Xavier student faces felonious assault indictment
Burns also faces charges for possession of illegal drug paraphernalia in an unrelated case
Kathryn Rosenbaum
News Editor
Following the Oct. 1 indictment of Xavier freshman Kevin Burns on two felonious assault charges, Burns also faces a misdemeanor charge in an unrelated case.
Burns was initially charged with assault after reportedly hitting sophomore Nate Wynveen in the head with a beer mug at the corner of Montgomery and Cleneay Avenues on Sept. 21, 2008, according to the police report filed in Norwood.
This assault resulted in a gash in Wynveen’s forehead that needed 60 stitches, said Wynveen.
Burns was charged with another count of assault after attempting to hit witness Patrick Foley with the beer mug.
Foley chased Burns as he ran away after hitting Wynveen. Burns then tried to hit Foley with the mug, said one of the arresting officers Detective Jeff Kilby of Norwood.
Kilby said that alcohol was involved in the case. Kilby said that Norwood police have the broken beer mug, photos of Wynveen after he was assaulted and photos of blood splatters at the assault scene as evidence in the case.
Prior to Burn’s arrest and indictment in the assault case, he did not have a criminal record, said Kilby.
However, Burns now also faces another misdemeanor charge in an unrelated case that occurred after the assault case.
Burns was charged with possession of illegal drug paraphernalia after he was arrested on Oct. 9 in Cincinnati, according to the Hamilton County Clerk of Courts website.
Currently, the assault case is set to go before Judge Fred Nelson in the Court of Common Pleas on Oct. 22. This motion for discovery hearing will also set a date for a trial.
Bond in the assault case was set at $25,000, with a 10 percent cash deposit required.
Burns was arrested and posted bail on Sept. 23, according to the Hamilton County Clerk of Courts website.
A felonious assault charge may result in a maximum sentence of two to eight years in prison and/or a fine. Instead of facing jail time, the offender may face probation, said Kilby.
Felonious assault is a second degree felony, which is defined as “cause or attempt to cause physical harm to another or to another’s unborn by means of a deadly weapon or dangerous ordinance,” according to Ohio law.
The illegal possession case was filed in Municipal Civil Court on Oct. 14 and an arraignment is scheduled to be held on Oct. 20.
Ingber breathes life into Xavier Interfaith
Amy Windhorst
Campus News Editorial
Rabbi Abie Ingber, the founding Director of Xavier’s Interfaith Community Engagement program (ICE), might not be who you’d expect to find in a small office on the third floor of Gallagher Student Center.
The rabbi (who prefers to be addressed as “Abie”), is the type of person who, upon meeting you, instantly offers to buy you a cup of coffee. His warmth and personality immediately expanded to fill his workspace during our two-hour conversation.
My first question addressed how he came to Xavier.
“This morning I debated between I-275 and Remington,” Ingber quipped.
In truth, the path that led Rabbi Ingber to Xavier’s doorstep is far more complex. It began nearly 30 years ago, when he was asked to participate in a local interfaith television program hosted by the late Father Edward Brueggeman S.J. During his time with “Dialogue,” Ingber and Brueggeman formed a strong relationship.
“I had never been close to a Jesuit priest before,” said Ingber. Brueggeman, whose name many students will recognize from our campus’ Brueggeman Center for Dialogue, was Ingber’s first connection with the Xavier community.
For three decades (until this past year), Ingber served as the Executive Director of the Hillel Jewish Student Center at the University of Cincinnati. This alone has made him an important member of the local community.
Ingber also has had a national, if not global impact. In 2004, with colleagues James Buchanan and William Madges, he created the exhibit “A Blessing to One Another: Pope John Paul II and the Jewish People.”
The exhibit, which Ingber anticipated to only be briefly shown, is now being booked into its seventh year.
His exhibit was actually completed upon the wishes of Pope John Paul II himself. Since 1999, Rabbi Ingber has had four separate conferences with the pope—two with Pope John Paul II and two with Pope Benedict XVI. He is a respected voice for the Jewish community and a known advocate of bridge-building around the world.
This summer left Ingber with a wealth of opportunies. He had just recently retired from Hillel, and was looking to pursue new paths.
Though he was not sure exactly what he wanted to do with his freedom, he said “I knew I wanted to do Interfaith.”
This led Ingber back to Xavier. As both an adjunct theology faculty member and the Director of ICE, Rabbi Ingber is quickly becoming a familiar face on campus.
As for ICE itself, the possible initiatives seem limitless. During our conversation, Ingber handed me a stack of 40 paper plates—each with a different initiative written on the top.
At ICE’s first event—an ice-cream social hosted in GSC—members indicated their support for the various ideas by placing stickers on their favorite programs. Some of the ideas included hug cards, morning breakfasts and prayer and the construction of a “Wall of Hate” in the greenspace.
Ingber is unfazed by any budget challenges he might face. “We will raise the money we need and we will make it happen,” he said.
The excitement Rabbi Ingber has about ICE and interfaith is evident.
“The soil is so open to planting new seeds,” he said. He emphasizes the need to bring out the diversity of individuals, to help each of them build his or her own faith, to build bridges and to expand the interfaith community.
Ingber is especially passionate about working with young people; with four daughters of his own, this comes as little surprise.
“The investment you make in a young person’s life—that’s when you open up the doors into their own lives,” he said.
The rabbi also wants to emphasize ICE’s continued cooperation with other organizations on campus.
“I don’t think we’ll sponsor a single program this semester that will not be collaborative,” he said.
One important step Ingber wants to make on campus is securing an interfaith prayer space on campus.
“It will happen,” said Ingber. Right now, he and others are looking to find a space in one of the residence halls, perhaps Kuhlman.
Meanwhile, Ingber has been taking time out to serve the local community. He recently visited with the Starfire Council of Greater Cincinnati, where he worked to educate people with handicapss on different faith cultures, including his own.
Students who are interested in interfaith should visit ICE’s website at www.xavier.edu/interfaith. There, they can sign up for the mailing list, which informs students of upcoming interfaith opportunities.
ICE is hosting an interfaith retreat, which will take place on Nov. 14-15 at a location to be decided.
Until then, Rabbi Ingber encourages students to visit him in Room 320 in GSC. They should stop by if they are interested in the interfaith community—or perhaps just looking for a great conversation and a cup of coffee to go along with it.
Unions rally at Cintas headquarters
Meghan Berneking
Asst. Campus News Editor
Xavier students joined other university students, workers, union members and community members on Tuesday morning for a rally outside the Cintas Corporate Headquarters in Mason, Ohio, advocating workers’ rights and safety.
In the past few years, the Cintas Corporation has been under scrutiny due to several reports of unsafe working conditions, unfair wages and citations for safety violations from the Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The campaign against the corporation has grown in light of the 2007 death of Eleazar Torres-Gomez in Tulsa, Okla., who was killed after being caught in a conveyor and dragged into a 300-degree industrial dryer while attempting to free a jam from one of the machines.
Cintas was fined $2.78 million for the incident.
As the rally began, picket signs around the protesters’ necks read “Make Cintas safe,” or depicted killed or injured workers.
The crowd grew to around 200 people, many sporting red T-shirts for “Service Workers Rising.”
Noel Beasley, an Executive Vice President of UNITE HERE and the emcee for the rally, was the first to take the stage. He began by saying that an attack on workers’ rights affects all of us, and referred to the painful and unsafe conditions faced by the workers. Though not all Cintas workers are injured on the job, “an injury to one is an injury to all,” he said.
He referred to the death of Torres-Gomez, saying that the company knew the conditions were dangerous, but did not do enough to stop it. In spite of the death, “Cintas continues to be fundamentally unsafe,” said Beasley.
Next on stage was senior Chris Calme, president of Students Against Sweatshops at Xavier.
“As a club, we strive to educate ourselves and our community about the realities of the labor world and strive to better the conditions of workers everywhere,” she said.
She also referred to the fact that many Xavier students only know the Cintas Corporation by name, but do not question if one of the university’s biggest donors upholds the Jesuit values held by Xavier.
“If so few of us know the truth of a company that has become such a large part of our lives, then surely we are failing ourselves and our communities when we say that we are people for others,” she said to the crowd.
Later in the rally, members of the Coalition of Injured Cintas Workers took the stage to a soundtrack of the Twisted Sister song “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” The members shared their experiences of unsafe equipment, harsh chemicals, and painful working conditions.
Finally, Bruce Raynor, the General President of UNITE HERE began the closing rally.
“[Service men and women] work for a company that doesn’t care about the people who make that company work,” he said.
According to Raynor, the death of Gomez has not changed the company because they were cited last month for the same violation that caused the death. Almost every Cintas laundry worker earns less than the poverty level in the United States, he said.
As the Cintas Corporation faces both reputed and confirmed reports of health and safety violations, students have taken action.
As Calme stated to the crowd of indignant workers, “We are here today because we, like all of you, believe that we are called to be and to do more.
We are called to take a stand to make Cintas safe for workers. We are called to make Cintas a place where workers want to work, not just a place they happen to work.”
Xavier reacts to RFK Jr.’s presentation
Andrew Chestnut
Editorial Columnist
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited Xavier to deliver a lecture on the environment on Thursday, Oct. 2.
Due to high demand, the free event had to be relocated from the Schiff Conference Center to the main floor of Cintas Center.
Kennedy’s lecture, entitled “Our Environmental Destiny,” was the first installment of this year’s Ethics/Religion and Society Lecture Series and briefly covered several topics relating to the environment.
Kennedy currently serves as senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council and president of Waterkeeper Alliance, among other positions of environmental influence. Drawing from experience and political background, he argued several points to the attending Xavier community.
Most notably, Kennedy emphasized that energy efficiency is not only good for the earth, but good for the economy—that investing in alternative energy and moving towards carbon neutrality cuts energy costs, bolsters growth and relieves our reliance on foreign oil. “Good environmental policy equals good economic policy,” he said.
According to Kennedy, polluters are not forced to bear most of the external costs of production, including climate change, more extreme weather conditions and contaminated air and water.
Dr. Kathleen Smythe, Co-Chair of Xavier’s Climate and Sustainability Committee and Chair of the ER/S program, said, “Our current system of externalizing the costs of clean air, clean water and sustainable ecosystems is causing tremendous costs, such as poor health and social and psychological ills that are increasingly born by those in lower socioeconomic classes. Good environmental policy could potentially reverse this trend.”
The lecture was also markedly political. Kennedy called the Bush administration “the worst in our history for the environment,” evidencing Bush’s compliance to corporate lobbyists and appointment of “polluters” to heads of environmental regulatory agencies.
He also lambasted the national media for “letting this happen,” prioritizing the entertainment of viewers over the factual reporting of news.
“I would hope that those who heard his lecture, no matter their political persuasion, realized the critical role that our government plays in terms of our relationship to the environment,” said Smythe. “Students and others who care about the future health of our planet and ecosystems need to be engaged personally, institutionally and in terms of policy.”
Kennedy concluded by discussing the ethical aspect of environmental perseverance, emphasizing the recreational and spiritual value of the earth.
“I do think of climate change as an ethical issue and do wonder how my generation will explain to my children’s generation our relative lack of inaction in the face of such clear evidence that action was necessary,” said Smythe.
Dances highlight depth of Peruvian culture
Sponsored by the Student Director of Diversity
If a Xavier student was to think about Perú, he or she would perhaps be able to name Machu Picchu or maybe recall that an aged Indiana Jones went looking for his crystal skulls in this South American nation.
Perú is located on the west coast of South America, with Ecuador and Colombia to the north, Chile to the south, and Brazil and Bolivia to the east. It is not a country that makes our news very often, the earthquakes of 2007 being a rare exception, and so most Americans may not have a very accurate or complete picture of Peruvian culture.
Although Machu Picchu is certainly a noteworthy part of Peruvian heritage, the physical and cultural diversity of Perú goes far beyond the lost Incan city.
While Perú is slightly smaller than the state of Alaska in size, the South American country presents a geographic and demographic variety that exceeds the image most Americans picture of llamas, mountains, and ruins.
Perú is composed of Amazonian rainforest, dry coastal desert, and the highland regions of the Andes Mountains. Each region has its own distinct culture and an extremely significant aspect of Peruvian culture and tradition is dancing.
The Anaconda dance, as its name suggests, originates from the Amazonian region of Perú. The dance was originally a ritual intended to venerate the anaconda when the rainforest tribes were hoping for bountiful hunting and farming. Dancers stomp on a flattened log while wearing clothing of parrot feathers and bark cloth.
A less indigenous form of dance is the Festejo, an Afro-Peruvian dance that originated in the towns south of Lima. This dance explains the customs, happy moments, sorrows and sufferings of the black race in Perú.
The Festejo is performed by couples, who avoid physical contact but dance in
a sensual manner, rhythmically in nature and at a happy pace.
Another noteworthy dance is La Marinera Norteña, the ¨National Dance¨
of Perú. In this very complex and coordinated dance, a couple performs
the traditional rituals of courtship.
The dance is culturally important to Peruvians and thus it is very common to see this dance taught in schools because it is a part of Peruvian education from an early age.
This important aspect of Peruvian culture will be showcased at the Carne Asada event, part of Hispanic Heritage Month, and is hosted by the Student Organization of Latinos.
The Carne Asada Festival will feature a wide variety of Latin American food and drink and the Peruvian dance group, Los Embajadores Peruanos, will perform many traditional dances, including those aforementioned.
The Carne Asada Festival will take place Wednesday, October 15th at 6 p.m. on the Greenspace and the ticket cost is only $5.
This celebration will mark the conclusion of Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs from September 15th to October 15th.
Police Notes
Oct. 1, 9:32 p.m. — Campus Police investigated the report of smoke in the Gallagher food court. The investigation revealed that cooking equipment left on overnight caused the smoke.
Oct. 1, 9:52 p.m. — Two non-students playing basketball in the field house were issued trespass warning letters and sent on their way.
Oct. 3, 12:19 a.m. — An intoxicated student having trouble walking down the second floor of Brockman hall was cited for underage consumption of alcohol.
Oct. 3, 1:31 a.m. — Two students observed urinating behind the dumpster in the health center lot were cited for underage consumption.
Oct. 3, 9:40 a.m. — An employee on the first floor of the field house reported $160 stolen from his or her locked office overnight.
Oct. 3, 9:50 p.m. — A student reported receiving an unusual/harassing phone call from a professor.
Oct. 4, 2:05 a.m. — Campus Police assisted Norwood Police who arrested a student for disorderly conduct while intoxicated in the Domino’s parking lot on Montgomery Road.
Oct. 5, 3:56 p.m. — Campus Police and Physical Plant assisted nine students stuck in the small elevator in Schott hall. The students were warned about overloading the elevators and sent on their way.
Oct. 6, 1:50 p.m. — A non-student looking at bikes on the bike rack between Kuhlman hall and the Cintas Center was arrested on an outstanding warrant and released to the Hamilton County Sherriff.
Oct. 9, 2:36 a.m. — A student observed pushing a newspaper rack around Buenger hall was cited for underage consumption.
Oct. 10, 1:44 p.m. — Campus Police assisted Residence Life in Kuhlman hall with several arguing subjects. A follow-up was handled by Res Life.
Oct. 12, 3:25 p.m. — A visitor attending a soccer game at Corcoran Field reported that he or she was assaulted by another visitor during an argument over a call by a referee. Investigation is pending.
Oct. 12, 7:26 p.m. — A student reported that the glass on the southeast entrance door to the Commons was broken. Physical Plant was notified.
Police Note of the Week
Oct. 1, 1:29 a.m. — Campus Police and Cincinnati Police arrested two non-students for breaking into the old music house in an attempt to remove copper and scrap metal. One suspect was bitten by a canine while attempting to leave the scene.
