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UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN IOWA CEDAR FALLS, IA THURSDAY, APRIL 5 VOLUME 114, ISSUE 42
CEDAR FALLS, IA
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, 2024
VOLUME 120, ISSUE 24
College Square stilled A look at the past and future of the College Square Mall
JENNA WESTENDORF Staff Writer
W
hen UNI marketing professor Matthew Wilson thinks back to growing up in Cedar Falls in the ’70s, a lot has changed. The Industrial Park was still cornfields, and downtown Cedar Falls was basically a ghost town. Another major change: the mall. What was once a hot spot for shopping is now a mostly empty building. “I just remember I spent hours in the bookstore there, hours in the Music Land that we’d buy records at,” Wilson recalls when reflecting upon his time in the mall as a child. “Those were the places you’d spend hours at. Your parents would go shopping and they’d hand you a handful of quarters, and you’d go play video games [at the arcade] for an hour.”
STEPH STARK
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
See COLLEGE SQUARE MALL, page 2
Dead higher ed bills in the News briefs Legislature: What to know
CAB After Dark Campus Activities Board will be offering a fun-filled evening of events this Saturday, March 23 from 8 p.m. - 11 p.m in Maucker Union. They will have stuff-an-animal available for the first 250 people who registered, a mentalist, a hypnotist, an improv performance, Panther eSports games, Panther Tabletop games, bingo and food. A full schedule of the evening will be posted on their Instagram and the CAB registration page.
NOAH HACKBART
Staff Writer
CAMPUS LIFE
UNI alum Carson Uthe finds success in the theatre field with Children’s Theatre Company. SEE PAGE 6
SPORTS
Both men’s and women’s basketball teams fall in semifinals of MVC tournament. SEE PAGE 9
Editor’s note: Noah Hackbart currently serves as the Director of Governmental Relations for Northern Iowa Student Government The second funnel week of the 2024 Iowa legislative session ended on March 15. Here are some basics about the legislative process, the two funnel weeks and two major higher education-related bills that died during this time. The Legislative Funnel Explained The Iowa Legislature is made up of a 100-member House of Representatives and a 50-member Senate. These two bodies have two important funnel week deadlines during their legislative session and these deadlines often decide the fate of bills. For a bill to make it past the first funnel deadline and alive, which is usually the sixthor seventh week of session, it needs to have passed out of a committee in at least the
COURTESY/TRAVEL IOWA
Two major higher education bills died after the second legislative funnel deadline. One, HF2558 would have codified the DEI directives passed by the Board of Regents in November.
House or Senate. For a bill to stay alive after the second funnel, which is usually the 10th or 11th week of session, it must have passed through one of the two chambers and through a committee in the other. While Republicans currently have a trifecta of state government control, holding the Governor’s office, Senate and House, both the Senate and House had different pri-
orities, thus leaving many bills to die after the second funnel. However, both chambers have various ways of keeping whole bills or parts of bills alive throughout the entire session through amendments in bills that are still viable or by putting bills on the “unfinished business” calendar in the Senate to keep them alive for the entirety of the session. See DEAD BILLS, page 3
RodCon Scheduled Rod Library’s ninth annual RodCon will be hosted April 6 from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. The mini comic book convention offers a welcoming environment where people can celebrate their passion for comics, heroes and artists. The featured guest speaker will be Shakyra Dunn, a voice actor, author and singer. Attendees can also enjoy artists, vendors, trivia competitions, costume contents and a variety of other activities.