Though immigration was the focus of this quarter’s Northwestern Community Development Corps’ lecture series, funding for the series might be the big issue in the fall.
NCDC’s funding for its Undergraduate Lecture Series on Race, Poverty and Inequality for Fall Quarter was cut almost in half from the $2,000 spent on this spring’s series, after the series moved from the provost’s office to the Student Activities Finance Board.
NCDC members said they hope to use the success of this quarter’s series to appeal to ASG for additional funding for the fall series next year.
About 50 students attended a panel discussion on immigration with presentations from three speakers followed by a Q-and-A segment in the Technological Institute Wednesday night.
Prof. Victoria DeFrancesco Soto from NU’s political science department talked about immigration on a macroeconomic scale and the issue of immigration in the upcoming election. Mary Meg McCarthy, director of the National Immigrant Justice Center, discussed the denial of basic human rights to detained immigrants arriving in the United States, and Amalia Pallares, associate professor of political science and Latin American and Latino studies for the University of Illinois at Chicago, addressed Chicago political activism on immigration.
A Northwestern student-run community service group that focuses on community building through service, education and advocacy, NCDC organizes a lecture series each quarter with a different topic to raise awareness on volunteer issues, said Adam Yalowitz, a Weinberg freshman and co-chairman of lecture series.
“Rather than just trying to treat symptoms, we should be addressing the root problems of social injustice and social inequality,” he said.
Traditionally, SAFB funds the series in Winter and Spring quarters, and the provost funds the Fall Quarter series. Next fall, the provost’s office will no longer provide funding because it usually only funds one-time events, and the NCDC lecture series is recurring, said NCDC co-chairman and SESP junior Max Fletcher.
The volunteer group appealed to SAFB to fund next year’s Fall Quarter series, receiving a total of $1,250, compared to $2,300 for Winter Quarter and $1,800 for Spring Quarter. The funding goes to the honorariums for keynote speakers and speakers at panel discussions, Fletcher said.
NCDC plans to use the success of this year’s lecture series events to petition the SAFB for more funding and also possibly receive funding from the Institute for Policy Research, which often provides funding for the series, Fletcher said.
To keep costs low, the lecture series committee will try to maintain the quality of the series while bringing in less expensive speakers, he said.
“We can appeal to wealthier speakers who don’t mind taking an evening to come and speak or bring in public officials who can’t take money for ethical reasons,” Fletcher said.
But that’s not the case for the spring series, which had a lot more financial freedom in selecting speakers.
NCDC needed to use funding to bring the spring keynote speaker, Julian Lazalde, from the Local Initiatives Support Corporation’s New Communities Program. He will talk about community organizing and the importance of giving the immigrant population a voice, said Sara Fletcher, a Medill freshman and campus outreach co-chairwoman of NCDC. Lazalde’s personal experience with immigration would make him a passionate speaker who could relate to the students, said Sara Fletcher, who heard him speak at the Freshman Urban Program.
“The ultimate goal of ULRPI is to bring in people who are involved in these subjects and who have personal experience dealing with the policy and connect them to Northwestern students,” she said.
