Free Taye!

By Abdi Y. Maya

If you were a teacher who went back home and were thrown in jail for wanting to improve working conditions, what would you do? This happened to an ISU alum, Dr. Taye Wolde-Semayat. As an undergraduate, Dr. Taye, as he is most commonly known, was a member of the International House staff, co-founded Global Review and majored in Political Science. Today, he is known as a political prisoner of conscience.

Although he has always firmly denied these accusations, Taye was charged with armed conspiracy against the government, forced to confess under torture, held in solitary confinement, shackled for twenty-four hours a day and denied access to books and newspapers. Is this the type of treatment that professors should receive for trying to do their job?

Upon returning to his native Ethiopia in 1991, Dr. Taye became an assistant professor of Political Science at the Addis Ababa University. He was also president of the Ethiopian Teachers' Association (ETA), the largest national trade union set up in 1951 to promote interests of teachers and education in Ethiopia. [Full Story]

Mr. Kelleher Goes to Springfield?

Mike Kelleher, director of ISU's Adlai Stevenson Center for Community and Economic Development for the past six years, is a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor. A former Peace Corps volunteer and Congressional staffer, Kelleher administers the Peace Corps Fellows program, which provides former Peace Corps volunteers with specialized training to assist struggling rural and urban communities across the state. Kelleher, 40, resides with his wife Karin and three young daughters in Normal.

Last year he narrowly lost a closely fought U.S. Congressional race against Tim Johnson (R). Kelleher's platform, Clean Sweep, has won him the endorsement of the Illinois AFL-CIO, Independent Voters of Illinois, Planned Parenthood, the Democratic County Chairmen's Association, and Citizen Action/Illinois. [Read Interview]

Rec or Wreck?
Should Students pay $250 a year to finance a new recreation center on campus? A student referendum will decide.

Vote!
March 5-6, 2002
Online at www.ilstu.edu

Cast your vote on the recreation center referendum and the student government elections.

Vote Yes

By Valerie Uihlein

Currently, the Student Government Association (SGA) is aggressively pursuing an informational campaign for a referendum that will appear on the ballot in March. The referendum is for a new campus recreation and wellness center. This issue has been in the minds of this SGA Administration for some time because the students at Illinois State University have said that the current recreation center does not meet their needs.

To make sure of student support for the pursuance of a referendum for a new recreation center, the SGA went out and asked the students what they thought. In the fall semester of 2001, the SGA facilitated a random telephone survey to solicit student feedback. All the students that were contacted by phone were selected randomly and asked the same questions.

The results of the survey spoke loud and clear as to what the next step for the SGA needed to be: 80% of respondents polled said they would support a referendum to raise student fees by $125 per semester and 45% of respondents were willing to pay more than the proposed $125 increase. After those results the SGA asked the Assembly to approve moving forward with the referendum that would appear on the ballot in March. Since the Assembly approved this initiative, the SGA has been moving forward in full force in an attempt to educate the student body about this issue. If the students vote in favor of the referendum in March, they would be agreeing to go forward with the building of a new recreation facility. [Full Story]

Vote No

By John K. Wilson

To hear Student Government rave about it, one might think that no sane person could be opposed to the $250-a-year student fee hike for a new recreation center on campus. However, there are many serious questions to be raised about these plans, and whether student fees actually reflect the priorities of students at ISU.

Before we applaud the burden of yet another big student fee, ISU students should demand greater information and accountability for how our money is currently being spent.

This fall, another SGA-supported fee hike will start when the 12-hour cap on fees is raised to 16 hours. Students taking 16 hours of classes will face a 33% hike in student fees. Their current $973.68 a year in fees alone will jump to $1298.24. Add on a $250 rec center fee, and for a full-time student taking 16 hours, fees for the spring and fall would jump from $973.68 to $1548.24-about one-third of the total tuition and fee bill. Do most students think that the extracurricular activities offered to them are worth half of what they spend for their classes and library?

Although the recreation services at ISU may be inadequate, the same could be said of many dorms, classrooms, and programs (and these other improvements might be delayed if a rec center is given priority). Why should recreation get so much emphasis? We already pay plenty for it: the Athletic and service fees ($8.84 per credit hour, $282.88 per year); the Redbird Arena fee ($4.83 per hour, $154.56 per year); the Recreation facilities fee ($5.83 per hour, $111.68 per year). Next year, full-time students will be spending $549.12 on athletics and recreation. Add on $250 per year, and that's $800 charged in sports-related fees, more than half of all student fees charged. [Full Story]

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