WILLblog

The political two-step, that is. Exhibit A, this photo shows anti-Chief protesters blockading the University of Illinois Swanlund Admin Building last week. They held out for two days before our outgoing Chancellor Nancy Cantor (outgoing in two senses of the word) negotiated a way out of this particular impasse. Meanwhile, U of I Board of Trustees Chair Lawrence Eppley says he wants a review of campus security policies in the wake of this latest unauthorized student occupation. It's happened before, but this time it involves the Chief, and Board sensitivities are running high to say the least. Chairman Eppley has recently said he doesn't want to vote on retiring or keeping Chief Illiniwek, but instead wants more dialogue. We can hardly disagree with more dialogue under any circumstances, but we should also point out the University has already spent somewhere between $600,000 and $1 million (depends who's counting) on the Chief dialogue, and that's just for the lawyers. And by the way, you can dialogue with the dialogue on our Chief Illiniwek web feature, which has archives and links to just about everything that money paid for. Exhibit B will be presented tomorrow, when pro-Chief activists occupy the same space. Except they say they'll feed the administrators hamburgers instead of locking them out of their own building. The WILLblog newscam will document that occasion as well