Take Back the Night march will be sectioned
The steering committee for the Take Back the Night march met Thursday to discuss concerns about separating the march into three sections.
Erin Dury, the sexual violence prevention and education coordinator for the ASUO Women’s Center, said people have told her separating the march into sections is not the best way to go.
Due to the recent controversy, Dury anticipated a large turnout for the meeting. However, only about 17 people attended, and they all concurred that the march should be split into three sections.
“I was a little surprised because I thought there would be more people,” Dury said. “I was completely prepared for it to be a much greater issue.”
Overall, Dury felt the meeting went well.
“I feel more prepared to speak to people about their concerns,” she said.
The attendees agreed the three sections should be women-only, gender-queer and gender-neutral, in that order.
The biggest issue raised at the meeting was how to prevent allies and the gender-neutral section from feeling excluded. Many felt that would be largely affected by the attitudes and actions of the march’s safety team.
Since the participants of the meeting agreed on the need for separate sections, they began a discussion on the logistics of the march, such as the method of section separation, enforcement of section separation and spacing of the sections.
Students who were unable to attend the meeting can still contribute to the decision on how to organize the march by voting. Dury and the rest of the steering committee will keep the voting open until 5 p.m. today. Votes can be made by calling, e-mailing or stopping by the ASUO Women’s Center in Suite 3 of the EMU.
The march’s steering committee will take all of the votes and concerns into consideration before making a final decision about the layout of the march.

— Lisa Catto

‘Struggling for God’ project to hold first symposium
A multi-year project on the language and imagery of war in Judaic, Christian and Islamic sacred texts begins this weekend at the University.
The “Struggling for God” project will have its first symposium, titled “War and Martial Metaphor in Scripture,” on Sunday, Feb. 29 and Monday, March 1.
Susan Niditch, a professor of religion at Amherst College in Amherst, Mass., and author of the book “War in the Hebrew Bible,” will give the first keynote speech. The speech, called “War in the Hebrew Bible: Historical, Literary and Ideological Considerations,” will take place on Sunday at 8 p.m. in 182 Lillis.
Mahmoud Ayoub, professor of Islamic studies and comparative religion at Temple University in
Philadelphia, Pa., will give the second keynote address, titled “Jihad and Fighting: Peace and War in the Qur’an,” on Monday at 8 p.m. in the same room.
The symposium also features a panel discussion on themes of the militancy and martialism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam on Monday, March 1 from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. in the Knight Library Browsing Room.
All events are free and open to the public.
University religious studies Assistant Professor Timothy Gianotti initiated the project, which is expected to continue for four years.
In a press release, Gianotti said that the project’s purpose is to explore various perspectives on militancy and martial imagery in the three religious traditions within a larger context of religious visions of peace and justice.
“In this sharing and dialogue we hope to create an atmosphere of thoughtful conversation and increased appreciation of these interrelated communities and traditions,” Gianotti said.

— Ayisha Yahya

Leap years keep calendar aligned with seasons
This Sunday is leap day, an event that happens once every four years during a leap year.
According to Eric Weisstein’s World of Astronomy at http://scienceworld.wolfram.com, a leap year is “a year in which an extra day (is) added to the calendar in order to synchronize it with the seasons.”
This extra day falls at the end of February, thereby giving the month 29 days instead of the usual 28.
According to http://www.timeanddate.com, there are three rules that determine which years are leap years in the Gregorian calendar — used by most countries: Every year divisible by four is a leap year, but every year divisible by 100 is not a leap year, unless the year is also divisible by 400, then it is still a leap year.
This means that although the years 1600 and 2000 were leap years, 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not.
According to the National Maritime Museum, a change was made from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar hundreds of years ago to align the months with the seasons due to a discrepancy in the Julian calendar. The difference between the real length and the adopted length of the year was 0.00781 days. According to the NMM’s Web site, “the discrepancy … may not seem important but over hundreds of years the difference becomes obvious.”
Therefore the Gregorian calendar was implemented. This change resulted in a more complex leap year in which “century years should only be leap years if they were divisible by 400.” Thus, we have leap day and leap year.
“In the dictionary, New Year and New Year’s Day is capitalized,” Raenell Dawn, editor of http://www.leapzine.com, said on the Web site. “Leap Year and Leap Day are equally deserving. I’ve been told that Leap Day is not capitalized because Leap Day is not a holiday. It doesn’t have to be a holiday. It’s Leap Day. Simple as that.”

— Reese Lee