The Lumberjack, February 21, 2008.

              N O R T H E R N A R I Z O N A U N I V E R S I T Y lumberjack The Independent
Student Voice
£ *
Lady lacks tennis
team plays hard
against Sac State.
• P ag e 10
Students take
pride in good
dental health.
• Page 11
Issue 6, Volume 97
Fell. 21, 2 0 0 8 -
Feb. 27' 2 0 0 8
www. JackCent ral.com
Poet shares his art
inside arid outside
the classroom.
N A U J U N I O R B R I T T N E Y Walsh, h u m an itie s major, p ours a draft b e e r V a le n tin e 's Day evening. Walsh is a b a rte n d e r for C h a rly ’s Pub & G rill. C h a rly ’s
is o n e of the bars review ed in th is w eek's A rts and E n te rta in m e n t.se c tio n . The review p rovides an in-dep th surve y of th e v a rio u s b a rs lo cated in dow n­tow
n Flag staff. In a d d itio n to C harly's, part o n e of th e review, w hich is lo ca te d on page 15, co vers th e M o n te V ista lo un g e and M a lo n e y ’s. The second
half of the review w ill run in next w eek's sectio n .
• Page 15
Snow-
Jack
gives
free ride
ROB E R T O T S U BO
T he L u m ber jack
An ASNAU finan­cially-
secured project has
been realized in the form of
NAU’s Snowjack Express, a
free ride for students from
campus to Arizona’s Snow
bowl.
Andy Bourget, coor­dinator
of NAU O utdoors,
said the club had been work
ing to have the project real­ized
for a significant am ount
of time.
“We have been talking
about it in the past but it was
never developed,” Bourget
said.
Bourget said due to
inadequate snow conditions
in previous years, Snowjack
Express was never brought
to life.
“Last year we tried,
but the season was bad,”
Bourget said.
With 55 inches of snow
at Snowbowl this winter, the
conditions were adequate to
begin the project.
The Snowjack Express
made its maiden voyage Feb.
1.
“It has been selling
S e e SNOW JACK
P a q e 4
Spring
numbers
increase
C HRIS C O P L A N
T he L u m b e rja c k
W ith the beginning
of the spring 2008 sem es­ter,
NAU marks its highest
spring enrollm ent m the
university’s history.
Spring 2008 enroll­ment
totaled at 20,224
students at the M ountain
Campus and other sites in ­cluding
NAU-Yuma and
NAU-North Valley. This
was nearly 6 percent higher
than spring 2007s 19,095
students, with 12,859 at the
Flagstaff campus, and an
additional 4,418 enrolled
throughout the state.
In the interim of fall
and spring semesters e n ­rollment
num bers usually
decrease, but the spring se­mester
continued fall 2007 s
increased enrollm ent where
the university saw a record-breaking
21352 students.
Graduate student e n ­rollment
increased by 7.9
percent, up to 14,513 from
spring 2007 s 13,453 stu­dents.
NAU President John
D. Haeger said this increase
proves NAU is successfully
interacting with students.
“This indicates we’ve
been successful in getting
the word out,” Haeger said.
“Student enrollm ent has
just been doing a spectacu­lar
job’
David Bousquet, vice
president for enrollm ent
management and student
P a t * 5
D ow ntow n Flagstaff bars hopping with weekend student activity
Bryan Kinkade/The Lum berjack
Homophobia strikes Reilly in form of threats
S A S H A S O L O M O N O V
T he L u m b e r ja c k
On Monday, Feb. 4, after
two weeks of coming home to
homophobic phrases scribbled
onto his whiteboard. Ash Arp
returned to his 2”*1 floor Reilly
cform room to find a death
threat.T
he words “The dyke
will die” were written in black
marker in all capitalized letters
over an old note Arp, a sopho­more
sociology major, had on
the whiteboard. Arp, who iden­tifies
as transgendered and pre­fers
the pronoun he,’ quickly
called his roomm ate Laura
Bjork, a freshman English m a­jor
who identifies as a lesbian,
and the police to docum ent the
hate crime.
Bjork said she did not
find the threat viable at first,
but quickly realized the sever­ity
of the situation after speak­ing
with the police.
“I startedgettingspooked
because the cop told us to lock
our doors, even when we were
going to the bathroom,” Bjork
said. “Then I started realizing
the seriousness o f the situa­tion.”
Four days later Arp re­ceived
an even scarier threat
that underm ined the safety of
both his room m ate and him ­self.
O n Feb. 8, the death threat
left on Arp and Bjork’s white­board,
“The dykes will burn, I
will find the dyks,” ultimately
prom pted them to move out of
Reilly.
“1 was terrified,” Arp
said. “1 have known people that
have been killed by hate crimes
before and it scares me that
for a while you think that
you’re so safe on campus,
you think that you’re so safe
where you are living and then
this comes up and it brings
back these old fears.”
Arp, who serves as
panels manager for PRISM
the lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender (LGBT) club at
NAU, said the person who
wrote the homophobic threat
on his whiteboard did so out
of ignorance.
“They try to make peo­ple
feel uncomfortable to try
and scare them back into the
closet and scare them into a
life that is socially accept
able,” Arp said.
Arp said his fearless­ness
to be out of the closet
and serve on the executive
board of PRISM made him
a visible target for bigotry.
Bjork is also an active m em ­ber
o f PRISM and works as
secretary to the club.
Aside from anony­mously
written death threats,
Arp experiences discrim ina­tion
just by walking to class­es.
“I’ll be walking around
campus and people will yell
SOPHOMORE SOCIOLOGY M A JO R Ash A rp (left) and Laura Bjork, Sophom ore English
major, chat in their new dorm room. In a hateful gesture "Die D yke” was w ritten on the door
of th e ir previous room.
out, that f-ing dyke should
die.m Arp said.
Arp and Bjork are not the
only LGBT students to be sub­ject
to sexual discrimination in
the residence halls. Earlier this
year Amanda Pixley a freshman
hotel and restaurant m anage­ment
m ajor who lives in
McConnell Hall, got both
her door and car defaced
because of her expression
of her sexuality.
*1 had a rainbow
sticker that said celebrate
diversity,1” Pixley said
about her car. "One day I
went to my car and it was
gone.”
Pixley had rainbow
pictures and photographs
of lesbian icons ripped or
otherwise damaged on her
dorm room door.
“I was angry because
I didn’t think I should go
through this because 1 didn’t do
anybody any harm ” Pixley said.
“I’m just being myself”
Pixley said her friend
Helen Kennedy, a fellow Mc­Connell
resident, also had les­bian
iconography tom from her
room d o o r
about those threats m aterial­izing.
educational program ­ming
and rallying around
the victims to provide sup­port.
Following the meet:
ing, Reilly resident assistants
provided passive program ­ming
to the residents in the
hall to inform them of the
dangers of hate.
“Often times the stu­dents
that need the events
most won't attend them, but
they’ll read a bulletin; they’ll
read a sign in the bathroom
stall,” Wesbrock said.
In addition, Residence
Life holds campus-wide
anti-discrim ination events
throughout the year such as
Sechrist s “Take My Voice,”
where participants remain
silent for a day to experi­ence
what it is like to be part
of m inority group without a
voice, and Tinsley’s “Hunger
Project,” which tackles so ­cio-
economic class issues.
The programs aim to
Sh H OM O PHO BIA,
Paqe 5
Gretchen Wesbrock,
freshman connection coordina­tor
for Residence Life, person­ally
called Arp after hearing he
was the victim of a hate crime.
Wesbrock said her initial reac­tion
was to com fort and console
Arp.
Ash Arp
“Then there was anger
because this is the kind of stuff
that I absolutely do not toler
ate happening in our residence
halls,” Wesbrock said.
The death threats in Reil­ly
lead to an all-staff meeting
in the hall to discuss concerns