What is happening to federal diversity, equity and inclusion data? How does the Workers Retention Ordinance impact the Northwestern community? What is R. F. Kuang’s experience like as an Asian American author? The Daily answers these questions and recaps other top stories from the last week.
ANAVI PRAKASH: Northwestern researchers grapple with federal data deletions.
City Council passes the Workers’ Retention Ordinance 8-0.
Author R.F. Kuang shares writing advice with students.
From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Anavi Prakash.
LAUREN KEE: And I’m Lauren Kee. This is The Weekly, a breakdown of the top headlines from the past week.
[music]
ANAVI PRAKASH: Today, we’re starting with reporter Eunice Lee, who spoke to NU researchers about the impact of federal data deletions.
Many of the deletions are in accordance with President Donald Trump’s executive order to eliminate all diversity, equity and inclusion programming.
To start off, what deletions have occurred and what is their impact on researchers?
EUNICE LEE: So the datasets that are being deleted is mostly related to DEI and some examples being the health data that had gender as one of the variables, and the climate change data, which basically showed social inequalities around the States.
And the deletion of these data sets obviously disrupts scientific research, but also policymaking and advocacy efforts, and overall, it basically makes it harder for anyone to address any social issues, which is a very significant problem, I believe. And I think the more concerning aspect of these data deletions is that it’s basically censorship, and it really seems like an attempt to suppress inconvenient truths by controlling available information by the government.
And it’s not even like they’re stopping future data collections and they’re deleting data that was already there, collected from the people and available to the public through (and) supported by tax dollars.
ANAVI PRAKASH: You mention data related to gender and socioeconomic trends. Why are these datasets so important and are there any efforts to preserve them?
EUNICE LEE: There definitely are efforts to preserve data. One thing I wrote about in my article was the Data Rescue Project, but there’s also a lot of different data archives that are working, like data librarians and researchers, that are working to archive data that they think potentially the government’s going to take down. They’re trying to save them before it gets deleted. And they’re also sourcing for people for data sets that are already deleted. They’re trying to find people who had those data sets personally, and they’re trying to make it available for the public again.
But these research, I mean, these efforts are great, but one thing that my sources were talking about was that these efforts can’t, it’s not sustainable, as in individuals cannot be trying to save data all the time. At one point, it can’t be done privately, because people are spending a lot of their time, doing a lot of manual work, reaching out to people, uploading data, updating data sets and stuff like that, and their concern is that this is not going to last.
[music]
ANAVI PRAKASH: Eunice, thank you.
Next, we speak to Assistant City Editor Clara Martinez about the Workers’ Retention Ordinance.
The ordinance was introduced to City Council after being approved by the city’s Human Services Committee in early February. City Council passed the ordinance 8-0, with one abstention.
To start, what is the Workers’ Retention Ordinance?
CLARA MARTINEZ: So the ordinance basically enables employees to maintain their jobs at the institution that they’re working at when the contractor changes.
So what happened in 2018 at Northwestern was they changed contractors to the current one, which is called Compass Group, and all of those employees were kind of put in limbo and were unsure if they would be able to maintain their jobs. And now the ordinance says that you have a 90 day trial period once the contractor changes, and then if the employee continues to work to the same level of satisfactory as determined by, that part is still a little ambiguous, of what that will exactly entail with the trial period, but it basically ensures that their jobs are protected, even if the contractor changes.
ANAVI PRAKASH: What did the ordinance mean to the workers at Northwestern and the Northwestern community as a whole?
CLARA MARTINEZ: A lot of them have been working there since long before 2018, but after experiencing that, that kind of kick-started this movement. And there’s also a trade union that is in the Chicago area, that’s made up of hospitality workers, and so they’ve been campaigning for this for a long time. And the people that were speaking at the meeting were people that had been present numerous times.
What was surprising to me was how many students were also there, who are completely unaffiliated with the families that work at the University, but wanted to comment. I spoke to some of the people that had been campaigning for a while, and they didn’t know those students, they weren’t, they truly just showed up of their own accord.
I just think it was a really kind of electrified atmosphere in the City Council chambers, which is something you don’t see super often, but at one point, workers, students, their families, everyone who had gathered to support the ordinance being passed stood up, and it was a very powerful moment that you could feel among everyone that was there and among all the council members because the majority of the audience for the meeting was made up of people wanting to hear about what was gonna happen with this ordinance. And so after that, everyone filed out, and it was like a very exuberant kind of departure and then the rest of the meeting continued.
ANAVI PRAKASH: And what are the next steps for the ordinance?
CLARA MARTINEZ: It is like a protection, so should the University change contractors, that’s when you’ll see it really come into effect, and workers just won’t have to be campaigning and protesting to keep their jobs, they’ll all still be here. But that’s not really something that you would see come into effect while Compass Group is still here.
And yeah, I think one of the things that the workers were saying when they were speaking to City Council was how Compass Group is kind of resisting this protocol or passing this ordinance, so I’m not entirely sure how they plan on adopting it in any other way than, should the University replace them, the new contractor will have to keep them as employees.
[music]
ANAVI PRAKASH: Clara, thank you so much.
LAUREN KEE: Next, I spoke to Assistant Games Editor Miguel Tsang, who along with Diversity & Inclusion Editor Sydney Gaw, reported on bestselling author R.F. Kuang’s visit to Northwestern.
So, who organized the event and who were the attendees?
MIGUEL TSANG: Yeah, so the event was organized by (the) Asian American Studies Program, and it was a crowd of like 80 people or so. It was a wide range of students.
LAUREN KEE: What topics did Kuang discuss in the panel?
MIGUEL TSANG: The one that stuck out to me the most was about how people reacted to her work, and how they kind of tried to sell her work. I remember she described at one point how they put her in a category of similar authors, except the similar authors to her were authors like Amy Tan, who had really nothing in common with Kuang except race. So she was like, “Yeah, I don’t really have anything in common with these people.” And so she kind of talked about the process of being put in a box, and how that disproportionately affects authors of color.
LAUREN KEE: What did Kuang share about her most recent book, “Yellowface?”
MIGUEL TSANG: She talked about the themes of “Yellowface,” and I thought it was super interesting because it’s about this white author and a Chinese American author who are friends. One day, the Chinese American author dies in some accident, so the white one steals her manuscripts and works them into her own book that she sells as her own.
And in the book, you’re kind of supposed to empathize with the white author, even though it’s a little messed up. And I like how she said that she agreed with that: She wrote it so you could empathize with the white author. So, the book isn’t really about who gets to gatekeep whose story, as much as it is about the dangers of who gets to gatekeep.
LAUREN KEE: I know you’ve read “Yellowface,” and getting to know an author in person can be different from meeting them through the words they put on a page, and so did meeting Kuang surprise you at all?
MIGUEL TSANG: I think you can get a good sense of who she is and who her sense of humor is, at least from the one book of hers that I’ve read. And I kind of wasn’t surprised to hear that the person who was talking was the person who had written that book.
LAUREN KEE: What did Kuang share about the inspirations behind her works?
MIGUEL TSANG: Yeah, it’s really clear that her inspirations are stuff with a similar tone. “The Office” and “Succession” were two TV shows which she mentioned were big inspirations for the tone of “Yellowface,” which is more of a contemporary, satire-type book, that was based on sort of an awkward humor that she found in both shows.
LAUREN KEE: What was the atmosphere in the room like?
MIGUEL TSANG: I remember everyone would start the question by saying, ‘’Thank you for being here.’’ So everyone was super grateful to have her, and there was just a lot of energy in the room, like a lot of laughter, and just excitement to be there.
[music]
LAUREN KEE: Great. Thanks so much Miguel.
Here are the other top headlines from this week:
All six NU undergraduate schools remove their diversity, equity and inclusion resource web pages.
With 70% of service lines containing lead, Evanston continues its replacement effort.
NU men’s basketball stifles Iowa’s high-octane offense in a 68-57 win and
Evanston Latinos’ community kitchen empowers entrepreneurs and kickstarts businesses.
From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Lauren Kee.
ANAVI PRAKASH: And I’m Anavi Prakash.
Thank you for listening to another episode of The Weekly. This episode was reported by Anavi Prakash, Lauren Kee, Eunice Eunsoo Lee, Clara Martinez and Miguel Tsang and produced by Anavi Prakash and Lauren Kee.
The Audio Editor is Anavi Prakash. The Multimedia Managing Editors are Kelley Lu and Jillian Moore. The Editor in Chief is Lily Ogburn.
Our theme music is “Night Owl” by Broke for Free, used under a Creative Commons Attribution License and provided by the Free Music Archive.
Follow us on X and Instagram @thedailynu.
Email: [email protected]
X: @anavi_52
Email: [email protected]
X: @laurenhykee
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
X: @claramart1nez7
Email: [email protected]
Related Stories:
— SESP removes DEI research and coursework page from website
— With 70% of service lines containing lead, Evanston continues replacement effort.
— The Weekly: Federal funding, bird flu, Justin Timberlake tour
