. “We have already made up about a billion dollars and have another billion to go before we reach peak levels again.”

Correction: The original version of this article stated the endowment grew to $5.8 billion as of September 31, but it should have stated September 30. Thanks to commenter Nick for pointing it out.

Dance Marathon enrolled more than 1,000 dancers for the event on March 5-7, 2010, on their first year of using online registration.

Participants filled out their forms online and then brought in a printed waiver and their registration fee to Norris. According to a Dance Marathon press release, the organization is moving towards a paperless registration system in the future.

“In the past, everything was done in paper,” said Allister Wenzel, DM’s finance co-chair, in a press release. “The Exec board and Finance committee would spend hours upon hours the week after registration meticulously entering the data from these paper forms into a Google spreadsheet. We saw online registration as the future, not only in streamlining the workload on our end, but also allowing the dancers to register in a more convenient way and being environmentally-friendly in the process.”

The first all-DM dancer meeting will be held on Tuesday, October 27 from 7:30-8:30 p.m. in Fisk 217.

Thirty-two Northwestern students received Fulbright Scholarships from the State Department this year, the highest number of any research university, according to the Fulbright Web site.

According to the organization’s Web site, 109 Northwestern students applied for the scholarship. The 32 graduate and undergraduate students who were awarded scholarships have either recently left to study abroad or will do so in the near future in order “to study, teach English and conduct research in more than 100 different fields in more than 125 countries,” according to a Northwestern press release.

Northwestern has continually risen or stayed steady on the top of the Fulbright top-producing schools list since 2004 as shown on the Fulbright website. Since 2004, the number of Northwestern applicants has more than doubled, and the number of winners has quadrupled. This year, Northwestern placed first overall and first in the 38-school research institutions category.

Typically 6,000 to 7,000 students apply for the Fulbright scholarships each year.

More to come.

Clad in an NUCuisine jacket and chef’s hat, President Schapiro was on hand Tuesday night to unveil Northwestern’s new student hangout, a refurbished historic dining hall called the “Great Room.”

Located at 610 Haven Street, the Great Room, which previously served as a reading room in the Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, will offer food, TV and wireless access to Northwestern students. The room will be open from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. Sunday-Thursday.

At the ceremonial ribbon cutting Tuesday evening, President Schapiro described the room as aesthetically magnificent, and lauded the team that restored the room for a job well done.

“I’m particularly excited at the chance for [the opportunities] to off-campus students,” Schapiro said. “The Great Room is an alternative to Burger King – not that there’s anything wrong with Burger King, but this is a beautiful venue.”

In addition to its proximity to campus, the Great Room is open as late as or later than any other campus dining facility Sunday through Thursday. Boasting “pub grub” complete with a burger bar, espresso machine, and small C-store, the Great Room doesn’t discriminate. Two long tables down the center are ideal for big groups, while smaller round tables on the side are perfect for individual studying. Couches at the back of the room allow for an full absorption of the Hogwarts-like view.

According to project manager, Associate Director for Food Service and Configuration Planning Anne Vanosdol, the most comfortable chair in the room is located in the back-right corner. The chairs were custom made. “I wanted them to fit my legs, because it’s all about me, isn’t it?”

Vanosdol devoted her summer vacation to the restoration, starting the project in the last week of July. She insists she merely shined up the room, and that it was magnificent to begin with.

Weinberg sophomore Matt Kluk called it a great use of space, saying that the reading room was “sort of a waste.”

A subpoena by the Cook County’s state’s attorney on the reporting notes, interview recordings and academic information of Northwestern students who were part of the Medill Innocence Project has sparked up a legal debate between the university and the County’s prosecutors. While a legal issue over the attorney office’s right to demand the information is clearly at stake, it is not yet certain what the university’s next steps will be, Medill professor Jack C. Doppelt said Tuesday.

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.