BY SARI LESKSTAFF WRITER

Gasps, cheers, “oohs” and “ahs” reso-nated through an audience of about 50 people Friday during the fi nal perfor-mance by the Student Playwright Out-reach Theatre project.

The Student Playwright Outreach Theatre, or SPOT, used stories submit-ted by fourth and fi fth grade students from Booker T. Washington Elemen-tary School in Champaign to create 18 sketches that were performed in the Stu-dio Theatre at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. Through the The-ater Department, University students worked together to create the show. The actors performed the sketches in a pro-

I N S I D E P o l i c e 2 A | C o r r e c t i o n s 2 A | C a l e n d a r 2 A | O p i n i o n s 4 A | C r o s s w o r d 5 A | C o m i c s 5 A | S p o r t s 1 B | C l a s s i f i e d s 3 B - 4 B | S u d o k u 3 B

The Daily IlliniMondayFebruary 20, 2012

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The independent student newspaper at the University of Illinois since 1871 www.DailyIllini.com Vol. 141 Issue 100 | FREE

BY THOMAS THORENSTAFF WRITER

Singers such as the late Etta James and Whitney Houston were brought to life as the past became the present Saturday evening.

Students paid tribute to African-American perform-ers throughout history by covering gospel, hip-hop and R&B artists as part of “Cotton Club,” an annual celebration of Black History Month. This year’s “Back to the Future” theme gave performers the chance to play the part of art-ists ranging from Michael Jackson to Jay-Z.

Saturday’s variety show at Foellinger Auditorium was the culmination of six months of work by more than 100 stu-dents and faculty members. Approximately 1,500 students, local community members and people from all over Illinois fi lled the nearly 2,000-person capacity venue.

After his fi rst time attending “Cotton Club,” Romel Moore, theatre arts major at Park-land, said he was impressed by the production and thought the performers did a great job.

“The biggest thing was the amount of preparation and expertise it takes in imitating these acts,” he said.

Ashley Myles, producer of “Cotton Club” and program-ming chair of the Central Black Student Union executive board, said she was pleased with the show’s presentation and the crowd’s reception.

“I’m really happy that (the audience) appreciated the hard work,” said Myles, junior in Business.

The University’s Central Black Student Union organized the event along with sponsor-ship by the Student Affairs Programming Coordinating Council, Central Residential Funding Board and Universi-ty Housing.

Crasha Perkins, adviser of the Central Black Student Union executive board, said

KELLY HICKEY THE DAILY ILLINI

Natasha Larkin, sophomore in FAA (left), performs a skit on princesses with Justice Janowski, junior in FAA, and Christopher Williamson, sophomore in FAA, during the dress rehearsal for Student Playwright Outreach Theater (SPOT) on Friday at the Krannert Center for Performing Arts.

Painting the town green

Cotton Club pays tribute to black musiciansAnnual variety show honors Whitney Houston, Etta James

Group puts local children’s stories center stageUI students adapt tales from elementary schoolers for theater

See SPOT, Page 3A

See COTTON CLUB, Page 3A

Editor’s note: This is the fi rst in a three-part series regarding contentious dis-cussions over proposed changes to the University’s enrollment management, after thousands of emails were ob-tained by The Daily Illini under the Illi-nois Freedom of Information Act.

Before even spending a full semester on campus, Chancellor and Vice President Phyllis Wise was under pressure from the University administration that expected her to endorse its plans.

During a time when the enroll-ment management proposal was becoming a contentious point of discussion among campus lead-ers, University President Michael Hogan pushed Wise and other chancellors to accept his origi-nal recommendations, schedul-ing special meetings and provid-ing “talking points” to convey to faculty. Emails show that Hogan was upset at Wise for her “lack of leadership on enrollment management.”

“I expect you to be an advo-cate for the campus, of course, but also an advocate for the Board

(of Trustees) and the president as we push forward with an agen-da that you knew about when you accepted the job,” Hogan told Wise in a heavily redacted email dated Jan. 5.

Wise responded three days lat-er, objecting to some of Hogan’s comments:

“I would argue that I have exerted the kind of leadership that encourages an open discus-sion of the options before us. In my concept of leadership, it is extraordinarily important to pay attention both to the people who report to me as well as those to whom I report.”

University spokesman Tom Hardy fi elded questions Friday in lieu of Hogan and Wise.

When asked about Hogan’s concerns about Wise’s leader-ship, Hardy said these ongoing discussions have been a part of a working relationship Hogan has with all the chancellors.

Emails show that Hogan was disappointed with Wise for how

See ENROLLMENT, Page 3A

JOSHUA BECKMAN THE DAILY ILLINI

Seen refl ected, Kris Fisher, a Champaign native, paints a St. Patrick’s Day mural on the windows of Legends bar on Green St. on Sunday. The painting process takes two days, says Fisher, who has completed similar holiday-themed murals at other area restaurants.

‘A LACK OF LEADERSHIP’ENROLLMENT MANAGEMENT

President Hogan’s vehement criticism of Chancellor Wise revealed in emails

BY DARSHAN PATELSTAFF WRITER

“In my concept of leadership, it is extraordinarily important to pay attention

both to the people who report to me as well as those to whom I report.”

PHYLLIS WISE,chancellor

Olympic hopefuls on iceU.S. speed skaters compete at UI Ice Arena NEWS, 3A

The Daily Illini | www.DailyIllini.com Monday, February 20, 2012 3A

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BY ZACH BASSSTAFF WRITER

With speeds averaging about 30 miles an hour, the top speed skat-ers from across the country com-peted in the American Cup at the University’s Ice Arena this week-end, all hopefuls of graduating to the Olympic-level someday.

Because of the shortened length of the rink, the event consisted of only short track events, limit-ing the total registered competi-tors to 56. Several amateur U.S. speed skaters training for the 2014 games were in attendance. Each race usually consisted of about fi ve to six skaters depending on the event. Many times, only U.S. ama-teurs raced against each other.

“That’s why they came up with (these events), so the top compe-tition can compete against each other,” said Marcu s Merrill, vice

president and board member of the Champaign Regional Speed Skating Club, which hosted the event. “It’s basically limited to people that can skate the higher level speeds.”

Several team USA represen-tatives were also in attendance speculating about who might be a good fi t for the team in two years in Sochi, Russia. Coming off of a silver medal performance in team pursuit two years ago in Vancou-ver, the U.S. is seeking an even better performance in two years as it tries to recruit new skaters to the team.

“From what I saw today, the belief that these events are pro-ducing the top Olympic talent is definitely confirmed,” said Michael Hubbs, a competitor at the event. “The USA team has a bright future; these events are

important because they’re where you get to be picked for the USA world team.”

But coming from the last team, several skaters, particularly on the men’s side, have had a series of injuries, and several other indi-viduals have left the team.

“I think we’ve lost some people, but we haven’t lost any momentum; if anything, I think we’re stron-ger,” said Jack M ortell, director of sport operations for USA speed skating. “Last Olympics, we felt like we came up a little short; we had a lot of medalists but not gold medalists. An Olympics medal is fi ne, but silver just doesn’t shine as bright as gold.”

Being the last of the three cup series, the next event will be the 2012 American Cup Final on March 2-4 in Salt Lake City, Utah, where the U.S. Olympic

Center for speed skating is locat-ed. The entire series goes off of a point system in order to determine which men and women within each event is the number one amateur speed skater. The winner of the overall series gets “an automatic birth into our training program.”

“(Getting in to the program) is a huge deal because if you look at Vancouver, we were the only country that did this: every sin-gle one (short-track competitors) came back with an Olympic med-al,” Mortell said. “So if you make our Olympic team, you’ve got a good chance at coming home as an Olympic medalist.”

CHONG JIANG THE DAILY ILLINI

A performer, dressed as Michael Jackson, sings and dances during the 2012 Cotton Club, an annual variety show that honors African American history, at Foellinger Auditorium on Saturday.

BRENT HOFACKER DAILY ILLINI

Erin Bartlette (101) leads the pack in the 1500m race during the Speedskating American Cup at the Ice Arena. The on-campus event took place Sunday.

Top US speedskaters come to Ice

BY PULU WANGSTAFF WRITER

Christie Foundation hosted its fi rst runner’s symposium on Sat-urday to educate runners about marathon training, aimed at those planning on running the Illinois Marathon this April.

Topics ranged from the care of runners’ hearts, feet and ankles as well as aquatic cross training and weight loss.

The event at the Christie Clin-ic was held from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. About 130 runners who are plan-ning to par-ticipate in the upcoming Christie Clinic Illinois Mara-thon showed up for the event.

Dr. Jeremy Youse, a der-matologist at Christie Clin-ic, gave some suggestions for people who hadn’t run a mara-thon before.

“You want to make sure there is nice, p r o t e c t e d clothing between you and any friction-causing surface,” he said. “Get protective medicine, if pos-sible. That can quickly ruin a race if you have bad nipple burn or any of those.”

For fi rst-time runners, Youse recommended using plain vaso-line to prevent chafi ng.

“You can buy a one-pound jar for four or fi ve dollars, which

most people don’t having trouble affording,” he said. “It can last the entire running season.”

Lisa Sparrow, Champaign resi-dent, has run the marathon twice before and said she learned a lot from the symposium.

“The fi rst time I was not really sure why I decided to run, and I had no idea what I was doing. This time, I’m just trying to be more prepared and interested in if I am doing the right things,” Sparrow said. “Some of the injuries, the overuse injuries that they talk-

ed about, ways to notice them and what is what, how to deal with it — was pretty helpful.”

Luis Delfin, Christie Clinic employee, was one of the volun-teers who helped organize the whole event by preparing food and drinks, set-ting up chairs and tables and c o n t a c t i n g speakers.

“We do a lot to try to synthe-size and get a lot

of health education in the com-munity. We felt that this type of event would bring a lot of value to the community just because we have six different providers talking about different aspects, especially for runners, to get a lot of knowledge, such as things with pain. Hopefully, they (attend-ees) get lots of their questions answered.”

Christie Clinic hosts runner’s symposium

duction for just the elementary students at 10 a.m. Friday and performed again for the public Friday evening.

Julia Celentano, sophomore in FAA, coordinated the project this year. Celentano was an actor in the production her freshman year

and accepted the role as coordi-nator this year after having an “absolutely fantastic time” the previous year. She said she sees value for the students in having their work come to life.

“When you’re in school, it’s all great that you write stories and all that,” Celentano said. “But it’s a completely different experi-ence knowing that someone took the time and was so inspired by

your work that they would take the time to do this and put it on stage.”

Parents of the children also expressed appreciation for their children’s work being turned into skits. Mahesh Gubba, father of Anisha Gubba, a fi fth grade stu-dent at Booker T. Washington, said he thinks such a project is valuable for children because it will engage the children further

in the writing process.“It’s actually good because

it gets them into the thinking mode,” Gubba said. “They write stories, but they’re not very atten-tive to the detail of it. When some-thing like this happens, they get more interested in it.”

Gubba added that Anisha was very enthusiastic about seeing her story on stage. Anisha com-mented that it “felt as if it was a

real movie.”Actors in the SPOT Project said

they appreciated the opportunity to participate in the project. Nata-sha Larkin, exchange student from England, said she chose to act in the show because of the out-reach aspect of the production.

“I’m quite interested in theater in the community,” Larkin said.

Justice Janowski, junior in FAA, assistant coordinator and

actor in the SPOT Project, said the experience was one of the most rewarding in her life. She said she wants to be an educa-tor in the future and found that watching the children’s talent come to life was inspiring for kids and adults alike.

Fighting back tears, Janowski said, “Seeing them happy made me proud because it’s like they’re proud of themselves.”

FROM PAGE 1A

SPOT

preparations for “Cotton Club” began in September with the selection of nine executive board members. Myles and the other executive board members then selected the show’s theme and began holding auditions for the show’s performers.

Artists auditioned for the opportunity to portray famous acts. After they were selected, they worked with the executive board to select appropriate acts to fi t into the show’s script.

Since November, the show’s performers have met three times per week for three-hour practices, with the board meet-ing an additional three hours per week, Myles said. She said there were not any major prob-lems throughout the production’s preparation.

They worked together so well that they were even able to include a last-minute three-song tribute to Whitney Hous-ton, Perkins said.

“This board was so creative,” Perkins said. “They just did an excellent job.”

FROM PAGE 1A

COTTON CLUB

she handled the Urbana-Cham-paign’s Senate meeting on Dec. 5, where some senators expressed strong disapproval of Hogan’s plans while others encouraged the group to have a discussion.

Just a day later, Hogan emailed Board of Trustees chairman Christopher Kennedy, express-ing his misgivings about the Urbana senate, saying the cam-pus has always been “opposition-al” on reforms he has made over the last 18 months. In that email, Hogan said Wise failed to prop-erly respond to faculty concerns, especially when LAS dean Ruth Watkins said enrollment decisions should be made at the respective campuses, under the provost’s authority.

“(It seems) to convey (her) implicit support for rejecting the board’s and my plans to address our declining enrollment perfor-mance through the reforms pro-posed in the report,” Hogan said of Wise.

At that meeting, Wise called an Urbana task force’s review of Hogan’s report “thoughtful,” say-ing the campus should have more input during the implementation stages. But this review report only accepted three of the 21 rec-ommendations, saying that many required further discussion or complete overhaul before imple-mentation. However, Wise did not publicly endorse either report dur-ing that meeting.

Hogan added later in his email to Kennedy: “I’m meeting with Phyl-lis (in two days) about this, and I’m hopeful that after a very frank dis-cussion with her, she will begin to

assume a strong leadership role on this and other matters.”

Hogan met with all three chan-cellors that week and provided talking points to communicate to their campuses. One talking point told faculty leaders that the chan-cellors felt that faculty and deans will continue to play the same role in the admissions process as they do now.

“They’re standard operating procedure in every large institu-tion and organization,” Hardy said. “We have three different chancel-lors with three different campuses and (there is) obviously a desire to make sure that everybody is communicating the same infor-mation to the many constituents of the University.”

After his meeting with the chan-cellors, Hogan emailed Kennedy saying that he told the chancel-lors during a “very serious con-versation” that he and the trust-ees endorsed the new plan and “expected them to follow suit.”

On Dec. 12 — the day the anon-ymous emails were sent to the University Senates Conference — Wise told members of the Sen-ate Executive Committee and the press that the chancellors agreed to the idea of hiring an executive director for enrollment manage-ment, calling it a “doable thing.” This was partly because the chan-cellors had been assured that the campus will have input in the hir-ing process, according to Wise.

Even with this assertion, mem-bers of the executive commit-tee endorsed the campus’ enroll-ment management review report and forwarded it to the trustees, Hogan and members of the Uni-versity Senates Conference, who were preparing to issue their own review report.

FROM PAGE 1A

ENROLLMENT

More on-air: Tune in to WPGU 107.1-FM at 5 p.m. for more information

about the American Cup in Champaign.

»

» » » » » » »

» » » » » » »

“The fi rst time I was not really sure why I decided to run, and I had no idea what I was doing. This time, I’m just trying to be more prepared and

interested in if I am doing the right things.”

LISA SPARR, Champaign resident