Autism activist, animal welfare advocate and professor of animal studies at Colorado State University, Temple Grandin, spoke to a packed Glenn Miller Ballroom Thursday evening about the different types of human minds and learning abilities that exist.

She shared her personal experiences and stories with a crowd of about 500 people, Jenna Greenwood, chair of Cultural Events Board, said.

Grandin, the subject of a 2010 HBO biopic, recently released “Different … Not Less,” her new book about ways to improve the lives of those with autism, Asperger’s, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

[Show as slideshow]

Contact CU Independent Photojournalist James Bradbury at James.bradbury@colorado.edu.

CU Student Government is open to candidates for the spring elections of tri-executive positions, representatives and senators. 

Contested seats and number of petition signatures threshold:

• Three university tri-executive positions, currently distinguished as a student-body president and two vice presidents, that must run together on the same ticket (150 student signatures per ticket)
• Four Legislative Council representatives-at-large that may run individually (75 signatures each)
• Two School of Arts and Sciences co-senators that may run individually (50 Arts and Sciences signatures each)
• Five School of Arts and Sciences representatives (25 Arts and Sciences signatures each)
• University of Colorado Engineering Council president and vice president (no signatures required)
• Two Engineering Council co-senators (no signatures required)
• Seven Engineering Council representatives (no signatures required)

Eligible students must pay full-time student fees, be a full-time student at CU Boulder in the term sought and attend a mandatory candidates meeting with valid student identification in Hellems 252 at 7:30 p.m. next Wednesday, March 13.

In order to run, students must pick up petition packets from the student government front desk in UMC room 125, located between The Connection bowling alley and Elevations Credit Union. Completed packets with required signatures are due back to the office by 5 p.m. next Monday, March 11.

For more information, contact Election Commissioner John Michael Thistle at Johnmichael.thistle@colorado.edu. 

Contact CU Independent Copy Editor Alison Noon at Alison.noon@colorado.edu.

If you are considering purchasing tickets for a dubstep show this weekend, don’t.

The Colorado Ballet is performing three world-renowned dances, one of which has never before been performed, in Ballet MasterWorks. Ticket prices rival the prices for concerts in Boulder and Denver, but your ears and mind will be much happier at the end of the night.

Caitlin Valentine-Ellis and Dmitry Trubchanov performing “In Pieces” choreographed by Val Caniparoli at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House in Denver. The show runs Feb. 22 – March 3. (Photo courtesy Mike Watson/Colorado Ballet)

The show opens with choreographer George Balanchine’s 1947 “Theme and Variations,” a traditional, romantic ballet with some twists. A dazzling pack of 26 dancers take a central pas de deux and grand polonaise, but sometimes spot on the back wall instead of the audience, and sometimes lead the women by wrists or armpits instead of fingers or waists. The 30-minute opener satisfies any hunger for storybook ballet, which the Colorado company usually sticks to.

After an intermission, men in tutus take the stage and bring unexpected delight. It would be a stretch to say that costume designers were making a statement on gender equality. More likely, the dress is meant to liken the male silhouettes to the females’, which is a main focus of the funky piece. Or, as my accompaniment said, “They’re supposed to be flies on the wall.”

Six dancers run around the stage, shake their hips, walk backwards at multiple points and depart from the usual ballet techniques of the Colorado company. “In Pieces” included movements that resembled skills I once learned in CU’s Modern Dance course.

The ballet premiered last Friday and has been the talk of the town in the week since. Choreographer Val Caniparoli wrote the piece to music by Poul Ruders, which Sanya Andersen-Vie, public relations manager for the Colorado Ballet, said he had wanted to incorporate into the dance scene for some time.

Caniparoli, the choreographer for San Francisco Ballet, has contributed to over 35 dance companies and is influenced by all forms of movement, Colorado Ballet Artistic Director Gil Boggs said in a news release. The piece is groundbreaking for the company that is growing and generating excitement in the Denver arts scene.

“In Pieces” far surpassed any expectations I had for the company’s first performance of the new piece, and it’ll only get better in the second, final week of the show.

Although the second piece was by far my favorite of Ballet MasterWorks, the company has really pushed its celebration of the 100^th anniversary of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring”.

“When it premiered in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris in 1913, the music was so groundbreaking and the choreography so controversial that it nearly evoked a riot on opening night,” Boggs said. “This pro

Colorado Ballet performs “In Pieces,” the original piece in the company’s spring production, Ballet Masterworks. The performance is showing at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House in Denver Feb. 22-March 3. (Photo courtesy Mike Watson/Colorado Ballet)

duction promises to be just as intense. Its percussive rhythms and dissonant harmonies with the challenging choreography will be a true feast for the senses and will hopefully evoke strong emotions in the audience, without the rioting of course.”

“The Rite of Spring” is animalistic and jaw-dropping, though very different from the other performances without pointe shoes. Andersen-Vie watched the final dress rehearsal, she said, and witnessed dancers being hounded to act “more like chimpanzees and birds.”

Tickets for Ballet MasterWorks start at $28. The final performances are Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. There is also a Sunday matinee show.

Contact CU Independent Copy Editor Alison Noon at Alison.noon@colorado.edu.

University of Colorado Cultural Events Board announced at a student government meeting Thursday night that musicians Macklemore and Ryan Lewis will play at Balch Fieldhouse on April 19.

The concert is part of a long line of college venues they’re playing this spring. They play at the University of Northern Colorado on March 3.
Tickets for the concert at CU go on sale 10 a.m. Monday at University Memorial Center. The board is expecting the show to sell out and added that the UMC opens at 7 a.m., when people may start lining up for tickets inside. Tickets will be $15 for students, $40 for non-students.

The Cultural Events Board and partner Program Council will provide further details at 2 p.m. on Friday.

Contact CU Independent Copy Editor Alison Noon at Alison.noon@colorado.edu.

CU Student Government approved a bill 10-4 Thursday night that expresses their opinion that the state should repeal Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, well-known as TABOR.

Under TABOR, which passed on Colorado’s 1992 ballot, if any state or local revenue exceeds an allowed amount of government spending, the excess money must be returned to taxpayers. According to the Colorado Department of the Treasury, the state has returned more than $2 billion to taxpayers because of the provision.

That money, student government argues, could be funding higher education.

The CU Student Government listens to a prospective member during their September 6th meeting. (CU Independent File/James Bradbury)

“It really is necessary to repeal it if we want to change the funding picture at CU,” said Walker Williams, a law student at CU and graduate and professional studies liaison to student government. “We’re trying to make a statement that we believe the current level of state funding to CU is unacceptable.”

Student government heard from six students who urged the council to pass the bill expressing discontent with TABOR during their weekly meeting. Legislative Council discussed the bill into the 10 p.m. hour.

Advocates of small government have pushed TABOR in upwards of 30 states, but Colorado is the only state to have adopted it, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. All eyes have been on Colorado’s subsequent drop-off in public services since adopting the provision just over two decades ago.

“TABOR limits are the strictest revenue and spending limits in the nation,” Great Education Colorado, a nonpartisan organization, says on their website. “Most voters were not aware of the strangling effect TABOR would have on basic government services.”

The New York Times noted on Jan. 30 that Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights is, “generally considered the tightest cap on spending and taxation in the nation.”

There is a major lawsuit underway challenging the constitutionality of the provision because it limits government spending and right to oversee taxes without public referendum, which, 33 plaintiffs say, calls for a more direct democracy the framers’ republican ideal.

Should people paying taxes decide the government’s spending amount and when taxes should be raised? The framers argued that a government made through representatives of the people, or republican democracy, would avoid that dilemma. James Madison, specifically, argued that populous needed a filter representatives.

For Vice President of External Affairs Tyler Quick, the repeal of TABOR is essentially about allowing the government to fund important programs, like education. More people would be able to attend CU Boulder, he said, if tuition costs weren’t steep and rising each year. That problem, he argued on Thursday, could be addressed after repealing the provision limiting funding to state schools.

“The platform we were all elected on is we would do anything to lower tuition,” Quick said to the representatives. “So that’s why we have to do this.”

The issue is a hot topic, Quick said, and the generally Republican-supported amendment to the Colorado Constitution is likely to be challenged in the newly Democrat-controlled state legislature in the next year or two.

Contact CU Independent Copy Editor Alison Noon at Alison.noon@colorado.edu.

Two members of CU Student Government felt the wrath of fellow representatives Thursday night after they testified in favor of a state-level gun bill without the blessing of other representatives.

Vice President of External Affairs Tyler Quick and President of Legislative Council Colin Sorensen gave support for Rep. Claire Levy’s bill, HB 1226, banning concealed weapons on college campuses in Denver on Wednesday. Whether or not it was intentional, Sorensen thanked the House for letting them speak on behalf of the student government, though he had not consulted other members of the group on the testimony.

A CUSG legislative budget meeting last spring. (CU Independent File/Robert R. Denton)

Sorensen did not realize he explicitly said he was speaking for the group until Thursday evening and apologized after a heated Legislative Council meeting. Other members expressed alarm at finding out about the testimony first in the news.

“If you guys have the opportunity to speak on behalf of CUSG, then I should have that opportunity as well,” Rep. Alexis Scobie said.

Vice President of Internal Affairs Logan Schlutz, when speaking about the ordeal and said he would have appreciated a consent of opinion on the bill before being spoken for at the gun hearing.

“Times are changing and they’re marching on and no matter what the opinion is, we need to represent it together,” Schlutz said. “Nobody should say they represent everyone unless they talk with everyone.”

Quick said that the only thing the representatives owed apology for after the hearing was not reaching out to students more.

Quick and Sorensen agree, however, that a majority of CU Boulder students support a gun ban on campus, which is why they felt comfortable representing that sentiment at the state legislature, they said. Quick attested to a general unease that Boulder students and faculty have in regard to concealed weapons.

“What our basic argument was is, ‘This isn’t about gun rights,’” Quick said on Thursday. “What this is is its making faculty members feel unsafe and therefore less productive.”

At the hearing, the vice president brought up an accidental gun discharge on CU’s Anschutz Medical campus in November, which injured the concealed-carry permit holder and another woman present. He also mentioned the signs hanging around the Boulder campus asking that concealed weapons not be brought into individual offices.

“When they’re scared, so are we,” Quick said in his testimony.

Sorensen argued that, based on an unofficial survey conducted by the Presidential Leadership Class in Boulder, the majority of the student population feels safer without concealed weapons on campus. He also told the state House about 2010 student government legislative activity that inadvertently supported CU’s then-gun ban, which was deemed unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court in March.

Rep. Justin Everett asked if Quick, Sorensen or Director of Legislative Affairs Julia Harrington, who accompanied them on Thursday, have seen any incidents of intimidation among students involving concealed weapons. Quick said that the general feeling on campus is fear more than intimidation.

“We’ve met with students with concealed weapons and we don’t pretend to represent their views at all today, but we are of the belief that most students [would] feel safer, not necessarily because of intimidation, if concealed weapons were banned from campus,” Quick said.

Levy’s bill cleared the House Education Committee on a party-line vote of 7-6, The Denver Post reports. It heads to the House Appropriations Committee next, before it hits the floor of the Democrat-controlled House and likely moves on to the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Listen to the Wednesday hearing here; CUSG representatives were the first to give testimony.

Contact CU Independent Copy Editor Alison Noon at Alison.noon@colorado.edu.