01/29/20

REP. BOBBY RUSH TAKES ON CHALLENGERS

JANUARY 29, 2020 FOURTH WEEK VOL. 132, ISSUE 13

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ADRIAN MANDEVILLE

University Purchases Jewel-Osco Property for $20M PAGE 4

SOPHIA CORNING

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ZOE KAISER

Black Students at Lab Describe “Racism and Intolerance” in Open Letter PAGE 3

VIEWPOINTS: Reimagining RSO Recruitment PAGE 10

ARTS: The Graduates/Los Graduados Offers Six Compelling Stories of the Latinx School Experience

SPORTS: UChicago Sweeps the Competition at Lewis University

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Rep. Bobby Rush Takes on Challengers at 1st District Forum

By DIMITRIY LEKSANOV Senior Reporter Indivisible Chicago–South Side, a political advocacy organization, hosted a forum featuring three of the four candidates running for the Democratic nomination in the election for Illinois’s first congressional district at the First Unitarian Church of Chicago on Thursday, January 23.

The forum was moderated by Esther Peters, associate director of UChicago’s Center for East European and Russian/ Eurasian Studies, and featured incumbent representative Bobby Rush, as well as challengers Robert Emmons, Jr., and Sarah Gad. The fourth candidate, Ameena Matthews, had planned to attend, but could not due to illness.

Rush, 73, has served as the representative for Illinois’s first congressional district since 1993. Prior to being elected to the House, Rush served as alderman for Chicago’s Second Ward between 1983 and 1993, and also served in the U.S. Army from 1963 to 1968. In 1999, Rush ran for Mayor of Chicago, but lost to Richard M. Daley.

At the forum, Gad criticized Rush for his voting record, saying, “We do not have representation in D.C.” Between 2007 and 2015, Rush missed 22.4 percent of House votes, the highest rate of any House member during that period.

However, according to a ProPublica study, a majority of his absences for which an explanation was found were due to health issues affecting Rush and his wife.

In his rebuttal to Gad, Rush mentioned

his 2008 battle with cancer, saying, “I was fighting for my life.” He went on, “If my wife is ill and needs me by her side, this is where I’m going to be.”

Gad, 32, is a student at the University of Chicago Law School. During her third year of medical school, Gad suffered severe injuries in a car accident, which led to opioid addiction and, eventually, a stint of incarceration for drug-related offenses.

“Seven years ago, I was languishing in a jail cell at Cook County Jail,” said Gad at the forum. “I was beaten, raped, and stabbed.”

After her incarceration, Gad began a research assistantship for civil rights attorney Kathleen Zellner in 2015. Three years later, while at the UChicago Law School, Gad founded Addiction 2 Action, a nonprofit organization focused on opioid addiction treatment, particularly in jails and prisons.

At the forum, Gad criticized drug enforcement in the United States. “We have waged war on human life through this drug war…yet we keep fighting it,” she said, and suggested that a greater emphasis should be placed on education about addiction.

Emmons, 27, is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC). After graduating, Emmons worked for OneGoal, a nonprofit organization that aims to increase the opportunity for underprivileged youth to obtain higher education.

He has also served as a community leader at the Obama Foundation, helping other activists design projects and initiatives.

Emmons described his own experience with gun violence, saying that his former college roommate experienced poverty af-

ter being expelled from UIUC and was killed shortly after moving back to Chicago.

“Statistically, this was predictable,” he said.

All three candidates were asked what they would do to reduce the rate of gun violence. Emmons said gun violence prevention is his number-one concern, and suggested repealing the 1996 Dickey Amendment, which restricts the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from using funds to promote gun control. Until 2018, this law indirectly prevented the CDC from doing research related to gun violence.

Gad suggested that providing greater career-advancement opportunities for people who were formerly incarcerated would reduce repeat offenses and violence. In particular, she suggested allowing inmates to become eligible for Pell Grants, which provide basic financial support for undergraduate education.

The 1992 Higher Education Act prohibits Pell Grants for people on death row or serving life sentences, and the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act extended this eligibility to all inmates.

At the forum, Emmons and Gad criticized Rush for voting for the 1994 Act, which also established sex offender registries, expanded federal capital punishment, and officially defined hate crimes.

When asked, all three candidates said they would support reinstating Pell Grants for incarcerated persons.

“There is an intimate relationship between gun violence and lack of opportunity,” Gad said.

Rush described gun violence as “a public health issue,” and said that, in October of last year, he held a Chicago hearing on gun violence with several other representatives from Illinois.

The candidates were later asked about their stances on several issues which have been pushed by the left wing of the Democratic Party, including universal basic income (UBI) and reparations for descendants of former slaves.

All three candidates at the forum supported reparations. “It’s the only way to rectify not only slavery and Jim Crow, but also modern slavery and the new Jim Crow,” Gad said.

Rush and Gad both expressed support for UBI. Emmons said, “I support UBI in spirit, but one of the major cons is that it will take away social services from poor folks,” mentioning in particular that it may make it more difficult to enact reparations, as it could take away from funds that would be used for reparations.

“We need reparations before UBI,” Emmons said.

Matthews, who was not present, is a community activist who focuses on violence prevention.

The Democratic primary election will take place on March 17, while the general election is on November 3. Several of the candidates have already received endorsements: Rush from the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and Emmons from the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led political movement focused on environmentalism and climate change.

UChicago Students Volunteer in Annual Homeless Count

By YIWEN LU and LAURA GERSONY News Reporter and Senior Reporter Forty students and community members spent a night counting and surveying individuals experiencing homelessness as part of the 2020 Point-in-Time (PIT) Homeless Count.

The PIT count, which took place between 9 p.m. last Thursday and 3 a.m. on Friday, is an annual census of all individuals experiencing homelessness in the city of Chicago.

Because Chicago receives federal funding under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, the City must conduct the count during the last week of January as a condition of the grant. The data helps estimate the resources needed to address homelessness in Chicago and track progress in reducing the number of people in this situation.

The University Community Service Center and the Chicago Studies program have coordinated UChicago volunteers for the count since 2016.

Laura Pape, a second-year public policy major, volunteered in the count to better understand the community off campus. “We spend a lot of time in college on campus, and with people who look like us and come from similar places...but [homelessness] is all around us,” Pape said.

Pape believes that although classroom learning is important, exposure to community realities is also instructive.

“I think it’s really valuable to learn on the streets, in the city. The city is a whole different class[room] for us.”

Adrianna Barnett, a site organizer for the event and a fourth-year in the College, views her volunteering as part of a broader effort to give back to the community. “I think that the University of Chicago students in particular have a duty to serve and give back to their community, especially because this institution that we’re benefiting from has taken so much from this community.”

“I don’t think that anyone necessarily needs to feel guilty about that, but you do need to do something about it,” Barnett CONTINUED ON PG. 3

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said.

Recent sources of tension between the University and the surrounding neighborhoods include the University’s expansion south of 61st Street, concerns surrounding the anticipated Woodlawn Commons south of the Midway, and prolonged administrative resistance to the opening of a trauma center on the South Side.

Watching other students ignore individuals experiencing homelessness adds to Barnett’s frustration. “I see [UChicago students] brushing them off a lot, which is really hard to watch,” Barnett said. “Just treat them with the common dignity and respect that you would if it

was someone that you knew.”

Elaine Waxman, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and part-time lecturer at UChicago’s School of Social Service Administration, told The Maroon that witnessing homelessness informs her research into issues affecting low-income communities. “As a researcher, I feel it’s really important to connect those faces and experience with the numbers that I use regularly in my day-to-day work,” Waxman said.

To Anna Carvlin, a system implementation specialist at the nonprofit All Chicago Making Homelessness History, housing issues are deeply personal.

Carvlin lost a family member who was experiencing homelessness in 2011, and

she approaches the count with a sobering sense of purpose. “I think that housing is a human right. I think that it’s unconscionable that in a wealthy city like Chicago, that we have homeless people. It’s just not necessary,” Carvlin said.

Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services coordinates the count in collaboration with the homeless prevention nonprofit All Chicago. The Chicago Transit Authority, the Chicago Park District, the Chicago Police Department, and other City agencies also assist with the count.

UChicago community members joined volunteers from around Chicago at Olive Branch Mission, a community service organization in Englewood,

where they were divided into groups of three to five people. They then received training from coordinators about how to approach individuals and administer the survey, as well as emergency protocol. The surveys covered the individuals’ demographic information, veteran statuses, and lengths of time experiencing homelessness, among other things.

Volunteer groups then drove to their assigned census districts across the city and conducted the count and surveys, offering scarves, gloves, and shelter information to any individuals they encountered. Volunteers were advised to perform several laps around their district to ensure the accuracy of the count.

Alexis Florence contributed reporting.

Does the Wealth Tax Benefit the Lower Class?

Sanderson and Pawar Debate Wealth Distribution and Economic Power

By GUSTAVO DELGADO Senior Reporter On Wednesday, January 22nd UChicago Political Union (UCPU) hosted a debate between Senior Lecturer Allen Sanderson and former Alderman and IOP fellow Ameya Pawar on the proposal made by several Democratic presidential candidates to create a federal Wealth Tax. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, two prominent Democratic presidential candidates, have proposed different versions of a Wealth Tax that would create a new tax on those with a net worth starting anywhere from 32 million to 50 million. Their plans also propose a greater tax on billionaires.

Pawar argued that the economy is too reliant on the laissez-faire theories of Adam Smith and self-interest.

“There isn’t a single person here, or a faith-based institution, or anyone’s aunt or uncle that would raise their children to have a belief that you have to be selfish all the time,” said Pawar.

Pawar criticized public policy that

does not prioritize the needs of the poor.

“We talk about the idle poor, a narrative in public policy to create really prejudiced policies in social welfare, but we don’t talk about the idle rich,” Pawar said.

Pawar also pointed out the negative effects of having a large amount of wealth concentrated in the hands of a few people.“We have money that is aggregated at the very top that is not moving, and we know that money moving through the economy has a stimulating effect. But if it’s just clustered at the top and is being passed down generation after generation, how do we actually expect people to get ahead,” he said.

Sanderson, who has taught at the University since 1984, opposes a Wealth Tax. He said that “Not one single faculty member, even on the liberal side, has ever mentioned the wealth tax as a way to address poverty.”

According to Sanderson, Warren’s Wealth Tax proposal does not take from the rich and gives to the poor. Sanderson assers that it is not revenue neutral for the government. “The Wealth Tax deep down is not about helping the poor. It’s about

helping the government grow,” Sanderson said.

Sanderson said that the greatest power in the economy is incentives, and with a Wealth Tax, there is no longer any incentive for the wealthy to donate to charity.

“I would actually rather have Bill and Melinda Gates making decisions about where their money goes than the average congressman.”

During the debate, Sanderson gave Pawar a copy of Milton Freedman’s Capitalism and Freedom, a gift to newcomers to campus despite Pawar having a long-standing relationship with the University of Chicago.

Pawar said in his rebuttal that the state of the economy measured by indicators like the Dow Jones is not truthful when considering the Average American’s relationship with their income and the economy.

“While we may be close to full employment, most of the jobs we are creating are terrible. Creating an army of gig workers and part-time employees is not a healthy indicator of where we are. It’s how people can work two to three jobs and still

be on welfare.”

Pawar added that in the contemporary economy, money equals the power to make policy decisions, which produces structures that keep the poor in the state of poverty.

“The average net worth of a black woman between 18 and 35 is five dollars.

That doesn’t happen without structural impediments that are put in place by society” said Pawar. “And people who are benefitting by keeping her poor. There are people at the top who benefit from the status quo.”

Sanderson disagreed with Pawar’s assertion that money equals power. During the debate, Sanderson said that “half of the wealth of this country is up here” while pointing to his head. “It’s human capital and that is very much more equal redistributing,” he said.

Both of the candidates, despite their differences on the question of a Wealth Tax, agreed that it is necessary to distribute more of the economy’s resources to the poor. Sanderson and Pawar brought up plans like earned income tax brackets or universal base income.

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Lab School Black Students Association Detail “Racism and Intolerance” in Open Letter, Call for Increased Diversity

By BRAD SUBRAMANIAM Senior Reporter Members of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools’ Black Students’ Association (BSA) delivered an open letter demanding greater efforts from Lab School administrators to address “racism and intolerance” during the school’s Martin Luther King, Jr. assembly on January 16.

The letter, published in the Lab School’s student newspaper the U-High Midway, was written, according to the paper, after a student posted a racist meme on social media in December. It calls for more diversity training for faculty, a more inclusive curriculum, denunciation of derogatory and insensitive language by the school administration, to welcome more students of color, a more diverse faculty, and specific punishments for intolerant behavior.

In the letter, BSA says that while the school claims to prioritize diversity, insensitivity has continued to run rampant. “Lab is a place where jokes about racial and religious identification have been normalized. A place where Black students get their hair gawked at and constantly touched without their permission as if they were animals in a petting zoo,” the letter reads.

Lab School junior Mikaela Ewing, vice president of the BSA, was among the students who read the letter during the MLK assembly. She elaborated in an interview with The Maroon that some students of color feel uncomfortable in classroom settings due to a lack of diversity.

“You have to try to explain and be an ambassador for your race, or you have to sit there and let other people debate your experience and the Black experience,” Ewing said.

The letter concludes with a call for considering the entire letter rather than focusing on one specific demand.

“We do not intend that this letter have all the immediate solutions to the problems presented; we want this to be a first step in truly making a difference,” the letter reads.

Ewing added that reception of the letter by the Lab School community has been mainly positive. “I think the fact that it got this much attention, and that people from other schools and newspapers and other institutions are talking to us about it, shows a lot about the way that your voice can have an impact, as well as the way the world works,” Ewing said.

In response to the letter, Lab School director Charles Abelmann announced by email an action plan which described current policy changes the administration had been planning to implement.

These include listening sessions and

training programs for members of the Lab community, an expanded Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and a review of steps to improve faculty and staff diversity.

To address the concerns described during the assembly, Principal Paul Beekmeyer also hosted an open forum discussing potential administrative policy changes.

Lab School junior Ella Beiser, an editor at the U-High Midway, told The Maroon in an interview that a lack of enforcement of rules prohibiting racist remarks and behavior underlies why the administration’s efforts over recent years have resulted in little to no change.

“I feel like one of the reasons is that [racism] is not really punished…. The handbook says that it’s prohibited, but there isn’t any protocol, so a lot of things get excused,” Beiser said.

Bronson Declares “new abnormal” as Doomsday Clock Ticks Closer Than Ever to Midnight

By ALEX DALTON Grey City Editor On Thursday morning, the UChicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands on its Doomsday Clock from two minutes to midnight to 100 seconds to midnight, the highest threat level it has ever displayed.

Midnight on the Doomsday Clock symbolizes a human-caused global catastrophe, whether from nuclear war, climate change, or disruptive technologies.

The announcement was made at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. After inching closer to midnight in 2018 and reaching the highest threat level since 1953, the Clock’s position held steady last year, representing a precarious state of affairs that Bulletin president and CEO Rachel Bronson then referred to as a “new abnormal.”

The Clock was furthest from midnight in 1991, when the end of the Cold War was reflected by the Clock being set at 17 minutes to midnight.

Housed in the University’s Harris School of Public Policy, the Bulletin was formed after the Second World War by former participants in the Manhattan Project, which developed the world’s first nuclear weapons. This November will mark the 75th anniversary of the organization’s founding.

In her opening remarks on Thursday, Bronson reiterated the Bulletin’s deep concern about the state of world affairs.

“By undermining cooperative science- and law-based approaches to managing the most urgent threats to humanity, leaders have helped to create a situation that will, if unaddressed, lead to catastrophe sooner rather than later,” she said. “It would be a privilege and an honor to move the hands of the Dooms-

day Clock away from midnight, but our current situation does not warrant that.”

In fact, she added, it has gotten even worse.

In its 2020 Doomsday Clock Statement, the Bulletin stressed the importance of international agreements such as the multilateral Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (commonly referred to as the Iran Nuclear Deal), which the United States withdrew from in 2018, for the prevention of nuclear war. The group also urged world leaders to pursue diplomatic paths towards nuclear disarmament.

The statement went on to call the international response to climate change “insufficient” and warned of the threat posed by new technologies that can more easily disseminate misinformation and subvert democratic institutions.

“It’s very hard to find the words even to express the moment we now are in,”

former California governor Jerry Brown said at the conference. Brown serves as the Bulletin’s executive chair. “What you’re hearing this morning is really the voice of prophets of doom.”

He lamented the fact that those seeking to sound the alarm on global threats have, in his view, been ignored, likening them to biblical prophets who went similarly unheeded.

“I hope that not one person here feels any cynicism, complacency, or feeling that we’re not in this predicament,” Brown said. “We can still pull back from the brink.”

So far, according to Brown, attempts to address the threats identified by the Bulletin have been “totally inadequate,” and most of those in power are “totally ignorant, blind, and deaf to our predicament.… The task is: Wake up. Wake up, America. Wake up, the world.”

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Undergraduate and Incarcerated Students To Take Class Together

By ADYANT KANAKAMEDALA Senior Reporter For the first time in its history, the University of Chicago will enroll undergraduate students in the College and incarcerated students from Stateville Correctional Center in the same class, Narrating Social Change, this spring.

Political science professor Cathy Cohen and human rights professor Alice Kim will teach the class, which will take place at Stateville Correctional Center, a state prison about an hour southwest of Hyde Park. The University plans to arrange transport to and from the Center for students.

The incarcerated students are a part of Northeastern Illinois University’s University Without Walls program, which confers bachelor’s degrees to people in Illinois state prisons. Last May, the program graduated its first cohort of students, who became the first students in decades to earn a degree while incarcerated in an Illinois state prison. According to Cohen, incarcerated students will fill out the same application as UChicago undergraduate students in order to enroll in this course.

“It is too easy for too many of us who aren’t in prison to not think about those who are incarcerated,” she said. “U of C has an obligation to people who are incarcerated to provide [them with] an educa-

tion. A goal of this course is to insist on that.”

Both Cohen and Kim said that they were initially opposed to the idea of a mixed-enrollment course, but their incarcerated students changed their minds.

“Students inside convinced me,” said Kim. “They wanted to have outside students.”

The syllabus is still being designed, but Cohen said the course will draw from many disciplines and use different kinds of texts to examine social change.

The application for the course closed January 27, and applicants can expect a decision within a week. The eight students chosen to participate in the course will undergo a clearance process so that

they can be approved to enter the prison facility by spring quarter.

Although the course is scheduled to take place from 10:30 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. every Friday, undergraduate students’ time commitment will be greater than that. Transport between campus and Stateville will be arranged, but students will have to meet on campus early in the morning—once they arrive at the prison facility, they will each have to present ID and pass through security checkpoints before they can enter.

During the information session, Kim said that the class is a pilot course and that she hopes to offer the course again in the future.

Undergrads Pilot Note-Sharing App

By RENEE HUANG News Reporter While most UChicago students were leisurely enjoying their breaks after a week of essays and finals, UChicago undergraduates fourth-year Adit Damodaran and third-year Joe Berusch were busy collaborating on the development of a new online app, NoteShare, a platform dedicated to fostering a collaborative space for students to share lecture notes and save time, and also to making information portable and accessible from anywhere.

The idea came about when the two were working together on a problem set for a math course. While reviewing their notes, they came across sections that

weren’t quite comprehensible, finding that at times, it seemed as if chunks of information were disconnected or missing.

In talks with their peers, Damodaran and Berusch found that this was a common experience.

Damodaran and Berusch said that they created NoteShare to help students by creating a venue to compare and share notes from a given class.

Students receive a token for every set of lecture notes they upload to NoteShare, so long as moderators approve the notes for quality. The token can be exchanged for a folder that contains a classmates’ notes for that day’s lecture, the previous lecture, or the next lecture.

Damodaran and Berusch said they

are piloting NoteShare in three courses (ECON 10000, PHYS 13200, and CHEM 22100) to see whether reaching out to students or professors results in higher student registration. Damodaran and Berusch obtained the student rosters for the economics and physics classes and sent out an email debuting the app.

For the chemistry class, Damodaran and Berusch worked with professor David Schmitz who supported their endeavors by announcing NoteShare with a mass email and announcement to all students via Canvas.

Since the app had no initial digital presence, Damodaran and Berusch said they did not have high expectations for registration from the economics and physics

courses. However, they expect that this will change with time as the network slowly grows.

“It’s getting from 0 to 1…that’s the tricky part. The students we’ve talked to seem super interested. It’s figuring out how to translate the issue into implementation,” said Bersuch.

While Damodaran is pursuing a degree in economics with a specialization in data science, Berusch has a background in programming and is majoring in computer science, which has allowed them to collaborate on the development of the app.

Damodaran and Berusch said their focus this quarter is on testing the value of the app, and they also recently launched a website.

UC Dems Show Off 2020 Campaign Opportunities

By AVI WALDMAN Grey City Editor Representatives from several state and national Democratic campaigns made their pitch to students in Reynolds Club on Monday evening at the University of Chicago Democrats’ (UC Dems) Election Opportunity Fair. The fair provided an opportunity for students to ask candidates and their representatives questions in an informal setting.

Incumbent Illinois State Senator Robert Peters and his primary opponent Ken Thomas, J.D. ’16, both attended, along with staffers and volunteers for Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, state’s attorney candidate Bill Conway, congressional candidate Marie Newman, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Senator Bernie Sanders.

Peters and Thomas both described themselves as progressive candidates for Illinois’s 13th state senate seat. Thomas emphasized his record defending tenants

in eviction cases and his commitment to an affordable housing policy in Woodlawn, which includes rent-to-buy homeownership initiatives that allow renters to pay part of their monthly bill toward the purchase price of a home. Thomas framed Peters, who was appointed last January by a committee of Democratic aldermen and county officials, as part of the Chicago “Democratic machine.” “[The incumbent] was picked behind closed doors, and I think that folks are

looking for a progressive candidate…who’s not taking money from corporations and [who’s] really going out and fighting against the Democratic machine,” Thomas said.

Peters portrayed his campaign as the product of years of grassroots organizing.

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policy priorities to UChicago student activism about policing and mental health.

“You have CareNotCops on campus, you have a bunch of community members doing organizing,” Peters said. “If you can get folks together in a room, we can have a constructive conversation around making sure that we have some real police accountability.”

Peters referred to the shooting last April of Charles Thomas by UCPD and the later shooting of Myles Fraizer by Chicago police as examples of how his policies would address the gaps between policing and mental health care by ensuring people in crisis receive a first response from

trained mental health workers.

“Looking at mental health and how we respond to crisis…the idea is that if you do a wellness check, that should be [done by] somebody who works in the wellness field,” Peters said.

Student organizers with UChicago for Bernie and UChicago for Warren shared a table next to the state senate candidates at the fair. Both groups have been ramping up phone-banking efforts and canvassing trips to Iowa in preparation for the February 3 caucuses. When asked why she thinks college students should support Sanders’s presidential bid, third-year Alexandra Hohenlohe cited Sanders’s support for a Green New Deal.

“I can’t point to a specific poll on this, but I get the sense that [climate change] is overwhelmingly the number one issue for young people just in terms of the fact that we’re going to be the ones who will have to deal with [the consequences],” Hohenlohe said. “[Bernie’s] sponsorship of the Green New Deal signifies that he is willing to put climate as one of his top issues and really fight to get carbon emissions down.”

According to second-year Isabella Hurtado, working for the Warren campaign this past summer cemented her support for the candidate.

“I see her as the most intersectional candidate,” Hurtado said. “I’m really excited about her platforms and her plans

that sort of tie in women of color. She has a whole plan for the maternal mortality rate for Black women, she has campaign cochairs that are important, impactful women of color.”

For third-year Lucy Ritzmann, volunteering for Marie Newman’s campaign in Illinois’s third congressional district was a way to connect with Chicago and its local politics in a way she had not done before.

“I really wanted to get more engaged with the city,” Ritzmann said. “I feel like my time at the University has been awesome, but I don’t know how much exploring and engaging I’ve done with a greater community, and this has been such a cool opportunity to do so.”

Professors Vasudevan and Pashby Debate Whether “Philosophy of Science is Philosophy Enough”

By ALEX DALTON Grey City Editor Philosophy professors Anubav Vasudevan and Tom Pashby debated whether “philosophy of science is philosophy enough” on Thursday as the latest installment of the Night Owls discussion series. The question of the night was, “Does Science Leave Room for Philosophy?”

The room was packed, with many attendees having to sit on the floor.

At the start of the talk, Vasudevan acknowledged that his and Pashby’s statuses as philosophers made it unlikely either would argue that science left no room for their discipline.

“Tom and I are both colleagues in the faculty of the philosophy department,” he said, “which I think should suggest to you that neither of us are likely to be inclined to answer that question with a sort of categorical ‘no.’”

Instead, the two professors outlined different visions of what the relationship between science and philosophy should be.

Pashby’s argument drew heavily on

the writings of the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine, who famously sought, among other things, to dispel the notion of a “first philosophy” that proceeds natural science and is capable of justifying it and to ground philosophical pursuits in scientific evidence.

In Pashby’s view, the value of philosophy is in its ability to apply a critical lens to scientific findings in order to produce a more profound understanding of their significance, “sort of starting from science and working outwards.”

Quine and Pashby see philosophy as the next step in the scientific process following the acquisition of self-justifying empirical results.

“We’re going to just sit there and tidy up what the scientists have been doing,” he said.

One reason to put scientific discoveries ahead of philosophizing, he said, is science’s ability to use evidence to answer questions for which philosophy could not provide conclusive answers.

He cited the question of whether time had a beginning. “Here’s a traditional philosophical question,” Pashby

said. “Philosophers made zero progress,” debating it for centuries, only for it to be conclusively answered by scientists with the development of the Big Bang theory.

Vasudevan, on the other hand, saw philosophy as much more separate from science. He cited the quote, wrongly attributed to physicist Richard Feynman, that “philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.”

In Vasudevan’s view, scientists and philosophers are actually engaged in very different tasks, to the point that their work is of limited relevance to one another.

“For people who are neither scientists nor philosophers,” he said, “it’s easy to say that philosophers and scientists look like they’re both just annoying nitpickers, or at least they can.

But I think if you look at it a little more closely you see they’re picking very different nits.”

Vasudevan believes there are “superficial and obvious reasons” that demonstrate that the two disciplines are distinct from one another, includ-

ing their divergent histories, unique methods and the distinct psychological needs that each pursuit fulfills.

Both speakers were pleased with how the event went.

“It’s very hard to get unguarded conversations between philosophers. You can’t read them in journals,” Pashby told The Maroon. The Night Owls series, he said, provides an opportunity for students, including philosophical novices, to hear philosophical issues explored in a casual and low-pressure environment.

Their philosophical disagreement concluded, Vasudevan agreed with Pashby on the event’s merits.

“It’s a non-threatening environment for students to start to think about philosophy in a way that doesn’t have the pressure of the classroom,” he said.

“And yet at the same time, I think, the conversations are serious. They’re not flippant. So I think it sets a good model for students for how these kinds of conversations should go.”

The next talk in the series, titled “The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence,” will take place on February 6.

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Heitkamp and El-Sayed Weigh Left -wing and Moderate Strategies Against “Electability” and Beating Trump

By ANVI LOHIA News Reporter On January 21, The University of Chicago Institute of Politics (IOP) hosted an event, titled Democrats: Whose Party Is It Anyway?, which explored the current rift between factions of the Democratic party. Student IOP representative Madison Irene introduced the event, and described this divide as two politically influential individuals politely going head-to-head.

Former North Dakota senator Heidi Heitkamp represented the moderate strain of thought in the Democratic party, and IOP Fellow and former director of the Detroit Health Department Abdul El-Sayed presented a more progressive take on the party. Amanda Terkel, the Washington Bureau chief at Huffington Post, moderated the event.

While Heitkamp and El-Sayed differed on specific policies and their

general political outlook, they united around the goal of defeating President Donald Trump. Heitkamp stressed that it was essential to select a candidate who has the ability to beat Trump: “Donald Trump is an existential threat to the democracy, and you may have to compromise some of your values, you may have to compromise some of your ideology in order to basically get someone who can beat Donald Trump.”

While Heitkamp said electability is of prime importance, El-Sayed had a problem with the term because it has failed to predict actual electoral outcomes. He gave the example of Hillary Clinton, who was considered highly electable given the offices she had held over her career, but lost the 2008 Democratic primary and the 2016 presidential election. He also said that Barack Obama was not considered electable by mainstream commentators in 2008 and 2012 because he was a black man, but that he still won the presidency and his

re-election bid.

When asked about her opinion on Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (A.B. ’64), Heitkamp said that Sanders worked very hard on the Veterans’ Access to Care through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act of 2014 and cares deeply about veterans, but he simply let Trump take all the credit. Additionally, she said that the prospect of a “free college education is not a winning strategy,” in reference to Sanders’s plans to cancel student debt and make public colleges and universities tuition-free.

Heitkamp stressed that the reasons voters do not believe in politics anymore is because they are “promised the sun, stars, and moon,” and it never happens. “We got to make it happen,” countered El-Sayed regarding voter disillusionment.

Heitkamp said that a more moderate message will stand a better chance of defeating Trump: “Donald Trump would like nothing more than to run

against someone who can be labelled as a socialist.” He believes that the candidate with the best chance to defeat Trump is former vice president Joe Biden, who is widely considered to be a moderate in the race.

El-Sayed disagreed, saying that “a moderate will not win against Trump.”

He believes that voters will focus on “who will bring change” and “embrace an agenda that will deliver for people.”

Referring to the charge that Sanders might be attacked for identifying as a socialist he said, “I think we cannot hold ourselves hostage to what people will say about us.”

“The reason we still have the Affordable Care Act is because I was able to get elected in North Dakota,” Heitkamp said. “My point is you need to learn how to win elections. Let’s get the politics right, and then we can take care of the policies later.”

University Nets Jewel-Osco Property in $20 Million Purchase

By OREN OPPENHEIM and BRAD SUBRAMANIAM News Editor and Senior Reporter The University of Chicago has bought the property occupied by Jewel-Osco on 61st Street and Cottage Grove Avenue for nearly $20 million.

Crain’s Chicago Business first reported on Tuesday that the University, through what the publication described as “a venture connected to the university,” made the $19.8 million purchase back in November. Crain’s also reported that UChicago financed the purchase with a loan worth $14.8 million.

Greenstone Partners, the broker in the sale, first announced the sale of the property on January 10, but the terms and buyer were not disclosed at the time. In a press release, Greenstone wrote that the then-undisclosed buyer was interested in the property because of how many people live near the store,

as well as the amount of underdeveloped land in the area.

University of Chicago spokesperson Gerald McSwiggan told The Maroon via email that the Jewel-Osco would continue to operate under its 20-year long-term lease to the grocer’s parent company, Albertsons.

“The developer for this property approached the University last year as they were planning to sell. We considered it an important community asset and decided to purchase the property to ensure that it remains locally controlled rather than going to a national buyer,” McSwiggan wrote.

The Jewel-Osco became the first full-service grocery store in Woodlawn in over 40 years when it opened on March 7, ending the neighborhood’s lack of easy access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

The store provided a “good return” to investors, according to comments

by DL3 Realty managing partner Leon Walker (J.D. ’94, M.B.A. ’94) to Crain’s.

Walker was not immediately available to comment on the sale. In an interview last February, he told The Maroon that the Jewel-Osco could help revitalize the neighborhood.

“It creates the opportunity to build the neighborhood, to grow, to rebound,” he said then. “This will encourage additional investment in the area, and the key is, we’re now very engaged in making sure that we become more of a market player in the neighborhood.”

According to Crain’s, the Jewel-Osco has created over 200 full-time and parttime jobs for residents of Woodlawn.

The University of Chicago’s acquisition of the Jewel-Osco is part of a wave of investor and development interest in the Woodlawn area, including the University’s own upcoming Study Hotel, due in part to the proposed Obama Presidential Center (OPC) in Jackson

Park.

However, the surge in development has also raised concerns over potential gentrification and displacement of residents due to rising housing costs.

A study by the University of Illinois at Chicago in September found that as the OPC’s proposed construction date nears, increased housing prices could cause further displacement unless affordable housing is made available. This prospect is also on the City’s radar; City officials are holding a forum this week on community displacement around the OPC. The Obama Community Benefits Agreement Coalition is hosting a forum as well.

Jewel-Osco joins the Trader Joe’s on 55th Street and Lake Park Avenue as grocery options in Hyde Park that occupy University-owned properties.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — JANUARY 29, 2020

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Goolsbee On Buttigieg Endorsement: “I think he has the best plan and he’s not from Washington.”

By ALEX DALTON Grey City Editor In December, Austan Goolsbee, an economics professor at the University’s Booth School of Business and a former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, announced his endorsement of former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s bid for president in 2020. In an interview with The Maroon, Goolsbee discussed his decision to support the candidate.

The endorsement, he said, came down to a combination of Buttigieg’s policy proposals and his separation from federal politics.

“I think he has the best plan and he’s not from Washington,” Goolsbee said, likening the dynamic among capitol insiders to a “dysfunctional Thanksgiving

dinner, or something, where you come in and everybody knows what everybody else has got to say.”

It was in large part due to Buttigieg’s relative outsider status that Goolsbee decided to endorse him over the other candidates, though he expressed admiration for former vice president Joe Biden as well as Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, and stressed that his endorsement should not be seen as an attack on any of Buttigieg’s competitors.

Goolsbee cited Buttigieg’s experience as an executive as another strong point of the candidate’s résumé.

Goolsbee said that Buttigieg’s Medicare for All Who Want It proposal is “in the spirit of the original vision of Obamacare,”

citing initial plans to include a public option in the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which was removed in negotiations over the legislation.

Goolsbee was skeptical of the more far-reaching Medicare for All plans advocated by Senators Bernie Sanders and Warren.

“The plan that’s called Medicare for All is really not Medicare,” he said. “That is not the Medicare program. It’s far more expansive than Medicare is.”

His primary issue was the speed with which Sanders’s plan would go into effect. In the same vein, he commended Warren’s decision to soften her approach, opting for a gradual transition to a single-payer system with a public option as an intermediate step.

“In my view,” he continued, “you have to create a glide path

that people get comfortable with anything before you impose it.”

He did note, however, that “literally every single plan that the Democrats have put forward is far superior to the kind of gutting of the system that has taken place and is taking place.”

On the topic of Buttigieg’s potential liabilities, Goolsbee quipped that he wished the 38-year-old mayor “was 55 years old and balder than me, but, you know, he’s not.”

One of the Buttigieg campaign’s most obvious stumbling obstacles has been the mayor’s consistently weak support from African-Americans—a fact that may severely hamper his chances of winning the February 29 primary in South Carolina, where more than half of Democrats are black.

Goolsbee acknowledged that “realistically, if he does not increase his support by African-Americans, he won’t be the nominee,” but remains optimistic about Buttigieg’s ability to recover.

“The main thing I do is remind everybody is it’s still tremendously early in the campaign, and nobody has yet voted,” he said.

There was a time, he said, when President Barack Obama’s electoral prospects looked similarly precarious to many.

“In essence, candidate Obama proved the doubters wrong and he had an early state strategy. He won in early states and that gave him some momentum and that gave people were willing to give him a look. And I think the same thing [could happen] for Mayor Pete.”

VIEWPOINTS

Bernie Sanders for President We Know Exactly What He’ll Do as President, Because He’s Been Fighting the Same Fight Since His Time at UChicago

By MAROON EDITORIAL BOARD

The Maroon does not traditionally endorse presidential candidates. As the University of Chicago’s student newspaper, we tend to focus on elections for student government, as well as state and local elections that affect our Hyde Park and Woodlawn neighbors. National contests, we feel, are already saturated; there is little we could say that has not already

been said by another publication.

But this year’s presidential election is different. No alum of the College has come closer to the nomination of a major U.S. political party than Senator Bernie Sanders (A.B. ’64) did in 2016. His 2020 campaign has been even more impressive: He leads the field in fundraising and in polls of the crucial first contest in Iowa, while polling of the general election nearly unanimously shows him defeating

President Donald Trump.

At the core of his campaign and his political life has been a courageous commitment to justice which he developed, in part, at the University of Chicago. By his own admission, Sanders was a mediocre student, finding the classroom “boring and irrelevant.” But his time here wasn’t worthless; in 2015, he explained to Time that he “received more of an education off campus than [he] did in the classroom.”

One of the first lessons in

that education came in January of 1962, when the University of Chicago played host to one of the earliest sit-ins in the northern United States. Thirty-three students, organized under the banner of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), occupied what is now Levi Hall, demanding an end to the segregation of University-owned housing.

Sanders, chair of CORE’s social action committee, gave a speech on the steps of Levi, then led the group up to the office of Univer-

sity president George Beadle, where they remained for nearly two weeks. An agreement with administrators ended the sit-in, and, by the fall of 1963, the University integrated its off-campus apartments.

His time at the University produced the now-famous photograph of a 21-year-old Sanders being dragged to a police wagon by two Chicago police officers at a protest in Englewood against segregation in Chicago Public CONTINUED ON PG. 9

the chicago maroon — January 29, 2020

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“Sanders’ vision of the presidency as ‘organizer-in-chief’ sets him apart from other candidates.” continued FROM pg. 8

Schools. Just two weeks later, Sanders—$25 poorer after paying his fine for “resisting arrest”—boarded an overnight bus to D.C. to attend the March on Washington, where he witnessed Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech on the National Mall.

Sanders has credited this time at the University of Chicago with helping him to “look at politics in a new way,” teaching him to recognize the “relationship between wealth, power, and the perpetuation of capitalism.”

Sanders’s approach to politics shines through in his recent engagement with the University. In 2017, Sanders called on the University to respect graduate workers’ vote to unionize with Graduate Students United.

When the University refused to recognize GSU, the union called a three-day strike in June 2019.

Sanders’s campaign sent more than 100,000 emails and texts to supporters in the area, driving supporters from across the city to join graduate workers on the picket lines.

After decades of decline, the American labor movement is experiencing something of a renaissance. Membership numbers, gutted by the decline of industries like mining and manufacturing and further decimated by right-to-work laws, continue to drop. The last few years, however, have seen more workers go out on strike than at any time since the 1980s. American public approval of unions is near a 50-year high, the Fight for $15 movement has seen victory in state after state, and unprecedented teachers’ strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Chicago have captured national headlines.

The labor movement has

Lee Harris, Editor-in-Chief Elaine Chen, Deputy Editor-in-Chief Deepti Sailappan, Managing Editor Peng-Peng Liu, Chief Production Officer

shown the effectiveness of a politics of mass mobilization, and it needs a friend in the White House. While most Democratic candidates sign on to broadly pro-labor proposals, only one candidate uses his campaign infrastructure to drive turnout on picket lines and collect donations for strike funds. Sanders’s vision of the presidency as “organizer-in-chief” sets him apart from other candidates. It also hearkens back to a lesson he learned at the University of Chicago: Change only happens when people are mobilized to take on established interests.

This approach to social change is also apparent in his platform on the environment.

Sanders’s Green New Deal proposal is the most expansive of any candidate’s, setting an ambitious goal of 100 percent renewable energy by 2030. Greenpeace ranked his proposal the best out of the field, awarding him the only A+ on their candidate scorecard. But the proposal’s strength lies beyond its technical details. The Sunrise Movement’s recent endorsement of Sanders lays it out: “a world in which we stop climate change…

cannot be achieved by one President or even the government on its own. A Green New Deal can only be achieved by building and sustaining a movement of millions of people of all walks of life from all corners of the country.”

On a whole host of other issues, Sanders stands apart from the rest of the Democratic field through his commitment to grassroots organizing. He is the only candidate who continues to fight for Medicare for All, the only one to propose universal student debt relief, and the only candidate with a 50-year record of opposing America’s military intervention in Vietnam, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran. These positions have been criticized as politically unrealistic, but this criticism misunderstands Sanders’s ambitious approach to societal change. Other candidates, most notably Senator Elizabeth Warren, have also presented impressive policy proposals, but Sanders is the only candidate who pairs those with a theory of change focused on building a mass political movement. He recognizes that, throughout history, the kind of structural change he sees as necessary has

only materialized when millions of people organize and demand it.

Sanders’s slogan is “Not me.

Us.” It’s not just a catchy saying; it reflects a radical reimagining of the presidency as the leader of a mass movement—a political revolution—that is capable of taking back power from the richest 1 percent. That fight against inequality and injustice has been Sanders’s work for most of his life. It makes it easy to believe that Sanders is honest about his goals and intentions as president; we know exactly what he’ll do, because he’s been fighting the same fight since his time at the University of Chicago.

Sanders’s integrity and consistency is a welcome change.

His vision of revolution from the bottom up sets him apart from his competitors in the Democratic primary. The Chicago Maroon endorses Bernie Sanders for president.

News Editor Caroline Kubzansky recused herself from this editorial due to her involvement in coverage of the upcoming Iowa caucuses. Associate Arts Editor Alina Kim also recused herself.

The Maroon Editorial Board consists of the editors-in-chief and editors of The Maroon.

NEWS

Tony Brooks, editor Miles Burton, editor Emma Dyer, editor Caroline Kubzansky, editor Matthew Lee, editor Oren Oppenheim, editor Justin Smith, editor GREY CITY

Alex Dalton, editor Caroline Kubzansky, editor Avi Waldman editor VIEWPOINTS

Zahra Nasser, editor Meera Santhanam, editor ARTS

Zoe Bean, editor Perri Wilson, editor SPORTS

Alison Gill, editor Thomas Gordon, editor Brinda Rao, editor COPY

Mohammed Bashier, copy chief James Hu, copy chief Cynthia Huang, copy chief Jason Lin, copy chief Olivia Shao, copy chief Kuba Sokolowski, copy chief

DESIGN

Jessica Xia, head of production Suha Chang, head designer Matthew Chang, design associate Joseph Min, design associate Connie Zheng, design associate BUSINESS

Michael Vetter, chief financial officer Brian Dong, director of strategy Gianni LaVecchia and Kelsey Yang, directors of marketing Victor Doddy, director of development Jennifer Phu, director of operations ONLINE

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JESSICA XIA

the chicago maroon — January 29, 2020

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Reimagining RSO Recruitment Competing RSOs on Campus Need to Stop Disparaging Each Other

By KETAKI TAVAN As an incoming first-year approaching my first quarter at UChicago, clubs were often on my mind. I saw joining different campus groups as a way to explore my identity at UChicago. However, after arriving on campus, I quickly discovered that finding the right groups to join came with a host of challenges. With numerous dizzying career fairs to attend and more interest meetings taking place than I could fit into my calendar, I was faced with more options than I could ever try out myself. So, I sought the advice of my older peers.

While consulting other students for advice on which clubs to join, I found that people seemed overly negative about RSOs to which they didn’t belong. Students would say that the publication they worked for was the only one worth reading, or that their business organization was the only “legitimate” one on campus. I’m now a columnist for The Maroon, but even in the process of joining the paper, certain students discouraged me from doing so. The significant mixed messages I received when consulting upperclassmen about which RSOs to join made the process of navigating extracurricular options difficult as a first-year student.

I understand that the purpose of recruiting for a club is to attract interest and get more people to join, but I was still surprised by the degree to which students assumed that the process had to involve talking down other groups. It’s healthy to have pride in your RSO, and such pride fosters a sense of community within the group and encourages collaboration among its members. However, that doesn’t mean that we have to put down other RSOs. Indeed, having pride in one’s RSO and supporting others shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.

This competitive culture between RSOs limits the potential for interconnectedness and collaboration between different groups on campus. RSOs are suffering because they’re not collaborating as much as they should. By not collaborating, RSOs are missing opportunities to pool grant money, throw bigger events, and share networking opportunities and internship lists.

Especially at a school like UChicago, where

students tend to compete with each other academically, there is no need to introduce this competitive culture to the RSO scene in a way that negatively impacts the groups themselves.

With nearly 500 RSOs on campus, the opportunities to get involved are endless.

What is missing, however, is a platform that connects different RSOs to each other in a productive way. Why does it have to be the case that The Maroon and The Gate don’t collaborate? Why can’t the Phoenix Sustainability Initiative connect more with the Outdoor Adventure Club? Perhaps we could create parent organizations under which groups with similar goals can collaborate and exchange resources, like the UChicago Environmental Alliance. Different campus publications should be able to interact through campus-wide journalism events. Academic interest–based RSOs

should be able to compile their internship lists to offer more learning opportunities to their members. Groups should take advantage of the diverse talents of our student body and be willing to explore what others have to bring to the table.

Additionally, it’s important to consider whether or not this is the best attitude to portray to incoming first-years with regard to the different groups on campus. Inundated with opinions about which RSO was best, I felt like I had to constantly tune out judgments from every direction. Indeed, attempting to seriously consider all of these opinions would leave me just as confused as I was at the beginning.

Creating a more positive dialogue between different RSOs would not only make it easier for first-years to navigate the RSO recruitment process, but would also improve collaboration between RSOs, offer-

ing more resources to students as a whole.

Moreover, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that these groups help establish the culture of the school as a whole.

Next time you are recruiting a first-year for your RSO, remember this: Pride in your RSO doesn’t mean you need to bash others.

In fact, if RSOs collaborated more—pooling their resources, launching initiatives, and sharing opportunities with a wider range of undergraduates—all students and clubs would benefit more. Organize joint meetings between your group and others to help generate a productive exchange of ideas and resources. Get coffee with a member of a “competing” RSO to discuss your unique structures and strategies. Indeed, getting to know those in similar organizations could illuminate certain changes that each group could make to

ALVIN SHI

the chicago maroon — January 29, 2020

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Considering Transferring? First, Try Study Abroad Studying Abroad Helped Rekindle My Connection to UChicago

By BRINDA RAO Ironically, it took me six months away from campus to truly fall in love with UChicago. I considered transferring, but after an excellent study abroad experience, I reconsidered. While I understand that for some, UChicago might not be the right place, I’d encourage those with doubts to try studying abroad.

I ended my first year socially anxious, academically uncertain, and indifferent to UChicago. Throughout the school year, I doubted my decision to come here. I considered transferring but struggled to take the leap. Ultimately, I decided to study abroad in order to get some distance from campus, reconsider what I wanted, and make a new plan. I was admitted to two programs, the summer European Civilization in Paris program and the autumn British Literature and Culture in London program, both of which I accepted. I chose to go on both programs as I was really interested in pursuing an English major and fulfilling my civilization Core requirement.

Having committed to spending both the summer and fall quarters away from campus, I worried about losing friends and any sense of identity with the College. Ultimately, however, I found that this decision gave me both the space and social experiences I needed to discover that I do feel at home in UChicago’s community and academics.

I started my time abroad with the summer European Civilization program in Paris. Over the nine-week program, I was immersed in Paris, spending mornings at the UChicago Center learning about the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and afternoons exploring the city. I was joined by 24 other students in my cohort, another Civ cohort of 25, a small advanced French group, and five students studying neuroscience. Weeks were divided between class days spent poring over 18th-century texts and weekend trips around Europe and within France. After this

program, I attended the autumn British Literature and Culture program in London. Having spent the summer with around 75 UChicago students, I found myself startled at the intimacy of my nine-person London cohort. However, as we spent our initial days on Charles Dickens walking tours of London and afternoons continuing classroom discussions in our shared apartment, I began to appreciate the intimacy of such a small group.

Studying abroad marks a stark contrast to UChicago’s typical theoretical style of education, as its education comes not just from theoretical readings in the classroom, but also firsthand day-to-day experiences in a foreign country. At UChicago, I studied French troubadour poetry in the space of my Poetry and the Human class.

In France, we discussed the origin of these poems in the very medieval palaces where they were first composed.

In Hyde Park, I studied Romantic literature in Harper Library, relying on my imagination to create images of bucolic English fields and towering estate houses. In London, however, I went with my cohort on weekly excursions out into the English countryside, where we discussed literary works in the very environment of their conception. I no longer felt like a distant observer of Coleridge and Wordsworth’s *Lyrical Ballads*, but rather, a participant in the verse.

Beyond academics, studying abroad allowed me to engage more meaningfully with my peers by creating a space for me to forge new friendships and learn how to reach out to others. At UChicago, I found myself feeling more alone than ever in massive lectures, making only a few friends through classes. However, during study abroad, my London and Paris cohort members became my roommates, travel companions, and close friends. Our class discussions escaped the classroom, joining us on meanders around London and trips to Ireland. While the smallness of a study abroad cohort could seem oppressive, I

marveled at how in my cohort, exciting conversations were never in short supply. Moreover, studying abroad allowed me to create close relationships with my professors more organically; I didn’t feel the need to constantly attend office hours or schedule meetings with my professors outside of class as they were with us every day of the program, inside the classroom and out. Some invited us into their homes, even having us over for dinner. Other professors recounted their experiences in academia on long bus rides to excursions. Furthermore, the bonds formed in my study abroad programs transformed into intense relationships that have continued on campus. In December, I went with a group of people in my Paris Civ cohort to a cohort member’s ballet performance to cheer her on. While it may sound clichéd, I found that experiencing another country with a small group of people definitely bonds you together. By providing a small environment for me to not only forge close friendships but also learn to lean into discomfort, study abroad made me more confident in my ability to reach out to others and make new friends.

Coming from first year having spent most of my time with people from similar backgrounds and life interests, meeting classmates from a variety of callings and stories while abroad alleviated a lot of my social anxiety. I was exposed to a new slice of the University, befriending classmates with a larger range of interests and personalities than I normally would. Knowing the brevity of the 10week program, I found myself more inclined to be myself in these groups as the social impressions I made would have short-term consequences. Spending classes, travels, and excursions with a small group of people I didn’t know allowed me to learn how to feel comfortable reaching out to people. In a way, *not* knowing anyone in the group ahead of time allowed me to feel more comfortable reaching out, and the 10week timeline of the program reminded

me to just be myself in the short span of the program. Moreover, the small size of my cohort allowed me to see that classmates who I thought were intimidating were actually approachable and sweet.

I spent the first week of my time in London in intimidated awe of my fourthyear roommate, but through getting to know her and reaching out, she became one of my closest friends.

Studying abroad also enabled me to find my place with my friends back on campus. Through FaceTime, letters, and constant messages, I found myself rekindling friendships that I had overlooked while on campus. A friend I hadn’t spoken to in months messaged me on Thanksgiving, eager to hear about my first Thanksgiving overseas and expressed her excitement for my return. When my on-campus friendships were no longer based on easy lunch and dinner dates, I found myself more earnestly engaged with many friends back home.

While I still do not know exactly what I want to study and am just one of thousands of students trekking across the quad, I find myself excited to be present at UChicago. I not only feel like I belong, but I am excited to reach out to people in forging new relationships and friendships. Since coming back to campus, I’ve found myself eagerly greeting people on the quad, sharing long conversations with old, nearly forgotten classmates and eager to befriend those I do not know. I feel better able to meet unfamiliar faces in classes and RSOs and reach out. I am excited to be back.

I understand that for some people, UChicago is not the right place and transferring is an excellent option.

Moreover, I do not believe that you need to globe-trot to reconnect with UChicago. Many of the experiences I’ve had are ones that can be found on campus. From joining a small RSO to trying a 12-person seminar, there are many places to experience one of UChicago’s welcoming and diverse microcosms.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — JANUARY 29, 2020

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ARTS From Antique Stores to Man Booker Prize

By LEXI FRANCISZKOWICZ Arts Reporter

Last Wednesday, the UChicago Program in Creative Writing hosted Chicago cartoonist Nick Drnaso to discuss the evolution of his artistic style from Beverly, his debut short story collection, to Sabrina, the first-ever graphic novel to be longlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. As part of the Dedmon lecture series, Drnaso started his afternoon craft talk by discussing the beginnings of his career—his education at Columbia College Chicago and the various janitorial jobs during which he began developing his muted, bleak style. Drnaso said that because novels seemed too daunting at that time, he wrote Beverly as a short story collection, of which he admits portions were heavily autobiographical, and that only over time has he become progressively more comfortable working in fiction.

Though his style is often subdued and pared down, Drnaso’s work is sometimes

interrupted by juxtaposing styles. For instance, Sabrina features large panels resembling a Where’s Waldo? book with bright colors and small, crowded, overlapping people.

These panels serve not only to break from Sabrina’s heavy storyline but also build character and themes, as one of the main characters suffers a loss that leaves him unequipped to deal with the adult world.

Drnaso is intentional in structuring his scenes this way. He makes a script, similar to a screenplay, which more or less lays out the sequence of events. Beginning with only the panels, he said, is much more restrictive, and the script allows him to understand what actually happens in each scene before he moves on to the visual stage.

In both lectures, Drnaso used a PowerPoint presentation to explain the way he creates visuals.

“Most of the comics is drawing the same thing over and over,” he said as he flipped from slide to slide. On the left were photos he had taken: Chicago streets, stairways,

storefronts, house exteriors, bedrooms, garages; on the right, his own illustrations of them. These pictures serve as reference points for color, scale, and size, through which he begins to shape the tone of the story. Drnaso tells stories primarily through visuals and dialogue. Though at first he tried using text to narrate scenes, something about it felt unnatural, so he favored expressing an ambiguity through visuals.

Drnaso also emphasized the importance of space in his work—how it’s often intuitive for him to look at a finished page and know when one of the panels is too large in proportion to the others. He described imagining spaces as “labyrinths,” for the photos he takes help him illustrate the idiosyncrasies of the spaces. His methods for scavenging images to draw are numerous: some he takes from his own life or neighborhood, and others from Google Maps, Flickr accounts, or film location scout photos. And for interiors, he looks to old Sears and home renovation catalogues. He even goes antiqu-

ing in remote towns. He uses old yearbooks for naming characters, finding new haircuts, awkward smiles, and so on.

Perhaps most striking was the way Drnaso talked about his own work. To him, finally throwing out his old journals and scribblings from college was “cathartic,” because “there wasn’t anything good in there anyways.” He couldn’t bear to reread Beverly for the craft talk. He delayed Sabrina’s publication, fearing his story would only add negativity to the world. However, despite his self-criticism, Drnaso made it clear that making comics is what he loves to do, even if the result is never as satisfying as the process of creating them. In the midst of his work, he said, his characters feel “alive,” and he immerses himself in the world he has created, locating his characters in the real spaces he has fictionalized. And once he has finished, the story “ends” for him, as it becomes the readers’ turn to inhabit the specific and peculiar reality of his stories.

Mura Masa, the Master of Musing Over Memories

By LUCAS DU Arts Reporter

When British musician Mura Masa, born Alex Crossan, released his critically acclaimed self-titled album Mura Masa in 2017, he seemed to stake a place in the modern pop world as a worldly, genre-agnostic dance producer. The album was polished, glittery, and bouncy, featuring a laundry list of high-powered features—the likes of A$AP Rocky, Charli XCX, and Christine and the Queens. It sounded alternately like dance-pop, R&B, trap, EDM, or tropical house. In many ways, it was an album born of the Internet generation.

But with R.Y.C., Mura Masa pivots sharply from the danceable, omnivorous pop of his debut album to introspective, guitar-driven indie rock. While Mura Masa was bright, bubbly, and futuristic, R.Y.C finds Crossan preoccupied with loneliness, anxiety, doubt, and the enchanting appeal of nostalgia. If Mura Masa was an album

born of the Internet generation, R.Y.C. is an album for the Internet generation. It’s an album that seeks something raw, authentic, and warm amid isolation and uncertainty.

Another departure from R.Y.C.’s collaborative tracks, Crossan’s voice is featured prominently on the album. On “Raw Youth Collage,” the eponymous opener, Crossan lays sparse, poetic, and slightly distorted vocals over a minimalistic guitar riff.

It’s a guitar song that sounds almost like a memory of what a guitar song should sound like. The stripped-down, almost impressionistic instrumental creates a nostalgic, hazy vibe over which Crossan’s lyrics—a stream-of-consciousness, cluttered, and anxious internal monologue—come through like the voiceover of a daydream.

At times, the lyrics are an indictment of the rose-colored lenses through which we view the past: “Good times/ That place we used to hang out/ That thing we used to do/ Was it even there?/ I miss it.” At other times, Crossan simply seems trapped, glued to

the screen, and unable to deal with the uncertainty that comes with the passage of time: “I don’t wanna go outside/ It’s all different.../ It’s right there/ In RGB, in LCD/ In zeros and ones/ In 5.1/ How am I supposed to live in the world?” “Raw Youth Collage” is, more than anything else, a painfully hopeless song. “Do you ever wish you could forget the good times?” Crossan asks toward the end. “At least then you wouldn’t feel the ache.”

The hopelessness that threads throughout the album is made even clearer with “No Hope Generation,” another excellent Crossan-centered track. Desperate and sardonic lyrics are laid over a distorted, repetitive, and strangely uplifting guitar riff. “Everybody do the ‘No Hope Generation’/ The new hip sensation craze sweeping the nation/ Give me a bottle and a gun, and I’ll show you how it’s done.” Crossan’s processed vocals sing over a punchy kick, acidly comparing the self-destructiveness often associated with modern-day youth

to a viral Internet phenomenon. The most affecting lyrics in the song are when it feels as if Crossan is in a daze, talking to himself.

“I need help, I need help,” he sings absentmindedly just before the first chorus, and one can’t help but sing along.

The two best tracks on the album, however, are both features. “I Don’t Think I Can Do This Again” features Clairo, an artist who pairs well with Mura Masa’s new indie rock style. It’s a love song, but like most other songs on the album, it’s obsessed with nostalgia and the passage of time. “Call me when you get a second/ Know it’s been a minute since I’ve picked you up,” Clairo sings, cleverly using units of time to express how much she misses someone. The production is what really makes the track, lending an elegant twist to Clairo’s indie vocals. Structured around a sample from “1880 or So” by Television, the instrumentals build up to an explosion of distorted bass in the chorus, warping Clairo’s tenCONTINUED ON PG. 13

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der, bedroom-rock voice around a heavy, pounding dance-music inspired beat.

“Deal Wiv It” features Slowthai, a U.K.– based grime rapper. It’s the hardest-hitting, angriest track on an album otherwise filled with melodic indie anthems. The grittiness lends the album a bit of an edge; the production grows more jagged, lined with angular, menacing bass riffs, electronic

glitches, and distorted, grinding guitars.

Slowthai rails against gentrification, following in the politically conscious anger of his debut album Nothing Great About Britain, but there is something here too about change and time that tie it thematically to the rest of R.Y.C. “Walking back through my old estate/ I see my mates that ain’t my mates and they don’t wanna stay safe/ They say, ‘You’ve changed’/ Fucking

deal with it,” Slowthai raps in the chorus, responding to feelings of change and loss with a righteous dose of anger. It’s a fun, punky change of pace in an album that can sometimes wallow in its interiority.

R.Y.C. is a bold and surprising second album for an artist who very well could have built off an established sound. Mura Masa eschews more features and higher-gloss production for an album that bravely and

sensitively attempts to explore hopelessness, anxiety, and a generational obsession with nostalgia. And for the most part, he succeeds. While at times it can stumble into bland guitar balladry, such as on the track “Today,” R.Y.C. is full of shimmering, vulnerable, and artfully produced songs that give voice to the angst of the Internet generation.

The Graduates/Los Graduados Offers Six Compelling Stories of the Latinx School Experience

By ADRIAN RUCKER Arts Reporter

It is no secret that there are deep-seated problems within the American school system. Yet everyone seems to have their own conception of what exactly these problems are, where they come from, and what solving them would look like. Director Bernardo Ruiz takes an approach in his docu-

mentary The Graduates/Los Graduados so obvious and effective that viewers are left wondering why it is not more widespread: Ask the students. They not only comprise the school system, but they live it.

The film opened the winter 2020 program for Cinema 53, a screening and discussion film series that reflects on pressing social issues. The series is curated by Jacqueline Stewart, and the screenings

The Graduates/Los Graduados. courtesy of imdb.com

take place in downtown Hyde Park’s Harper Theater. This quarter’s series is titled “Race and American Schools,” and it focuses on issues at the nexus of race and education, calling into question longheld assumptions about how the American school system treats students of color.

Originally aired on PBS, The Graduates/Los Graduados follows six Latinx students in different public schools across the United States, focusing on how the multifaceted challenges they face intersect with their identity. The film emphasizes that young Latinx people are one of the largest and fastest-growing demographics in the United States, and the quality of their education will have enormous impacts on the nation at large. Through the Latinx lens, the documentary shows intersecting identities interacting with other social issues. The compelling film centers around real, powerful depictions of students experiencing austerity, homelessness, teen pregnancy, gang violence, homophobia, and undocumented status.

The documentary is divided into two sections. The first half showcases the lives of Darlene, Stephanie, and Chastity. Darlene lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and initially dropped out of high school following her pregnancy. The film follows her reenrollment in an alternative high school as she balances caring for her child, maintains a shaky relationship with her family, and attempts to complete the education to provide a better life for her family. Stephanie is a Chicago Public Schools student who

initially finds refuge from the violence in her neighborhood through an after-school peer jury program. When the program is shut down due to lack of funding, she finds an outlet for her activism as a student organizer in support of the Chicago Teachers Union strike in 2012. Stephanie’s story eerily foreshadows Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s mass closing of schools on the South Side in 2013 as the family discusses rumors of closures and viewers hear radio snippets of similar news. This situates Stephanie’s experience in the broader context of Chicago’s gutting of public schools. Finally, Chastity is a high school senior in the Bronx, whose family has been homeless several times and currently lives in transitional housing. She goes through the college application process unsure about whether her decision to attend college is selfish, and she attempts to square her love and commitment to her family with longterm personal goals.

In the second half, viewers are introduced to Eduardo, Juan, and Gustavo. Eduardo tells the story of his arrest during a brush with gang activity in high school. He narrowly avoided more serious consequences after a college prep organization that he was involved with intervened. Wanting to return the favor, Eduardo returns to his hometown after college and helps at-risk students avoid situations like his own. Juan is the son of a Dominican immigrant mother who struggles with coming out about his sexuCONTINUED ON PG. 14

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ality to his family and friends in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Through a choreographed dance routine, he expresses his identity to those around him. Gustavo is a high-performing student in Georgia whose college dreams are blocked by a state law barring undocumented students from enrolling in the state’s University system. He finds a glimmer of hope when he learns about DACA, the federal policy allowing deferred action from deportation for undocumented people brought to the United States as children. Gustavo eventually becomes a public activist for undocumented rights

and attends Freedom University, a free, underground university established to provide education for undocumented college hopefuls and help them acquire a fouryear degree at an accredited institution.

His story, along with the others, was filmed around 2012. Since then, immigration policy has become much more unpredictable, calling into question whether his story would still be possible today, and showing how inextricably connected immigration and education policy are.

After the film, artist and scholar Eve Ewing moderated a discussion with the director. The questions she asked Ruiz

FITE OR FLITE

By JESSICA SWEENEY Across 1. Moved through waist-high water 6. Eugenicist better known as the telephone inventor 10. Some writing instruments 14. 90s soccer great Lalas 15. “Me also!”

16. Pasts 17. Amendments 9 and 10?

19. Private nonprofits (Abbr.)

20. Split in three 21. Smells 23. Whispered sweet nothings 26. Year in Mexico 27. Laughing 31. Ghostly vision?

35. First-born of many 37. Spot for unbaked muffins 38. Ticket info 39. Mountain lion alias 40. ___ bin Laden 42. Mound 43. Bird: prefix 44. Kind of acid 45. It’s often underfoot 47. Response to “What could be causing my allergies?”

50. Bother continuously 51. Wine-dark expanse 52. India’s first P.M. 54. Grande of pop music 57. Rodents in a marathon?

62. Original Apple genius 63. “Get Orville out of prison!”?

66. Up to the task 67. Vibe 68. Bitter 69. Woodwind accessory 70. “La Vie Boheme” musical 71. Favors one side Down 1. Mr. Disney 2. Winged 3. He loved Lucy 4. Office phone nos.

5. Makes a scene?

6. Circus venue 7. Biblical verb suffix 8. Park place?

9. Opposite of win 10. Pressed Italian sandwich 11. 1826 Christmas incident at West Point 12. Cozy corner 13. Snake sound 18. Cryptocurrency fundraiser 22. To-do item 24. Side-of-head annoyance 25. Apothecary weight 27. Add new stuffing to 28. Candy heart message 29. Like some evidence 30. Museum-funding org.

32. Superfruit bowl base 33. Slangy California greeting 34. Short social media post 36. Donut shapes 41. Alternative to speech 42. Anti-vaping ad, for short

were submitted by students in Ewing’s Race & American Public Schools class being taught this quarter.

Ewing began the conversation by asking Ruiz what changes he thinks schools should make to more effectively serve Latinx students, pointing out that each of the people in the film are more or less “success stories.” Ruiz responded by emphasizing the “quietly radical idea” of allowing students to “tweak their own environment.”

Students are more likely to succeed when they have a say in their own education.

This approach mirrors his own espoused approach to the documentary form, letting

44. ’omo sapiens?

46. Like Switzerland 48. Hinted at 49. “___ Level Midnight “, The Office’s movie-within-a-show 53. Uncooked

1

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61. Airport approximations (Abbr.)

64. Regret 65. West end?

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The next film in the Cinema 53 winter series will be The Homestretch on February 13. Conversation with Eve Ewing and Gina Samuels will follow. The event is free and open to the public.

54. What jam goes into 55. After-shower attire 56. Off in the distance 58. Food grown in a paddy 59. Taj Mahal city 60. Place for a goatee

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the participants tell their own stories. Ruiz pushed back against prevailing notions of documentary filmmaking as involving an unequal power dynamic between subject and director. He stated that the most effective approach lends autonomy to the subject, allowing them control over their own history and, by extension, their future.

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SPORTS

Captain Spotlight: Ryan Cutter

By DANIEL ZEA Sports Reporter

At UChicago, the three-season athletes on the running teams rarely rest. However, for the rest of us, it is worth pausing to recognize their excellence on the course.

This past cross-country season, third-year team captain Ryan Cutter turned in a phenomenal series of performances, adding to an already impressive career resume.

Winning the 8K races at both the University Athletic Association (UAA) Championships and the NCAA Division III Midwest Regional Championships, Cutter led the team into the top five at both competitions.

The Maroons then went on to earn a spot in the NCAA Division III National Championships, where Cutter capped the season with a top-10 finish.

Reflecting on last quarter’s competitions, Cutter attributed his personal gains to two things—consistency and having the

right mindset. In many ways, Cutter highlighted the importance of embracing the daily grind, stressing that “nothing that you do on any one given day is going to make you a good runner. It’s about putting it all together and getting at the sum of work.” Though Cutter’s All-American season certainly indicates his natural talent as a runner, Cutter pushed back on the idea that his success stems from something special, saying, “I don’t have any secret to what’s gotten me better. It’s just being consistent.”

Though Cutter’s persistence and hard work certainly contributed to his award-winning season, Cutter also stressed the significance of his team. Though a casual observer might view running as an individual sport, Cutter made it clear that such an assumption could not be further from the truth.

“The interesting thing about cross country is that I can be the No. 1 runner for the team, but I’m not the important piece,” Cut-

ter said. Explaining that multiple athletes need to place well for the whole group to do so, Cutter highlighted the team-oriented nature of long-distance running. He attributed some of his personal success to this part of the sport, stating that “the sense that you’re running for other people is what can elevate you individually to be better. It gives you a lot of extra motivation and pushes you to dig deeper than you would otherwise than if there weren’t other people relying on you.”

In keeping with this mentality and demonstrating why he holds the position of team captain, Cutter said, “I’ve always been someone that wants to see all my teammates succeed.” Not taking himself too seriously, Cutter conveyed that his captaincy has not affected his mentality or changed his demeanor. Rather, Cutter views his heightened responsibility as an opportunity to reiterate the importance of hard work to his teammates, leading by example more than anything else. In fact, Cutter reflected, “I see

myself as someone who can set the tone for the team and show that being consistent and just being committed to the process and trusting the training and your teammates can really lead you to elevate.”

Though Cutter and the Maroons have shifted their focus to the indoor track and field season, I did ask Cutter to reflect on his favorite moment from the fall. Once again, he focused on the team instead of himself, choosing a meet in which they scored a perfect 15 points, something Cutter told me had never been accomplished under their current head coach. Though Cutter could have selected one of his multiple championship victories, the highlight of his season centered around the team.

Humble to the core, Cutter embodies what it means to be a champion, but perhaps more importantly, what it means to be a teammate. If last fall was any indication, those qualities will undoubtedly serve him well this indoor season and beyond.

UChicago Sweeps the Competition at Lewis University

By NOAH SCHAAR Sports Reporter

With the men ranked fourth and the women eighth nationally, all eyes are turned toward the University of Chicago tennis program and its perennial stars. Let’s begin with a recap of last season. In the Division III NCAA postseason, the women fell short in the quarterfinals, losing to conference rival Emory 5–0. The women placed second, again to Emory, last year in the University Athletic Association (UAA). The men were bounced by Claremont, 5–1, from the DIII playoffs in the NCAA semifinals. Following a UAA championship victory in 2018, the Maroon men failed to bring home the trophy in 2019, landing in third place. This season opened on January 25, when the Maroon men and women marched to Lewis University to take on the Flyers.

Despite the absence of masterful fourthyear Marjorie Antohi, the women trampled the Lewis Flyers, taking all nine matches.

The doubles players laced all three matches

with tremendous effort from partners Lauren Park and Catherine Xu and the duo of Brigitte Wu and Eugenia Lee. Look out for first-year Perene Wang, who gave up only one point in her two-set match.

With prominent veterans like singles star Jeremy Yuan and doubles partners Tyler Raclin and Ninan Kumar, the men put up an 8–1 score against Lewis. UAA Rookie of the Year in 2018 and a DIII All-American in 2019, Yuan started off the season by winning both sets in his singles match at Lewis. After a deuce, the doubles team of Raclin and Kumar rallied and slammed the competition in an 8–6 winning set. The men’s squad excelled with an impressive showing by Alejandro Rodriguez, who beat his opponent 11–9 to win the decisive third set.

The tennis program has experience unprecedented success thanks to the wealth of talent and the leadership of head coach Jay Tee and assistant coach Kris Powell. This professional and coaching pair has fielded nationally competitive teams for the past eight years. Given the current rankings of

the men and women’s teams and the schedule ahead, the Maroons look to be the favorites in most of their matches. For the women, look forward to their match against No. 28 Hope University on February 15. On the same day, the men face off against No. 29 Kalamazoo. From February 28 to March 1, the women’s team will compete for the ITA DIII National Championship in Danville, KY. For

the men, the ITA National Championship takes place in St. Peter, MN, between February 21 and 23. The tennis program on the South Side has no lack for talent nor skill. If these student-athletes can stay healthy, few opponents will be able to match up with the mighty Maroons.

Second-year Alex Guzhva at Lewis University on Saturday, January 25. uchicago athletics

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Maroons Victorious Against Challenging Opponents

By THOMAS GORDON Sports Editor

The UChicago women’s basketball team had a packed weekend of tough home matchups against Brandeis University and New York University. NYU came into the Friday matchup as the top-scoring offense in the University Athletic Association (UAA) with 81 points per game, as well as the leading scorer with guard Janean Cuffee (21.4 PPG). The threat was evident from the beginning as Cuffee scored the first seven points for the Violets. The Maroons dominated the paint with their physicality throughout the first half, yet NYU stayed tight due to their reliance on their outside shooting. However, it was unlikely that the Violets would be able to be bailed out by three-point shots for the entire game. The Maroons came out strong in the third quarter with a seven-point run to retake the lead as fourthyear Mia Farrell continued to use her physicality to get to the free-throw line.

Ultimately, a quick 6–0 run at the start of the fourth quarter gave UChicago the breathing room necessary to pull out the victory. Farrell ended up tying her career high with a very efficient 31 points on 15 shots, 10 of 15 from the field and 10 of 12 from the charity stripe. The difference in the game came down to the ability for the Maroons to dominate the paint and the fact that NYU was unable to keep up the three-point shooting after the break as they only shot three of 14 from deep in the second half.

The Maroons followed up this hardfought battle with a matchup against the Judges from Brandeis. If the last game resembled a track meet, this one was a defensive struggle. The score was tight throughout the entire contest as UChicago went into the break up only one point, 25–24. Brandeis was able to keep inching in front through their ability to draw fouls and not waste their opportunities at the free-throw line as they shot 19 of 20. Brandeis appeared to be in the driving seat up by three in the final minute, but

first-year guard Grace Hynes hit a clutch spot-up three to tie the game at 53 apiece with 23 seconds left. The Maroons’ stingy interior defense prevented the Judges from retaking the lead, and Ratner was treated to some free overtime basketball. UChicago took this momentum with them into overtime and came out flying with an 8–0 run. Brandeis was able to cut it back to a one-possession game at 63–60; however, fourth-year Taylor Lake closed that glimmer of hope with a clutch three-pointer. UChicago was able to finish the weekend undefeated after a close call, and they also extended their home winning streak to eight games. In addition to this win, fourth-year guard Miranda Burt made history becoming the third member of the Class of 2020, and 16th UChicago women’s basketball player overall to tally her 1,000th point.

When asked about it, Burt first wanted to discuss the past weekend of games and the team’s accomplishments: “This past weekend was huge for our team. Both NYU and Brandeis are two of the most

talented teams in the UAA, and they really challenged us to step up and play at a different level. I’m so proud of our team, particularly in the Brandeis game, as everyone made plays to help us win. It truly was a team win, from the week of practice before where everyone made sure we were prepared, to game day where we all held each other accountable.” Then, she was finally able to relish in the moment of history. “Getting to 1,000 points is really surreal. First and foremost, I think it’s a testament to my teammates—no way I am close to 1,000 without them creating opportunities. It really goes to show how blessed I’ve been to play on good teams for four years.” This team focus mentality has aided the Maroons so far this year and will continue to help them go far. The Maroons follow up this undefeated weekend with a huge clash against Emory, the only UAA team undefeated in conference play so far. Come out to Ratner Athletics Center on Friday and make some noise! The game is set to begin at 6 p.m.

Men’s Basketball Goes 1­–1 in Weekend Conference

By MICHAEL KAYDIN Sports Reporter

The Chicago men’s basketball team nearly emerged from the weekend with two key wins in the pivotal conference race, but the Maroons will have to settle for a 1–1 ending. The Maroons defeated the New York University Violets 79–74 on Friday and lost to the No. 24 Brandeis Judges in the final seconds of Sunday’s matinee game. After the weekend, the team’s record stands at 7–9 overall, 2–3 in conference.

Against the Violets, the Maroons used an early three-point barrage and some tough playmaking down the stretch to secure the win. Second-year guard Brandon Beckman continued his recent hot streak; for the third-straight game, he set a new career high with 19 points. He added seven assists and four steals, exhibiting a penchant for playmaking. Facing a rarely seen zone defense, the Maroons let it fly from deep.

In the first half, the Maroons knocked

down 11 three-pointers on 30 attempts, with Beckman accounting for five of those made baskets. The Maroons took a seven-point lead into halftime.

Out of halftime, Chicago continued to build on its lead. The score ballooned to 56–41 when Beckman connected on a nifty, behind-the-back pass to fellow second-year Zach Munson for three.

From there on, Chicago struggled to score while the Violets mounted an impressive comeback. While the Maroons attempted 45 three-pointers, NYU was able to consistently find success in the paint and from the bench. The visitors outscored Chicago 46–12 points in the paint and 46–37 off the bench. When the lead shrank to four points, fourthyear Jordan Baum hit two clutch free throws with one second on the clock to ice the win. Third-year Dominic Laravie and Beckman paced the offense with 19 points apiece, and first-year Bryce Hopkins led the battle on the board with seven rebounds.

The Maroons came close to pulling

off an upset and notching their biggest win of the season against nationally ranked Brandeis. In a half-court battle, Chicago managed just six fastbreak points while holding their opponent scoreless in transition. The teams combined for a mere 12 turnovers with just nine points off turnovers. The Maroons were able to use some opportunistic shot-making to take a 32–28 lead into the halftime break. On his way to a double-double with 20 points and 10 rebounds, third-year Brennan McDaniel scored an efficient 10 points and Laravie added seven off the bench in the half.

The Maroons failed to find their rhythm in the second half, as Brandeis chipped away to take a 51–42 lead. McDaniel reeled off seven straight points to close the gap to a five-point Brandeis edge. With 1:17 on the clock, fourthyear Cole Schmitz cut the deficit to three with a streaking layup at the rim.

A strong defensive stand from the Maroons preserved the score, 60–57, in the ensuing possession. Once again, the Ma-

roons needed a bucket, and they turned to McDaniel. Schmitz found McDaniel in the corner, and he buried it. With the score all tied and Chicago turning up the defensive pressure, it seemed like the game would head to overtime, but the Judges made a play to avoid the upset and earn the win. With 3.2 seconds remaining, Brandeis senior Eric D’Aguanno knocked down a heavily contested triple to break the 60–60 tie. Following a time out, Baum’s shot hit back of the rim and the visitors walked away with a narrow victory, 63–60. In a game of “almosts” for the Maroons, their final shot missed by a few inches.

Chicago has another chance to earn the upset next weekend. The Maroons face off against No. 8 Emory on Friday evening before shifting focus to Rochester, another team earning national polling recognition, on Sunday. These games will take place at the Ratner Athletics Center.