CON V ERGING CA MPUS & COMMU NIT Y
NORTHWEST MISSOURIAN
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2024
MARYVILLE, MISSOURI
NWMISSOURINEWS.COM
VOL. 113, NO. 2
@THEMISSOURIAN
Two resident directors join University, talk bringing sense of unity ASTRE SCHLAISS News Reporter | @AstreWords
AKASH THANNEERU PHOTOGRAPHER
Northwest student Thomas Ismert and junior Leo Burns have drinks at Buffalo Wild Wings GO, located in The Station. The restaurant is the first Buffalo Wild Wings GO on a college campus and it obtained its alcohol license Aug. 29.
Leniency continues for campus alcohol policy
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DAKOTA OSWALT News Editor | @doswalt_NWMSRN
uffalo Wild Wings GO, the first to exist on a college campus in the country, serves alcohol at its bar, allowing for continued leniency on the University’s alcohol policies. Northwest officially became a dry campus Sept. 6, 1984, under President Dean L. Hubbard. When a campus is dry, it means no alcohol can be served or consumed by anyone on campus, regardless of age. Vice President of Student Affairs Matt Baker said after Hubbard left in 2009, the dry campus policy started to shift. Baker said for years, Northwest would turn a blind eye to people tailgating on football game days in the Carl and Cheryl Hughes Fieldhouse parking lot. In 2013, Baker and former University Police Department Chief Clarence Green worked together and realized it wasn’t appropriate to say Northwest was a dry campus while also allowing alcohol to be consumed at tailgates. They also recognized that tailgating was a pretty typical game-day experience around the country. “We didn’t have any problems with the behav-
ior that was there,” Baker said. “So we decided to be honest about what we allowed. And so in that year, we went to the Board of Regents. We also, around that time, probably before that even, began to allow alcohol in the football suites.” During football games, those who own football suites can provide their alcohol or use Northwest’s catering service to purchase it. The 2013 policy made that more concrete, and allowed alcohol before football games in designated parking lots. Around 2017, Baker said Northwest officially changed its alcohol policy following approval from the Board of Regents. This also established that alcohol could be served during events held in Northwest’s facilities. He said there were many discussions about risk management and insurance for this to be put in place. “We also recognized at that point, we had a lot of student organizations that would rent out facilities for formals or events that they served alcohol at, and we realized that Northwest would provide a safer environment for people who are of legal age to drink than perhaps somebody’s barn just outside of town,” Baker said.
SEE ALCOHOL | A4
Over the summer, Northwest’s professional staff for Residential Life underwent some changes. One change that could affect those living on campus is the three Resident Directors who moved careers while the University was on break. This left Franken Hall, Tower Suites and Millikan Hall temporarily without a director. Soon after the previous RDs left, two new ones came in. Resident Director of Millikan Hall Aaron Hayes and Resident Director of Tower Suites Grace Wilken stepped into their roles at the beginning of August with the start of the school year. Both RDs agreed starting a new semester and new position at the same time can be stressful, but they thought they took it in stride. For Wilken, this is largely because of the support she received from the staff. “I do think that having a sense of unity in housing and student staff across the board, not just in your hall, is extremely beneficial because you have a huge network of people,” Wilken said. “I think it’s like 65 of us, (a) huge network of people that you can reach out to across campus to help get students connected and help them find who they want to be, what they want to do.” Wilken has a background as a Resident Assistant at St. Louis University, and noticed many differences in the way things are run at Northwest, specifically in how the University handles the mental health of students. “When we had our crisis response training here, I didn’t have words to even tell them that we didn’t have crisis response training (at SLU), that we were just thrown into it, and we had no support at all,” Wilken said. Wilken said her experiences as an RA inspired her to apply for this position. She said she loved working with freshmen and seeing how she was able to support them in coming into themselves. “Our building theme for the year is ‘seen, heard and known’ as just something that I picked up in grad classes for counseling that has kind of stuck with me for a very long time,” Wilken said.
SEE DIRECTORS | A4
Title IX seeks to implement new policies regarding pregnant, parenting students DAKOTA OSWALT News Editor | @doswalt_NWMSRN
Northwest’s Title IX and Equity unit will soon implement policies regarding pregnant and parenting students. As of now, no such standards are in place, so there is no consistency between accommodations each faculty member provides for impacted students. These modifications were discussed at the University’s Fall 2024 Academic Affairs meeting, where Stephanie Krauth, Northwest’s assistant vice president of Title IX and Equity, explained it. She said privacy accommodations that protect against sexbased discrimination in educa-
tion programs have been a part of Title IX, for some time. But, updated guidelines to Title IX by the U.S. Department of Education in April required schools to prevent discrimination based on pregnancy or related conditions. Krauth said the state of Missouri has an injunction in place – a court order prohibiting the state from performing a specific act – so the new Title IX guidelines are not enacted in the state at this time. This is due to the state of Missouri being one of many states filing a lawsuit against the Biden-Harris administration, opposing the new Title IX guidelines due to its redefinition of the term “sex.” While the guidelines are not
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required due to this, Krauth said the Title IX and Equity office has been advised by its legal counsel to move forward with the modifications anyway, since most institutions of higher education across the country have similar processes in place. “Again, pregnancy accommodations have been part of the language for quite some time, so we went ahead and had it approved by the Board of Regents in August, if anything, just to make sure we’re updating in compliance and doing the right thing by both our students and you (faculty),” Krauth said at the meeting.
SEE PREGNANCY | A4
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