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NEWS: All Charges Dropped Against UCUP Sit-In Protestors

JANUARY 11, 2024 SECOND WEEK VOL. 136, ISSUE 7

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“Moongate” Brings Intrigue, Memes, and Controversy to a UChicago Core Class and Beyond

By NIKHIL JAISWAL | Co-Editor-In-Chief and SABRINA CHANG | Deputy News Editor On November 30, the world stopped turning for the approximately 250 students of Earth as a Planet: Exploring Our Place in the Universe (PHSC 10800) when the professor, Fred Ciesla, sent an email titled “Important: Moon Journal Grades.”

While on the surface Ciesla’s email and what prompted it seemed like a runof-the-mill academic integrity scandal, the uproar that ensued was anything but.

A professor in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences, Ciesla created Earth as a Planet in 2015 and has taught it every autumn since. The class, which fulfills a physical sciences requirement in the Core for non-physics majors, has a reputation for being an “easy A,” but course reviews suggest otherwise.

“This course was tougher than I thought, a lot more math on [the assign-

ments] than I expected,” one comment from autumn 2022 reads. “Harder than I expected, why do people say this class is easy,” another reads.

Earth as a Planet is taught in a lecture format three times a week. Attendance is not recorded, nor is there a discussion or lab aspect to the course. Like many other Core classes, the syllabus includes weekly homework assignments, quizzes, and a final exam at the end of the quarter.

But one assignment embodies Earth as a Planet’s controversial reputation better than any other: the moon journal.

Throughout the quarter, students are expected to make 15 unique observations of the moon. Each observation needs to include a sketch or photograph of the moon and details such as the moon’s angle of elevation, its direction, and the location

of observation.

The vast majority of course reviews praise the assignment for being a fun demonstration of the material learned in class or describe it as an easy element of the course. But despite its relatively simple nature, a number of students fabricate journal entries.

“I’ve always known [using online resources instead of observations] is something that students have been doing. But, in the end, the goal is for them to be able to demonstrate that they understand why… we see the changes in the moon that we do see,” Ciesla told The Maroon in an interview.

Ciesla began permitting data from online sources to substitute for moon journal observations during the COVID-19 pandemic, when some remote students complained that they were unable to make observations because of quarantine CONTINUED ON PG. 2

courtesy of uchicago sidechat.

University Presentation Reveals Severe Financial Pressures

By ELENA EISENSTADT | News Reporter

University operations financial year 2023 in budget town hall presentation.

NEWS: Skilled Tradespeople Say UChicago Compensation Needs to Be More Competitive to Retain Talent

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NEWS: UChicago’s Drop in College Rankings Draws Little Reaction from Students PAGE 8

The University finds itself grappling with ballooning costs and a dramatically increased budget deficit. These changes are causing severe financial pressures as UChicago has attempted to catapult itself into contention with universities that have far larger endowments over the past two decades.

Provost Katherine Baicker and newly appointed chief financial officer Ivan Samstein provided details of the Univer-

sity’s finances to employees at an invitation-only budget town hall on December 7. In presentation materials reviewed by The Maroon, financial figures were exhibited alongside details of a long-term financial strategy that the University Budget Office is working to unveil in March.

While UChicago’s investments have enabled it to punch above its weight for

ARTS: Sen Morimoto’s “Diagnosis” Pushes Through the Static

SPORTS: Too Good for DIII: The Curious Case of Wilson Cunningham

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“One of the issues was there were some students who submitted things last year that just were nonsensical.”

The email sent to all students on December 3, titled “Moon Journal Resolution”.

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restrictions.

The use of online resources by students continued without issue until autumn quarter 2022, when some students submitted observations that were scientifically impossible to record.

“One of the issues was there were some students who submitted things last year that just were nonsensical. They said, ‘I saw the moon at this time, and it was below the horizon,’ which is just physically impossible and demonstrated that [they] didn’t understand a lot of what we discussed in class.”

Despite the clear evidence of wrongdoing, multiple students refused to admit their mistakes, leading Ciesla to report them to the dean’s office.

“I’m not here to investigate things,” he said. “I’m just reporting what I see, so

if the student did something, then there should be some investigation here. I contacted the dean’s office and told them what had happened. That made us more aware this year of things to look out for.”

However, the autumn 2022 students were not the only ones responsible for Ciesla’s renewed focus on academic integrity. A spate of cheating on a series of homework assignments from before this past Thanksgiving break had made it clear that academic integrity was an issue in the course. Upon reviewing the moon journals after they were submitted on November 27, Ciesla found many more academic integrity violations.

In an email on November 30, Ciesla wrote that he and his teaching assistants were compiling a list of students who were suspected to have used online resources and who would be referred to the Dean

of Students. Students were also given the option to confess if they had fabricated observations, “in which case the penalty [could] be lessened.” The deadline for confessing to cheating would be 11:30 a.m. on Friday, December 1—the start of the next lecture. According to the email, moon journal grades for the entire class would be delayed as a result of the suspected violations.

“Given that the final was just in a matter of days, it was important for the students to know that academic integrity issues are taken seriously,” Ciesla said.

“That’s what led to [this] kind of communication.”

Within minutes, posts about the email began to appear on the anonymous social media platform Sidechat, which maintains school-specific communities that can only be accessed by verifying that one

has a university-affiliated email.

The case, dubbed “Moongate” by students, went viral on campus as students commiserated, joked, and shared information about the case.

The circulation of the moon journal case on social media led to an influx of emails from students to the Student Advocate’s Office (SAO), a branch of Undergraduate Student Government tasked with advising students who are “navigating administrative and disciplinary procedures within the College, including housing, academic, and financial aid proceedings.”

Even more students reached out after the office posted graphics about the situation to social media and placed placards in front of Kent Laboratory 107, the classroom where Earth as a Planet lectures CONTINUED ON PG. 3

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As for Ciesla, next year will be the first in which he does not teach Earth as a Planet.

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were delivered.

Third-year Amadis Davis, SAO’s lead caseworker, served as the primary point of contact for students accused of cheating.

“As time passes, we’re seeing more and more people reach out, presumably because word of mouth has spread. But we’d like to help as many students as we can,” Davis told The Maroon in an interview before the resolution of Moongate. “I would really caution against thinking this is less serious because the matter is called a moon journal. I do understand there’s a certain amount of it that might sound silly. However, in terms of the way it’s viewed, it’s still an assignment that you have committed academic dishonesty on if you [cheated].”

Ahead of the Friday morning deadline, numerous users on social media purported to have confessed. Others declared that they were determined to fight any accusations, often using the slang term “standing on business” or an alternative version, “standing on bidness.” Both phrases, while dependent on context, convey that a person is either standing their ground or focusing on their work.

Friday’s class, the final one of autumn quarter, had record attendance according to those present. There were few seats left in Kent Chemical Laboratory room 107 as students not enrolled in the course attended to hear additional details about “Moongate.”

Ciesla spent most of the class delivering a lesson on Pluto. When he finally addressed the moon journal at the end, he said that students who confessed would probably not receive a punishment but that if they didn’t confess and had been suspected of cheating, their cases would be transferred to the Office of the Dean of Students.

At one point during the final lecture, Ciesla read the Walt Whitman poem “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” a tradition he has maintained at the end of every quarter.

On December 3, students enrolled in the course received a second email titled “Moon Journal Resolution.”

The email said students who were not suspected of misconduct would be graded as described in the syllabus—the moon

journal would account for 20 percent of their grade. To make up for the increased scrutiny and subsequently lower grades on the moon journal, students could have their grade on the moon journal replaced by their score on the final if it benefited them, which would make it worth 50 percent of their grade.

Students who had admitted to fabricating entries would not face disciplinary action and would instead have their moon journal grades substituted for their grades on the final, automatically making the final worth half of their overall grade.

“For those students who self-reported…we cannot count your journal towards your grade. However, we also recognize and appreciate the courage that it took to self-report, and we want to acknowledge that. None of you will be referred to the Dean of Students office,” the email read.

Students who were suspected of academic dishonesty and did not self-report would be referred to the Dean of Students office for investigation. If it was determined that a violation occurred, then they would receive a zero on their moon journal assignment and their final grade would be capped at a C. The subject line of this email, however, belied the sense of uncertainty some students faced. In particular, students who had fabricated entries and chose not to confess as well as students who had submitted legitimate entries but were afraid of being mistakenly accused of cheating remained unsure of their fates.

In particular, there was widespread confusion around the University’s academic disciplinary system, which varies depending on a student’s academic history, year, and the course. While details about the discipline process and the outcomes of past cases can be found on a page maintained by the Office of College Community Standards, students have limited information for gauging the severity of their cases or estimating potential penalties.

“Every single year they publish what the charge was and what the result was of some of the cases that they see without any specific details. And so I find that it can be incredibly difficult for students to get a bearing of what their case is. The charge might be three counts of academic dishonesty, and the reported result is

nothing happens. But it’s dependent on circumstance,” Davis said.

The clearest statement of what students can expect in terms of punishment can be found on a page on the website of the Office of the Provost.

“Instructors have a range of options in dealing with academic dishonesty. It is within the discretion of the instructor to use evidence of plagiarism or academic dishonesty as grounds for failing the student in all or part of the course. The area dean of students may be asked to speak with the student to issue a formal warning or to consider disciplinary action,” the page reads.

“Anything you know about law or due process, presumed innocent, or innocent until proven guilty, none of that really applies here,” Davis said. “The College has its own policies; it has its own rules.

The letter of the law is the syllabus of the class and the student handbook, so I think that’s a common misconception that it’s innocent until proven guilty.”

Five days later—December 8, the final day of autumn quarter finals week—clarity came in the form of an email titled “Earth as a Planet Update: Final Exam Grades and Final Grade Resolutions.” Students were informed that if they had not received an email letting them know they were suspected of cheating, their moon journal had not been flagged as fabricated.

“I had no interest in making an example of anybody or making this a big deal.

When something happens, if students are recognized as doing something wrong, they take responsibility for it and use it as a learning exercise, and then you move on from it,” Ciesla said. “That’s what I wanted to achieve in most of the cases, and that’s why I gave students that option.”

Throughout and after Moongate, some students expressed frustration at what they believed to be a lack of clear communication.

“I think it’s a very light case of cheating, especially considering that every single other year, people have cheated on this assignment,” said a third-year student who fabricated entries and did not confess and spoke on the condition of anonymity. “If they would have made it more clear or emphasized that they were taking academic integrity very seriously this year, then it would have been more

digestible. But because they didn’t do that, it’s more shocking and feels kind of like a waste of time.”

Other students thought there was a clear basis for the accusations.

“Because he stated so clearly at the beginning of the quarter that this is a fairly simple assignment and ‘here’s what’s expected of you and we really want you to learn and do this in real life,’ then yeah, if you cheat and go online and do it in a day, it’s fine to get your points reduced because there was a standard set,” said Jules Yaeger, a third-year enrolled in the class whose journal was not flagged for cheating. “If he had pulled that out of nowhere, it would be like, ‘Whoa,’ but no, it was in the syllabus.”

Still, even students like Yaeger who sympathized with Ciesla reported that the nature of the email was unnerving.

“I know many people were freaked out. I know people who didn’t cheat, myself included, and we were still freaked out anyway, just because he dealt with it seriously and formally,” Yaeger said.

According to Ciesla, his experience last autumn of having students who refused to admit to cheating despite clear evidence prompted him to take stricter action. “You might ask why not just lower the grade there. But in part it’s because of this back and forth that I had with students in the previous year.”

Despite the drama of Moongate, many students still enjoyed Ciesla’s class.

“I think he’s just really passionate, and I’ve had several really good science Core professors, people who obviously are teaching something they’re interested in and are doing a good deed of taking up the Core class slack. And they still try to make it engaging and don’t lose their passion for it, which I really, really respect,” Yaeger said. “Weirdly enough, this Sidechat thing made [Moongate] have more hype, but I think it also sort of alleviated a little bit of tension because it was a joke. I know people personally that were worried about it and were able to find some humor in it.”

As for Ciesla, next year will be the first in which he does not teach Earth as a Planet.

“This was something I had decided before this [cheating scandal],” he said.

“Having taught it since 2015, I’m ready to try something a little bit different.”

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The University’s choice to operate at a deficit in recent years has seen a series of repercussions.

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decades, rising interest rates and a drop in operating income have necessitated a range of cost-cutting measures, including a temporary staff hiring freeze and voluntary staff retirement packages, as well as budget cuts for programs across the University.

When asked why students were not invited to the presentation or informed of the University’s precarious financial situation, a University spokesperson responded that information regarding budget deficit reductions mainly concerned University employees. However, they added that “University leaders plan to discuss these topics with student leaders in the new year.”

The presentation looked at the 2023 budget deficit of $239 million in the context of the University’s overall financial health. The slides also compared UChicago’s financial health with that of its Ivy Plus peer institutions. The last slide of the presentation shared short-, medium-, and long-term plans to improve the University’s deficit.

Since 2013, UChicago has seen a 25 percent student enrollment increase across its undergraduate, Ph.D., master’s, and professional divisions. This increase is one of the highest among UChicago’s Ivy Plus peer group, second only to Columbia’s 27 percent student enrollment increase during the same time period.

However, UChicago’s 2022 endowment market value of $10.3 billion stood lower than that of many of its peer institutions. A majority of these institutions were founded before UChicago, affording them more time to invest and grow their endowments. In a recent letter to the editor in The Maroon, former dean of the College and Senior Advisor to the President John Boyer blamed UChicago’s lower endowment value on decades of low student enrollment rates between the 1950s and 1990s. But the University’s endowment growth has also underperformed its peers for nearly a decade.

The presentation largely mirrored Boyer’s framing of the school’s financial state in his recent letter. While invest-

University operations financial year 2023, presented during the budget town hall presentation. ments in recent decades have proved costly, they have enabled UChicago to climb a number of rankings and compete with its better-funded peers. But now, the University, as Boyer wrote, “must address the ongoing need for new pathways to financial resource generation and endowment growth, while preserving the special intellectual culture of the institution.”

Increased enrollment in the face of UChicago’s lower endowment value is resulting in a series of financial growing pains. The deficit growth at a 16.4 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) since 2019 shows that revenue-stream increases from sources such as grants, contracts, and tuition dollars over the same time period have not been able to keep up with rising costs for services, supplies, and staff salaries.

The University ended fiscal year 2023 with a roughly $239 million deficit, meaning that revenue was unable to cover 8 percent of the University’s $3.14 billion operating expenses.

Between 2019 and 2023, operating expenses rose 24 percent, from $2.53 billion to $3.14 billion. Additionally, the University increased full-time equivalent (FTE) positions by 8 percent for academics and 10 percent for staff.

By contrast, the University’s operating revenue only rose 16 percent in the same period, from $2.49 billion to $2.90 billion. The rise is partially due

to tuition and fee increases since 2019.

The University’s gross revenue from tuition and fees, which includes financial aid, was $1.18 billion for 2023, while net revenue, which excludes financial aid, was $601 million.

Meanwhile, UChicago’s “strategic investments” have included projects that expand financial aid, student housing options, investment in neighboring communities, and investment in “new academic and research initiatives to recruit top faculty and students,” according to the presentation.

In the period before the COVID-19 pandemic, the University’s operating deficit hovered near breakeven, but since 2021, UChicago’s operating income has crashed into greater and greater deficits.

“The deficit exists because the growth in expenses has been greater than the increase in revenue,” wrote a University spokesperson in response to a question from The Maroon.

The presentation included metrics that compared UChicago’s staffing ratios and endowment per employee with those of some of its peer institutions. According to one slide, current staffing ratios show that UChicago is not overstaffing in relation to students or academic faculty. Instead, it falls on the lower end of the spectrum in relation to peer institutions. Another slide showed two charts depicting UChicago’s endowment per tenure-track faculty member and per

FTE student, essentially full-time enrollments measured by hours worked.

On both endowment per FTE students and per tenure track faculty member, UChicago fell on the lower end of the scale.

When asked why the University had lower endowment per staff metrics than its peers, a University spokesperson responded that “the University’s overall staffing is consistent with the levels needed to fulfill our academic mission.”

Looking forward, the University has outlined a list of short-, medium-, and long-term “developing categories” to decrease its deficit. Some key short-term items include “potential sunsetting,” meaning the potential closing of certain programs or services, and “stewarding resources.”

The University’s choice to operate at a deficit in recent years has seen a series of repercussions. According to a draft paper written by classics and history department professor Clifford Ando that is set to be published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the University’s debt grew from $2.236 billion in 2006 to $5.809 billion in 2022, which represents an increase of 260 percent.

While the University’s credit rating has remained strong over the past decade, credit rating firm Fitch stated the University’s ability to take on “new debt beyond the current issuance is limited at CONTINUED ON PG. 5

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“Big economic disruptions can be very challenging for such big institutions that have lots of obligated forms of spending.”

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the current rating.”

Despite this, the University’s fixed rate debt increased by around $120 million to a total of $4.2 billion between 2022 and 2023, and it has begun to rely increasingly on more expensive forms of variable or floating-rate debt rather than fixed-rate debt.

Floating-rate debt increased by over $300 million, from $170 million in 2022 to $481 million in 2023. The increase came in the form of lines of credit from banks, which generally charge the highest interest rate paid by the University.

Interest payments on floating-rate debt increase as interest rates across the broader economy, making them especially risky for institutions like UChi-

cago which have few ways to quickly reduce costs or increase revenue to cope with higher interest payments.

In other words, “big economic disruptions can be very challenging for such big institutions that have lots of obligated forms of spending,” economics professor Michael Dinerstein said. Dinerstein, who researches the economics of education, explained that much of a university’s money pools, especially endowment funds, are tied to specific functions.

“That lack of flexibility just complicates responses to economic shocks,” Dinerstein said. In times of economic shock, such as rapidly rising inflation and interest rates, Dinerstein told The Maroon that “in times, like inflation, where the economic conditions are

changing, universities might need to re-optimize.” However, “the more constraints that they face in the optimization make it harder,” he said.

In his draft paper and during an event on campus in early November, Ando argued that UChicago’s solution to rising interest and debt payments has been to prioritize professional schools and STEM fields, often at the expense of the humanities and social sciences.

And while he cited the presentation from the budget office as “a welcome step toward transparency,” he has concerns about the feasibility of the University’s medium-term revenue growth strategies, which include expanding professional and master’s degree programs, research licensing, and greater facility

utilization with summer programs and conference hosting.

“Comparative and historical data suggest that the University’s plans to meet its budget deficit in part through increased revenue face very strong headwinds,” Ando wrote in an email to The Maroon.

“In other areas of higher education, breaking into a space like professional education that is already populated by established providers has proved exceptionally difficult; and data from the Association of University Technology Managers suggests that only a tiny handful of universities have ever profited from patents owned or co-owned by universities,” Ando added.

Skilled Tradespeople Say UChicago Compensation Needs to Be More Competitive to Retain Talent

By TIFFANY LI | News Reporter University Facility Services employees represented by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73, the union for skilled trade workers at the University of Chicago, have continued to press for higher wages and improved safety policies as their collective bargaining process with the University stretches into the new year.

Core to Local 73’s demands are efforts to make UChicago competitive with other large employers in Chicago, an element the union believes is key in a strong job market.

“When we do get employees in, most of the time there’s quite a bit of training and trying to bring people up to speed on basic skills they should have before they’re even hired,” Joe Pruim, president of the UChicago unit of SEIU Local 73, said in an interview with The Maroon. “That’s a whole extra task for that employee.”

While Faculty Forward, the union that represents non-tenure-track faculty on campus, is also a part of SEIU Local

73, Faculty Forward bargains separately from facility services employees. Facilities workers, including carpenters, painters, and engineers, bargain collectively under the Local 73 name at UChicago, which has been one of the most prominent unions on campus for decades.

Local 73 is looking to secure a number of economic—i.e., wages and benefits— and workplace policy gains in its newest contract with the University. Chief among their demands are making safety equipment, such as prescription safety glasses, accessible to workers and instituting a pay scale competitive with other universities and employers in the Chicagoland area, such as Northwestern University.

The union and its University counterparts have not yet reached an agreement on safety equipment. However, on the policy front, they did agree in the meeting that the two 15-minute breaks within an eight-hour workday in the current contract will continue to the next contract.

On the economic front, the Universi-

ty’s current offer stands at a 2 percent pay increase every year over the four-year life of the contract.

“That nowhere near covers inflation,” Pruim said. “For as large and prestigious of a university that we are, with one of the largest endowments out of all colleges, I believe [our pay] should be competitive at a fair market value.”

Pruim says the current level of pay makes it hard to attract and retain qualified employees, meaning current employees already stretched thin by understaffing must frequently spend time training often underqualified new hires. Under the current contract, existing employees are not paid for the time they spend training new hires, which the union also hopes to change.

The University has also rejected the union’s request that it reimburse training costs for union workers, such as courses at technical schools, which would give current employees the opportunity to acquire new skills and work across different areas.

“The University is negotiating in good

faith with SEIU Local 73, which represents 150 employees in the Facilities Services bargaining unit,” the University wrote in a statement to The Maroon.

“We are deeply grateful for the contributions of Facilities Services employees to the work of the University, and we look forward to working constructively on a contract that will benefit employees and serve the University community.”

In its latest bargaining session with the University on December 13, the union proposed a higher percentage wage increase per year and continued discussing safety equipment for workers. The union and the University will continue negotiations in future meetings.

“Hopefully the University can come to terms, and we can have a successful contract, grow through this high inflation right now, and improve the University all around,” Pruim said before the December 13 session. “Because I just walked out of a retirement party for a painter, Tom Drane, who worked for the University for 41 years. I hope to see longevity like that for a lot of our employees.”

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All Charges Dropped Against UCUP Sit-In Protestors

By TIFFANY LI | News Reporter During a court hearing on December 20, state prosecutors dropped all charges against the 26 students and two faculty members arrested during a sit-in of Rosenwald Hall on November 9 organized by UChicago United for Palestine (UCUP).

The University charged protestors with “criminal trespass to real property,” typically a Class B misdemeanor in Illinois, which can carry a punishment of up to six months in jail and a $1,500 fine.

The arrested protestors still face a lengthy legal process to have their records expunged and a litany of University disciplinary charges despite the charges being dropped. According to Youssef Hasweh, a fourth-year Palestinian student who was among the arrested and charged, the University required arrested protestors to attend disciplinary hearings during finals week.

Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office declined to pursue the charges, which were originally brought by the University of Chicago and escalated to the state level. The arrest of students and faculty was a significant break with University precedent. Students were not arrested and were allowed to leave after occupying UCPD’s headquarters overnight during a sit-in connected to the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

“When we had gotten there, we were all under the assumption that [the charges were] going to be dropped,” Hasweh said. “Our attorney had talked to the state, and they said they were not prosecuting protest charges.”

The students and faculty were repre-

sented pro bono by lawyers from National Lawyers Guild Chicago, which has coordinated legal support for many pro-Palestine demonstrators across Cook County facing charges.

Hasweh said UCUP at UChicago was one of the few student coalitions across the country that had seen its University escalate charges to the state level rather than use internal measures. On the same day UCUP’s court hearing was held, Brown University pressed charges against 41 anti-Israel protestors who held a similar sit-in. Protestors at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Michigan Ann Arbor were also arrested and charged after sit-ins.

Protestors at other universities, including Harvard, Columbia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, only faced university discipline.

“We’ve seen suspensions, like at Columbia, of their student groups, but we haven’t seen them escalate to a state level and try to prosecute their own students.

That’s so fucking insane,” Hasweh said.

Columbia University suspended its student groups Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voices for Peace on November 11 for unauthorized protest.

The Maroon also spoke to another student member of UCUP who was arrested at the sit-in and who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“The administration tried to intimidate us; they tried to silence us. But we are not going to be silenced,” the student said.

The student said the experience of being arrested only strengthened their

resolve to continue taking action to support Palestine.

“The moment when the police sergeant came in and said, ‘We’re going to arrest you if you don’t leave,’ I just felt this clarity and the sense that I have to stay here. This is what I have to do,” the student said. “What’s happening in Palestine is just so horrific, and I feel it is my duty to do whatever is in my power to bring attention to that and hopefully to bring a stop to it.”

After the charges were dropped, UCUP held a GoFundMe fundraiser to gather the court fees necessary to expunge the charges from the protestors’ records. The fundraiser’s total goal of $4,200 was surpassed within 24 hours, after which UCUP began redirecting donors to other organizations, including Chicago Community Bond Fund, Care for Gaza, and the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

Hasweh said he felt the sit-in and its aftermath, including the fundraiser, brought out a wave of support for UCUP and the pro-Palestine cause while making the protestors a tighter-knit group.

“The amount of people that rally behind us only makes me want to do this more. It was so euphoric,” he said. “I feel like being arrested, and knowing that the University is willing to arrest, actually has allowed us to be more public and more transparent with a lot of our supporters.

We’ve garnered more support for our actions.”

Per Hasweh, protestors have to return to court to have their fingerprints taken and to ask the judge to expunge their records.

UCUP plans to resume its advocacy efforts during the upcoming winter quarter by continuing to demand a public meeting with President Alivisatos, transparency in the University’s investments, and the University’s divestment from arms manufacturers and Israeli companies. A 2020 article by The Maroon found that University investments had exposure to weapons manufacturers such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Raytheon through exchange traded funds and investment vehicles overseen by third-party managers, but no evidence has been found of the University directly investing in weapons manufacturers.

“We will continue to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people as we did before, and as we will do until the Palestinian people are free and until Palestine is free,” the anonymous student said.

However, students who engaged in the sit-in have been vocal about the toll the experience has taken on them. Hasweh said the arrest and charges, as well as the timing of the University and state court hearings, made him feel that the University was being antagonistic towards him and other protestors. Hasweh also said he lost his former job at the University’s admissions office after the sit-in. “[The University] chose to fire me and have me arrested and shut me down as I’m Palestinian, as I need to worry about the lives of my family in Palestine. And now I have to worry about my degree. I think it’s such bullshit,” Hasweh said. “It’s just a nightmare that they don’t want to end.

I really don’t know if I’m going to make it to graduation. I don’t know if that is in [UChicago’s] plan.”

University Survey Finds Less Racism, Sexism Since 2016; Marginalized Groups Report Higher Bias Than Others

By NAINA PURUSHOTHAMAN | Senior News Reporter Provost Katherine Baicker released preliminary results from the 2023 Campus Climate Survey conducted in spring quarter in an email sent to the campus community on Monday, December 18.

According to the email, fewer survey

respondents reported that they perceived the climate on campus as racist or sexist than the previous one in 2016, but members of minority or marginalized groups continued to report experiencing greater levels of bias on average than their peers

did. Baicker’s email also said that some groups on campus reported “a lower sense of belonging” and were “more likely to experience instances of harassment.”

Full results of the survey, which intends to inform future diversity and inclusion initiatives on campus, are set to be released in February 2024.

Baicker’s email reported an overall response rate of 30 percent, with responses from 41 percent of faculty, 21 percent of students, and 42 percent of staff members. According to the email, these rates were nearly identical to those for the 2016 survey.

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[S]ome groups on campus reported ‘a lower sense of belonging’ and were ‘more likely to experience instances of harassment.’

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The survey was a joint effort between the Office of the Provost, the Climate Survey Advisory Committee, and the Office of Institutional Analysis.

The Climate Survey Advisory Committee is made up of faculty and administrators from across the University’s divisions as well as two undergraduate students and two graduate students. The committee was formed to advise on the development and implementation of the survey.

The questionnaire asked UChicago students, faculty, and staff about their perceptions of the University’s climate

and their attitudes and experiences with racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of bias.

The survey was open throughout May, and the survey committee compiled and analyzed the results over the summer. The full results release in February is set to occur alongside a University-wide town hall hosted by the Office of the Provost.

The 2023 survey looked to build on the 2016 survey, with the goal of measuring changes in experiences and perceptions over time. This year’s survey added questions about perceived ageism, perceived tolerance or intolerance of diverse politi-

cal views, national origin, socioeconomic background, and gender expression. The results from the 2016 survey are available on the Office of the Provost’s website.

Vice Provost for Diversity and Inclusion Waldo Johnson Jr., who chaired the Survey Advisory Committee, spoke with The Maroon about the survey when it was launched in the spring.

“Administering this survey is a crucial step towards understanding and improving the campus climate at UChicago,” he said. “The survey results will provide a baseline against which to measure improvements and track the impact of future

efforts, helping the University allocate its resources most effectively to create a welcoming environment where everyone can participate fully in campus life.”

According to Baicker’s email, discussions about the survey results will be held in smaller groups and within academic units during winter quarter. These conversations, the survey results, and additional information collected about the campus climate will be used to inform a new strategic plan for the University’s diversity and inclusion initiatives, she wrote.

New Polsky Managing Director Samir Mayekar Sees Startups as Key to the Future

By GABRIEL KRAEMER | News Reporter Samir Mayekar took the reins as managing director of the University’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation last month. Mayekar previously worked in the Obama administration as the director of national security personnel; served as the deputy mayor of Chicago for economic and neighborhood development under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot; and cofounded the NanoGraf Corporation, a renewable energy startup.

The 25-year-old Polsky Center, according to its website, operates a variety of programs promoting entrepreneurship and oversees commercial applications of UChicago research. University-affiliated researchers hoping to introduce new technology into the market apply for patents and licenses via the center, which reported $22 million in revenue last year.

“As head of the Polsky Center, Mayekar will play a pivotal role in advancing UChicago’s ambitious priorities in innovation, technology commercialization and entrepreneurship,” the University wrote in a press release announcing his appointment. “He will foster connections across the University, the city of Chicago, the region and the world that will enable the

Polsky Center to accelerate the commercialization of critical technologies.”

In an interview with The Maroon, Mayekar praised the different arms of the Polsky Center and expressed excitement about how the Center’s work paralleled his own experiences.

“There’s this very interesting intersection of the Polsky Center’s work that’s very focused on the commercialization of science and student-based entrepreneurship and also doing work in the community,” he said. “And that just so happens to be my background, from starting my own science-based company to doing my work as deputy mayor focusing on neighborhood investment.”

Mayekar identified four core functions of the center’s work: an entrepreneurship curriculum and programs at the Booth School of Business; its Tech Transfer Office, which manages commercialization of University research; various accelerator programs for startups; and initiatives helping small businesses on the South Side.

Mayekar said his work in the White House Presidential Personnel Office, which manages presidential appoint-

ments, at the beginning of Barack Obama’s term inspired him to enter the renewable energy industry. “One of the people I helped place was running the U.S. Development Finance Corporation, and she brought me in to be on her executive team,” he said. “What I learned there was how that organization did billions of dollars of financing clean energy projects all around the world. That’s what got me interested in clean energy.”

After serving as CEO at NanoGraf, Mayekar joined Lightfoot’s administration. “[My work was] really all about balancing economic development both downtown and in our neighborhoods, especially in neighborhoods that hadn’t seen investment for decades.” He helped develop the Invest South/West initiative, which aimed to direct investment to 10 underserved neighborhoods on the South and West Sides. By early 2023, the program had resulted in more than $2.2 billion in public and private investment.

Mayekar’s time at City Hall also coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, which he helped Chicago navigate. He viewed the city’s recovery as another point of pride for him.

Mayekar sees huge opportunities for scientific innovation in the near future.

“There’s never been, certainly in our lifetimes, as much funding available for the commercialization of science,” he said, citing recent federal legislation including the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the CHIPS Act. “Here at the Polsky Center at UChicago, what has us excited is the advances and the companies that are going to be built in quantum and data science, in clean energy and life science. When you match the entrepreneurial talent that we have at the University with the fundamental research that’s happening here in the labs, with the type of funding that’s coming from the federal government, that will really catalyze more private sector investment.”

To Mayekar, the “commercialization of science” holds great potential—and the Polsky Center occupies a vital role in promoting it. “You think about some of the fundamentals that we have to deal with as a society around ethical and responsible AI, inequality, how we tackle climate change,” he said. “All of these require breakthroughs in science-based innovation. That’s what universities do, especially what places like UChicago do.

CONTINUED ON PG. 8

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To Mayekar, the “commercialization of science” holds great potential—and the Polsky Center occupies a vital role in promoting it.

CONTINUED FROM PG. 7

And that’s what our job is at the Polsky Center is: to really help build up that ecosystem so that innovation can have the impact that we all want to see in the world on those major issues of our time.”

He emphasized that those goals exist alongside the other mission areas of the Polsky Center, including revitalizing local business. “The South and West Sides in Chicago, they’ve seen disinvestment for far too long, for decades, and inequality is one of those fundamental issues that we as a society have to tackle,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter…if you’re running a

small business that’s going to have a few locations or if you’re running a big data company or a science-based venture and you’re located here in the neighborhood.

We’re going to help both those kinds of entrepreneurs, and we want them to be successful because they’ll create jobs, they’ll hire locally, and they’ll help catalyze that flywheel that we need to see happening with the local economy here on the South Side.”

He highlighted Hyde Park Labs, a new multipurpose science facility on Harper Avenue north of 53rd Street that is scheduled to open in late 2024, as an example

of the new spaces that can help communities. He added that creating jobs on the South Side is another priority, noting that the soon-to-open Obama Presidential Center offers “a real swell of economic growth potential.”

Mayekar, a Northwestern graduate, highlighted other institutions in and around Chicago as potential partners.

“Historically in Chicago, our big flagship institutions haven’t always found the right way to collaborate with each other.

But recently, when places like Northwestern and UChicago and the University of Illinois system and others work togeth-

er, that’s when you win things like the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub that has come to Chicago,” he said, referring to a new biomedical research center that combines the three universities’ resources. “I see that being a really positive force for all of us in Chicago.”

Mayekar’s short-term priorities include “making sure we are finding more capital to support our startup ecosystem and making sure that if you’re trying to build a company, that capital isn’t a barrier to you,” he said. “Number two is ensuring that entrepreneurs have the space they need to be successful.”

UChicago’s Drop in College Rankings Draws Little Reaction from Students

By AMY MA | News Reporter It has been almost three months since the U.S. News & World Report published its annual ranking of American colleges.

Because of changes in the evaluation criteria, the University of Chicago dropped six spots in the ranking, from No. 6 to No. 12. Both in person and online, UChicago’s fall out of the top 10 generated a wide range of reactions.

For some recently admitted students, UChicago’s continued presence in the upper tiers of college rankings played a large role in which college they decided to attend. “I chose UChicago over Johns Hopkins because it was ranked higher,” first-year Matthew Castillo said.

“I based my college decision solely on rankings. If UChicago’s ranking drops more next year, I will drop out,” first-year Yero Diamanka joked.

Yet for many other recent admits, college rankings held little sway over their decision-making process. “[UChicago’s ranking] actually had very little to do with my choice… . my college process was much more emotionally and fit-driven,” first-year Gabrielle Morin said. Firstyear Julius Dorsey said that rankings weren’t a consideration for him either.

“[This was] actually the first time I’ve thought about [the rankings].”

For many students, rankings were just one of among many factors they considered when choosing schools. “Thirty percent of the reason why I applied was because it looked like Hogwarts,” Castillo joked.

“From the rankings I saw that UChicago was a great school, but it was not at all the main reason why I chose to come here,” first-year Evan Tecimer said.

Students frequently cited location, the Core Curriculum, and specific academic offerings as reasons for choosing to attend UChicago.

“I have an interest in criminal justice, so the combination of critical race and ethnic studies and Law, Letters, and Society really appealed to me,” first-year Naja Aralynn said.

Some students were keen to point out the various nuances that a singular ranking fails to represent. For example, the U.S. News ranking is a lump sum of all of a college’s academic resources that does not account for differences between divisions and programs. “I looked more into the rankings and resources of my major,

chemistry. Those numbers mattered a lot more to me,” Castillo said.

Some students also noted the substantial discrepancies between different ranking systems, indicating their skepticism toward the credibility of these rankings. “As an international student, I looked a lot at the QS World [University] Rankings, where UChicago sat at a very impressive No. 11. On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal ranked us 34th [in the United States]. The large degree of difference sort of invalidates the seriousness of these rankings for me,” first-year Gabriel Hui said.

However, college rankings may be a larger consideration for parents and family members. “For my parents, the main reason they let me come here rather than the state university, which I received a full scholarship to, was because it was the highest ranked school out of all the schools that I got into,” Castillo said.

Aralynn had similar thoughts. “[UChicago’s ranking] is a source of pride for my parents and [me],” Aralynn said.

However, that sentiment does not apply to all parents. “My parents did not care about UChicago’s rankings much.

What they cared about most [was] me getting a good education and being hap-

py,” Dorsey said.

The release of the U.S. News rankings also spawned a multitude of reactions on Sidechat, an anonymous social media platform that maintains school-specific forums only accessible to those with university-affiliated email addresses.

Memes and commentary flooded the site in the wake of the release, showcasing a wide spectrum of opinions. Some lamented the decline and scrutinized the changes made to the evaluation metrics, while others trivialized the fuss: “me waking up to Sidechat exploding over a number.” One Sidechat user quipped that “if we cared about the environment as much as the Wall Street Journal rankings…we would have the cleanest planet ever.”

Several students emphasized that the change in rankings did not alter their perception of UChicago. “Rankings are not something that define[s] what I think of UChicago. UChicago is nevertheless a very good institution,” Dorsey said. “[No one] should let prestige consume [them] to that point.”

“The top 10 to 20 schools are all generally the same in terms of quality. At a certain point, what you gain from your education depends on what you make

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A Glimpse of Chanukah on Campus

By ZEV WOLDENBERG | News Reporter This year’s Chanukah arrived right at the end of finals week, but that didn’t stop UChicago’s Jewish community from coming together to celebrate.

Rabbi Yossi Brackman of Rohr Chabad at UChicago, one of the University’s Jewish religious-cultural centers, spent the days before Chanukah handing out menorah kits to students across campus. On the first night of Chanukah, Rabbi Brackman gathered Jewish students in the backyard of the Rohr Chabad house to light a ninefoot menorah, which symbolizes the miracle of its oil lasting eight days. Students sang together, munched on jelly donuts, and competed to guess how many dreidels were stuffed in a jar. Afterwards, about 50 graduate students, free from the burdens of finals week, attended the graduate student Chanukah party.

“With delicious donuts and latkes, fun games, and Israeli music, what better way is there to end the quarter and get everyone excited for Chanukah?” first-year Joel Abraham told The Maroon.

Elsewhere on campus, students who could not make it to Chabad scrambled between final exams, papers, and flights to light the candles on their own. Bolting back to Woodlawn after his Arabic final, second-year Josh Milstein rallied some members of the Jewish community of his Woodlawn Residential Commons dormitory to one of the building’s common rooms via WhatsApp. By the window of the common room, they too lit the first candle of the menorah. After singing “Maoz Tzur,” a liturgical poem that recounts Jewish deliverance from enemies throughout history, the students embraced and went their separate ways. Some of them hurried back to the library, while others left for the airport, already having finished their exams.

“Celebrating on campus is unique because it’s a time when you, as an individual, get to take charge of what Chanukah means to you outside of the context of your family,” Milstein said.

Last month, Milstein decided to usher

solana adedokun.

in Chanukah celebrations early at UChicago Hillel’s interfaith holiday party. He led the newly refounded Jewish acapella group “Rhythm and Jews” in singing traditional Chanukah songs for its first performance. At the holiday party, students also knit scarves by hand and packed blankets and food for those in need this winter.

Chanukah, the holiday where Jews

celebrate their ancestors’ victory over the Seleucid Greeks and the rededication of their temple in Jerusalem, took on particular significance for some members of the Jewish community this year.

“With so much darkness in the world, this year’s Chanukah should bring light, hope, and joy,” Rabbi Brackman said.

UChicago Chemistry Lab Makes Breakthrough in Drug Discovery Strategies

By DEREK HSU | News Reporter When synthesizing new drugs for pharmaceutical purposes, medicinal chemists will experience success or failure depending on differences as small as a single atom. The Levin Lab, an organic chemistry lab at UChicago led by associate professor Mark Levin, has found two strategies to replace a carbon atom with a nitrogen atom. The breakthroughs, published in Science and Nature this fall, could make developing new drugs easier.

The Maroon spoke with Levin about the recent discoveries made by his group.

Acknowledging the difficulty of developing new drugs, Levin called synthetic chemistry a “multidimensional optimization problem.” “[The drug] has to be efficacious, non-toxic, [and] absorbed in the gut in order to be in oral therapy,” he said.

Most drugs in development have some, but not all, of these requirements.

Fortunately, the swapping of a carbon atom with a nitrogen atom radically increases the chance of meeting these parameters by allowing chemists to fine-tune many properties of chemical compounds, including “hydrogen-bonding, polarity, metabolic stability, target specificity and solubility.”

However, making modifications at the core of a molecular skeleton compared to its periphery is rather difficult.

It’s like changing layers during the winter: It’s easy to swap a jacket but hard to put on a new shirt without taking the entire outfit apart. Put on the wrong shirt, and the process becomes a chore.This interest in skeletal editing—swapping out individual atoms without disassembling

molecules—is not exclusive to the Levin Lab. Levin is among a group of chemists to pioneer the term “skeletal editing,” which has been used in over 100 scientific papers in the past two years.

With the promise of developing drugs without synthesizing compounds from scratch, Levin suggests two ways to replace the carbon atom: first, attaching a compound containing three nitrogens to a carbon ring, and second, replacing a carbon with nitrogen after breaking a double bond between two carbons using ozone.

The first paper published in Science on September 28 was led by postdoctoral researcher Tyler Pearson, who works in Levin’s lab. The paper reports that carbon is replaced wherever a three-nitrogen compound, known as an azide, is placed. While there are many ways to attach the azide, their findings suggest C-H

functionalization, in which the bond between carbon and hydrogen is broken, serves as a segway for nitrogen replacement. If chemists can dictate which carbon is exiting, they can understand how replacing different carbons affects a drug’s molecular properties.

The second paper published in Nature on November 1 was led by postdoc Jisoo Woo. It focuses on existing carbons in a ring of atoms containing two or more elements. Using ozone to open the ring, the cleaved structure can then accept nitrogen and close again.

Similar to Pearson’s approach, Woo’s findings were built off decades of preexisting knowledge about transformations.

The choice to use ozonolysis, or using ozone for cleaving, was based on “hundreds of years or more of transformations we wanted to try. Ozonolysis was CONTINUED ON PG. 10

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“Creativity is the most valuable currency in science.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 9

the best out of all the different reactions that we could apply,” Levin said.

The two papers align with the group’s culture with what Levin calls a “modality agnostic lab.” “We are more interested in ‘here’s the class of problem we want to solve’ and we’ll use whatever technique

we believe to be appropriate,” Levin said.

The lab actively supports ideas that resonate with students. The projects carried out are largely inspired with the creative direction of its lab members.

“Creativity is the most valuable currency in science. I never found systemization to be particularly conducive to

creativity,” Levin said.

In contextualizing his lab’s work, Levin understands that it will take more time to turn these conceptual advances into proven industry tools. More work needs to be done in academia overall to make these advances more user-friendly so that they can be used on a commercial

scale.

Still, Levin is excited about the lab’s findings and the future directions of his group’s research. “This is really the first time that we developed a reaction that really deserves to be turned into the best possible version of itself.”

Nobel Laureate Professor Michael Kremer Talks Development Economics at UChicago Women’s Board Annual Dinner

By TIFFANY LI | News Reporter The UChicago Women’s Board invited Nobel laureate and economics professor Michael Kremer to speak at their annual dinner at the Rubenstein Forum on November 16. The Women’s Board, a social and charitable organization run by women, annually funds grants to various causes associated with the University. Grants fall into four categories: arts and cultural institutions, faculty research and support, quality of student life, and community outreach.

The board granted a total of $561,111 across 14 grants in the 2023–24 cycle.

At the event, Kremer detailed the experimental approach to development economics that he pioneered, which led to him jointly winning the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Emily Cupito, executive director of the Development Innovation Lab at the Becker Friedman Institute, joined Kremer on the podium to interview him.

“In medicine, people do trials. To see whether new vaccines are going to be approved, they try them and see whether it works,” Kremer said. “So the idea was, this was an opportunity [for economics] to learn from the same approach.”

With data from randomized experiments, economists can be more certain that the treatment itself, rather than other factors, is causing any differences they see between treatment and control groups.

“One thing about this method is you get an answer that is very hard to hide

from. You can’t use fancy techniques to say ‘No, it’s not really there,’” Kremer said. “But I think, perhaps even more fundamentally, it takes economists out of the ivory tower. It has people working on very concrete problems with policymakers, with teachers, students, health workers, and people from other disciplines.”

Kremer said this on-the-ground engagement aspect of experimental economics was one reason why he was excited to come to UChicago and found the Development Innovation Lab. “That type of engagement requires an infrastructure to operate,” he said.

“President Zimmer and the University were interested in trying to create that same type of multidisciplinary, integrated effort to engage with developing.”

Kremer first began using this approach to evaluate the impact of different education techniques on student performance in Kenya. His discoveries there include the cost-effectiveness of deworming—medicine to remove parasitic worms from humans—in improving students’ academic performance.

Brigitte Ozzello, the director of the Women’s Board, spoke with The Maroon after the event.

“I think everybody was really excited after COVID to be gathering in person, to have a Nobel Prize–winning laureate, and [to] be in a festive environment,” Ozzello said.

The Maroon also spoke with Elizabeth Sonnenschein, a Women’s Board

member who joined in 1993 and is currently serving on its Programs Committee.

“We have the talk first, and then dinner after, so people sitting around the table eating dinner, if they care to, can talk about the talk,” Sonneschein said.

“It’s very University of Chicago.”

Sonnenschein first joined the Women’s Board as the wife of former University president Hugo Sonnenschein.

Sonnenschein said chairing the Grants Committee, which decides how to allocate the board’s funds, was one of her most enjoyable experiences with the board.

“It’s such an interesting process to see 15 women sit around a conference table and negotiate with each other… and come to a consensus at the end,” Sonnenschein said.

The Women’s Board’s Grants Committee changes each year and consists of between 15 and 20 members who have not participated in the grantmaking process before.

“Our grants typically range in monetary value from $40,000 to $60,000 per grant,” Ann David, chair of the Women’s Board, said. “We tend to give grants to entities that are helping women, since we’re the Women’s Board, and we also like to focus on things that help the citizens of Chicago.”

In the 2023-24 cycle, David said one of her favorite grants had been given to a team in the University’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology for developing the ‘Bionic Breast.’ “Trials for the Bionic Breast, an implantable, neuro-prosthetic device that restores

touch sensation and mitigates pain post-mastectomy, are planned for Q3 2023,” reads a summary of the grant on the board’s website.

David emphasized that many of the Board’s members are not directly affiliated with the University and that they simply appreciate the community and charity aspect of the board.

“They’re not all alumni, parents of alumni, or professors. I’d say about half of our membership has no connection to the University at all,” David said.

Ozzello, Sonnenschein, and David all mentioned that the board’s membership and activities had taken a hit as a result of the pandemic.

“One of our biggest assets is offering people the ability to come together and network and be with like-minded women,” David said. “When we couldn’t do that, it was really hard to keep going.

And we did, but since we’ve come back after the pandemic, we’ve lost a lot of members.”

Ozzello, who joined the board’s staff four months ago, said she aims to increase fundraising and membership as the board continues to recover from the pandemic.

“My goal is to grow the number of people who are interested in joining the Board, engaging with it, and having the pleasure of giving their money in a way that is meaningful to them,” she said.

“My challenge now is, how do we nurture the past but move us more into the future, and align the Women’s Board really well with the vision and future of the University of Chicago?”

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Here Comes the Money: University and Unions Begin Discussing Pay and Benefits

By NIKHIL JAISWAL | Co-Editor-In-Chief At a press conference in front of Levi Hall on December 4, unionized nurses and graduate students reiterated their demands for higher pay and benefits. After the event, the two unions entered bargaining sessions with the University, the 12th for graduate students and the 11th for nurses.

The processes for both unions appear to be running in parallel. Both groups are in the initial stages of discussing economic proposals, broadly those relating to pay and benefits, with the University.

For nurses, higher wages and benefits are deeply intertwined with the safe operation of the Medical Center as the hospital struggles with retaining nurses.

According to National Nurses United (NNU), over half of “core nursing staff” have left the UChicago Medical Center (UCMC) since the pandemic, leaving the remaining nurses over-stretched. A survey conducted by the union in August showed that more than two-thirds of nurses at UCMC believe improved staffing is a key issue.

“We really are bringing the important issue of safe staffing,” said Stephanie Gamboa, a member of NNU who spoke at the press conference. “I think that ties into all of what we’re looking for: dignity, respect, retention. Those are all things that we want to bring.”

Notably, the contract for nurses, represented by NNU, expired in November, leaving the union free to strike. NNU went on strike for 24 hours in 2019 during the bargaining process for their now-expired contract.

While that previous contract established staffing minimums in more than 20 units within the hospital, Gamboa highlighted how understaffing in some units compromised operations across the system.

“We’re looking for safe staffing at all units. So whether you’re at an ambulatory clinic here on the Hyde Park campus or a satellite office or if you’re working in IV therapy, all of those units need those plans in order to adequately serve the patients.”

She added, “If you do not have enough nurses answering your phone triage in an adequate time, that preventative care that could have prevented you from going into

the ER is missed.”

In a statement to The Maroon sent the week of the rally, UCMC wrote that they are looking forward to continuing negotiations.

“We anticipate continued progress during the next three sessions, which are scheduled throughout December. And we remain committed to working collaboratively and respectfully for a fair and equitable contract that allows us to continue to attract exceptional nurses who meaningfully contribute to our institution and its reputation for excellence,” the statement read.

December 6’s session was Graduate Student United’s (GSU) first since the group spoke to The Maroon in November about their negotiations with the University and the first since GSU delivered their economic proposals to the University. While the two sides have agreed on a number of matters, GSU highlighted how the University and GSU have yet to agree on terms relating to pay and benefits or on the specifics of a nondiscrimination statement.

Soham Sinha, a graduate student who spoke at the press conference, highlighted the necessity of firm language when it comes to non-discrimination. “Our position is clear: We need unambiguous contract language that will create a culture shift on this campus and erode the conditions that enable discrimination to occur in the first place. That is the only way to make our workplace safer,” Sinha said.

In a statement circulated before the press conference, GSU chastised the University for what it saw as efforts to delay negotiations and called on them to respond more quickly to proposals.

“The administration seems committed to one playbook: delay, delay, delay,” a statement from GSU member Elaine Colligan read. “Our members are long overdue for a living wage, a workplace free from harassment and discrimination, and health care benefits including dental and vision coverage.”

By contrast, in a written statement to The Maroon, a University spokerson said that the speed of negotiations with GSU was high compared to that of other bargaining

processes.

“To date there have been 11 bargaining sessions, nearing 70 hours in all, with forthright and constructive conversations resulting in tentative agreements between the University and the union bargaining team on nearly two dozen contractual provisions, including nearly all of the non-economic proposals. This represents encouraging progress in a relatively short amount of time in the context of other union negotiations.”

State Senator Robert Peters–who represents the 13th district which encompasses Hyde Park–also spoke at the press conference.

Peters touted his deep ties to the nurses’ union and spoke of how he worked with NNU as a community organizer before his 2019 appointment to the State Senate. NNU endorsed him during his 2020 and 2022 campaigns.

As a state senator, Peters spoke at NNU events during the union’s last set of negotiations with the University in 2019. In 2020 he was the only non-federal level candidate in the country endorsed by NNU. After the press conference, Peters emphasized to The Maroon both the importance of staffing levels at UCMC and the need for graduate students to be compensated fairly: “At UCMC, we have to think about the staffing levels. We need to think about people’s safety in the workplace, people’s pay and people’s benefits, and then also thinking about those who are in the classroom, particularly grad students who after the Great Recession had more and more put on, to have to play the role of professor and teaching. We need to make sure our grad students are getting the pay that they deserve, the benefits they deserve, and the experiences they deserve.”

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THE CHICAGO MAROON — JANUARY 11, 2024

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ARTS Your Favorite Old-Time String Band: Old Crow Medicine Show Senior Arts Reporter Sofia Hrycyszyn finds herself surrounded by friendly folk fans at Old Crow Medicine Show’s Chicago performance.

By SOFIA HRYCYSZYN | Senior Arts Reporter With a chorus of quick fiddles and plucky guitars, Old Crow Medicine Show came out with a country bang.

They opened with “Tell It To Me,” a piece with lyrics (sang with a twang, of course) such as “cocaine’s gonna kill my honey dead.” Ketch Secor, the lead vocalist, played so furiously on his fiddle that the frayed strings of his bow swung around his head, and his hair became matted with sweat. Secor and Mason Via, guitarist and newest member of the band respectively, took turns dancing around the stage, kicking up their legs in an impressive riff on the can-can. The hit is

from their newest album and namesake for their current 25th anniversary tour, Jubilee, which they proudly announced has been nominated for folk album of the year.

The old-time string band consists of many multitalented musicians who seamlessly switches between instruments, sometimes mid-song. Cory Younts started stage left behind a wooden piano but would occasionally step up to the microphone. Mike Harris claimed stage right with his imposing slide guitar.

Morgan Jahnig occasionally limped his giant upright bass around the stage but

mostly stayed put. PJ George peeked out from stage left, one second with an accordion, the next with a banjo or mandolin.

Dante’ Pope, originally from the west side of Chicago, switched from the drums to a silver chest washboard. The band was originally discovered busking—playing on the street—in North Carolina, and 25 years later, they maintain that high energy and sense of community on stage.

With the seven musicians constantly bouncing around and fighting for space around the communal microphones, the stage buzzed with energy.

The Salt Shed was full of middle-aged, die-hard folk fans, many of whom had traveled from far outside Chicago to at-

Mason Via, Ketch Secor, and Willie Watson (from left to right) rocking their strings. sofia hrycyszyn.

tend. While I’m not really one to socialize at concerts, the crowd was so friendly and easygoing I found myself in three or four conversations throughout the night.

While chatting, I learned that the opener, Willie Watson, used to be a member of the band and collaborated with them on their newest album. Watson may have been the most engaging and energetic opener I’ve ever seen and was clearly a seasoned professional. Opening with Sara Watkins on what Watson called the “hot violin” and Ben Gould on the upright bass, the trio had the crowd hopping and singing along to old work songs.

When Watson, beat-up guitar in hand, popped back on stage to reunite with Old Crow during their set, it was clear that the band was moving into their signature tracks. Secor whipped a harmonica out of his sleeve, and all immediately jumped into “Down Home Girl.” With complex combinations of harmonica, strings and percussion and Watson’s twangy vocals, “Down Home Girl” is one of their best songs. It also includes some of my favorite lyrics of all time: “Every time I kiss you girl,/ It tastes like pork and beans.”

The band clustered together around the microphones at center stage and a calm, steady fiddle melody introduced their top song, “Wagon Wheel.” The chorus was originally recorded by Bob Dylan in 1973, and Secor wrote the verses in the early 2000s. The song has since been covered numerous times with some covers topping the charts, but Old Crow’s take on the classic country piece is probably the most musically complex of any version, and unlike the covers, it doesn’t rely on upbeat instrumentals to suck in the audience. The crowd of men on stage all contributed to the soul of the piece; their instruments complemented each other while their voices reached out to the crowd in a beautifully executed harmony.

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Sen Morimoto’s “Diagnosis” Pushes Through the Static Sen Morimoto’s “Diagnosis” tour challenges the status quo through technically impressive beats and magnetic dissonance.

Sen Morimoto captivates the audience at his Chicago “Diagnosis” show. harmonie ramsden.

By HARMONIE RAMSDEN | Senior Arts Reporter Sen Morimoto grinned playfully over his guitar. The artist had spent the last hour entertaining fans at Thalia Hall, but nobody looked eager to leave any time soon. “Time is flying as fuck!” Morimoto joked. Throughout the performance, the singer and his band never stopped smiling. Morimoto, a 29-year-old artist based in Chicago, enraptured the crowd with the magnetic dissonance characteristic of his music. A crowd of avant-gardes from every generation swayed along to soft rap and saxophone solos as the singer ran through his new album, Diagnosis.

The show began with a performance

by Neptune’s Core, two sets of siblings whose music perfectly encapsulates teenage angst. Hordes of high schoolers crowded around the stage, whooping for their friends performing. Neptune’s Core showcased a whirlwind of emo-

tions: from feeling unworthy of love to wondering when life will improve, with impressive, if nascent, voices.

The group was followed by Angélica Garcia, a singer-songwriter whose multidimensional style invites listeners to watch her make magic. Garcia builds layers of beatboxing and harmonies to create dissonance in her self-described style of “singing a poem between textures,” dancing in the breaks between each addition of a musical element. An approach that can only truly be understood live, her plea of “mira”—look—during “El Que” was eagerly answered by a crowd that couldn’t help but marvel.

The crowd seemed to have stumbled out of the vintage store next door before hitting Thalia Hall. The number of piercings and Doc Martens boots was rivaled only by the count of hands holding

Modelo beers. Teenagers slumped on a stoop against the venue’s left wall, giggling and passing around tubes of face glitter. When the lights dimmed to signal Morimoto’s performance, the intergenerational cacophony of noise immediately dissipated.

But the stage remained empty. Time seemed to freeze as Morimoto read off of a projected image of a CD covered with printed text. Morimoto’s soft voice pulsed with passion. “I hope this album, lyrically and sonically, makes the case for the value of weaponizing our internal dissonance toward more revolutionary paths for the self and society. I hope it… holds your hand and screams with you.”

The crowd waited with bated breath; then, Morimoto and his band entered to perform “If the Answer Isn’t Love.”

Thalia Hall’s opulent façade was flooded in pastel-hued lights throughout Morimoto’s performance. After “If the

Answer Isn’t Love,” the artist replaced the CD projection with a ceaseless loop of distorted neon animations, their TV static quality recalling the constant deluge of overstimulating content we navigate in the rest of our lives. In this environment, Morimoto and his band shone: A simple theme of black, lace, and flannel across their outfits distinguished them as a calm constant amidst the noise. “Bad State” and “St. Peter Blind” followed the opening song, forming a trilogy that demands a purpose for life and later defines it as loving and being loved.

The intensity swelled with each song, the audience’s energy rising to match, until the band played the album’s title track, “Diagnosis.” Recorded audio interrupted harsh chords as Morimoto rapped, “It’s the catch-22/ You live a long life doing what you have to do.”

The lights and band ran free in this CONTINUED ON PG. 14

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To Morimoto, love—of others, of nature, of the self—is inherently a rebellious act.

CONTINUED FROM PG. 13

song, each member of Morimoto’s team releasing their frustrations regarding our society. “Diagnosis” is not meant to make listeners comfortable. The grating harmonies and palpable anger about the catch-22 of a prolonged, unfulfilling life were clear through Morimoto and his band’s performance of the song. Then through the dissonance came a rich, isolated saxophone note. Smooth riffs suggested a reprieve from the friction of society. The audience’s fervor slowed as the crowd relished a moment of calm after a coalescence of melodies.

Morimoto followed the title song with “Surrender” and “Pressure on the Pulse,” two songs that channel the vehemence of “Diagnosis.” Though the triad

of songs is rife with discord, these contrasting elements somehow meld perfectly. This flawlessly executed theme of jarring elements carries throughout Morimoto’s music in his lyrics, production, and ambiance. The singer combines appreciation of our world and critique of its inequitable structures in a way that defines the human condition. To Morimoto, love—of others, of nature, of the self—is inherently a rebellious act. The singer asserts through Diagnosis that the pinnacle of existence in our current social structure is throwing away worries of time’s rapid development in favor of spending our limited hours among those we love. Work and stress, to Morimoto, detract from the core of the human experience.

Morimoto’s performance felt akin to an intimate backyard jam session among close friends. During “Woof,” a clear fan favorite, the crowd howled and bayed as the singer crooned, “I’m crying so loud that my dog is barking at me.” Even in their most visceral, angry moments, Morimoto and his band were technically flawless—and enjoying themselves.

Morimoto’s ethos of radical self-love was reflected by Thalia Hall’s attendees, who took the concert as a moment to be free. Rarely was there a phone in sight, a testament to the time-freezing impact of Morimoto’s beginning monologue and captivating performance.

As the show neared its close, Morimoto took his final track “Shouldn’t Live or Remember a Day” as a chance to let

loose. Soft lighting transitioned to strobing rainbows and layered production became soulful interludes. The singer joined the backup saxophonist to riff across notes between iterations of the phrase, “Can you still hear me?” Morimoto’s whirlwind performance left audience members marveling at the production quality long after the last chord was played. The singer refuses definition. No one label can describe his work. Discordant elements coalesce in Morimoto’s Diagnosis album, rejecting conventions of performance and magnetizing attendees. In a moment characterized by existential crisis and discord, Morimoto’s performance stopped the clock, giving listeners the agency to simply feel while inside Thalia Hall’s doors.

SPORTS Too Good for DIII: The Curious Case of Wilson Cunningham

By KABIR GOEL | Sports Reporter UChicago student. Math whiz. Professional baseball player for the Chicago Cubs. One person being all three seems paradoxical. But that’s exactly what Wilson Cunningham is: a paradox. He didn’t touch a baseball in his freshman or sophomore year of high school, yet he managed to get drafted by an MLB team just two years later. He is attending college and has rigorous academic commitments, yet he continues to train professionally with the Cubs at the same time. He is extremely accomplished and decorated with achievements across fields, yet incredibly humble and one of the nicest people you could ever meet. Welcome to the curious case of Wilson Cunningham.

Wilson Cunningham has a special contract with the Chicago Cubs, wherein he is part of the Cubs’ minor league system while also attending college at the University of Chicago. Choosing between college and going professional is one of the toughest aspects of any young draftee’s career,

but thankfully, Cunningham never had to make this choice. In this interview, The Maroon dives into Cunningham’s childhood, baseball career, life at UChicago, and everything in between.

CHICAGO MAROON: Thank you so much for being here today! Let’s start with a bit about your childhood. Can you share something about your early days in baseball and what inspired you to pursue it professionally?

Wilson Cunningham: I’ve been playing baseball ever since I could hold a baseball, starting in T-Ball as a 4–5-year-old.

My childhood dream was to be a professional baseball player. Unfortunately, in middle school, I picked up a few injuries and started getting pretty burnt out with baseball. Also, I’d started growing a ton, so I decided to branch out and try a few different sports. I tried track, golf, volleyball, which were all fun, but I really missed baseball and came back to it junior year. So I was very rusty my junior year and had to

work a lot on getting my rhythm back. A good thing was that my high school had a really good team, so there were a lot of scouts at our games, which allowed me to be noticed even without being a huge draft prospect.

CM: Were there any particular players or role models who influenced your playing style and career aspirations?

WC: I was always a big fan of lefty pitchers, being one myself. Especially tall lefties, like Chris Sale, Randy Johnson, Jon Lester, and C.J. Wilson, were players that I emulated in my game. [Cunningham is 6 foot 8.]

But outside of players, I had a whole slew of coaches that were formative to who I am, both as a player and a person. My pitching coach [during middle and high school], Glenn Zielinski, was very formative in not just my love for baseball but also in me growing as a person. Another coach was J.P. Glasscock, who really helped me knock off my rust in junior year and…really helped my game. And of course, my parents, who were always very enabling and supportive of me and my career. My gratitude towards

them pushed me to always work harder.

CM: What were some of your hobbies or interests that helped you unwind and relax after such rigorous training throughout your childhood?

WC: I’d play around a lot with my friends, a lot of pickup basketball, tag, and biking around. I used to play the saxophone but never got super into it. But when I got an ankle injury in eighth grade and couldn’t do sports anymore, I started playing the piano sitting at home and ended up playing classical piano throughout high school. So piano was definitely my biggest time-out from baseball and school.

CM: What has been the most memorable moment in your baseball career so far, and why?

WC: They have this massive tournament in Cooperstown [an upstate New York town where the Baseball Hall of Fame is located] for middle schoolers. There are hundreds of teams from across the country. So my travel ball team played in that tournament, and we actually ended up CONTINUED ON PG. 15

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“I do a training program with the Cubs while also attending classes here.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 14

winning it! So that was really cool.

CM: What would you say is your biggest strength on the field?

WC: My frame. Me being 6’8” and a lefty definitely help me a ton as a pitcher.

Having my release height and extension a bit higher allows me to release the pitch closer to the plate, increasing my pitches’ perceived velocity. I feel like that’s kind of unfair because I didn’t have to work for my height or left-handedness [laughs], but they are probably my biggest strengths.

CM: Have you been making any changes to your game recently? You’d mentioned working on your fastball?

WC: Yeah, I’ve been making a ton of adjustments to my pitches. I added a lot of velocity to my fastball this summer, hitting 94 mph now [up from 88 during Cunningham’s first year at UChicago]. I’ve also put on a good amount of muscle and cleaned up some mechanics, which really helps my velocity. I also recently added a cutter, which is also a very effective pitch.

CM: Your special contract with the

Chicago Cubs is so intriguing. Can you talk us through the contract and how it panned out?

WC: So the Cubs scouts had talked to me before the draft about whether I’d be willing to leave UChicago if they signed me, and I had made it clear that it would have to be a life-changing amount of money for me to even consider not going to UChicago [laughs]. So they started brainstorming ideas that would allow me to attend college here while also being part of the organization, and they came up with the idea of this contract. I do a training program with the Cubs while also attending classes here. So basically, I get the best of both worlds!

CM: How does your training schedule look like here? Do you train with UChicago coaches or Cubs or a mix of both?

WC: My programming is all through the Cubs’ coaching and strength and conditioning staff. So I have a weightlifting program, a throwing program, some sprint work, and some arm care to make sure everything is healthy, and that’s all through the Cubs. I do all that on campus, but most-

Cunningham training on Stagg Field. courtesy of john zich.

ly on my own.

CM: Why UChicago?

WC: UChicago is such a prestigious institution, and it was a great fit for me because at the time, I wasn’t too sure about what careers I wanted to pursue other than baseball, and so the Core and liberal arts curriculum really stood out to me. Also, I’d never been to the Midwest and was excited about exploring Chicago! So I was really excited about attending college here, and the Cubs knew that while drafting me.

CM: What are your long-term goals in baseball or your career generally? Would you maybe want to combine your interests in baseball and math or finance and become a general manager?

WC: Yes, for sure that would be great [laughs]. I mean, goal number one is still being an Opening Day starter at Wrigley Field. I want to take baseball as far as it’ll take me and only think about other potential careers if that doesn’t work out for some reason. But yes, it’d be great to still work in sports. Front office work would be right up my alley.

Rapid-fire: What was your uncommon essay topic? The Miles Davis quote essay. I have no idea what I wrote, though [laughs].

Favorite hangout spot on campus?

Hutch and the Hutch quad, good food—the Saffron butter chicken is great.

Best class you’ve taken at UChicago? Visual Language: On Images for the Arts core.

Reg or Mansueto? Reg. Ratner or Crown? Crown all the way.

Every day of the week.

Best dining hall? Bartlett. I like the taco station.

One RSO you’re passionate about?

Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I’m the communications chair.

Favorite player on the current Cubs team? Justin Steele, lefty pitcher. Also Luke Little. He started the year in High A and made it all the way to MLB. I’ve spent some time with him over in Arizona, so I’m rooting for him.

World Series predictions for next year? Cubs win.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — JANUARY 11, 2024

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CROSSWORDS 69. The Object of Philosophy

By ELI LOWE | Crossword Constructor Across 1 Clothes line?

5 PC brain 8 Oolong and ginseng, for two 12 Hot rod’s rod 13 Water filter brand 15 TV port acronym 16 Genesis killer 17 Label anew 18 Show biz award quartet 19 Psychological concept that may forge one’s outlook on a situation?

22 Head honcho, for short 23 Triple ___ 24 Dramatic concept that may make one recoil?

29 Take advantage of 31 The “raw-some” combo of fish, rice, and nori 32 Spooky mo.

35 Introspective Sosc class 37 High pts. of a range 38 Soothing succulent 39 Oasis locale 42 Blue lobster, for example 44 Classic video game console: Abbr.

45 Texter’s “I forgot to mention” 46 Principle that pushes one to the cutting edge of philosophy?

51 It starts and ends with a line 53 Snooker stick 54 Goes to study at the library, in UChicago slang 57 Scientific thought experiment that might have one think outside of the box?

62 Members of a 5-Down team 63 Laminating material 64 What you might be when in Germany?

65 Jazz job 66 ___ de plume 67 Comic book interjection Down 1 Inky container 2 Thing that one might have during Week 10 3 Et ___ (“and others”) 4 Stand-up guy who might sit on a Jewish holiday?

5 Coxswain’s group 6 Stone fruit centers 7 Zion canyon locale 8 Franchise with Thor or Loki

9 10 11 13 14 20 21 24

For more puzzles, visit chicagomaroon.com/crosswords.

Microsoft browser Ovid’s love?

Canine command “We Real Cool” poet Gwendolyn Andre of tennis fame To Kill A Mockingbird was the only novel she published during her lifetime One of the Little Women women Animation frames

25 26 27 28 29 30 33 34 36 38 40

Phil Per or HBC Abbr. for movie or video game music DVD ancestor Mardi Gras city, informally Amer. currency Visualize Bamboozle Hanoi holiday Foil characters?

If all else fails Word that might blink on a

41 42 43 46 47 48 49 50 51

camcorder Gatekeeping org.?

Deg. one might obtain at Booth Big name in pretzels Yellowish pigment Hosting, informally Early riser?

Middle child in King Lear Synopsis What other schools might call clubs

52 55 56 58 59 60 61

Supposed “superfruit” Cancún kitty Sit in anger Texter’s “I can’t believe it” Modern workplace department inits.

Prefix before -friendly or -system Dreamy sleep acronym