Greek leaders will unite Saturday at the 2003 Fusaro Leadership Institute at the Holmes Student Center's Carl Sandburg Auditorium.

Each executive board member of NIU's Greek chapters is expected to attend this noon conference.

Speakers at the conference will target executive board members such as presidents, recruiting chairs and new member educators, said Darnell Bradley, program coordinator for Greek affairs.

The conference aims at giving students an idea of how to do their jobs better, common mistakes to avoid and how to be a better member of the Greek community.

The first hour of the conference will be a Town Hall panel discussion in which students can ask questions to campus administrators, city officials and Greek affairs professionals.

Educational sessions for the members of the executive boards will follow.

Keynote speaker Heidi Anderson will talk about the future of Greek life and how to improve the Greek image.

"People have the image that all Greeks do is party and drink, and that's absolutely not true," said Bradley. "Being Greek is to live up to their rituals, brotherhood/sisterhood, academic success and serving the community."

In the past, these conferences have gone on for six to seven hours, said Chris Juhl, activities adviser for Greek affairs.

"It will be more relevant if we can condense it and say presidents go to this session and treasurers go to that [session],"Juhl said.

A college student who decided to try drinking and got drunk ended up in jail because she stole a chicken suit from a guy outside a chicken diner.

Years later, a question on her bar exam asked if she had ever been arrested. One night and one question decided the fate of the Harvard law student.

Mike Green, a motivational speaker and a recovering alcoholic of 25 years, recounted this story to an audience of about 600 students at the Holmes Student Center's Carl Sandburg Auditorium Wednesday night.

Green, who was speaking on the topic of substance abuse, focused on the life-long consequences of one night's irresponsibility.

He used jokes, questions to the audience, personal stories and props like shot glasses, liquor bottles and T-shirts to get his message across to the audience.

Green, who was an alcoholic in college and a bartender for almost 10 years, was able to connect with the students using his personal stories. In one such story, he recalled the time when he passed out drunk in the wrong house after running eight blocks from a pseudo police siren.

"He came down to our level and didn't make us seem dumb," said Larkin Harris, a freshman undecided major who attended the discussion. "He didn't lecture."

Green said that he did not expect students to give up drinking and made a distinction between drinking socially and getting drunk.

He held up a shot glass and said that it could be looked at as a sipping glass or as a killer shot.

"This is used to fill oil in your car, not as a social cocktail glass," said Green as he held up a funnel in his hand.

Green gave the audience practical reasons to reconsider their drinking habits.

An average drinker can spend up to $10,000 on beer in his or her four years of college.

Getting back on track as a team never felt so good.

NIU's persistence paid off as it ran away from Toledo down the stretch to claim a home victory 69-57 on Saturday.

With the win, NIU (12-14, 8-7 MAC) clinched a No. 7 or No. 8 seed and a will have a home game on March 8 in the first round of the MAC Tournament.

"Everyone knows we've been struggling this whole entire season," senior guard Kristan Knake said. "[Friday], we just had a good heart to heart as a team ... We came out today ready to play and ready to have fun. We just came out today to play basketball."

Knake finished the game with 12 points, nine rebounds and five assists.

The Huskies found themselves down nine to the Rockets (18-8, 11-4 MAC) at halftime. They turned the tables in the second half, however, outscoring the Rockets 45-24. For the second half, Toledo shot just 7-of-28 from the field while NIU shot at a 14-of-23 clip.

"In the second half, I thought we were a lot more patient," NIU coach Carol Hammerle said. "All five players on the court were looking for one another. We had some great passes into the post into Jen [Youngblood] and Joi [Scott]."

The inside combo of Youngblood and Scott combined for 24 points, 12 rebounds and four blocks for the game. The duo scored 20 of their 24 points in the second half.

The Huskies' surge was keyed with 10:16 to play on a Monique Davis three-point basket as the shot clock buzzer went off.

The three helped NIU to a 16-2 run and gave the Huskies a lead they would never rescind.

"This is the best I have ever seen Monique operate as our floor general," Hammerle said. "She was incredible; she just took charge, she made good decisions, she worked hard at both ends of the floor and she made some huge three's for us."

For the game, Davis scored 14 points on 5-of-6 shooting and added five assists.

The game also marked the return of Kim Boeding to the lineup. Boeding played for the first time since Jan. 22. (See page 19 for more.)

The loss amounted to a missed opportunity for Toledo. Ball State lost to Eastern Michigan on Sunday keeping both schools with a tie in the loss column for the MAC lead.

The controversial future of Title IX has moved into the hands of U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige after the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics submitted its final report last week.

Paige used Title IX's 30th anniversary to create the commission in 2002 to evaluate the law, address the controversy surrounding it and present recommendations the Department of Education.

"That controversy extended into the commission's debates and continues in the interpretations ascribed to various parts of the final report," said Cary Groth, NIU's athletics director and one of the 15 members of the commission.

Title IX is the part of the 1972 Education Amendments that requires equal opportunity for men and women in education programs. The law has been credited with allowing an increase in women's participation in sports and has been blamed for the cutting of some men's programs.

Four themes were presented in the commission's report -- commitment, clarity, fairness and enforcement.

The commission wants Education to reaffirm its commitment to Title IX's goal of providing gender equality. The report states that during the commission's public hearings there was no testimony suggesting that Title IX should be repealed. However, it heard from people who question the sincerity of the government's commitment to Title IX.

Clarity and consistency about the purpose and enforcement of Title IX is a problem the commission wants Education to resolve. It would like to see a national campaign by Education to educate institutions on the ways to be compliant with the Title IX. One specific area of confusion institutions face when trying to comply with Title IX is the use of private funds to support underfunded teams.

Universities and secondary schools across the country facing tighter budgets are being accused of cutting men's teams to remain compliant with Title IX, according to testimony before the commission. In order for Title IX to be fair to both men and women, the commission is calling upon Education's enforcement branch, the Office of Civil Rights, to make it clear that the cutting of teams for the sole purpose of being Title IX compliant is not an acceptable practice.

The commission recommended Education to encourage institutions to use sound financial practices concerning athletics expenditures. The commission also suggested that Paige recommend to Congress that college athletics receive an antitrust exemption.

Enforcement of Title IX received the most attention in the report with nine of the 23 recommendations addressing how the Office of Civil Rights ensures educational institutions remain compliant.

Besides asking the Office of Civil Rights to consistently enforce Title IX, the commission made several recommendations on the best way to deal with problems athletic programs are facing when using the "proportionality" prong of the "three-part test."

The three-part test refers to the ways in which an institution can demonstrate compliance to Title IX. The institution can show compliance by providing opportunities for women and men in intercollegiate sports that are proportionate to their respective enrollments. Another method is to show a history or continuing practice of providing equal opportunities for men and women in the institution's athletic program. The third method of compliance is to show the program has "fully and effectively" catered to the interests of the members of the under-represented sex. An institution only needs to pass one of these tests to be considered compliant.

Delta Sigma Theta service sorority will dedicate a week's worth of events to AIDS awareness.

The week is full of a variety of activities including a poetry reading, free HIV testing, a speaker and bowling.

"Every year, the national organization makes it mandatory for undergraduate chapters to host a day of AIDS awareness," said Jarquetta Egeston, vice president of Delta Sigma Theta. "We had ideas to do throughout the week, so we decided to make it a full week."

One of the events of the week includes a poetry reading that encourages participants to speak about health issues at Neptune Central by the fireplace.

"We like the setting of Neptune Central," said Meagan Lumpkin, financial secretary of Delta Sigma Theta. "People feel really comfortable and people would rather go somewhere comfortable."

On Tuesday, a representative from the DeKalb County Health Department will speak on more AIDS issues.

"The speaker will talk about contraception," Egeston said. "We are not saying abstinence, what we are saying is protect yourself. It seems like AIDS is a hidden topic and people don't speak about it. We try to bring the campus together and tell people there are ways to prevent the disease."

For information, call Meagan Lumpkin at 753-3495.

Tan bodies, oiled skin and bulging muscles will be abundant at this year's Greek Physique.

The body building competition is from 7 to 10 p.m. Wednesday at the Holmes Student Center's Carl Sandburg Auditorium.

Mickey Walker, a sophomore business major and philanthropist for Phi Kappa Sigma, said the event will benefit the Leukemia Society.

The competition is divided into groups. Men will be divided by weight, while women are divided by height, he said.

Mike Evans, a junior political science major and director of Greek affairs for the SA, said the competition is open to all members of the NIU community, not just the Greeks.

Walker said the contestants put in a lot of hard work and preparation for the competition.

"They've trained pretty much their whole lives lifting weights," he said. "Everyone cuts down their diet drastically."

Evans agreed.

"The people that do it and win and are serious about it, they've been body building their whole lives," he said. "It's not something they can whip up in a few weeks or a month."