Mari Stensgaard/The Mirror
Majora Carter, president of the Majora Carter Group and founder of Sustainable South Bronx, presents "Greening the Ghetto, and How Much It Won't Cost Us"
at the final plenary session on Saturday, March 7, at the Nobel Peace Prize Forum at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn.
Forum highlights 'green' efforts
Subject of climate change at forefront of Nobel Peace Prize gathering
Sandi Vietor
IN CRISIS
THE AUGUSTANA
Friday MIRROR Vol. XCVII
March 13, 2009
No. 14
1908 • CELEBRATING 100 YEARS • 2008
Seniors, if you're looking for a job, rest
assured you're not alone.
According to the Bureau of Labor Sta-tistics,
unemployment rose from 7.6 to 8.1
percent in the past month alone. This eco-nomic
downturn impacts the way gradu-ates
envision their next step.
"The grads coming out in May are going
to face a little bit of a different job market:'
Augustana Career
Center director
Sandi Vietor said.
"The markets
are very much in
belt-tightening
modes."
The United
States experi-enced
an eco-nomic
expansion
beginning in
2001. By 2008,
the expansion slowed due to a reduction
in consumer spending. This fallout rever-berated
and hit the job market, which cor-nered
U.S. employees.
"New jobs are not being created, and
old jobs are being eliminated:' associate
professor of economics Reynold Nesiba
said. "When the economy expands, that's
when jobs are created. Unemployment is
going to rise throughout the rest of this
year and probably into next before it turns
the corner, and that's about the best we can
hope for."
In spite of this dismal market, the Ca-reer
Center urges seniors to nip the prob-lem
and to use creativity in finding jobs.
"You can't sit back and wait for some-thing
to pop up, you have to go after it,"
Vietor said. "You have to be applying and
tenacious. Be thinking about all of the dif-ferent
ways you can use your skills."
Seniors may have to twist past
By Megan Brandsrud
Mirror Staff Writer
Once a year, students from the five
Lutheran Midwestern Norwegian "sis-ter"
colleges assemble to celebrate their
similarities and differences, all the while
learning about and striving for a healthy
global community that revolves around
one essential element—peace.
For the past 21 years, the five schools
have been taking turns in hosting the an-nual
Nobel Peace Prize Forum, highlight-ing
recent Nobel Peace Prize recipients.
The focus of this year's forum, "Striving
for Peace: A Climate for Change," cen-tered
on eco-justice, as it honored the
winners of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize:
former Vice President Al Gore and the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC).
This past weekend, St. Olaf College
in Northfield, Minn., demonstrating its
own "Go Green" efforts with its towering
wind turbine, welcomed students from
Augustana, Concordia (Moorhead),
Augsburg and Luther colleges for the
2009 forum.
The conclusion of the forum included
a presentation of this year's peace schol-ars
from each of the five schools, includ-ing
Augustana junior Beth Singleton and
senior Kimberly Johnson, and an invita-tion
to next year's forum.
Richard Alley, a professor of geosci-ences
at Pennsylvania State University
and contributing scientist for the IPCC,
opened the forum with the first plenary
session, "Projecting Peace: The IPCC and
the Science of Climate Change'
Alley discussed his work with the
IPCC and an assessment of the physi-cal
impacts of climate change. "Climate
science is a predictive science, not an ex-planatory
one," Alley said.
Alley explained how the people suf-fering
from climate change the most are
the poor, hot countries where people live
off the land and use natural projects. A
crowd favorite, Alley described these hu-manitarian
impacts of climate change by
saying, "It's illegal for me to poop in your
front yard, but it's not illegal for me to
change your climate."
As part of Friday's concurrent sessions,
Larry Rasmussen, a Reinhold Niebuhr
professor of social ethics emeritus, and
See PEACE, page 11
Job availability
slims with rise in
unemployment
By Mari Stensgaard
Mirror Staff Writer
See JOBS, page 12
m: irror .
must sees
1 Octo-Mom's
sanity called into
question.
Page 4
Twitter highlights
Tech Talk.
Page 6 3 Basketball
teams
headed for
playoffs.
Page 8
By Rob Green
Mirror Staff Writer
As the grip of the economic
crisis grows tighter, Augustana
officials are cautiously confi-dent
that the college can with-stand
the squeeze of the times.
To the 98 percent of students
that rely on Augustana scholar-ships,
the . financial stability of
the college is becoming a rel-evant
concern. Since last year,
Augustana's endowment fund
has plummeted some 30 per-cent—
last year's $53 million is
down to less than $40 million.
While not an immediate source
of panic, the endowment is a
victim of the times. With the
University of Sioux Falls laying
off some 20 full-time employees
and the remaining staff taking
a nine percent pay cut, some
wonder if Augustana could suf-fer
similar economic pitfalls.
"If it can happen four blocks
down the street, it can happen
here too," junior Jenna Stroth
said.
"Like all colleges, we've been
impacted in a number of differ-ent
ways," President Rob Oli-
EcoNomy
ver said. "It's a good news, bad
news type of story. The bad
news is we're down. The good
news is we're not as down as
other schools are."
As always, Oliver's focus is
on the students. Taking a con-servative
approach to next year's
budget, he assures students that
they will be the school's top pri-ority.
"Our commitment is to
See AID, page 11
Conservative buuddggeteitningg p riority for administration