Issue date: 3/6/08 Section: The Weekly

DEAN LAVINE, PHONE HOME

Dean Lavine had his first post-Quotegate interaction with a group of students on Tuesday night when he spoke to a group of Phonathon student callers. An e-mail sent to about 50 employees said he would be visiting their office, and all were encouraged to show up - whether they were working that night or not. This isn't the first time a dean has dropped in (Linzer and Ottino visited last year), but an unnamed source says Lavine came specifically to address curriculum changes that have greatly changed Medill in previous years and might have affected donations to the school.

"Some Medill alums aren't really wanting to give too much money," says Medill sophomore Elaine Williams, who has worked at Phonathon since her first quarter of freshman year. Along with about 20 other people, Williams attended the evening meeting with Dean Lavine. The administrator helped update student callers who aren't in Medill about the tenets of the school, spending about 10 minutes going through the new "2020" curriculum, the storefront newsrooms, the Intergrated Marketing Communications program and the campus in Qatar. After that, a question-and-answer session began where students queried the dean about technology and the curriculum.

"The quote thing didn't come up until the very end," says Williams, who asked the dean about the accusations that he had fabricated quotes. "I told him a lot of alumni were concerned about the issue and I wanted to know what he would say to them." She says that he summarized the incident for students that were not familiar, then asked the audience members if they remembered what they had for dinner three weeks ago. "It wasn't the best parallel," Williams says. After that, the dean said he realized he made a mistake and wished he had saved notes from student interviews. "He was just a little bit more apologetic and said that it wouldn't happen again," she says. "I wish he would have said what he told us in his letter to everyone." Afterward, when Williams was leaving the building to walk home, the dean offered her a ride in his PT Cruiser. Guess he wasn't offended.

BURNED BY TANCUN

If you were looking to build up a base tan for a tropical Spring Break but found your Clark Street salon closed and empty, bad news: Our Tancun is gone for good. "What happened with that store is that the people sold it; they went bankrupt. Now it's up for lease," says Amanda Adkins, a sales associate at the franchise's Loyola outlet.

Like other tanning salons, Tancun offered packages that allowed customers to tan using a debit system with points. The Loyola location, which is still open, will honor up to 150 points left on Evanston patrons' accounts - that's $45 worth of sunbed bronze, which will darken your skin to varying degrees depending on which beds you choose. Prices are comparable at Evanston's other indoor tanning oases including L.A. Tan, Ultimate Exposure and Solaris, a Maple Street salon that has left many patrons wondering why it's never open, even though no official closure has been announced. As for Tancun, new management took over the space in Evanston sometime in December, but business tanked immediately. "I was told that's what happened," Adkins says. "We were just honoring the 150 points because it is our name." So if winter has left you in desperate need of a summer glow and you want to spend the money you invested in Tancun, hop on the El and get off at Loyola. Hopefully your tan will stay longer than Tancun's last owners.

WHOSE SOCIAL CLUB IS IT?

Debonair Social Club, a hipster hangout in Wicker Park, seems to have become the latest hangout for Northwestern's own social clubs - sororities. Metromix described DBS as a place that welcomes a "who's who of local rockers, artists, DJs, photographers, hipsters and indie barflies; boys have better coiffed hair than the chicks, and the ladies all make statements with their outfits." But on Monday, the boite will be home to Kappa Kappa Gamma's formal. And on Tuesday, Delta Gamma's "Naughtical or Nice" crush party. "Shit," says Weinberg senior Gina Lee, herself a sorority girl, when she heard of the upcoming schedule at her hangout. "Lately there's been a mad influx of Lincoln Park yuppy types," she says. "Not the crowd you're used to seeing there."

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