The Spectator

THE SPECTATORTHE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-EAU CLAIRE’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER SINCE 1923

VOL. 92, NO. 19 SPRING 2014Thursday, Feb. 13

NEWS SPORTS CURRENTS OP / ED STUDENT LIFEPAGES 1-5 PAGES 7-9 PAGES 10-12 PAGES 13-15 PAGE 16

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What has been your favorite Olympic moment to this point?

Exclusively this week on spectatornews.comNEWS: Jenny Almquist, founder of a sex trafficking advocacy group, holds a talk session at Davies Center.

SPORTS: Men’s tennis goes 1-1 in two matches against a pair of Illinois schools over the weekend.

Fishing for funds

Saturday, the UW-Eau Claire Athletics Department and Recreation Department held the first annual The Jig’s Up ice fishing contest on Lake Altoona as a joint fundraiser.

The event ran from 6 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., with tickets cost-ing $25 per registered fish. The event also offered a variety of prizes from area businesses and sponsors, especially the largest sponsor, Scheels.

The lake was busy all day, even though it was 18 below zero when they were setting up to open.

Director of Athletics Scott Kilgallon said the event raised a lot of money and had a good turnout, despite the cold weather.

“For a first-time event, I think it was very successful,” Kilgallon said. “And honestly, we’ll probably have to look for a bigger lake.”

Some of the athletics de-partment staff was working, along with players and coaches from the football team.

Mark Munger, a junior football player at Eau Claire, said he saw a lot of commu-nity members while he was working.

“It was a pretty good turn-out, considering the weather,” Munger said. “But the great prizes are probably another

New budget battles waning enrollment on campusTurnout is high for Athletics Department and Recreation Department

fundraiser despite cold temperatures Glen Olson STAFF WRITER

ELIZABETH JACKSON/ The Spectator NICE CATCH: Blugold football player Jake Safstrom caught a 4.33 pound Northern Pike at the Jig’s Up Competition Saturday on Lake Altoona. The event raised money for the Athletics and Recreation Departments.>> FISH page 7

UW-Eau Claire students may see tuition bills jump $13 next year if Student Sen-ate approves next year’s Or-ganized Activities Budget on Monday.

Eau Claire expects low-er enrollment numbers next year, which are driving a 3.05 percent increase in segregat-ed fees — a charge on top of tuition — to avoid big cuts to student organizations like athletics and art programs.

Any higher and Senate would have to justify the increase to the UW System Board of Regents, who hold the power to rework the bud-get if it disagrees with Sen-ate’s seg fee level Tyler Will, Senate Finance Commission director, said.

“We did the best we could with declining enrollment,” Will said.

Of the 28 programs fund-ed by seg fees, 11 will get less money next year, 11 will get more and six will get the same amount if Senate ap-proves the budget without changes.

Student org funding de-pends on full-time enrollment numbers. If fewer students enroll in classes full-time, fewer students pay seg fees and less money flows into the organized activity budget.

“I would like to see en-rollment go up so we don’t have to continue on this path of having to draw back fund-ing,” Will said.

Before finance drafts org funding, university budget of-ficer Mark Reeves estimates how many students will en-roll in classes full-time, and how much money seg fees can bring in.

FTE peaked in 2011 at about 9,700 students but has been declining since. Next year, Reeves estimates about 9,200 students will enroll full-time at Eau Claire — or about 140 fewer students than this year.

THEN AND NOW

Back in 2008, Student Senate held nearly $1 mil-lion in its carryover account, which goes toward fund-ing unexpected expenses throughout the year.

But Senate learned the state of Wisconsin could snatch unused student money if the carryover got too high, Will said. So it started spoon-ing that extra cash into stu-dent organizations and other projects to scare away state budget hawks.

Reeves said carryover funds also allowed Senate to spend leftover money instead of hiking up student fees.

“There has been a num-ber of efforts to keep the seg fee level increase as little as possible and use up some of those carryover balances,” Reeves said.

Last year though, Senate increased funding for only one organization — the Athletics Department — after ‘08 sur-plus funds dwindled. Senate’s reserve account spending whittled the carryover from about $140,000 in the 2012 budget year to about $9,000 now.

But since budget year 2011, while Senate was cut-ting down its carryover ac-count, student organizations have been saving more.

Nate BeckCHIEF COPY EDITOR

“I would like to see enrollment

go up so we don’t have to continue ... to draw back

funding.”TYLER WILL

Student Senate Finance Commission director

Fewer full-time students in classrooms will mean higher fees for students next year if Senate signs off on bill Monday

>> SEG FEES page 2

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CORRECTION POLICY:While The Spectator continually strives for excellence and accuracy, we resign the fact that we will occasion-ally make errors. When these errors are made, The Spectator will take responsibility for correcting the error and will maintain a high level of transparency to be sure all parties are confident that the incorrect information does not spread.

CORRECTIONS: In the Feb. 6 issue, we incorrectly spelled Heidi Schmit and Mike Wick’s names in the ‘Frozen Future’ article. We apologize for this error.

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Thursday, Feb. 13NEWS EDITORS: Emily Albrent and Katie Bast

The UW-Eau Claire Student Office of Sustainability got the go-ahead from Student Senate to spend $11,000 of its funds to restock its de-pleted supply of reusable water bot-tles.

The bottles will be passed out at SOS events to serve multiple objec-tives, student officials from the seg-regated fee-funded office said.

The bottles cost about $10,300 overall, but the office asked for a bit extra as a buffer in case there were some unexpected costs, the officials said.

“[The bottles] address the issue of waste management,” Director of SOS Emy Marier said.

She said providing students an alternative to disposable bottles re-duces the effect of waste created by the university.

“It also ties in to the funding of water fill stations,” she said.

A couple years ago, SOS began paying for these fill stations to be installed around campus, which pro-vide an easier way for students and faculty to refill water bottles.

Freshman geography major Thomas Wavrin said he uses reus-able water bottles. He said even more than the environmental benefits, he doesn’t buy bottled water because the expense doesn’t make sense.

“I find it silly to buy water when it’s already available,” he said.

Each bottle costs $9.50. With added expenses such as shipping, the total cost comes to $11,000, or about $11 a bottle.

Mariah Dorner, management intern with the sustainability office said the expense is well worth it since the bottles are in line with the sustainability goals of SOS. They are made in the United States, which cuts down shipping’s carbon foot-print, and the bottles are made of re-cyclable aluminum.

Wavrin said purchasing these bottles is a good investment of stu-dent money. He said he would use a bottle if given one.

The bottles will be distributed at SOS-sanctioned events. Dorner said in the past students would end up with more than one bottle. She said although it’s difficult to monitor

Alex ZankOP/ED EDITOR

Part of org’s budget will go to restocking reusable bottles

Senate approves more water bottles

In late January, Business Insider pub-lished an article ranking U.S. universities by on-campus drinking and drug arrests per 1,000 students. Along with four other UW System schools, UW-Eau Claire made the top 20.

The report names UW-Eau Claire as 17th in the nation for on-campus drinking and drug arrests, but the statistics aren’t as clear as they may seem.

The report used data from universities with a student body of more than 5,000 stu-dents. That constraint brought the number of universities down to a few thousand, compared to the approximately 7,000 universities in the nation. The report also used a broad definition of arrest. UW-Eau Claire Chief of Police, David Sprick said arrest can also mean tickets and citations, “not being hauled away by a squad car.”

A reputation for underage and binge drink-ing isn’t anything new to the Midwest, and while some university students may see the report as an example of Blugold party habits, others, like Dean of Students Joe Abhold, see the numbers as a high level of enforcement.

Abhold has worked within the UW System for 14 years. He said people generally know about Wisconsin and the Midwest’s alcohol use issues.

UW-Oshkosh, UW-Stout and UW-La Crosse took the first three spots in the top 20

list. Western Illinois Univer-sity and University of Minne-sota-Duluth also take spots for Midwest universities on the list.

Sprick said the statistics didn’t surprise him, but he didn’t expect Eau Claire to be ranked 17th nationally.

“(The numbers are) fairly consistent as far as underage drinking goes, as drug use

goes,” Sprick said. “No peaks or valleys.”A 2013 Center for Alcohol Studies and Ed-

ucation survey said 84 percent of Eau Claire students consumed alcohol in the past year. That compares to 81.8 percent of students in a national Core study. Core is the largest nation-al database of alcohol and drug use in post-sec-ondary educational institutions.

Core reports that 43.9 percent of students reported binge drinking in the two weeks prior to taking the survey, and Eau Claire reported 49 percent.

According to the CASE survey, in 2013 32.8 percent of students said they had used marijuana in the past year and 16.3 percent said they had used it in the past 30 days. CASE groups other illegals drugs into a single cate-gory. The results of the survey said 4.3 percent of students said yes to using illegal drugs in the past year and 1.3 percent said yes to the

Martha Landry EDITOR IN CHIEF

UW-Eau Claire makes list of top alcohol and drug arrests University credits high enforcement rates for top-20 ranking

>> BOTTLES page 4

>> ALCOHOL page 4

Between fiscal year 2012 and 2013, the total amount in all student organization carryovers jumped from about $450,000 to about $750,000.

That means next year, Senate will pull savings from student organizations to help rebuild the Senate carryover, Will said.

CARRYOVERS

Will said the finance com-mission set a target amount for carryover holdings: about $30,000.

But to get there, finance will use .75 percent of all seg fees to help rebuild its carryover.

“ W e would like to build (the c a r r y o v e r ) up, not to where it was, but enough to m a i n t a i n

some kind of security,” Will said.

Finance also cut Counsel-ing Services about 10 percent and the Children’s Nature Academy about 45 percent because both programs held hefty rainy day funds, Will said.

These programs will use savings to cover reduced stu-dent money next year.

“It wasn’t that they were saying the services weren’t necessary,” Lynn Wilson, Counseling Services director, said. “They are very support-ive of counseling services …”

Last year counseling won a special allocation from a chancellor’s fund to pay for two more staff positions this year and next year.

Wilson said her office is busy, even with extra staff, and is trying to secure fund-ing for those positions by the time the chancellor’s fund runs out.

That’s part of the reason counseling has been building

a carryover — in case it had to use its savings to keep peo-ple on the payroll, she said.

W i l s o n said she un-d e r s t a n d s why finance wants to

give them less money next year but hopes future sena-tors won’t hold funding at that level.

“It’s important for the new senators to understand that because the Senate only gave us that amount … that doesn’t mean we don’t need the other amount that has been allocated in the past,” Wilson said. “Your savings ac-count only lasts so long.”

SEG FEES/ Senate working to restore savings

Beck can be reached at [email protected] or @NateBeck9.

WILL

WILSON

O’HALLORAN

NEWS3Thursday, Feb. 13

CAMPUS CALENDAR

NOTABLE EVENTS HAPPENING BOTH ON AND OFF CAMPUS

THURSDAY, FEB. 13

FRIDAY, FEB. 14

SATURDAY, FEB. 15

SUNDAY, FEB. 16

MONDAY, FEB. 17

TUESDAY, FEB. 18

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 19

• 5:30 - 6:30 p.m. — Therapeutic Slow Flow Yoga, The Center

• 6 - 7:30 p.m. — Rug Hooking Class, Chippewa Valley Museum

• 8:15 a.m. — EC half marathon buildup runs, Owen Park

• 10:30 a.m.- 12 p.m. — Youth Archery Workshops, Hilltop Center

• 12 - 1 p.m. — African-American History Month: Student Perception Panel, Davies Center

International Film Society:

“The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”

Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark become targets of the Capital after their victory in the 74th Hunger Games sparks a

rebellion in the Districts of Panem.

Runs from Feb. 7 - 97 p.m. — Fri. - Sat.2 p.m. — Sat.- Sun.

Woodland Theater, Davies Center

• 3 - 5 p.m. — African-American History Month: Film-Cracking the Code, Centennial Hall

• 6 - 9 p.m. — Winter After Hours, Boyd Park

• 6 - 7:30 p.m. — Tunes at the Tasting Lounge, Infinity Beverages Winery & Distillery

• 7:30 - 10:30 p.m. — Valentine’s Ballroom and Swing Dance, Eau Claire Moose Lodge

• 12 - 1 p.m. — Chancellor’s Round Table, Davies Center

• 9 p.m. — Karaoke, Pizza Plus

NEWS EDITORS: Emily Albrent and Katie Bast

• 2 p.m. — University Symphony Orchestra, Ganter Concert Hall

• 2 p.m. — The Famous Chinese Acrobats, The Heyde Center for the Arts

The push for gender-neutral

housing came at the end of Jan-uary from the Residence Hall Association, said Chuck Major, the director of Housing and Residence Life. Residence Hall Association approved a propos-al for gender-neutral housing and the Student Senate voted to back RHA on Feb. 3.

Gender-neutral housing would enable four people who identify as male, female or trans* to live together on a vol-unteer basis as an alternative to traditional residence halls.

UW-La Crosse and UW-Mil-waukee have similar programs for gender-neutral housing, with a small percentage of stu-dents taking advantage of the option. At La Crosse, eight of the 3,500 students living on campus are signed up for gen-der-neutral housing. At Mil-waukee 15 of 4,000 students live in gender-neutral housing on campus.

Major said he would expect similar percentages at Eau Claire, but said as long as you have options available, it is an improvement.

“If you only have a few peo-ple in a program it’s worth still worthwhile,” Major said. “It

benefits those people.”Since Housing and Resi-

dence Life is in support of gen-der-neutral housing, Major said he would make a recommen-dation to the vice chancellor of student affairs, Beth Hellwig, in the next week or two. Hellwig will then review the proposal and make a recommendation to the chancellor. If the proposal can make it through the higher levels of administration, Major said a few apartments in Chan-cellors Hall would initially be designated as gender-neutral. Creating the space for gen-der-neutral housing would not cost anything, Major said.

The Student Senate gen-

der-neutral legislation was au-thored primarily by Ben Thomp-son-Isaac who is an on-campus senator and also the RHA liai-son, said Stephen Kahlow, an off-campus senator. Kahlow said Thompson-Isaac attended all the RHA meetings and in-formed the Student Senate that gender-neutral housing legisla-tion was being passed through RHA. Thompson-Isaac suggest-ed Student Senate do the same to show support for the idea, Kahlow said.

Jessie Tremmel STAFF WRITER

Tremmel can be reached at [email protected] or @jessietremmel.

RHA and Student Senate are both in support of all-gender housing on campus

To read more about gen-der-neutral housing go to

spectatornews.com

Gender-neutral housing proposed

Ellis Williams: How did you find your way into teaching?

Joel Pace: My mom was teaching art when she was pregnant with me. I guess my first classroom experiences were very early on. My parents, both as artists and educa-tors, valued education and the arts above all else, so that path lead me to become an English professor. I also had some amazing mentors along the way, some of the most kind-hearted and generous people to shine a light on the path for me, and I really owe so much to them. As well as my parents and a music scholarship that helped me get through undergrad.

EW: Who were your mentors and how

did they help you out along the way?JP: The first is the chair of the English

department at Providence College (R.I.). His name is Dr. Bruce Graver. I grew up in the inner city and he instilled in me a love of po-etry about nature, which was a whole other world I could discover through poetry and trips out in nature from the city I grew up in. There is another professor. I studied abroad in England, I did my junior year abroad at Oxford (England), and I went back to Oxford to do my masters and doctorate, and there was a professor there named Dr. Valerie Dodd, and she really had students focus on self reliance. She really wanted to hear about the ideas we had. Sadly this man has passed on, but his name was Dr. Jonathan Word-sworth, and he was descended from poet Wil-liam Wordsworth. He was a world expert on romantic poetry, but in his class we’d all sit cross-legged on the floor and I had traveled

across the ocean to see what he had to say, and his interest was instead on what the stu-dents had to say, which was beautiful to me. Also I had another mentor named Dr. Ste-phen Gill, and he pushed me to do something entirely different from my dissertation, and was really just a guiding light along the way. I also have to shout out to my faculty in the English department who have been mentors to me, including many of whom now have re-tired and some of whom now are deceased, but I’ve been at Eau Claire for 15 years and I was mentored by them, because I had never taught in America before I was hired at Eau Claire.

EW: How did you end up in Eau Claire? JP: I had a really esoteric dissertation

topic, which was combining British litera-ture and American literature into Atlantic literature and when I went on the job mar-ket I was in England, but I wanted to move back to America and there were only two jobs in the entire United States for what I was doing because it was a new field. Eau Claire was one of those two places and I had such a warm interview process in Eau Claire and I really felt this was the place I wanted to devote my scholarly life.

GRAPHIC BY KARL ENGHOFER / The Spectator

To read more about English professor Joel Pace, go to

spectatornews.com

Williams can be reached at [email protected] or @BookofEllis.

4NEWS EDITORS: Emily Albrent and Katie Bast Thursday, Feb. 13

NEWS

Among the array of ads on TV for the Super Bowl, a Cheerios commercial depicting a multicultural family ap-peared on the screen. Although imag-es like these are now more prevalent in popular media, a group of students and faculty members said our society is still in the process of fully welcoming the idea of interracial couples.

On Monday afternoon in the Ho-Chunk room of Davies Center, a panel of students shared their experiences with interracial dating. The event, in conjunction with African-American History Month, has taken place for sev-eral years allowing people on campus to ask and answer questions about the topic. This year more than 40 students and professors attended.

The discussion points focused on interracial dating in American society as well as on campus.

Isiah Cage, a junior on the panel, related his experience of the “Eau Claire stare” in the past while walking around on cam-pus with his girl-friend of a differ-ent race.

While some people may think encounters like this don’t happen in today’s world, they do occur and are worth discussing in this context, Aleshia Green, a senior on the panel said.

During the event she said places like St. Paul, Minn. and Chicago are more accepting of interracial couples because they are more diverse cities. It is more common to see interracial cou-ples walking around the Mall of Amer-ica than around UW-Eau Claire, she said. This could be because only eight percent of the student body is multicul-tural, according to the 2013-2014 UW-Eau Claire Factbook.

Gender can also play a part in perceptions of interracial dating. The panel shared views of how normal it is for white men to date black women and vice versa.

The panel addressed ways their families and friends have reacted to interracial dating as well. Some mem-bers of the panel said their families and friends have been fully accepting, while others said it might take time to see it as normal.

During the event, Green said peo-ple tend to have expectations of her to date a black man. However, she said the people she knows will adjust to the idea of her dating a white man.

But interracial couples are not just among black people and white people. Jones posed the question of whether or not white and black people dating rises to a different level than people of other races dating or marrying.

The Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision in 1969 said laws could no longer be made to keep people from dating outside racial groups. But the laws before this time only applied to black and white people.

Carlos Diaz, a freshman politi-cal science major, said because of America’s past, he thinks people are more prone to ob-ject to dating rela-tionships between black people and white people.

As a whole, Diaz said the event shed light on an important sub-ject and brought up relevant topics he identified with as a person from a multicultural family.

“It’s an interesting topic because you hear about this and you live it and you see it … I definitely grew from (the discussion),” he said.

Justina Kinard, a sophomore ed-ucation major, said the panel was an opportunity for students to open their eyes to interracial dating and to think about how people can have meaningful relationships across racial lines.

The greater hope, Jones said in the discussion, is for people to consider in-tegration in intimate relationships so society can be unified.

Rachel Streich STAFF WRITER

Insight into interracial dating

Students share experiences and ideas at panel for African-American

History Month

strategies to cut down on how of-ten this happens.

“We do require students do some-thing specifically for the bottles now,” she said. “We have them sign up for our newsletter and ‘like’ us on Face-book.”

Sometimes the office hands out bottles as an award to the first few people who show up to events, she added.

SOS expenditures like the water bottle purchase all need to be ap-proved by Student Senate, which is why a vote was required at the gen-eral meeting Monday.

Zank can be reached at [email protected] or @AlexZank.

last 30 days and underage students who consumed alcohol in the past 30 days, but CASE Director Peggy O’Hal-loran said national numbers have de-creased as well.

“We are above national levels, but we are closer,” O’Halloran said.

Interpretation

When the Business Insider article was initially released, some students took to social media to express pride of their ‘party school,’ but Abhold said he has seen mixed responses from stu-dents, staff and faculty. While some embrace the idea, others have responded with dislike or an acknowledgment of the enforcement.

“Whenever situations like this come up, there are stu-dents who push back and say, ‘That’s not what I want my school to be known for,’” Abhold said. “I think we have to remember that the vast majority of the time, the vast majority of students are being responsible.”

Freshman Anne Zignego said she has friends and floor-mates who have received drinking citations in the dorms, so she can understand the number, but she isn’t proud.

“I think it’s a little disappointing,” Zignego said. “I’m not exactly happy with that number.”

Freshman Nate Oestreicher said the ranking doesn’t change the way he views the university’s reputation, be-cause it doesn’t mean illegal activity does not happen on other campuses.

“I know plenty of other colleges (where students) get away with whatever they want,” Oestreicher said.

O’Halloran said she encourages anyone to look at the numbers with a more critical lens, and not settle with the idea of Eau Claire as a ‘party school.’

“I saw it as we have a strategy of enforcement that goes along with other stuff we do around alcohol abuse on campus, and enforcement is a piece of that,” O’Halloran said. “It shows that police are enforcing policy and laws.”

Sprick said the university police work to enforce the law, but they aren’t unrealistic either. He said they re-alize students are going to break rules and laws — like

underage drinking and drug use. University officials en-courage students to be safe if they choose to participate in the activities.

“I think our community, our students have a pretty good relationship and understanding of trying to have some sort of balance of having a university in the middle of a city,” Sprick said. “As far as being respectful of neigh-bors who aren’t students ... students recognize when lines have been crossed and enforcement is appropriate.”

Sprick called attention to the fact that the study only uses data from police records at universities.

“If a private university doesn’t have a police depart-ment ... they might have the (administration) handling it or housing,” Sprick said. “They might not be bringing the police in.”

Moving forward, Abhold said he hopes anyone reading the report critically interprets the data and realizes Eau Claire takes student alcohol and drug use very seriously.

“As a campus we recognize there is the availability of alcohol, the temptation of alcohol,” Abhold said. “We address that through education and enforcement, and a lot of great things for students to do that don’t involve drinking.”

ALCOHOL/ Students and officials avoid ‘party school’ image

BOTTLES/ SOS to distribute at events, monitor distribution

Landry can be reached at [email protected] or @MarthaLandryy.

ABHOLD

“ It’s an interesting topic

because you hear about

this and you live it and

you see it ... I definitely

grew from (the

discussion).”

CARLOS DIAZFreshman

“Whenever situations like this come

up, there are students who push back

and say, ‘That’s not what I want my

school to be known for.’ I think ... the

vast majority of students are being

responsible.”

JOE ABHOLDDean of Students

Streich can be reached at [email protected] or @RachelStreich17. GRAPHIC BY KARL ENGHOFER / The Spectator

5Thursday, Feb. 13

COMMUNITY NEWSNEWS EDITORS: Emily Albrent and Katie Bast

The skate park local that skateboarders lob-bied for in the late 1990s saw its final skaters last fall.

Executive Director of the Eau Claire YMCA, Ken Van Es said the closing was motivated by a number of factors.

Attendance was on a steady decline while maintenance costs were on the rise, Van Es said.

“Everything we tried kind of dwindled over the years and at some point we can use our re-sources elsewhere,” Van Es said.

The park was opened in 1999 at 229 Moore St. in response to a demand for a place for skat-ers other than the streets. The city couldn’t find a place without neighborhood complaints so the YMCA stepped in, Van Es said, offering to ded-icate a piece of land without many neighboring houses to the project.

Since its opening, the park has seen nothing but decline in attendance numbers and when the city opened a free, unattended skate park of its own in 2013 things got even grimmer for the YMCA skate park.

UW-Eau Claire senior David Stingley began working at the YMCA skate park last spring

and said on an average day he would see about ten skaters at the park, which charged $2 for members and $4 for non-members.

Though Stingley doesn’t skate much he con-siders the skate park beneficial to the commu-nity, he said.

“It’s kind of unfortunate to see it close be-cause the ramps are some of the nicest in the city. There is another skate park but the YMCA (ramps) are actually wood,” Stingley said.

Local skateboarder and Eau Claire sophomore, An-thony Ducosin said he consid-ered the YMCA skate park a quality place to skate.

“I don’t see how it is going to benefit the community if they are closing one of the two skate parks in Eau Claire. People are going to have to skate on the streets,” Ducosin said. “It definitely is a loss. It was a quality skate park, it

could have been maintained better in previous years, but it was a good place to skate.”

Stingley said he hopes to see the equipment from the YMCA skate park donated somewhere else.

“It is pretty good material and I think it

can be used somewhere else. It’s unfortunate to lose this spot for skaters,” Stingley said. “I hope they don’t start skating around the city because I know a lot of people in the public really hate that and I think it would be nice if they donate them somewhere else so they can still be used.”

Van Es said the YMCA has dealers attempt-ing to sell the equipment. As for the land that

sits right next to the YMCA’s tennis center, Van Es said there are no concrete plans, but outdoor tennis courts are a possibility.

Courtney Kueppers COPY EDITOR

Kueppers can be reached at [email protected] or @cmkueppers.

Skate park is closed for good, according to board of directors

YMCA no longer on board

ELIZABETH JACKSON / The Spectator ON A TIGHT GRIND: Due to declining attendance and rising maintenance costs, the YMCA skate park won’t re-open. The park opened in 1999, but couldn’t compete with the free park opened by the city in 2013.

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SPORTS7SPORTS EDITOR: Steve Fruehauf Thursday, Feb. 13

Adam HjelterGuard

Men’s Basketball

SophomoreHutchinson (Minn.)

Hutchinson High School

Getting to know Hjelter:

Favorite food: Salmon

Favorite movie: The World’s Fastest Indian

Favorite NBA player: Steph Curry

Favorite song: “Return of Simba” by J. Cole

Favorite class: Statistics

The sophomore sharpshooter has been lighting up the scoreboard all season, particularly in his last two games before Wednesday. On Feb. 5, he scored 19 points against UW-Superior. Saturday, he poured in a career-high 39 points at UW- River Falls. Entering play Wednes-day Hjelter is fourth in the WIAC at 16.3 points per game and first in both 3-pointers made and free-

throw percentage.

GRAPHIC BY KARL ENGHOFER / The Spectator

FISH/ Kilgallon looking for even more participants next year

thing that draws people out.” There were prizes for the 100

largest fish, with money, fishing gear and gift cards up for grabs.

The $1,000 top prize went to Michael Andrews for his 4.73 pound Northern, with second place going to Dennis Steffen for a 4.56 pounder and third to Jake Safstrom with another at 4.33 pounds.

There was also a raffle with 11 winners. Prizes ranged from $50 gift cards to a large ice fishing package.

Andy Jepsen, Facilities Coordi-nator for the Athletic Department, said the event was a success for the departments involved. For a new fundraiser, it had been better than they thought.

He said they had been running around like crazy since set-up at 5:15 a.m.

“I knew it would be a great event

for community involvement and that the community would rally around it,” Jepsen said.

He also said they wanted to do this event because they knew it would attract people other than the usual supporters of the athletics and

recreation departments. They knew the community loved to ice fish, so it seemed like a “natural fit.”

He said quite a few students showed up too, though not as many as they would like to have in the future.

In all, the contestants caught 230 fish, and the departments reached their goal of selling 500 tickets.

Kilgallon said because the event was different from what they have had in the past, they didn’t know what to expect, and hadn’t known whether they would end up with “five people or 1,000 people.”

Kilgallon said they had a lot of help, and the community members enjoyed the event.

“We had great support,” Kilgallon said, “not only from athletics staff, but from the football team too.”

“I knew it would be a great event for com-munity involvement and that the com-

munity would rally around it.”ANDY JESPEN

Facilities Coordinator for the Athletic Department

Olson can be reached at [email protected] or @GlenPOlson.

The UW-Eau Claire Blugolds defeated UW-Superior 3-0 at Hobbs Ice Center on Friday night.

The game was a defensive bat-tle. Both teams struggled to score until 14:50 of the first period when Blugold senior forward Jon Wag-goner found the back of the net for the 10th time this season. Senior forwards Brian Nehring and Jared Williams had assists.

Waggoner said the offense was able to put enough pressure on the Yellowjackets defense to force ju-nior goalie Dayn Belfour to move slightly out of position.

“We were making them run and scramble, and we knew that their goalie was a very lively goal-ie,” Waggoner said. “He plays out. We were crashing and with all the pressure coming, I was able to find a way to get it past the goalie.”

In the second half, 10 minutes passed without either team scoring. However, at 10:10, junior defense-man Jack Callahan scored off his own rebound for his fourth goal of the year. Freshman forwards David Henry and Adam Knochenmus got the assists.

Shortly after, Eau Claire scored again, this time off junior forward Ross Andersen’s rebounded shot. Freshman forward Patrick Moore was able to put away the rebound to put the Blugolds up 3-0. Andersen and senior forward Niko Kapeta-novic picked up assists on the play.

Despite Waggoner’s five-minute penalty for cross checking, the Yel-lowjackets couldn’t score and Eau Claire finished the night at 15-4-1.

The next night, the Eau Claire team again took on Superior at

home, prevailing 6-2 to improve to 5-2-1 in conference play.

The first period began similarly, as both teams were physical. At 7:29 of the first period, the Yellowjackets were able to score and found their only

lead of the two game series. The rest of the period included no scoring and one penalty.

The Blugolds scored three times in the second period. At 1:21, Andersen took a shot that passed by the Superior goalie and sat on the goal line. Senior forward Niko Kapeta-novic quickly came in and knocked the puck over the line tying the game at 1-1.

Eau Claire then took the lead as junior defenseman Chris Heineman found the back of the net at 10:45 with senior forward Brian Nehring for the assist.

“Everybody did their job which led to opportunities,” Heineman said. “Everything was going our way.”

Andersen got another chance to shoot in the second period and he scored again for a 3-1 lead.

Into the third, the Yellowjackets (7-13-3, 2-6-2) found a way to score, cutting the deficit to 3-2. However, it wasn’t enough as the Blugolds came back and scored three times courtesy of junior forward Joe Krause (8:21), Nehring (9:14) and Knochenmus (13:38).

With the Saturday night win, head coach Matt Loen had his 100th career victory. He now holds a 100-76-13 record in his 7th season.

“As to the 100 wins, that’s why I’m here. I want to win games,” Loen said. “The wins are great but it’s not all me, it’s everyone involved.”

Loen also said he’s here to put together competitive teams with a good group of guys. He said he wants the total package: the aca-demics, the athletics and the stu-dent life.

This weekend, the Blugolds go to UW-Stevens Point to try to con-tinue their four-game win streak. Game time is set for 7 p.m on Fri-day.

Austin MaiSTAFF WRITER

Loen reaches 100 career wins after the men’s hockey weekend sweep

Blugolds go 2-0 against UW-Superior

Mai can be reached at [email protected] or @austinisfresh.

LOEN

WAGGONER

SPORTSSPORTS EDITOR: Steve Fruehauf Thursday, Feb. 13 8

Blugolds suffer

Offense goes cold in second half against UW-River Falls

Budget prevents team

UW-Eau Claire wrestling team has had three different head coaches in past four years, a struggle for athletes

Just from watching last Fri-day’s match against UW-Oshkosh, signs of a tight-knit UW-Eau Claire men’s wrestling team were appar-ent. Viewers could see the effort on the mat and support for each other.

But what they may not have seen during the match are the struggles occurring off the mat.

In the past four years, the wrestling team has had three head coaches and is still looking to fill the position permanently. Director of Athletics Scott Kilgallon said the team has the smallest budget of all 22 of the university’s sports teams. As a result, Kilgallon said it is dif-ficult to afford a permanent head coach.

“The state hasn’t been too kind with the budget, and they put a freeze on all of that,” Kilgallon said. “It’s not a lot of money and we have been fortunate to get all these coach-es together and keep the program moving forward.”

Steve Wozniak, the current in-terim coach, said he has been with the team for three years now, two of those serving as an assistant coach. He also said that although he is pur-suing a master’s degree at UW-Stout, he can still fulfill his commitment to the team as a head coach.

“I have a huge passion for the sport and I am at a time in my life where I can take on this extra re-sponsibility whereas some of the other coaches in the past were not at that point in their lives,” Wozniak said.

Kilgallon said Don Parker’s ca-reer coaching the team ended after 32 years due to a hunting accident. Kilgallon said the team went through a number of differ-ent coaches after the accident.

Luke Ortscheid, a 184-pound se-nior, said although the previous head

coaches had been in the program pri-or to being taking the head position, it was still difficult to adjust to.

“You kind of have to start all over again,” Ortscheid said. “You have to get used to the way they run prac-tice, you have to get used to interact-ing with them and the fact that some of our coaches have been around our age, that makes a different dynamic as well.”

149-pound senior Ryan Seidler said he believes becoming familiar with the expectations of each coach is difficult. He also said forming a personal relationship with them is challenging but necessary.

“Connecting on a personal level and not just as a coach is important in a sport,” Seidler said. “You will work harder for someone that you have more respect for and know on a personal level.”

Ortscheid said he believes the issue lies within the athletic depart-ment and their lack of commitment in finding a head coach.

“You can’t hold it against the new coach coming in and you can tell there is a frustration among the guys,” Ortscheid said. “What it comes down to is the athletics department not committing to finding somebody

that is going to bring solidarity to the team.”

Kilgallon said in order to fill the head coach posi-tion, the wrestling program would need to receive more budget dol-lars and full-time employment, both of which the state controls. However, he said he does not believe it will happen in the near future.

“It’s my 10th year here and with a lack of raises, I don’t see that in the eminent future for us,” Kilgallon said. “But it is certainly something in the strategic plan to help the wres-tling program move forward.”

Danielle PahlMULTIMEDIA EDITOR

from filling position

DANIELLE PAHL / The Spectator NO BUDGET: UW-Eau Claire freshman Matthew Laugen wrestles UW-Oshkosh Junior Tom Dahlke Friday at the McPhee Physical Education Center in Eau Claire.

Pahl can be reached at [email protected] or @DaniellePahl.

KILGALLON

ORTSCHEID

To see the wrestling photo gallery, go to

spectatornews.com

It seemed like things were finally clicking for the UW-Eau Claire women’s basketball team.

The Blugolds had won three of their last four contests and put themselves in a position to not just qualify for the WIAC tournament, but even host a playoff game. And they were welcoming UW-River Falls, who had lost seven contests in a row.

But as the old saying goes, you can’t win if you can’t score. That’s exactly what happened to the Blu-golds in a 47-44 loss to the Falcons Saturday night in Zorn Arena.

Three days removed from light-ing up the scoreboard for 73 points in a big win against UW-Superior, Eau Claire shot just 29 percent from the floor, including 21 percent in the second half.

“We shot poorly today, unfortu-nately, and a lot of those shots that went the other night didn’t go to-night,” head coach Tonja Englund said.

Sophomore guard Teenie Licht-fuss said it wasn’t a matter of get-ting bad looks at the hoop, it was a matter of not putting the ball through the bottom of the net.

“We got open looks, we just didn’t take our time, (we) rushed them,” Lichtfuss said. “We just didn’t finish.”

Despite the shooting woes, the Blugolds had a chance to win the ballgame.

Lichtfuss buried a 3-point bas-ket with five minutes to go to tie the score at 39, and with 1:43 re-maining in the contest, she found a wide-open Rachel Egdorf under the basket for a go-ahead layup to make the score 42-41 Blugolds.

The lead would be short-lived, however, as Falcon forward Tess Lueders knocked down a jump shot 30 seconds later to give River Falls the lead for good.

Junior forward Courtney Lewis made a shot with 12 seconds to cut the deficit to 45-44, but after Riv-er Falls made two free throws with five seconds to play, the Blugolds weren’t able to get a shot off before the buzzer sounded.

“We know what to do, we just for some reason didn’t do it,” Licht-

fuss said about not shooting before the buzzer. “We obvi-ously should have got a shot off at the end.”

L i c h t f u s s scored a game-high 14 points while Lewis chipped in eight for the Blu-golds.

The loss denied Eau Claire the chance to climb up in the WIAC standings, and the team now finds itself having to fight in the last few games to clinch a spot in the playoffs.

“It’s a missed opportunity is what it is, and it’s a lesson for the group to learn,” Englund said.

The Blugolds will have to learn quickly as they finish out against UW-Platteville at home as well as UW-Whitewater on the road. The Blugolds lost to both the Pioneers and Warhawks earlier in the year.

Lichtfuss said the team will come ready and hungry to attempt to secure a spot in the conference tournament.

“We have a lot of work to do, but I think we still have a good shot to win out the rest of the season after tonight,” Lichtfuss said. “We definitely took a little step back af-ter Superior last game, but I think we can build off it.”

The Blugolds fell to No. 17 UW-Oshkosh on the road Wednes-day. They were down by 14 at halftime before clawing back to trim the lead in the second half. Eau Claire ultimately fell by a score of 66-55 to the now 20-2 Titans.

The Blugolds shot the ball bet-ter against Oshkosh, shooting 40 percent from 3-point land as well as going 15-for-19 from the free-throw line.

Lichtfuss once again led the team in scoring, netting 15 points on 6-of-11 shooting. Freshman Abby Midtlien also chipped in 13 points.

Eau Claire will get the week-end off before hosting Platteville at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Zorn Arena.

Nick EricksonMANAGING EDITOR

crucial loss

Erickson can be reached at [email protected] or @NickErickson8.

LICHTFUSS

SPORTS9SPORTS EDITOR: Steve Fruehauf Thursday, Feb. 13

STEVE FRUEHAUF / The Spectator IN TRAFFIC: Junior Lewis Mau passes the ball out of the paint during a Blugold loss to UW-Oshkosh.

Over the past week, the UW-Eau Claire men’s basketball team had one of their players score 39 points in one game, endured a 45- minute game delay and battled through a hard-nosed defensive contest. The end result was a 1-1 conference game split.

The first win came Saturday at UW-River Falls as the Blugolds defeated the Falcons 73-65. Eau Claire fell to UW-Oshkosh 65-48 Wednesday night.

In the River Falls game, soph-omore Adam Hjelter scored a ca-reer-high 39 points en route to a Blugold victory. He said the game began with his first couple of shots feeling good off his hand, and from there he wanted to stay aggressive for the rest of the game.

“When I start getting my shot going it puts pressure on the de-

fense because they can’t key in on one thing since I primarily get my points off jump shots and threes,” Hjelter said. “That opens it up for my other teammates to get to the paint because they won’t leave me.”

Getting into the paint was ex-actly what Eau Claire was able to do as the team shot 26 free throws and made 22. Hjelter said the team knows they are good at free-throw shooting, and he does not shy away from going to the line at big mo-ments in the game.

“I always em-brace that mo-ment when it’s crunch time, espe-cially with some-thing like free throws,” Hjelter said.

Having the confidence to knock down free throws at the end

of games is es-sential for any basketball team and head coach Matt Siverling said Hjelter is the team’s best free-throw shoot-er, and his play-ers realize if they get him the ball he can close out games.

“He works at it and puts in the time,” Siverling said. “I think he is very confident in himself because he is in the gym all the time.”

With about nine minutes left to go in the game, Siverling said his team experienced something he had never encountered before. The fire alarm began to sound, and the game was stopped.

It is still unknown whether or not Hjelter’s hot shooting contrib-uted to the fire alarms being set off, but what is known is the delay

lasted about 45 minutes. Siverling said it was a distraction.

“The big thing was to stay loose and stay focused on what was taking place,” Siverling said. “Both teams had to go through some ad-versity, and it was going to be the team that came out and executed the best who was going to win the game.”

The Blugolds responded to their coach’s words by outscoring the Falcons 20-12 in the final nine minutes and went on to win the game.

Sophomore guard Eric Effertz said the game delay was crazy, but his team was able to overcome the situation by telling each other they were going to get the job done because they were not going to get back on the bus with a loss.

“It was great to get the win, and we strive for it every night so it is a good feeling and we hope we can feel that every night we play a game.”

The Blugolds will be back in action again at 7 p.m. Feb. 19 at UW-Platteville.

Ellis WilliamsSTAFF WRITER

Sophomore’s 39 points help men’s basketball team defeat UW-River Falls

A career scoring night

Williams can be reached at [email protected] or @BookofEllis.EFFERTZ

SIVERLING

CURRENTS10CURRENTS EDITOR: Zack Katz Thursday, Feb. 13

PHOTOS BY KATY MACEK / The Spectator CUT LOOSE: Woodcarver Kevin Midthun stands with a piece he crafted during Saturday’s art crawl. Midthun’s woodcarving was one of a number of artistic mediums represented at the event.

Banbury Place is to home many Eau Claire shops, but this weekend it hosted the annual Banbury Art Crawl, where local and visiting artists were able to set up and show off their pieces.

Ryan Hamilton, a senior at UW-Eau Claire, attended the crawl on Saturday and said he enjoyed looking at all of the different types of artwork. But that wasn’t what impressed him the most.

“I think my favorite thing over-all, aside from the variety of mediums that are presented, would probably be the fact that it’s such a good use of a space,” Hamilton said.

The artists were spread out through two buildings and featured various forms ranging from pottery, jewelry, woodcarving and everything in between.

One of the artists participating in the event was Eau Claire resident Ray-mond Kaselau, who makes mostly pa-pier-mache pieces, ranging anywhere from geometric shapes to masks and animals.

Kaselau became interested in his medium when he was a child working with papier-mache, but he began tak-ing his artwork seriously about four years ago.

“I started exploring different themes and different structure types, and then it started filling up my house,” he said. “So then it was time to do a few art shows and sell some it off so I could make room to make some more.”

His inspiration comes from “all around,” and he said it can change day to day. His geometric designs are made from free form patterns.

Of all the pieces he’s done, he said the papier-mache owl is his favorite.

“Being able to bring in different geo-

metric patterns and then also give it a personality on top of that was a lot of fun,” Kaselau said.

Another artist who proudly dis-played his work was Eau Claire res-ident Kevin Midthun, who has done woodcarvings for many homes and businesses in Eau Claire, including the UW-Eau Claire Seal of Excellence emblem.

Midthun said he started wood-carving while working as an orderly at a Lutheran hospital.

His friend’s dad was Chief of Staff and asked Midthun if he would like to do a wood carving as a “good Samaritan deed.” That carving is still hanging in Mayo hospital.

“I liked working for myself, and I always liked artwork, putting things together and drawing, so I was just a natural,” he said. “I don’t like clock-ing in. ... It’s like being held after school.”

In 1981 he opened his own shop. His friends and family were very supportive in helping him, he said.

Since then, he has created many woodcarvings, but said mantles are still his favorite to make.

“It’s quite rewarding to create a mantle for someone and put their ideas together with mine, and they get what they want.” Midthun said.

The art crawl allowed him to at-tract potential new customers, but he said it was also very nice to have people come up to him and remind him of the pieces he made for their homes.

“Sometimes you get the compli-ment when somebody’s building a house and they say ‘the best part of building the house was working with you,’” he said. “I like that.”

A REAL HOOT: Local artist Raymond Kaselau displayed his favorite piece at the Banbury Art Crawl, a papier-mache owl.

Shop ‘til you crawlBanbury Art Crawl offers variety of local artwork

Katy MacekSTAFF WRITER

Macek can be reached at [email protected] or @KatherineMacek.


The Heart Pills headlined Sat-urday night at the House of Rock of Water Street to release their new al-bum “Gunfighter.”

The local band followed Mer-idene, who is from Eau Claire, and the Traveling Suitcase, from Osh-kosh.

The show, like the new album, highlighted the band’s eclectic sound.

The band’s members, Sarah Bo-deau on keys, Josh Ingersoll on gui-tar, Matt Haapala on bass and Si-las Thompson on drums, have been playing together for about two and a half years, and this album has been a long project for them.

“It’s been a while,” Matt Haapa-la said, “working on (the album), try-ing to get into the studio.”

The band members said they don’t put a lot of emphasis on trying to stick to one type of sound. They said having an off-the-cuff approach is just the way their band works.

“(Gunfighter is) westerny, it’s science-fictiony,” Thompson said. “Basically, it’s everything.”

The album started as a project off the song Cabaret Lady, in which the mash-up of rock, western and electronics is clear.

“That’s when we decided to keep going,” Josh Ingersoll said, “and do some westerny tunes.”

As the album flows, the different sounds aren’t distracting, although the band members describe the group as murky and mysterious.

“It’s not good to tell people what

you’re going for,” Haapala said. “It’s better to let them figure it out, de-cide for themselves.”

And people seem to be figuring it out. The House of Rock was packed with people, and several people were there as soon as the bar opened and waited through each opening band.

The band said they enjoy being able to play whatever kind of songs they want, and the audience seemed to like the surprise.

And when the surprise is a sound like Clint Eastwood walking sideways out of a spaghetti western, that’s all the better.

But Haapala said even if that

doesn’t sound like something you would like, keep listening to “Gun-fighter.”

“Our songs all sound different,” Haapala said, “so even if you don’t like it, stick around.”

The Heart Pill’s new album, “Gunfighter,” can be found on their bandcamp site.

Glen OlsonSTAFF WRITER

Stick to your gunsLocal band The Heart Pills debuts “Gunfighter” on Saturday at House of Rock

EMILY ALBRENT / The Spectator TAKE AIM: Guitarist Josh Ingersoll performs from his group’s new album, “Gunfighter” on Saturday night at the House of Rock.

“It’s not good to tell people what you’re

going for ... it’s better to let them

figure it out, decide for themselves.”

MATT HAAPALABassist, The Heart Pills

Olson can be reached at [email protected] or @GlenPOlson.

A range of dances find their home at UW-Eau Claire this week-end.

Dance Fusion, put on by the Concert Dance Company combines different dance styles to create eight unique pieces. Eau Claire students, of distinct dance backgrounds will take stage at 7 p.m. on Feb. 14 and Feb. 15 in Schofield auditorium.

Eau Claire junior Cassy Os-trowski said the dance company likes to look at past dancers and combine what everyone knows. Os-trowski has been dancing since she was five, and will perform in two modern-influenced pieces. This is her third year with the Concert Dance Company.

“It can be hard,” Ostrowski said. “This week, especially, is very time-consuming, sometimes we have to do weekends, but in the long scheme of things we get it to work.”

Ostrowski is a dance minor at Eau Claire, which has helped her prepare for the show along with do-ing group warm-ups to avoid inju-ries. She is the lighting and techni-cal liaison and this is her first year as an officer with the company.

“I am involved in getting every-body who knows how to do the tech-nical lighting stuff for the show and I cut and edit music, plus I have a keen eye for what lighting would go well with a piece,” Ostrowski said.

She said she encourages people to attend the show because it is a showcase of what the dance compa-ny can do.

“It’s a great artistic example,” Ostrowski said. “We are just a bunch of friends who like to have fun, there are a lot of opportunities on this campus, but dance in particular I feel like isn’t extremely out there, so it’s nice to see a theatrical dance performance in that setting.”

Junior Rachel Forseth is in four pieces: contemporary, modern, hip-hop and a ballet-contemporary mix. She said the dance company also puts on more than one show.

“We also host one in the fall but that is more informal, more upbeat songs and a little shorter pieces, and Dance Fusion has longer pieces and we have been working on these piec-es since the beginning of the year,” Forseth said.

Forseth said the best part is the people she gets to work and dance with. She said it is a chance to be with a group of people who are just as passionate about dance as she is.

Senior Meredith Oates has been with the company since she was a freshman.

“That is part of the reason why I can to this university because they did have a dance minor,” Oates said.

Oates said there is a ton of work that needs to be done to put this show together.

“Being an officer, we do all the prep work, so creating the program, signing the contract, reserving Scho-field auditorium, working with event services and they are great, we do everything because it is student run,” Oates said.

To personally prepare for the show, Oates said she makes sure she is completely ready to be on stage by being healthy and getting plenty of rest.

“Just making sure you know the choreography and being confident in it so you can really perform it to the best of your ability so you can have that charisma and energy on stage,” Oates said.

For anyone who wishes to get in-volved next year, all levels of dance experience are welcome.

Smooth moves

Emily Albrent NEWS EDITOR

Dance Fusion to perform in Schofield Auditorium this weekend

ELIZABETH JACKSON / The Spectator IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Senior Amanda Chase rehearses for her weekend performance.

Albrent can be reached at [email protected] or @emilyalbrent.

Gostomski, a local skat-er and senior at UW-Eau Claire, is involved with the Eau Claire Skater’s Association.

“The thing I like most about Passion Board Shop is the location,” he said. “You could easily skate from the skate park to the shop, and I think it is super important for a skate shop to be accessible via skate-board and for it to be close

to the community’s skate park.”

With a public park being built near Lakeshore this past year, the local

A shop specializing in skateboards, long-boards, skating ap-

parel and snowboards will make its Eau Claire debut this spring after hard work and collaboration between members of the Eau Claire Skaters Association.

Passion Board Shop owner Chris Johnson said starting his own shop has always been a dream of his.

“I grew up skateboard-ing in Eau Claire, and it’s always been my biggest passion,” he said. “I’ve talked about opening my own shop for a few years now and it was actually my wife Kirstin that gave me that final push to finally take the leap and make my dream a reality.”

With most of the paperwork and account-ing finished, the shop is starting to take shape. Johnson said he has final-ly been able to focus on the interior of the shop, finish the wall fixtures, and get to working on signs. Kyle


ELIZABETH JACKSON/ The Spectator RIDE OR DIE: Johnson stands with merchandise at his skate shop’s soon-to-open Dewey Street location.

Trent TetzlaffSTAFF WRITER

City skate scene continues to growPassion Board Shop set to open its doors on April 11

Tetzlaff can be reached at [email protected] or @ttetz5.

“I grew up skate-

boarding in Eau

Claire and its

always been my

biggest passion.”

CHRIS JOHNSONPassion Board Shop owner

Never miss a beat

SpectatorThe

skate community is grow-ing fast and Johnson felt the city needed a place for skaters to hang out.

Throughout the process of renovating the Dew-ey Street location, John-son had the community’s support, including Keith Kohrs from Wintership Tattoo who made the shop graphic.

During this process, Johnson has been able to put in around 25 hours a week on the shop while working more than 50 hours a week at his two current jobs.

Gabe Brummet, a founding member of the Eau Claire Skaters As-sociation, said he thinks the new shop will help build Eau Claire’s skate community.

“There is enough sup-port in Eau Claire for sure, and with this shop and our new park our scene will only grow and improve,” he said. “The park and shop will hopefully do a good job of supporting each oth-er; it’s all about building a community in my opinion.”

Phil Fieber, the city Parks and Recreation di-rector, made a statement during the fundraising pro-cess about having multiple skate parks in Eau Claire located along the bike path.

Passion Board Shop will mark the second place that the Eau Claire Skaters Association can network with the skate community.

Through the creation of the shop, Johnson said he hopes to make a big im-pact on Eau Claire’s skat-ing scene while promoting skating positively.

Johnson is planning for the opening in April, but wants to keep the details a secret for now.

“It’s been awesome to see everyone come togeth-er to make this happen,” Johnson said. “If you skate or support skating, you’re part of that family and you’re always welcome at Passion Board Shop.”

OPINION / EDITORIAL13CURRENTS EDITOR: Alex Zank Thursday, Feb. 13

A college education used to be a no-brainer if you wanted to succeed. It got you a solid profession, out of your parents’ home and into one of your own.

Today, however, those who can afford the increasing tuition (first qualifying for federal loans), out-perform their classmates and land a job right after graduation are still behind.

Forbes reported some alarm-ing statistics: The national college student debt amounts to $1.2 tril-lion (surpassing the national credit

card debt total), the average debt after college is $26,600 and one in 10 students rack up more than $40,000.

The future is looking bright-er in Tennessee, though, as Gov. Bill Haslam intro-

duced a plan last week in his State of the State address, calling for two years of free schooling at community and technical colleges for any resi-dent with a high school diploma.

It would cost $34 million a year, paid for by diverting surplus revenue from the state lottery.

I think Haslam’s proposal is a move in the right direction. Even though it’s a minor fix to an enor-mous problem, it would give people opportunities they otherwise couldn't get, and could spark an emphasis on higher education nation-wide.

Community colleges are an op-tion for those who might not have the grades or money to attend four-year universities. A full year’s tuition and fees at a community college is $3,300 on average in the U.S., but tuition isn’t the only cost of college.

Those outside of Tennessee who opt for the cheaper degree are still, on average, $7,000 in the red when all is said and done. This doesn’t account for opportunity cost either, meaning what students are poten-tially losing with their sizable in-vestment in education.

For example, someone attending college misses out on two years of income, so not only are they $7,000 in debt, but they’re also out an addi-tional two years of income. Or if they depleted their savings account to pay for schooling, they’re also losing out on interest accumulated if that mon-

ey just stayed in their account.In today’s competitive workforce,

higher education is always preferred.Person A, who saves money and

earns an Associate degree, compet-ing against Person B, who spent the extra money to earn a Bachelor degree is like Wile E. Coyote vs. the Roadrunner — Guess who’s getting the job?

Times are changing though.A 2012 Harvard Graduate School

of Education study reported the U.S. is expected to create 47 million new jobs by the end of 2018, and one third of them will require only an associate degree.

An associate degree is a way to kill two birds, or maybe more, with one stone.

According to The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, registered nurs-es make a median annual salary of $65,950. The field is expected to grow at a rate of 26 percent each year, de-manding 120,000 new spots be filled. And the best part is it only requires an associate degree.

Person A just got a great start-ing salary in a field begging for more employees, saved a boat-load of money on school and loans, and did it two years before Per-son B, who is jobless, degree-less and steadily accumulating more debt.

The student debt crisis has a

Karl Enghofer GRAPHIC DESIGNER

SUBMITTED LOBBYING FOR STUDENTS: Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, Republican, recently proposed for free tuition for anyone going to a state two-year college. He would have it funded through the state lottery.

Enghofer is a senior journalism major and Graphic Designer of The Specta-tor. He can be reached at [email protected] or @KarlEnghofer.

An educated stance on educationFree two-year tuition proposal in Tennessee should be standard

for all statesripple effect on the U.S. economy. If more states adopt something like the Gov. Haslam’s proposed plan, jobs will be filled faster. Americans can also pay off their student loans fast-er, and they’ll have money to stimu-late the economy by buying houses and cars.

This seems like a worthy public investment to me.

ENGHOFER“Even though it’s a

minor fix to an enor-mous problem, it

would give people op-portunities they other-wise couldn’t receive.”

OPINION / EDITORIAL14OP/ED EDITOR: Alex Zank Thursday, Feb. 13

Professors should update education practices to 21st century standards

Eau Claire county ranks highest in number of fast food restaurants in the state

Eau Claire’s fast food abundance doesn’t mean you should eat it

Tech in classroom not always distracting

Biking within city good but not good enough

Meghan Hosely STAFF WRITER

Martha Landry EDITOR IN CHIEF

Hosely is a freshman journalism ma-jor and Staff Writer for The Spectator. She can be reached at [email protected] or @meghanhosely.

“D” grade shows room for improvement on city streets

To some, college is time spent on a limited budget, and not having time (or desire) to cook meals.

This combination can produce lethal results: students are tempted to take the easy way out and spend less time in the grocery store while frequenting their preferred fast food restaurants.

Even though many students may have a ‘fast metabolism,’ and they can eat ‘anything they want,’ many don’t know Eau Claire county has actually tailored to this mindset. According to County Health Rankings & Road-maps, an organization keeping track of health statistics in the U.S., Eau Claire ranks number one restaurants being fast food restaurants, with a staggering 86 of them. This amounts to 54 percent in the county, compared to the state average of 41 percent of restaurants being fast food.

According to the Eau Claire Chamber of Commerce, the most popu-lar restaurants in the Eau Claire area include Burger King, Dairy Queen and McDonald’s. Each of these menus in-clude meals surpassing 1,000 calories – half of the daily caloric intake.

People should account for two other meals, along with any snacking throughout the day. Eventually, their supposed fast metabolism will not be able to work as fast, and health risks, such as obesity, will rise.

The Obesity Action Coalition states two things factor into obesity: fast food and envi-ronment. The envi-ronment can mean numerous things, such as walking or biking paths, parks available, or even health care facili-

ties nearby. However, another import-ant aspect to our environment is our

access to fresh foods. In Eau Claire county, eight percent of the population doesn’t have access to a grocery store and many are low income.

Even though many students here at UW-Eau Claire have access to a gro-cery store, many are low income.

Having access to fresh food is es-sential to our living. Even if they are expensive, these foods have many attributes, including leaving people feeling more energized throughout

the day, or even able to eat more food for the same caloric intake as a burg-er at the nearest fast food joint. Even though it may seem like the grocery bill will add up, it’s better than having the medical bills add up in the future.

Though it seems as if students have no other options besides eating out, there are many things to keep in mind. Even if eating out is inevitable, with which I’m sure many students agree, some alternatives will reduce the caloric intake.

Opt for the no-calorie drink. Soda provides zero nutritional value and empty calories – a double whammy. Even with the diet sodas on hand, water will always be the best option, complimenting any meal. Another easy swap is to opt for a grilled version instead of the extra-grease, extra-fat option.

Many other alternatives are on the Internet. Research is best when mak-ing decisions about a healthy lifestyle, and having an open mind to kicking those unhealthy habits is also key.

HOSELY

At the Centennial Hall dedica-tion ceremony on Feb. 7, Chancel-lor James Schmidt reiterated the idea of taking UW-Eau Claire into

the 21st century. The new building is equipped with technology that students will en-counter in the real world. It also sets the tone for a new teaching method.

“It’s time we added some-thing that mir-rors the universi-

ty,” Schmidt said about the newest building on campus.

If anyone has had class in Cen-tennial, they know the classrooms are at the cutting edge, with interac-tive learning centers, learning pods, large monitors to assist with class-work, new projection screens and

other technologies to advance tradi-tional teaching methods.

The technology is set to most directly benefit education majors, but a variety of classes and majors are utilizing it. As Schmidt said, the building is helping the entire uni-versity take a leap in its educational practices.

It is often said that the millenni-al generation was raised by technol-ogy. We were the first to have Face-book, Twitter, iPhones and iPads. According to a 2012 Student Senate Information Technology survey, 97 percent of students own laptops. In the College of Business they are even required.

A study titled, “Integrating Technology into the College Class-room: Current Practices and Future Opportunities” from the Universi-ty of North Carolina at Chapel Hill called millennials good students who expect success from hard work. But it also described Gen-Y students as streamlined, highly communicative and interactive with short attention spans and high demand for informa-

tion access. The statement above described

me and my learning methods accu-rately. Sitting through an hour-and-a-half lecture where a Powerpoint presentation, notes and a lecture are the only stimulus is very difficult for me. I find some professors’ resistance to integrating technology into their classroom interesting.

Jane Pederson, Eau Claire histo-ry professor, said she doesn’t allow laptops in her general history cours-es because they are a distraction in the classroom.

“I know from reports in the past that (students) aren’t always just taking notes,” Pederson said. “There has been research that when tech-nology is being used it’s very dis-tracting for other students and it interferes with their learning.”

Pederson is not the only profes-sor on campus to have these opin-ions. In some of my journalism class-es technology is not allowed.

>> TECHNOLOGY page 15

LANDRY

FILE PHOTO / The Spectator TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS: The newly constructed Centennial Hall was built in part to meet the new technology needs for UW-Eau Claire.

Cyclists recognize there's an art to wak-ing up moments before class, then tearing by traffic or bombing the hill to be on time.

But despite Eau Claire's bronze medal in bike friendliness, the structure of our roads should be repainted with those artists in mind.

The Milwau-kee Journal Sentin-al showed while Eau Claire received an "A" in the categories of encour-agement and planning, we're a "D" letter grade in enforcement and in-frastructure.

An esteemed medal might seem like enough to appease riders, but for the cycling commut-er, that D is a tough one to swallow. If D’s don’t make degrees, do we consider the same standard sufficient for our community’s biker safety?

We’re in the midst of a lot of idealist think-ing and hopeful chatter with The Confluence Project, but a more bike-accessible street layout needs to be real-ized before Eau Claire is rider friendly.

Specifically, our city has done every-thing to ensure leisure-

ly biking is available for the community, and while this is a consid-erable achievement, we shouldn’t be so com-fortable in our joyriding potential that we forget bikes are also a form of commuter transporta-tion.

Senior Ryan Ham-ilton is no stranger to these bike trails, and said while they’re near-ly ideal, it doesn’t ex-actly fill out the rider’s spectrum.

“I’ve biked out to the Leinenkugel brew-ery for the tour and back and spent probably

80 percent of the ride on a path,” Hamilton said. “With that in mind though, being able to use a bike for serious transportation in Eau Claire ends up turning into winding through residential streets to avoid potential danger-ous traffic on the main thoroughfares.”

Water Street, of course, has a bike lane fully utilized by stu-dents and the com-munity when weather permits. Some of the other campus areas ar-en’t so biker oriented, though.

Jeremy Gragert, founder of the Chippe-wa Valley Transit Alli-ance, said the current double-gate format of the hill was made “pur-posefully more danger-ous” in order to deter riders.

A bold claim con-sidering the inherent risk we’ve all witnessed hill riders take, but I do agree the civil engi-neering aficionados who decided to mastermind the second gate are completely irresponsi-ble, as well as respon-sible for hill-related accidents.

Zack Katz CURRENTS EDITOR

“We shouldn’t be so comfort-

able in our joy-riding potential that we forget bikes are also a form of com-

muter transpor-tation.”

>> BIKES page 15

OPINION / EDITORIAL15OP/ED EDITOR: Alex Zank Thursday, Feb. 13

I can understand a professor’s concern students will be distracted and take notes continuously but (this is coming from a doodle master) I will find a distraction anyway.

I will tune the professor out and begin working on a to-do list or draw random pictures or straight up scrib-ble. Having a computer in front of me not only helps me stay awake, but it allows me to check D2L for more in-formation or pull up the Powerpoint slides in front of me.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just addicted to having a glowing screen in from of my face. But after living so many years with a constant connection to technology, I function more effectively when I have all of my documents on one platform — aka ‘the webs.’

In the University of North Car-olina study, it was refreshing to see

college referenced as “adult learn-ing.” The study breaks “adult learn-ing” down to six key concepts. These concepts include life experience, self-directed pursuit of education, re-sults-oriented, goal-oriented, a level of respect for their instructors and peers, and direct application to one’s life.

This is something that profes-sors need to consider when limiting student access to technology. We are adults. I assume that the vast major-ity of students on campus are at least 18 years old. Professors should be able to give students the benefit of the doubt and trust that we can monitor our technology usage to classroom-ap-propriate business.

TECHNOLOGY/ profs need to respect the tech

Landry is a senior journalism major and Editor in Chief of The Spectator. She can be reached at [email protected] or @MarthaLandryy.

Immigration reform is a local issue being treated as a distant one

For the last year or so, our national government seems to be always on the verge of action with immigration re-form. We hear good news — a bipartisan deal in the Senate or a formation of a “Gang of X” senators — then we’re almost as swiftly disappointed with more Congressional indeci-sion.

For now, immigration seems to be on the back burn-er (again), as House Speaker John Boehner claims it won’t be able to get through the low-er legislative body. The issue cannot be put off any longer, as so many industries and lo-cal economies rely heavily on immigrant populations.

Western Wisconsin, an agricultural stronghold, is one of these areas. Many farms rely on immigrant workers to do difficult work that not many others would even con-sider taking. An issue with so much national coverage is an issue we’re dealing with in our own neighborhood. Immigra-tion reform will have a direct impact on us.

It’s in our best interest to see immigration reform ultimately making America a more immigration-friendly nation. For all you xenophobes out there, I’m not suggest-ing that we force everyone to learn Spanish — although it’d

be nice if people would stop tweeting “this is America, learn to speak American” in reaction to things as simple as a multilingual advertisement.

What I am suggesting, however, is we do need to: 1.) admit that our economy is bet-ter off with immigrants of skill levels calling America home, and 2.) ensure people who want to immigrate here have as easy a transition as possi-ble, but with proper security protocol, of course.

It may seem radical to some that I’d favor smooth entry of new citizens to this country with as little red tape as possible, but it really isn’t. And my reasoning is not be-cause I’m some bleeding heart that wants to take in all the weak and unfortunate souls in the world.

Immigration poses a great potential opportunity for both migrant populations and the host country. As long as there is a demand for jobs in a sec-tor and these people fill that demand, both the producers in the industry seeking these workers as well as the con-sumers of this industry benefit (not to mention the workers themselves).

Before you throw the anemic job growth and unem-ployment rate at me, please think about it first. Do you

see lines of unemployed peo-ple lining up for jobs in the agriculture industry? No. In fact, it’s hard to get anyone to work these jobs. And farms need laborers to produce their goods. Low-skilled immigrant workers (the title is not meant as an insult; I’m just using an economic term) are filling this demand. And the consumers of these goods have them to thank for it.

The same goes for im-migrants looking to work in highly specific, high-skilled jobs. They do the same thing essentially, filling demand in fields which most of us do not qualify.

So the real problem that immigration reform needs to address is the severe backlog of applicants waiting to gain legal access to this country.

The Bureau of Consular Affairs releases monthly state-ments of the backlog of visa applications. For those having family-sponsored preferences (they have a relative living in the U.S.), the priority dates go

as far back as 1993.For example, if you were

an unmarried child of a legal resident and age 21 or older (that’s a lot of us students) and were trying to gain legal sta-tus to immigrate from Mexico, I hope you applied on or be-fore May 1, 1993. Otherwise, you’ve got a while to wait.

The backlog of employ-ment-based applications ar-en’t quite as bad, although some have priority dates reaching as early as Septem-ber of 2003.

Instead of getting caught up on whether to build a fence, grant all current undocument-ed immigrants amnesty or which side of the political aisle is “winning” on the immigra-tion reform showdown, what is truly alarming is this backlog.

Zank is a senior journalism and political science double major and Op/Ed Editor of The Spectator. He can be reached at [email protected] or @AlexZank.

Gragert mapped out a hill design that opens two bike lanes (up and down) for riders, and a queued lane for drivers on the other half.

It’s an intuitive design, and one that might bog university officials down with five minutes of thought.

The Master Plan for the Univer-sity promises Garfield Avenue will eventually be automobile free, but Gragert said we should hold those in charge of the plan accountable until it is seen through.

It doesn’t take any thought to see how traffic accidents could go the way of the dinosaurs after this effort. Put me in charge, folks. I’ll make it hap-

pen next week. Beyond some quick fixes neces-

sary on campus, we should be thank-ful for the initiative our city has taken so far, but also imitate the Transit Al-liance’s persistence in holding our city accountable for following through.

Our city’s success in encourage-ment and planning are only valuable if we translate them to infrastructure. Let’s get our grades up, Eau Claire.

BIKES/ let’s make Garfield Ave. bike friendly

Katz is a junior journalism major and Currents Editor of The Spectator. He can be reached at [email protected] or @theKatz_meow.

Online this week: In the spirit of the lively Bill Nye-Ken Ham debate, the Editorial Board weighs in on teaching evolution and creationism in science classes.

SUBMITTED

GRAPHIC BY KARL ENGHOFER/ The Spectator

STUDENT LIFE16STUDENT LIFE EDITOR: Emily Albrent Thursday, Feb. 13

For some, it’s all about that jazz. UW-Eau Claire has an exceptional music program that students flock to, and senior Mike Malone is no exception.

Malone founded The Mike Malone Big Band his sophomore year at Eau Claire with the help of Robert Baca, professor of mu-sic and director of jazz studies.

“I started doing things with more of a set, set book of tunes, from a Big Bander, from the swing area so we could play dances,” Malone said.

Baca said he helped with resources and direction for the Big Band, but Malone handled promotion, the hard work and earned the group’s success. Baca said in the end, Malone gets all the credit.

“Let me just say Michael is one of the most entreprenuerial, project-oriented, success-driven human beings I have ever met,” Baca said. “He understands the definition of short and long term goals about as good as anyone I have ever been in contact with.”

Baca said Malone always has his parts pre-pared. He said it takes a special individual to take ownership of their part of the bigger picture and not always assume leadership.

“He is the best,” Baca said. “I think he has all the success traits to do extremely well, and those traits are to be respectful with the larger picture, to think about how one can contribute

rather than to criticize the direction, to be as pre-pared as possible and hoping that the rest are on the same level to make the larger picture better.”

Malone said he has been playing music since he was very young.

“I took piano lessons when I was five, but I got pretty serious into music when I got into sixth grade band,” Malone said.

The Mike Malone Big Band isn’t his only musical endeavor. He also has other side projects such as Malonious Thunk and Chwerbel/Malone. He plays mostly drums and percussion but also piano. His big band consists of about 16 people, but that number fluctuates depending on the gig.

“Basically, what really got us going was doing the swing dances on campus at Higher Ground and now moving to The Lookout,” Malone said. “They have been really good to us and pretty much let us play every month since I was a soph-omore.”

Not only does the Mike Malone Big Band play on campus, but it also plays in the community. He’s booked future gigs at Pizza Plus and Heyde Center for the Arts in Chippewa.

“We have been doing a swing dance that we will be doing our second year at (Eau Claire) Me-morial High School because I think some of their students who are in the music area kind of heard about what we are doing on campus and they wanted to bring it to their high school,” Malone said.

Malone said the band is open to playing as much in the community as it can, but they do not get to play too often, usually just once or twice a month.

Junior Miles Plant has been playing in the Big Band since his freshman year and has been playing piano for 13 years, he said.

“I think the best part is getting to watch peo-

ple have fun,” Plant said. “It’s like I’m playing music that is making people have fun, it’s being part of an experience, it’s great to see that music bringing people joy.”

Plant said he is happy the Big Band exists here at Eau Claire.

“It needs to happen,” Plant said. “Things like this, they don’t happen that often, and they are dying out. This music is dying out.”

Malone is wonderful to work with because he is laid back, as long as everyone is doing their part, Plant said.

“He is a great guy and he is a fantastic musi-cian,” Plant said. “He can lead a band from the drum set without a problem, he knows how to play and how to play well and I love working with him; he is a really great entrepreneur.”

The growing music scene in Eau Claire is great, Malone said.

“I think the community really appreciates all the talent that’s in the area and they really make a point of supporting it and enjoying it,” Malone said.

The Big Band has given him and other stu-dents a chance to experience something that does not come often in the jazz world. Many times, he said people with a jazz career play in smaller groups of four or five.

“Having this group, we have all had this op-portunity way more times than a lot of jazz play-ers,” Malone said.

Malone doesn’t just play for the Big Band, he recently became even more involved.

“It’s kind of a newer thing I have been doing, writing music specifically for the band,” Malone said.

Tackling both school, work and the Big Band, along with his many other projects, takes up a lot of his time.

“I just have to be really organized,” Malone said. “I am definitely that kind of person who had four or five different calendars floating around on my computer or on the walls.”

Malone said he wants to continue with his musical career after graduation. Baca said he has high hopes for Malone and wishes him all the best.

“For him to be happy,” Baca said. “And for him to be happy would be to be involved with musical projects that take him to the end of his ability and beyond. For a musician, that’s as good as it gets.”

Emily Albrent NEWS EDITOR

SUBMITTED PHOTOS BIG SOUND: Mike Malone plays with world-class jazz trombone player Andy Martin.

ALL HIS OWN: The Mike Malone Big Band performs on the UW-Eau Claire campus, in the community and at Two to Tango, Eau Claire’s ballroom dance club.

Albrent can be reached at [email protected]. or @emilyalbrent

MALONE

GRAPHIC BY KARL ENGHOFER/ The Spectator

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