Latest news with #Armacost
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
UND dedicates monument at Hyslop at Memorial Village
May 23—GRAND FORKS — Fifty-one military service members who lost their lives during WWI were remembered and honored Thursday, May 22, during a dedication ceremony for the monument that graces the entrance of the Hyslop at Memorial Village building. The monument "shines a light on the sacrifices our students gave to their country," said President Andrew Armacost during the ceremony. Several members of the local American Legion post served as the color guard for the occasion. The colors were presented in ceremonial fashion and the U.S. flag was raised to the middle, and highest, of three flagpoles, between the North Dakota flag and the UND flag. The monument includes the names of 33 UND soldiers and 18 members of the Student Army Training Corps. The trainees were not UND students, but they came to UND to prepare for military service. All 51 died during WWI. The memorial "is a perfect example of the sacrifice that they and others have made not just to the university, but the nation," Armacost said. "We owe it to them that that sacrifice is recognized and remembered forever." The memorial is titled "Memorial Stadium Monument" and the message on its face reads: "Dedicated to those from the University of North Dakota who served, fought and died during WWI. We honor their sacrifice and preserve their legacy in stone and memory. Memorial Stadium, 1927. Memorial Stadium Monument, 2024." Atop the brick base, five black granite pillars stand tall — four of them reflect aerial views of the stadium full of fans. The pillar on the right lists the names of those who lost their lives during WWI. That pillar reads "Honor. In Memorial" and "They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this nation. — Henry Ward Beecher," followed by the 51 names. The Hyslop at Memorial Village building, located on the southeast corner of the intersection of Second Avenue North and Columbia Road, has provided first-floor office space for athletic department personnel since July 2024 and living quarters — in one- to four-bedroom apartments — for students and others during the past academic year. It occupies the area where the former Memorial Stadium was built in 1927 — with 392,000 bricks — and razed in 2021, Armacost said. A ceremony held in March 2021 was before the stadium was razed. About 100 years ago, nearly $200,000 was raised by students, faculty, alumni and Grand Forks business-owners to fund the project, which was dedicated to 33 UND soldiers and 18 young men who trained for the military at UND and who died in WWI. The stadium was also meant to honor Webster Merrifield, the university's third president. The campaign was titled "Help the U that is helping you," Armacost said in his remarks during the program. Thursday's ceremony replicated the ceremony that occurred in 1927, including Armacost's reciting the names of the 33 UND soldiers who died in WWI. At the conclusion of the reading, Joel Ness played the somber Taps. "We gather together to dedicate not only a monument, but to honor a legacy of the UND students who left to serve in WWI and never returned," said Steve Burian, who serves on the Memorial Village Development Team and led the construction project. A UND alumnus and track athlete, Burian is president and CEO of Burian and Associates and serves on the UND Advisory Board. The monument is a testament to "the courage, commitment and character of those men," but also to the athletes, students and fans who filled and enlivened the stadium. Those enthusiasts "poured their pride into UND at this historic site," according to the event announcement. The five vertical pillars of the monument represent "loyalty, respect, service, courage and most importantly sacrifice," Burian said. The legacy of this site is preserved through a time capsule, he said, and space has been designated for the capsule that will contain "a message for the future, about how far we've come" and progress expected in decades ahead. Burian expressed gratitude to Armacost for "his deep respect for the military" and personal oversight of this project. "May this memorial forever stand as a place of remembrance, reflection and gratitude," Burian told the crowd. In his remarks, Armacost noted that the time capsule — to be placed in the building later — contains the flag that last flew in 2021 before Memorial Stadium was razed, a 2021 UND yearbook that features the stories of the 33 soldiers who died in WWI, the original ticket to the first game played in the stadium in 1927, other UND military items, an official football, and "a handwritten note from me to the UND president 50 years in the future." The capsule will be placed within the new building sometime this summer, he said.
The Guardian
04-02-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
‘I can't order 100 pieces of junk for $15?': How Trump's tariff will hit fast-fashion devotees
Vivi Armacost loves Temu. She uses the Chinese online marketplace to buy crafting supplies for her purse-making hobby. 'You can get purse detailing and hardware for cents and pennies,' said Armacost, who is 24 and lives in New York. She says it seems like 'basically everything' in her apartment comes from Temu. Donald Trump's 10% tariff on China-made goods sold to the US, which went into effect early on Tuesday morning, might change her shopping habits. The tariff closes off a trade loophole that allowed fast-fashion companies like Temu and Shein to ship packages under $800 into the US duty free; this loophole, called 'de minimus' has been criticized by both political parties in recent years. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that Shein and Temu are now likely to raise prices, as is Amazon's Haul, a new e-commerce app that imports products from China-based sellers. Shoppers are concerned the tariff will get in the way of their retail therapy. 'Trying to get that last Temu order in before Trump puts another tariff on China,' Armacost, who works in consulting and also makes comedy videos on TikTok, captioned a post on Monday that shows her frantically typing on a computer, hacker movie-style. It was mostly a joke, but she has friends who made one final Temu run. 'My friend Piper got a ton of apartment stuff during a last-minute tariff haul,' she said. Temu – which surpassed Amazon as the most-downloaded shopping app in 2023 – and Shein are beloved by both the overly trendy and the obsessively thrifty. While Shein is known primarily for clothing, Temu also sells makeup, home goods and decor. These products are cheap – just over $4 for a pair of women's sneakers on Temu, or $1.45 for bracelet on Temu – but of dubious quality. Inevitably, many end up in landfills. 'A lot of the stuff comes actually way smaller than you expect,' Armacost said. 'I bought a desk lamp, except it can fit in my hands.' In the months before Trump took office, shoppers urged each other to stock up on Temu and Shein, in case the new administration followed through on its promise to tax US trade partners. 'Kinda feeling emo bc this may be the last good Black Friday for a while because of the tariffs,' one TikTok user wrote in a clip. 'Better collect your 'vintage Shein' because they will probably go for $100 next year.'' Two days after the election, the fashion writer Amy Odell warned readers of price hikes in a post to her BackRow Substack titled: 'Trump Won. So Shop Now.' Susan Scafidi, a lawyer and founder of Fordham's Fashion Law Institute, told Odell: 'Everything's going to be more expensive, which is a little crazy when you realize that a lot of the Trump appeal was with regard to the economy.' Could the tariff kill fast fashion, an industry defined by wasteful over-consumption, as we know it? No, says Margaret Bishop, a textile and apparel specialist and professor at New York's Parsons School of Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology. 'If anything, I think these tariffs will strengthen fast fashion's hold on customers,' she said. 'If everything costs more, particularly food, transportation and housing, they're going to have to cut back somewhere. 'Americans have a real hunger for new fashion, so they will trade down to be able to continue to buy things. If a $1 pack of T-shirts at Temu becomes $2 a pack, that's still cheaper than spending $20 for a couple of T-shirts that are better made,' she continued. Sheng Lu, an associate professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware, agreed that tariffs won't 'fundamentally shift' Americans' love of a good, if sketchy, deal. While small businesses will bear most of the pain from tariffs – due to supply chain snarls or the fact that Americans won't be able to spend as much – larger corporations such as Shein and Temu tend to absorb costs. 'These companies are resourceful,' Lu said. 'My more immediate concern is that small and medium-sized enterprises won't survive, or will face significant challenges.' In 2023, a US congressional report alleged that there was an 'extremely high risk' that Temu used forced labor in its supply chain, and that both Shein and Temu evaded US human rights reviews. (Shein denied these claims at the time, while Temu did not comment on the report.) A recent report from the Swiss advocacy group Public Eye found that some Shein workers endure 75-hour work weeks. (Shein told the BBC it was 'working hard' to address the issues raised in the report.) The fast-fashion industry is also synonymous with high carbon emissions and pollution. Lu fears that tariffs will exacerbate these issues. 'If they have to pay more on tariff duties but at the same time make their prices competitive, that's not good news for workers or the environmental impact, because companies will have more incentive to cut corners,' he said. Armacost knows that these e-commerce giants represent the worst of Americans' desire for excess. 'But also, at the same time, spending does stimulate the economy,' she said. 'In response to the idea that it's a good thing if people stop ordering so much random stuff, I say: 'What's the point of living in a country if I can't order 100 pieces of junk for $15?''
