A place to breathe. A place to meet. A place to “let your hair down.”

That’s what students in the Black Women of Achievement and Black Student Union asked of the board of trustees on Thursday. Students proposed that the University of Oregon build a ‘Black Center’ as a place for black students to have community, and that the UO hire more student advisers that are African-American and understand what that experience is like.

“Our biggest issue on campus is community,” said Fevean Siyoum, president of the Black Women of Achievement to the board. “I think it’s important for the board to understand that these advisers need to be black… White advisers will never know what it’s like to be black.”

Andrew Colas, a member of the board, voiced agreement.

“One of the things you don’t see here is a community because they’re so small,” said Colas, who graduated from UO in 2004 and is president of Colas Construction in Portland. “There isn’t a black frat house and there probably won’t be anytime soon.”

Other members of the board weren’t as sure as Colas. However, Ginevra Ralph, Board Vice Chair, wondered if building a Black Center would be a form of self-segregation.

“If I suggested that, people would say ‘There’s the white lady trying to segregate the black people,’” Ralph said. “I wish there were some other set of ideas that says ‘we do need to live together.’”

But the pro-Center students argued that it can be hard to move to a university that’s almost 80 percent white. That can be hard for students who are used to being around people of their own race all the time.

“Having that level of diversity, having that level of passion,” Colas said. “Having a place where students can celebrate being a black male or a black female is so critical to our mission as a board.”

A place to breathe. A place to meet. A place to “let your hair down.”

That’s what students in the Black Women of Achievement and Black Student Union asked of the board of trustees on Thursday. Students proposed that the University of Oregon build a ‘Black Center’ as a place for black students to have community, and that the UO hire more student advisers that are African-American and understand what that experience is like.

“Our biggest issue on campus is community,” said Fevean Siyoum, president of the Black Women of Achievement to the board. “I think it’s important for the board to understand that these advisers need to be black… White advisers will never know what it’s like to be black.”

Andrew Colas, a member of the board, voiced agreement.

“One of the things you don’t see here is a community because they’re so small,” said Colas, who graduated from UO in 2004 and is president of Colas Construction in Portland. “There isn’t a black frat house and there probably won’t be anytime soon.”

Other members of the board weren’t as sure as Colas. However, Ginevra Ralph, Board Vice Chair, wondered if building a Black Center would be a form of self-segregation.

“If I suggested that, people would say ‘There’s the white lady trying to segregate the black people,’” Ralph said. “I wish there were some other set of ideas that says ‘we do need to live together.’”

But the pro-Center students argued that it can be hard to move to a university that’s almost 80 percent white. That can be hard for students who are used to being around people of their own race all the time.

“Having that level of diversity, having that level of passion,” Colas said. “Having a place where students can celebrate being a black male or a black female is so critical to our mission as a board.”

The student newspaper inevitably absorbs pieces of pop culture, politics and people in its pages. Here are some pieces of history that the editors at the time threw in, probably without a thought as to how people in the future would be looking back and seeing them.

1. This advertisement for the original ‘True Grit.’

2. This Ralph Nader speech announcement.

3. This article wherein Steve Prefontaine is a sophomore.

4. This stylin’ member of student government from the ’70s.

5. This ‘ask the sexpert’ answer assuring readers masturbation won’t make you blind.

6. When the university changed the multicultural requirement.

7. When Letterman switched from NBC to CBS.

8. This Macintosh ad from the 1990s.

9. This weirdly prophetic ‘man on the street’ question from 1993.

10. This review of a Phish concert from the ’90s.

11. This Doonesbury during its original run.

12. …And this Calvin and Hobbes during its original run.

13. This virginity ad from 2000.

14. This analysis of Bush and Gore’s debates in 2000.

There are some university employees working full-time and on food stamps.

That’s what Johnny Earl said at the University of Oregon board of trustees’ meeting Thursday, where he and others from the Service Employees International Union warned the university they may strike if raises do not increase.

The SEIU represents service employees at UO, including janitors, office specialists and others around the state.

Over the years, cost of living in Oregon has risen and wages for working-class UO employees hasn’t been rising enough to cope, SEIU members said Thursday.

“There are some people at this university that are barely making it,” Earl said.

SEIU has asked for a two percent raise in the next two years. State universities are also proposing that when health insurance goes up for service employees, workers shoulder more of the costs (six percent instead of what it is now, five percent).

That’s not something SEIU can afford when many of their employees are already living paycheck to paycheck, Attneave said.

Earl said the same thing in his public comment to the board of trustees.

“We are an organ,” Earl said. “If one of us gets sick, all of us get sick.”

Earl himself oversees custodial services on campus and works nights. He gave this address to the Board during his sleeping shifts, according to Earl.

The SEIU’s current contract is up June 30. The two sides can agree to extend the current contract, but if an agreement isn’t made, the SEIU could strike by the end of summer.

“Classified staff can be invisible,” Attneave said. “We’re here year-in, year-out making sure UO is the best place we can make it… In the 30 years that I’ve worked here, my salary and my real wages here have declined until now we have hundreds of people falling into the working poor, and more all the time.”

University administration did not immediately respond for comment.

The Lane County Medical Examiner found no obvious cause of Noah DeWitt’s death, a 2012 University of Oregon alumnus whose body was found last week, Eugene police said in a press release Wednesday.

DeWitt was last seen in Eugene on Feb. 14, after leaving a friend’s house barefoot at 2 a.m. His mother, sister and friends launched an extensive search immediately after he had gone missing, but the search was inconclusive.

The results of the toxicology report are still pending, according to EPD spokesperson Melinda McLaughlin. The investigation remains ongoing and police are looking into the circumstances around the death, McLaughlin said.

Chris Lee was 16 when his parents kicked him out of their home.

But Lee is now 21 and a junior at University of Oregon, he’s planning on going to law school and he’s the headliner for this year’s UO Campus Block Party.

So how did he go from homeless teen to up-and-coming rap artist and 3.5 GPA student?

His hard work started with his hard-working parents. Immigrants from South Korea, they opened a grocery story in Southeast Portland and worked fifteen hours a day running it. Lee respected his parents, but he was obsessed with not being a burden to them; with being “self-sufficient”–and that’s what got him into trouble.

Lee’s parents would ask him if he needed new clothes for school, and he’d say “No.” But behind their backs, Lee would steal new clothes from stores and, when his parents asked where they came from, say “You bought this for me, remember?”

His parents knew what he was doing, but it took years and Lee getting into deeper trouble for them to kick him out.

Lee was fortunate enough to be invited to stay with a friend whose parents were adamant that he stay in school.

“They were like ‘get your ass to class,’” Lee said.

Lee did, and he got good grades and at the same time began developing his love for music. Lee developed a deep love for Tupac Shakur and the Chicago rap and hip-hop scene, many of whom (like Chance the Rapper) are among his biggest influences now.

Lee found something in music to throw himself into–to work hard like his parents. He began rapping, then recording, then performing. Lee calls his brand of music “cruising music” or “euphoric music.”

Lee became a Duck and brought his music to Eugene, where the scene was different and less developed–though no less appreciated, Lee said.

“People (in Eugene) love the hip-hop, but they don’t really know about it,” Lee said. “We’re trying to make something memorable.”

And that’s Lee’s goal with this show. He’s been trying to land a spot at the campus block party for as long as it’s been around, but now he and some other Eugene rappers he’s paired with have opened for bigger artists (most recently Sammy Adams) and have experience with bigger crowds.

Lee will be performing with two guests from the STRAY music project (a group the three of them and other rappers from Eugene perform as), Donte Thomas and Deontre Curry.

“(Deontre) and Donte are pretty much family,” Lee said. “Without them I wouldn’t have been able to come out of the depressions and hardships like I did and am.”

Thomas says their show is going to be more than just them rapping.

“When you give them a show, you give them a show,” Thomas said. “You can’t make an impact as an imitator.”

The Emerald was founded in 1900, and in the last century, journalism has grown up and changed distinctly–it looks way different now than it did a century ago.

The Emerald’s masthead–the letters at the top of the page saying ‘Oregon Emerald’ and later ‘Oregon Daily Emerald’ and then just ‘E’–looks way different now than it did then, too.

Here are eight different iterations of the Emerald’s signature on every paper:

1. This 1916 masthead.

Papers were more of a sheet back then–the columns were thin and there were as many as six to a page. Now, more than one story on a page is uncommon.

2. This ornate 1920s lettering.

The Emerald became a daily in the early ’20s as the school was growing.

3. This wacky, book-illustration-ish ’50s masthead.

4. This blocky, un-ornate ’60s masthead:

5. This aesthetically pleasing ’70s header:

6. This utilitarian ’90s masthead.

’90s design wasn’t about style, for the most part–many newspapers even dropped text with serifs.

7. This bevelled, embossed title line.

8. This modern, stripped down single letter.

In 2012, the Emerald went through what we called the ‘Revolution,’ where our daily newspaper turned into a twice-a-week tabloid-style news magazine. The paper started focusing efforts into digital media first, and publishing more and more stories that don’t show up in the newspaper–like the one you’re reading now.

Some of these are touching and encouraging, and some of them are incredibly racist. Some are from public service projects from the advertising council encouraging readers to be responsible citizens, and others encourage readers to try Camel cigarettes for a smoother drag.

Here are seven of the best:

1. This ad predates the A-Team by like, a lot:

2. This Camel ad will never have you looking at puffins the same way.

3. This discourse on how to be a good citizen:

4. This uncomfortable Emerald classifieds ad:

5. And then this ad, which encourages people to spend time with and “not spread rumors about” any race or religion.

6. This gorgeously dramatic tootsie roll ad.

7. This disturbing call for a model that we’re not sure is serious.

It all started with “I can fix that.”

It was 1991 and the University of Oregon didn’t have a hardware repair shop. But soon after he started saying that, Rob Jaques would come in to the UO Computing Center and find computers all the way down the hall of McKenzie with notes saying whose they were and what was wrong.

That was how the Hardware Repair Shop at the UO was born. Jaques would load six to 12 machines onto a double-decker Tupperware cart, jog them down the hall to a makeshift shop, fix them and go back for more.

“It was a blast,” Jaques said. “It was actually fun to come in to work every day.”

It didn’t take long for Jaques to realize he was going to work in the Information Services until he retired. Every Friday, he would go to Rennie’s with the entire department. They’d have Nerf wars in the halls.

Now, 25 years later, Jaques will be retiring as it closes down — and he thinks it’s too soon.

The shop has been losing an average of $70,000 annually for the last five years. The warranty repair business isn’t as lucrative as it used to be. There are fewer computers and more smartphones and tablets, which can be thrown away. Warranty repair reimbursement (companies pay people to repair their products) has dropped considerably, and the UO admin calculates that every Apple warranty transaction actually costs the university $32.59. In addition, Jaques and the hardware repair shop crew are often doing repairs that hurt their profit margins, like soldering broken parts free of charge.

In March, the UO administration announced that the repair shop will shut down on May 29.

Hundreds of people have said they want to save it.

After the announcement was made, retired math professor Marie Vitulli, who has used the shop since she started at the UO, created a petition that got around 400 signatures on Change.org before she sent it to interim President Scott Coltrane. Student employee Megan McMillan has submitted a motion to the University Senate trying to save the repair shop before it closes. They ask that the university subsidize the repair shop indefinitely, or at least until a way to make it profitable can be found.

But they all agree that it’s probably too late.

The administration is happy there’s this much passion for the shop, says Patrick Chinn, director of strategic communications for Information Services at the UO. Chinn himself worked as a student under Jaques in the repair shop years ago.

But there are more reasons other than money behind the UO’s decision.

First is low utilization. The hardware shop is a subsection of the university’s Tech Desk, and it accounts for less than 10 percent of its transactions, only about 1,800 last year.

Without the shop, students who have hardware problems with their laptops will have to go to other shops around town. Jaques thinks of this as a key service to the students—something the university could provide to them, instead of asking them to go elsewhere.

The schools within UO could suffer from this change as well. Other than the law school—which offers onsite warranty repair for Dell and Apple laptops, but only for law students—no school has the level of repair capabilities that the hardware repair shop does.

Schools do have their own IT departments that can troubleshoot software problems and in some cases diagnose and order new parts, but there will be no centralized location. If they have issues with repairs, they would have to look outside the university for help.

“This would be very destructive to departments,” Vitulli said.

When McMillan learned her job at the hardware repair center would be ending, she started collecting numbers. McMillan owes her entire breadth of skill to the shop. As a sophomore music student, she changed her major to computer science even though she had no skills. She had never even used a screwdriver, according to Jaques.

After two years, she can troubleshoot nearly any hardware problem and take a computer from broken to fixed.

McMillan isn’t losing her job at the repair shop — she’s moving to an apprenticeship that’s better for her career — but she’s still trying to save the repair shop any way she can.

McMillan compiled data for the university on the nearest shops, but she also compiled a list of  “intangible values” on what the university is losing based on her experience there for the past two years: including calls, the apprenticeships and student shop workers.

McMillan came on as an apprentice, part of a program the shop has been doing since 2008.

“The primary thing is educational value,” McMillan said. “I hope I can change their mind with this.”

McMillan isn’t the only student concerned. Comments on the petition show that some students and alumni are concerned as well.

Student Adam Lindsey would be personally affected by the shutdown, like he said on the petition.

“It would be wrong to take this away,” Lindsey said. “As a CIS student, I need my computer to do my work.”

But Chinn said that the Change.org petition, while heartwarming, did not gather many signatures. Part of that could be because, as Jaques points out, students weren’t notified of the shutdown through any main communications line. He still has customers coming in who have no idea the shop is shutting down soon.

The Duck Store is looking into the possibility of building a replacement repair center, but they would need to develop a model that makes sense budget-wise, according to Hanna Budan, an employee in the Duck Store’s technology department. And there’s no way they’d be able to build a repair center in a month, or even six months.

What they can do, and plan to launch in the fall, is a diagnostics service where students bring their damaged hardware in, the technicians look it over for a fee and they send it to a shop in town for repair. Costs for this vary widely, but students would pay a diagnostic fee to the Duck Store and a repair fee to the shop.

“The message for the students is that they’re going to be taken care of,” Budan said.

But Jaques thinks the university doesn’t need to open a new shop that charges students: he wants the university to provide this service for free to students. Jaques said that for that opportunity, he would even hold off retirement.

“I wish I could just say, ‘I don’t give a shit, I’m retiring,’” Jaques said. “But I do.”

In the first part of the 1900s, student newspapers were essentially the Internet: If you wanted to sell something, buy something, figure out what’s going on tonight, see how the Ducks did in volleyball or hear about classes cancelled, you picked up the student paper.

And with all that coverage of minutiae, ‘innovation’ was some variation on ‘start every word in your headline with P.’ Student journalists found some really interesting ways to present their stories.

Here are some wonderful ways that ‘innovation’ came out in the Daily Emerald. These are taken from 1915 to the late 1930s.

1. This wonderfully phrased headline.

2. This quality snapshot of 1931 life.

3. This confusingly racist story.

4. This randomly placed illustration of strangulation.

5. This TMI piece.

6. This enticing advertisement.

7. This entirely delightful combination of words.

8. This soothingly progressive quote.

9. This piece of artistic gold.

10. This important announcement from the governor.

11. This uncomfortably named honors society.

12. This important think-piece on Hayward Field’s namesake and his struggle with seasickness.

13. This well-phrased coverage of a civic issue.

14. This delightful evasion of a second adverb.

15. This uncomfortable observation.

16. This wonderfully named workshop.

17. This surreal, oddly specific description.

18. This headline straight out of an Air Bud film.

19. This indication that Phelan’s Boys need to suck it up.

Thanks to Alexandra Wallachy for the idea for this TBT.