July 18, 2005, Northern Today Abridged
NIU expert says Congress should revisit
‘life tenure' of Supreme Court justices
As the perfect political storm brews over the nomination to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court, NIU's Artemus Ward says it's a prime example of why provisions for retirement from the nation's most powerful court need to be reformed.
“There's surprisingly little discussion about the reasons for and timing of retirement decisions,” says Ward, a professor of political science and expert on the nation's high court.
Ward's 2003 book, “Deciding to Leave: The Politics of Retirement From the United States Supreme Court,” provided the first systematic look at the process by which justices decide to leave the bench.
Most other democratic nations have fixed terms or mandatory retirement ages for high court justices, but U.S. federal judges – including Supreme Court justices – receive life tenures. Historically, Supreme Court justices served until they died. In the 1950s, when Congress expanded retirement benefits for federal judges, the option became more attractive and utilized.
As an unintended consequence, the timing of departures has become an increasingly partisan process, Ward says. Justices typically leave the bench during favorable administrations, when they are most likely to be replaced by someone like-minded. The infrequent turnover adds to the stakes of each appointment.
“We've had 11 years without a vacancy,” Ward says. “Hundreds of millions of dollars are now in place for this confirmation fight. I think that no matter who the president nominates, this is going to be a highly visible and very contentious process.
“In the final chapter of my book, I argued that the life-tenure system isn't working because the justices are playing politics with the decisions and some are staying too long, despite being ineffective, not fully engaged or unable to keep up with the demand,” Ward adds. “I suggest we should revisit the issue of life tenure and maybe get into some sort of mandatory retirement scheme.”
Ward expects the upcoming nomination and confirmation process to last into the fall. The U.S. Senate must confirm a nomination by a simple majority. Historically, one-third of all nominees have failed, Ward says, and senators also could filibuster to prevent a vote altogether. That happened in 1968, when lame duck President Johnson nominated Abe Fortas. President Nixon ended up making the appointment.
In finding a replacement for O'Connor, the stakes are particularly high. “Justice O'Connor has been the key swing vote on many issues, including cases involving federalism, religion and affirmative action,” Ward says.
Because O'Connor was the first woman ever appointed to the Supreme Court, the NIU professor expects President Bush to run into some opposition if he nominates a man.
“The short list of possible nominees includes almost all women now,” Ward says. “But one big name people are talking about is Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who has long been a favorite of the president. The court has never had an Hispanic justice, so it would be historic.”
Ward is working on two new books, one examining the role of Supreme Court law clerks and another on Justice Anthony Kennedy.
NIU, WSCR-AM officials radio sign
four-year package for Huskie football, hoops
Chicago — Big league. Major market. A 50,000-watt signal in 38 states and four Canadian provinces. Radio coverage of NIU football and men's basketball just went up, up and away.
NIU Intercollegiate Athletics and WSCR-AM, known nationally as “670 The Score Chicago Sports Radio,” have entered an exclusive four-year agreement. The Chicago-based clear channel sports talk outlet will carry all Huskie Sports Radio Network football broadcasts and 20 men's basketball games annually through 2008-09.
The joint announcement was made Thursday, July 14, by NIU Director of Athletics Jim Phillips and WSCR-AM Vice President-General Manager Paul Agase at a special luncheon held at Harry Caray's restaurant in downtown Chicago.
“This certainly is a monumental moment for all Huskies and our institution to be associated with ‘The Score,'” Phillips said. “For us, this is unchartered territory. The increased visibility and exposure for our athletic program and our university in the nation's No. 3 market with eight million people is immeasurable. Northern Illinois is thrilled to be in this partnership with WSCR.”
WSCR-AM becomes the sixth member of the current Huskie Sports Radio Network line-up. Northern Illinois, the 2004 Silicon Valley Football Classic kingpin and Mid-American Conference West Division co-champion, opens the 2005 season with back-to-back contests against first-division Big Ten Conference competition on the road: defending league champ University of Michigan (Sept. 3) and “neighborhood rival” Northwestern University (Sept. 10).
“It's great for the No. 1 college football team in the state to be on the same team as the No. 1 radio sports talker in Chicago,” said Mitch Rosen, program director at WSCR-AM radio. “The people at ‘The Score' are enthused about this partnership with Northern Illinois and we look forward to maintaining a strong relationship with the Huskie athletics program for many years to come.”
In addition to carrying the NIU football and men's basketball games, “The Score” will feature a weekly sports show devoted to the Huskies and college athletics during the fall and winter seasons, come to campus for four live “remote” broadcasts a year, and offer a variety of promotional spots to highlight the 17-sport program and other aspects of the institution.
“It has been a personal goal to enhance our presence in the Chicago radio market since I came on campus last August,” Phillips added.
“For us, this is a tremendous opportunity. ‘The Score' is an outstanding vehicle to tell our story and NIU's story to our 175,000 alumni in the Chicagoland area and our community at-large. We are a Chicago school. Over 90 percent of our current 25,000 enrollment comes from the Chicago area," he added. "Along with promoting our teams and student-athletes, ‘The Score' gives us a major media venue to spread the word about various aspects of our university, such as our prestigious Executive MBA program, our Top 10 accountancy program, our admissions office, our alumni association, you name it. In broadcasting terms, four years represent a long-term commitment by both parties.”
Owned by Infinity Broadcasting, WSCR-AM originated in 1991 and ranked No. 1 among Chicago sports talk radio stations in the Arbitron “winter book.” In the Chicago ADI (“area of dominant influence”), “The Score” reaches a cumulative total of 500,000 listeners per week. Starting in 2006, WSCR-AM will also become the exclusive radio home of the Chicago White Sox.
Ironically, WSCR-AM already stands 2-0 as an outlet for Northern Illinois football. On September 20, 2003, “The Score” carried the Huskies' historic 19-16 triumph over the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Last December 30, WSCR-AM broadcast NIU's 34-21 success over Troy University in the Silicon Valley Football Classic at San Jose, Calif. The win represented the program's first bowl victory since 1983.
“A great deal of this notoriety is a reflection of what head coach Joe Novak and his student-athletes have accomplished on the field,” Phillips added. “The turnaround and the competitiveness of the Northern Illinois football program has been a national story.”
With the addition of WSCR-AM, the Huskie Sports Radio Network includes six local outlets whose signals blanket the northern Illinois region. This fall, for the 17th consecutive year, WLBK-AM (1360 kHz) in DeKalb, will serve as the network's flagship station. One of the pioneer AM radio entities in the region, WLBK first aired in 1947.
“This is extremely important to us, that we keep our long-term relationship strong with WLBK as our flagship and our other network affiliates,” Phillips said. “WLBK has been an important voice in our local community for almost 60 years and it has been involved with NIU every step of the way. From a technical side, it is essential that WLBK serves as our network flagship.”
The remainder of the 2005 Huskie Sports Radio Network includes WRHL-AM (1060 kHz) in Rochelle, WSEY-FM (95.7 MHz) in Oregon-Mount Morris, WMKB-FM (102.9 MHz) in LaSalle-Peru, and WRMN-AM (1410 kHz) in Elgin.
Townsend helps historical-genealogical society
with book on county's one-room schoolhouses
DeKalb County history buff Henry Leonard came to Lucy Townsend, curator of NIU's Blackwell Museum , with a question: “Can you help us?”
Leonard, a retired NIU math professor, was president of the DeKalb County Historical-Genealogical Society at that time.
Townsend, curator of NIU's Blackwell Museum said “yes” to Leonard, a retired NIU math professor and then-president of the DeKalb County Historical-Genealogical Society at that time, joining a mission to create and publish 1,500 copies of a book chronicling the county's rich heritage of one-room schoolhouses.
All are working to raise $30,000 to cover printing costs for “Rural School Journeys: A Legacy of Learning” that will feature around 250 pages and more than 200 photographs and anecdotes from former students.
“It should be a valuable resource for historians as well as people who want family histories. The committee is finding documents never looked at before, things out of newspapers and attics,” Townsend said. “The photographs are phenomenal: wonderful pictures of the kids playing baseball, playing in the snow, sitting in the classroom. Just from a historical perspective, the pictures alone are priceless.”
The book will contain a brief overview of Illinois one-room schools, a map of DeKalb County 's schools and chronological lists of superintendents and teachers.
Although research will conclude late this fall with a 2006 publication target, sales will begin in September. Townsend will put NIU's share of the profits toward an endowment fund for the College of Education 's Milan Township One-Room Schoolhouse that supports its upkeep.
DeKalb County once was home to more than 160 one-room schoolhouses, each of which was only a couple miles from the next, giving true meaning to the term “neighborhood school.” The era spanned about a century from the 1850s to the 1950s.
Alumni speak glowingly of how the wide range of ages in the classroom enriched their learning.
Kindergartners were exposed to lessons meant for eighth-graders, and every level in between, while older students enjoyed constant “refresher courses” as the younger children studied. Meanwhile, older students naturally took on the responsibility of nurturing their younger classmates.
Because each had its own district and its own trustees, Townsend said, no single repository for local artifacts exists. Also, she added, “most education historians ignore them.”
NIU, however, is a leader in preserving the one-room heritage.
The Milan Township District 83 one-room school – dedicated in 1900 – was reconstructed on NIU's campus and dedicated Sept. 12, 1999.
Built by local farmers at a cost of $850 and measuring 24 by 36 feet, the school was 13 miles southwest of DeKalb on the corner of Perry and Tower Roads near the town of Malta. A shrinking number of school-age children in the district forced its closure in 1942.
Also, NIU will welcome next year's return of the Country Schoolhouse Conference, devoted to the preservation, interpretation and recollection of the one-room schoolhouse experience.
NIU hosted the first of the annual conferences in 2001, and now will become the home for the organization and its Web site. Townsend said she hopes the site will include links to all one-room schoolhouse museums in the United States and Europe.
Townsend made a presentation on the book project at the recent conference, held last month on the campus of Union College in Barbourville, Ky.
For more information on the project, or how to contribute, contact Townsend at (815) 753-9326 or (815) 753-1236 or the DeKalb County Historical-Genealogical Society, P.O. Box 295, Sycamore, Ill., 60178.
School of Theatre and Dance announces
productions for 2005-06 season
NIU's School of Theatre and Dance has announced its 2005-06 production season.
All events take place within the three theater spaces in the Stevens Building, which houses the 450-seat O'Connell Theatre, the “black box” Players Theatre with flexible seating up to 180, and the Studio Series-only Corner Theatre, which seats 145. Mainstage productions of the Subscription Series are performed in the O'Connell Theatre and the Players Theatre.
The two series offer a wide variety of production styles and settings, and include several matinees planned for students from elementary school through high school. All weekday and Saturday School of Theatre and Dance performances begin at 7:30 p.m. Sunday performances start at 2 p.m. For information about school matinees and high schools nights, call the school's marketing office at (815) 753-1337.
“Alice,” NIU Professor Christopher Markle's adaptation of Lewis Carroll's story, opens the season in Players Theatre and runs Sept. 8 to 11 and Sept. 14 to 18.
The remount of an NIU production in Moscow, this is the charming tale of a proper young Victorian girl who takes the journey of a lifetime by following a white rabbit through a hole and into a world in which madness reigns and where, “I mean what I say,” is not the same thing as, “I say what I mean.” The story is all too reminiscent of the adult “real” world: brusque, impatient, demanding and rude.
“Fall Dance Concert” runs Oct. 13 to 16 in O'Connell Theatre. It's a dance extravaganza that represents the full range of dance expression and showcases the nationally recognized pre-professional training program that has placed the School of Theatre and Dance students in nationally renowned dance companies and venues throughout the United States since 1979. The fall concert features selections from the ballet, “Pas de Quatra,” and a remount from a summer tour in New York of the modern dance piece, “Crossings.”
The second of the mainstage productions, “Cinders,” by Janusz Glowacki, runs Nov. 10 to 13 and Nov. 17 to 20 in the O'Connell Theatre.
Set in a girl's reformatory school in Poland in the late 1980s, “Cinders” is a bleak, and truly accurate, depiction of adolescents oppressed and manipulated by the communist regime. A play-within-a-play, staging the classic story of “Cinderella” becomes a refuge and a hope for the girls to escape their unhappy lives, but a career enhancing propaganda film for the director. The interplay between the mindless bureaucracy running the school, the ambition of the director and the means by which the girls' dreams are taken advantage of, is a stark look at the methods of creating conformity and cooperation.
“Omnium Gatherum,” a comic drama by Theresa Rebeck and Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros, begins the spring with shows Feb. 2 to 5 and Feb. 8 to 12 in Players Theatre.
Believing that lively, contentious debate is the heart and soul of a dinner party, a domestic artist and perfect hostess has invited an assortment of opinionated personalities to share a surreal meal. In an urgent, impassioned but comical work, the characters are guests at this exquisite feast of food and argument who confront the global implications of Sept. 11 and beyond.
“War and Peace,” Helen Edmundson's adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's epic historical novel, runs Feb. 23 to 26 and March 2 to 5 in the O'Connell Theatre. Edmundson condenses the novel's 1,000 pages into an “enthralling, imaginative, serious masterpiece” of three acts, according to “Financial Times.”
It follows the histories of five aristocratic families, members of which are portrayed against a vivid background of Russian social life during the war against Napoleon (1805-14). The theme of war, however, is subordinate to the story of family interplay and survival, exemplifying Tolstoy's optimistic belief in the life-asserting pattern of human existence.
The season's final offering, “Mahagonny Songspiel,” a satirical opera by Bertolt Brecht, runs March 30 to 31, April 1 to 2 and April 5 to 9 in Players Theatre. Brecht's script deliberately breaks down the dynamics of operatic spectatorship through bizarre visuals, disagreeable music scores, and use of non-operatic voices. The facets of classic opera are thrown off, and a satirical look at its sometimes and unavoidably inherent inaccessibility is pronounced.
“Spring Dance Concert,” which runs from April 27 to 30 in O'Connell Theatre, offers a second look at the many facets of dance expression. It features guest artists from the Mark Morris Dance Group in New York and from the School of Theatre and Dance theatre faculty, and guest choreographer Dimtri setting dance numbers specifically for SOTD students. The concert also will mark the premier performance of a multi-media and multi-disciplinary dance event based on artist Irene Belknap's “Dressed in Words” oil on linen series of paintings.
Productions scheduled for Corner Theatre include “Voices of the Oppressed – A Theatrical Collage,” from Oct. 20 to 23; Chekov one-acts, from Nov. 3 to 6; scene night, from April 3 to 4; and Storytellers Theatre, from April 20 to 23.
Subscription brochures and forms can be picked up at the NIU School of Theatre and Dance administrative office in Room 221 of the Stevens Building, or ordered by phone and returned by mail.
For more information on subscription purchases, the season and school matinees, call the school's administrative office at (815) 753-8269.
State raises mileage rate
The State of Illinois mileage reimbursement rate for the use of personal vehicles on official NIU business has been increased from 37.5 cents per mile to 40.5 cents per mile. This applies to travel that takes place on or after July 1, 2005.
The NIU travel voucher form has been updated to reflect this change. For more information, call (815) 753-1514.
Library hosts exhibition on cataloging department
Founders Memorial Library's current lobby exhibition, "Behind the Scenes in the Library: The Cataloging Department," is on display through Aug. 31.
For more information, call (815) 753-9863.
7-18-05
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