Henri Harper filled a difficult position at Iowa City’s City High School for the last 11 years as the juvenile court liaison, helping students transition back into the classroom after personal and legal problems instead of letting them become part of a drop-out statistic. But in December 2007, after a series of fights at City High, Harper realized that his official post at the school wasn’t enough. Along with students, their parents and community support, Harper started the Fas Trac College Bound Program–originally consisting of six black students but eventually growing to more than 40 students from all backgrounds.

Commentary: June/July 2010 ~ Two years ago in June, the water began creeping. The rain didn’t stop and the water creeped and creeped. Everyone we knew still went to work, shrugging beneath black umbrellas, minds and eyes on the sky. Kids went to school, dogs got walked, and the river slowly wrapped a watery arm [...]

“Stand up and introduce yourself,” said Mrs. B.
“Umm…Hi, my name is Bonkuya. Nice to meet you all,” I said. These were the first words to have ever exited my mouth when I first got to City High. I was new to Iowa, and even though I had lived here for about a week before my [...]

Features: June/July 2010~ It’s a seemingly simple solution. Need more women in leadership roles? Then hire more of them, right?
Wrong.
According to Kelly Thornburg, coordinator of Iowa N.E.W. Leadership, an intense six-day workshop for young women, much more diversity and many more women are needed to help find innovative solutions for modern problems.
Thornburg said many young [...]

Features: June/July 2010~ On a chilly, rainy afternoon in May, two young Iowa City women searched downtown and the pedestrian mall for a place to get a cheap manicure.
It’s a normal thing for two young women to do–especially in a college town–but for Kelsey Godwin, 22, and Wakemia,12, it’s a chance to get to know [...]

Once again, the busybodies have stormed the Barricades of Fun, and managed to pass a 21-only ordinance for bars. While I respect the sincerity of their good intentions, I think it’s a really dumb idea that will hurt local businesses, without significantly curtailing underage drinking.

Iowa City is in the midst of a cultural identity crisis. With the passing of a 21-only ordinance by the city council on April 6, it seems the like the lights of enforcement have turned on way too bright after last call. I encourage everyone to read the transcript of this meeting–it is a brilliant prism of conflict concerning the culture of drinking. However, don’t mistake this ordinance for anything other than a serious shift for Iowa City culturally and economically.

I am in a large, crowded and noisy room watching a group of women on roller skates delivering powerful and cringe-inducing hits to one another and taking spills that no amount of protective padding–store bought or God-given–could ever fully protect them from.
By day, they are college professors and paramedics and stay-at-home moms, police officers, construction [...]

Features: April 2010 – The BS Gallery is not pretentious.
“It’s a nice flexible space,” says co-curator Chris Reno. “But it doesn’t hide the fact that it’s a basement.”
Basements seldom do. And if you stopped at the top of the stairs leading down to the BS Gallery, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this basement was [...]

Features: April 2010 – Let’s talk about frames.
Because if we start discussing “art,” many will picture rectangle frames bearing painted and processed works, stuck on the static walls of galleries or museums. A display, well defined. And in this part of a story about art, as we’ve learned to expect from journalism, the readers should [...]