JANUARY 8, 2019
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SINCE 1892
UChicago to Open Expanded Center in Paris in 2022
By MATTHEW LEE news reporter
By DEEPTI SAILAPPAN news editor
Construction on the Woodlawn Residential Commons, located south of the Midway, has begun.
VOL. 130, ISSUE 20
The University will open an expanded center in Paris in 2022 to replace the current facility. The UChicago Center in Paris, which opened in 2003, was UChicago’s first global facility and is now one of four centers abroad. The center will include a theater, laboratory, café, and green spaces, and will be connected to a mixed-use space not owned or
pete grieve
The site of the new center is part of a civic project to develop former industrial sections of Paris’s Left Bank, led by the French National Library and including various higher education institutions. “The 13th arrondissement is a key district for higher education in Paris and the University of Chicago’s increased presence strengthens our strategy of maintaining universities and student facilities inside Paris,” said Jean-Louis
District Committee Appoints Robert Peters to Replace Raoul as State Senator By ALISON GILL news reporter
Amid community residents’ calls for an election, political consultant Robert Peters was appointed to be the next state senator of Illinois’s 13th District, which includes Hyde Park. Peters was a former aide to several officials who sit on the committee that appointed him. The senate seat of the 13th District was previously occupied by now Illinois Attorney General–elect Kwame Raoul. Though residents wanted a say in choosing Raoul’s successor, the process mandated by Illinois law is to fill vacancies through appointment rather than elections. The 13th Democratic Legislative District Committee selected Peters at a meeting held at the Fourth Ward Democratic Organization Office on 53rd Street, where he was immediately sworn into the office by Judge Robert F. Harris. The announcement came after a closed-door executive session of committee members that included Toni Preckwinkle, Cook County Board president and a mayoral candidate. Peters previously worked closely with Preckwinkle as a field deputy director on her campaign for Cook County Board president and as a paid political consultant with her office. Several people in the room believed that this relationship ultimately played a large role in Peters’s appointment. Peters has also worked for Fifth Ward Alderman Leslie Hairston, who also sits on the committee. Hairston said there was no connection between Peters’s selection and previous work with Preckwinkle or herself. The seat, once held by former president Barack Obama, was left
Individual Environmentalism Just Isn’t Enough By MAYA HOLT page 5
vacant after Raoul was elected to be attorney general in November. Raoul had first been appointed to the seat in 2004 after Obama’s election to the United States Senate. The next election of state senators will occur in November 2020. In the state of Illinois, all vacancies that occur fewer than 28 months before the end of the term are filled by appointment; if greater than 28 months remain, a special election is held. The committee that chose his successor consisted of Preckwinkle and Democratic committeemen whose wards are included in the 13th District, including those who oversee parts of Hyde Park: Hairston of the Fifth Ward and Kevin Bailey of the 20th Ward. Prior to the meeting, dozens of residents gathered outside of office to protest the appointment process and call for a special election. Gabriel Piemonte, an aldermanic candidate challenging Hairston in the Fifth Ward, said to a crowd of protestors and journalists that he and a group of community residents want a special election—even an advisory one—instead of an appointment. “What neighbors did not want, what residents did not want was that this be an appointed process, a process where in a closed room ward committeemen made a decision about who was going to represent us,” he said. Fourth Ward aldermanic candidate Ebony Lucas said, “As we stand out here right now, we have no idea who the candidates are, and, if these are people who are going to be representing us and the community, we deserve to know at a minimum who are you considering and why are you considering them.”
While the appointment process is mandated by Illinois law, the protesters expressed frustration with a lack of clarity and communication that resident Cassie Creswell said “is really disappointing to me as a voter and a taxpayer.” The protestors referenced the city’s history of political corruption and obscurity. “That’s our history, and it’s continuing now…. It’s unbelievable that in the [seat] of Barack Obama [and Harold Washington] and in supposedly progressive places, things haven’t changed,” resident Michele Beaulieux said. Resident Hannah Hayes said that her phone calls, e-mails, and social media outreach to Preckwinkle concerning the appointment had gone unanswered. She also noted that her senator, state representative (Christian Mitchell), and alderman (Sophia King) are all appointed officials. “So my vote didn’t matter and now I feel like my voice doesn’t matter…. As a voting Democrat, I call on my elected officials to delay this appointment until there is more dialogue, more scrutiny. As the very least, do not claim to be progressive and wear the mantle of a progressive, when that is nothing but hypocrisy.” “We are asking for a pause to the process…. Going forward there should be a change so that this isn’t the process,” Piemonte concluded. The committee also considered Adrienne Irmer, Flynn Rush, and Kenneth Sawyer. Irmer and Rush both lost their races for state representative of the 25th District in November 2018, while Sawyer lost his 2004 race for Fourth Ward alderman. Each candidate was given five minutes to address the committee in continued on pg.
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Rendering of the expanded center in Paris. operated by UChicago. It is being designed by the Chicago-based architecture firm Studio Gang in collaboration with Parisian architecture firm PARC Architectes. The selection of the center’s architect was a competitive process conducted by SEMAPA, the government agency responsible for developing the Rive Gauche neighborhood, where the center is located.
Missika, the deputy mayor of Paris, in a statement. Studio Gang previously collaborated with the University to design Campus North and Baker Dining Commons, which opened in 2016. The firm is also responsible for Hyde Park residential high-rises City Hyde Park and Solstice on the Park, completed in 2016 and 2018, respectively.
UChicago President Robert Zimmer Voted in the 2016 Republican Primary By EUIRIM CHOI editor-in-chief University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer voted in Illinois’s Republican primary in the 2016 election, according to public voting histories. Illinois requires voters at the state, congressional, and presidential levels to declare their affiliation with a political party at the polling place before voting in that party’s primary. Such declarations are recorded and made public. Zimmer has long been coy about his politics, declining to
interview:
Second-Year Singer-Songwriter, Jakob Leventhal By WAHID AL MAMUM
courtesy of studio gang
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answer a question on the subject in a 2016 interview with The Maroon. In recent years, however, he has become somewhat of a celebrity in conservative circles, earning praise from commentators for publications like the National Review and The Federalist for attacking “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” as the public face of the University of Chicago’s purportedly pro-free speech stance. Under Zimmer’s leadership, the University has taken a strong anti-union position with respect to graduate student workers, recontinued on pg.
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