What does the Legacy Business Alliance do to support Evanston businesses? How did Northwestern Mock Trial celebrate its 40th anniversary? Why was Northwestern’s campus full of snowmen on Monday? The Daily answers these questions and recaps other top stories from the last week.
ELIZA MARTIN: On today’s episode: the Legacy Business Alliance preserves Evanston storefronts, Northwestern Mock Trial celebrates its 40th anniversary, and the first snow of the quarter on campus.
From the Daily Northwestern, I’m Eliza Martin.
KATE MOORES: And I’m Kate Moores.
ELIZA MARTIN: And this is The Weekly: your breakdown of the top headlines from this past week.
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KATE MOORES: I’m here with Daily reporter Hannah Brooker, who covered Evanston’s Legacy Business Alliance this week. Could you share a little bit about the story and explain what the Alliance is and why it matters?
HANNAH BROOKER: Yes, definitely, so I reported on this story with a co-reporter, Hannah Mehler, and we reported on the Evanston Legacy Business Alliance, which was created in 2023 by the Evanston Preservation Committee, and it’s now in its second year running. It includes 51 member businesses. So, specifically, the program recognizes and supports Evanston’s storefronts, specifically ones that have operated for more than 20 years.
Having a membership with the Alliance provides these small businesses with both a network of mentorship and community support, but it also really encourages economic stability and resources and just protects these businesses as Evanston continues to develop.
The Legacy Business Alliance is more than just a business directory. It is a strategy for preservation of these storefronts, and I also think our story really showed the practical challenges that small businesses around Evanston have, whether that be rent, spikes, or competition from online retailers and big department stores. And this just shows how the alliance can provide direct and real help to these businesses and make a difference.
KATE MOORES: Several owners talked about the importance and the fragility of keeping local businesses alive. What makes small businesses so essential to Evanston’s identity?
HANNAH BROOKER: There are so many ways that small businesses are so crucial to Evanston. One of the ways we really highlighted was that small businesses are uniquely able to respond to local needs.
These small stores can fill immediate and hyper local needs in ways that big retailers can’t, which I thought was an interesting point. And I also just think the survival of small businesses connects current residents to Evanston’s past and helps carry forward a legacy and reinforces the history of Evanston and their identity.
KATE MOORES: Thank you so much for coming on the show.
HANNAH BROOKER: Thank you so much for having me.
ELIZA MARTIN: Next up, a look at how Northwestern Mock Trial celebrated its 40th anniversary last weekend.
I’m here with Daily reporter Lauren Kim, who’s going to speak about her story on Northwestern Mock Trial’s 40th anniversary. So can you tell me a little bit about the story you wrote?
LAUREN KIM: I covered a story on Northwestern Mock Trial’s 40th anniversary alumni reunion that happened in the Guild Lounge at Scott Hall on Saturday evening,and it was a bunch of alumni and current Mock Trial members coming together to celebrate the legacy and the history of their club. It was a great moment for the students to be able to meet people that they’ve only heard about. For example, there was a district court judge of Illinois. Her name is April Perry. She was a judge who recently ruled that Trump can’t put troops in Chicago. There were a lot of interesting and accomplished alumni at the event that students were able to engage in conversations with.
ELIZA MARTIN: And I believe there was a competition as well for Mock Trial.Can you talk a little bit about Mock at the Rock?
LAUREN KIM: So Mock at the Rock is an annual competition they have where other schools also come to Northwestern and compete in mock trial. It was a competition that lasted for two days and had four rounds. Students had positions such as attorney and witness.
And I was able to speak with some students who were either participating in their first competition or their second, and they all told me that it was a great experience, because they were able to really build a sense of camaraderie with their members and learn more about themselves as teammates in the competition. And I also had the opportunity to speak with a former coach of the mock trial team. His name is Nabil Foster and he’s currently a professor at the Pritzker School of Law as well as a practicing attorney, and he told me that mock trial is what drew him to teaching, and that’s why he’s currently a professor at Pritzker. So that was really interesting to hear about.
ELIZA MARTIN: All right, thanks so much!
LAUREN KIM: Thank you.
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ELIZA MARTIN: And for our last story: a snowstorm on campus.
KATE MOORES: I’m here with Daily reporter Ryan Ottignon, who’s here to talk about their piece on the first snowfall at Northwestern. Could you start by telling us a little bit about the story you wrote?
RYAN OTTIGNON: Hi, thank you for having me. So I wrote about the first snowfall of the 2025 winter and fall season. It’s not actually a part of the winter snow. It was caused by the lake effect snow, which is when a cold mass of air travels over a lake and warm water from the lake goes up into that mass of air and deposits as snow, on the Lakeshore. It usually happens on the New York side or on the Canada side, but we got lucky this year with a November snowfall.
And the storm recorded 3.3 inches of snow in Evanston in the first spout on November 9th. And then an additional 3.5 inches of snow between 9 and 11 a.m. the next day. So students were out donning their coats, having snowball fights, building snowmen, and it was a fun time.
KATE MOORES: Were you on campus when the snow started, and what was the atmosphere like?
RYAN OTTIGNON: It was a funny story, I was just leaving the newsroom here at Norris, and I went outside, and I saw the snow develop from light winds to basically a blizzard, a localized blizzard as The National Weather Service called it, and I ran back up to the newsroom, grabbed a camera, interviewed people on the scene and walked around for the next two hours. So I was talking to people who were having snowball fights, I saw a bunch of snowmen, taking photos and that was my night that day.
KATE MOORES: So you said there were snowball fights and some snowmen attempts. Did it feel like campus instantly shifted into winter weather mode?
RYAN OTTIGNON: Yes, absolutely. I heard there was one about Slivka. I specifically talked to people down outside Willard Hall on the west end of the sorority quad. They had a big fight. People were trying to go into Fran’s and getting hit by stray snowballs, and they were playing winter music. So it definitely felt like the start of winter.
KATE MOORES: Some students said they loved the snow and others felt totally unprepared. What would you describe was the overall mood on campus that night and the next morning?
RYAN OTTIGNON: Well, it was very mixed. There were some students who said, ‘oh, I wish I had a heavier coat. I wish I had better gloves. I wish I had a face covering because the wind was very strong, and the snow felt like bullets traveling at you.’ But there were some students who loved it. They hadn’t seen snow in a while. They were just giddy looking out the windows, going outside, experiencing the snow for the first time or for the millionth time. So yeah, very mixed.
KATE MOORES: All right. Thank you so much!
RYAN OTTIGNON: Thanks for having me!
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ELIZA MARTIN: Here are the other top headlines from the week:
Kellogg hits ‘post’ on influencer marketing course
Starbucks workers’ union rallies in Evanston to finalize contract on company’s biggest day of the year
‘Overcompensating’ stars Mary Beth Barone and Wally Baram perform in sold-out A&O fall speaker event
Field Hockey: No. 2 Northwestern seeks repeat NCAA title on the road after top-4 snub
From top awards to major snubs, The Daily predicts 2026 Grammy winners
ELIZA MARTIN: From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Eliza Martin.
KATE MOORES: And I’m Kate Moores.
ELIZA MARTIN: Thank you for listening to another episode of The Weekly. This episode was reported by Eliza Martin, Kate Moores, Lauren Kim, Ryan Ottignon, Hannah Brooker and Finian Hazen.
The Audio Editor is Finian Hazen. The Multimedia Managing Editors are Sydney Gaw, Christina Lin and Sarah Serota. The Editor in Chief is Emily Lichty.
Our theme music is “Night Owl” by Broke For Free, used under a Creative Commons Attribution License and provided by the Free Music Archive.
Follow us on X and Instagram @thedailynu.
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Produced by Eliza Martin, Kate Moores and Finian Hazen
