020321 by Chicago Maroon

STUDENTS, PROFESSORS REACT TO BIDEN’S INAUGURATION

FEBRUARY 3, 2021 FOURTH WEEK VOL. 133, ISSUE 14

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Virtual Convocation, Limited Diploma Ceremonies Planned for Class of ’21 Miles Burton

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E. 55th Staple Cafe Corea Closes for Good PAGE 2

By KATE MABUS News Editor

Matthew Lee

GREY CITY: Forecasting Apocalypse at 100 Seconds to Midnight PAGE 3

SSA to Be Renamed the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice

VIEWPOINTS: Freeze Out ICE, Make UChicago a Sanctuary Campus PAGE 5

In an email to the University community Wednesday morning, President Robert Zimmer announced that the School of Social Service Administration (SSA) will be renamed the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice in honor of a large gift from James and Paula Crown and to better reflect the interdisciplinary work of the school. UChicago’s school of social work is one of the oldest in the United States, facilitating research and innovation around topics such as “educational inequality, health disparities, crime and violence, poverty, and child and family welfare.” The donation, which is “the largest ever in support of a school of so-

VIEWPOINTS: Don’t Let Winterfest Wither After COVID

cial work,” will be used to support financial aid for students, research and hiring for faculty, and community engagement projects. James Crown, who received an honorary LL.D. from the University in 2011, is the president of his family’s investment group, Henry Crown and Company, and a member of the University’s Board of Trustees. Paula Crown is a multimedia artist. The Crown family has been among the University’s leading donors for more than three generations: The Henry Crown Field House, erected in 1932, is named for James Crown’s grandfather. “The $75 million gift will bring the Crown family’s total giving in support of social work, education, and access at UChicago to more than $100 million,” Zimmer wrote.

ARTS: Nothing Much to Wonder About in Shawn Mendes’s In Wonder

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THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 3, 2021

With Biden Inaugurated, Divergent Opinions at UChicago By ROSHINI BALAN Senior Reporter Following an insurrection at the Capitol and impeachment proceedings in the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency, student and faculty reactions to President Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20 ranged from skepticism to relief. First-year Hayden Flaskerud described the relief he felt seeing Biden’s inauguration. “From the moment Biden stepped on the podium, he felt presidential. Biden feels like a true leader who followed both his personal ideals and those of the American people,” Flaskerud said. “It was refreshing to feel respected once again.”

Third-year Chase Leito was less optimistic, saying that the President and Vice President’s careers were morally disagreeable. “We can’t ignore their histories...as senators and as legislators,” he said. “They have perpetuated violence in the communities they represented.” Political science professor William Howell focused on Trump’s behavior during the final weeks of his administration. “Most obviously, there’s this irony that a president who wraps up his presidency by starting an insurrection...kind of naively calls out, ‘stop the violence,’” Howell said. “It speaks to the lack of, really, any convictions that this president has when he talks about being a law-and-order president.”

Political science professor Susan Stokes said she was dismayed by the increased security in Washington, D.C. on Inauguration Day. “The obvious way in which the insurrection at the Capitol changed it was the huge presence of the National Guard and whatnot—that’s not what you should see in the nation’s capital,” Stokes said. Second-year Ally Stevanovich described what it meant to her not only to see Biden get inaugurated, but also to watch a woman take federal executive office for the first time in U.S. history. “Watching Vice President Kamala Harris get inaugurated felt right. I felt like seven-year-old me, who got told by boys that a woman could never be in a position of power, [would be] extremely happy and

proud.” First-year Alena Pedroza was also excited by the Vice President’s inauguration, seeing it as a sign of a more tolerant and diverse future. “In seeing Vice President Kamala Harris elected, it makes me hopeful that we are headed down an unprecedented path filled with limitless possibilities for women and men alike, of any race or religion,” she said. First-year Ade Osadolor said the inauguration restored her faith in the future of the country. “This inauguration makes me believe that unity can still be achieved despite our different, divergent beliefs and political views.”

State Board Rejects Mercy Hospital Outpatient Center By NICK TARR Deputy News Editor On Tuesday, January 26, the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board rejected an application by Mercy Hospital’s parent company, Trinity Health, to open an outpatient center on the South Side. The $13 million outpatient center is part of a bid by Trinity to close Mercy Hospital, which has served Bronzeville and the greater South Side for over a century. The board’s rejection of the outpatient center comes one month after it unanimously rejected Trinity’s plans to close Mercy. The board cited concerns about declining medical access on the South Side, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a key factor in its decision. Activists fear that Mercy’s

closure would lead to a “health care desert” on the South Side. The proposed center would provide primarily diagnostic and preventative care, while no longer offering inpatient services like surgery and childbirth. Trinity has referred to this move as a “transformation” of services, claiming that it will be cheaper and more convenient for emergency and screening services than a conventional hospital like Mercy. According to Illinois Public Health data, however, Mercy currently provides primary care for 300,000 patients per year, while the proposed center would only treat an estimated 65,000 people annually. Community organizers and local politicians see Trinity’s outpatient center as poor justification for closing Mercy. “We have watched Trinity callous-

ly call the decimation of health care in our community ‘transformation,’” Fourth Ward Alderman Sophia King said. “What they are calling transformative care is little more than imaging machines and urgent care.” At Tuesday ’s hearing, the state board voted 3–2 against the opening of the outpatient center. Linda Rae Murray, a board member who voted against the center, pointed out that local health-care providers, who would be essential for the proposed patient-transfer system, did not indicate their support for the project. She also claimed that Trinity would not have proposed the outpatient center absent their plans to close Mercy, suggesting that the center is merely a cost-saving measure by Trinity. “I don’t understand how…you all think this actually materially improves

care,” Murray said. “If everybody switched to this model, we’d see more deaths and more chronic disease.” Board member Gary Kaatz voted in favor of the center, saying that the application was separate from Trinity’s closure plans and that outpatient centers have worked elsewhere. Managers at Mercy say that the hospital loses $4 million every month, and fewer than half of its hospital beds are routinely staffed. Trinity has flirted with selling the hospital in the past, but without success. Trinity has two weeks to submit more information to the board or request another hearing, and it also plans to appeal the board’s rejection of their closure plans at a hearing in March.

Korean Restaurant Cafe Corea Closes Due to Pandemic By LUKIAN KLING Senior Reporter Cafe Corea, a family-owned Korean restaurant on East 55th Street known for its authentic food and cozy atmosphere, closed permanently at the end of January. The cafe, which has been in Hyde

Park for over 15 years, struggled amid the nationwide downturn for restaurants due to COVID-19 lockdowns. In a message posted on the door of the restaurant, Cafe Corea’s owners thanked the Hyde Park community for their “support and loyalty over the past years.” “We will miss you,” the note read.

Residents of Hyde Park have come to know Cafe Corea as one of the best options for authentic Korean food in town. The mom-and-pop establishment consistently satisfied customers with its tofu soups, excellent service, and intimate setting. A review of Cafe Corea by Jade Gold-

stein, a writer for Spoon University, an online food publication, lists the suntofu jjigae, a beef and tofu stew; dolsot bibimbap, a rice dish in a hot stone bowl; and green tea mochi ice cream as highlights. The restaurant dealt with COVID-19 restrictions by offering takeout and deCONTINUED ON PG. 3

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livery options, but more than a year since the first case of the coronavirus in the United States, the prolonged economic toll proved too difficult to handle. Governor J. B. Pritzker ordered Chicago bars and restaurants to halt indoor service for the second time in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic on October 30. After a period of more than two months, restaurants were permitted to reopen for indoor dining, albeit at 25 percent capacity, on January 23.

Cafe Corea struggled during the pandemic, and ultimately closed permanently in January. Miles Burton

University Announces Virtual Convocation By KATE MABUS News Editor Convocation for the Class of 2021 will take place online, while the College tentatively plans to hold diploma ceremonies as “a limited in-person event.” University President Robert Zimmer announced the news to the campus community in an email Monday morning, saying that public health concerns prohibited the University from hosting such a large event. “It is not practical or safe to proceed

with planning an in-person gathering of several thousand people,” the email said. 2021 graduates will receive their diplomas at in-person ceremonies, however. If public health requirements remain steady, these ceremonies will only be open to graduating students, participating faculty, and staff. In a separate email to the Class of 2021, Dean of the College John Boyer emphasized the ceremonial element of the planned in-person events. “The College is delighted that the

University of Chicago is able to hold in-person diploma ceremonies for the Class of 2021, in accordance with health and safety protocols,” he wrote. Boyer also announced that the College will cover the cost of the entire Class of 2021’s academic regalia. Convocation activities are currently scheduled for the weekend of June 12. Chicago’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign is scheduled to begin phase 2 on May 31. During phase 2, members of the general population older than 16— including most of the graduating class

of 2021 and other University members— will be eligible for the vaccine. Despite the planning for in-person ceremonies, Zimmer also said that 2021 graduates’ families and guests should not come to Chicago. “We strongly discourage families and guests from traveling to campus as we will be unable to accommodate their presence at the diploma ceremonies,” the email said, before acknowledging that many graduating students and families would likely be disappointed with this decision.

Is This the End of the World? Grey City sits down with Doomsday Clock scientists and apocalypse scholars to discuss the recent surge in apocalyptic thinking. By LAURA GERSONY and MILUTIN GJAJA Grey City Reporters

In the first days of 2020, a deadly respira-

tory virus began making its way around the world. Over the summer, many in the United States saw hazy sunsets as the West Coast went up in flames. And the Atlantic hurricane season whipped through an alphabet’s

worth of names in record time. Unsurprisingly, last year saw a surge in apocalypse predictions—even before locust swarms of biblical proportions descended upon Eastern Africa, that is. The Univer-

sity of Connecticut’s Peter Turchin gained attention from national media outlets for his study of the rise and fall of civilizations, having forecasted in 2010 that the CONTINUED ON PG. 4

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“The end of the world is always the end of somebody’s world.” CONTINUED FROM PG. 3

would go through a period of social upheaval in the following decade. And the notion of 2020 as doomsday so suffused the collective consciousness that “2020 apocalypse bingo cards” were presented without context on social media, with boxes such as “United Nations Collapses” and “Meteor Strikes Earth.” So perhaps it’s no surprise that on January 27, 2021, the Doomsday Clock—an installation housed at UChicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and one of the most recognizable symbols of impending apocalypse—remained set at “100 seconds to midnight,” its closest time ever to the metaphorical demise of humanity. But one reading of the 74-year-old clock’s history offers a cautiously optimistic lesson: The present moment is far from the first time humanity has entertained thoughts of apocalypse.

The Clock’s History

The Doomsday Clock was created shortly after World War II by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a group of University of Chicago physicists concerned about the potential devastation that could be brought upon humanity by nuclear weapons. “The fundamental idea…that led to the idea that we should think about things in [apocalyptic] terms was the atom bomb test,” said professor Robert Rosner, chair of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board, in an interview with The Maroon. “Unlike all other weapons that humans have ever conceived of, this one was the first one that could end all of civilization.” As for the choice of metaphor, the actual Doomsday Clock was chosen serendipitously. Martyl Langsdorf, a landscape painter and the wife of Alexander Langsdorf, who worked on the Manhattan Project, designed it as a cover for the Bulletin’s magazine. The illustration struck a chord with the team, and the hands were initially set to seven minutes before midnight because, according to the artist, “it looked good.” Nowadays, in order to set the clock, specialists in a variety of fields including the military, science, and public policy, meet in groups throughout the year to analyze current threats to humanity. They then present their findings to the Science and Security Board, which then makes a “consensus-driven” decision on what the time

should be. Interestingly, the central question the committee tries to answer is not an absolute, but a differential: Has the world gotten better or worse since the clock was last updated? “Midnight symbolizes catastrophe, doomsday if you like, and the question is, are we moving closer or further away?” said professor Daniel Holz, a member of the Science and Security Board. “The time of the clock is completely arbitrary.” In the past, the clock has often followed a pattern of escalation and détente. Past moments of extreme stress have included the discovery of the hydrogen bomb in 1953, when the clock dropped to two minutes until midnight, and the height of the Cold War in 1984, when it was set to three minutes. But for both events, an easing of tension took place soon after, and the clock fell back to 12 and 17 minutes respectively with the signing of nuclear treaties in 1963 and the end of the Cold War in 1991. Recently, however, this hasn’t been the case. Since 2010, the time to midnight has been gradually decreasing, from five minutes to the low-water-mark of 100 seconds to midnight in 2020 and 2021. Holz and Rosner gave a number of explanations of this worrying trend. Although less prominent in the public sphere than it was in the 20th century, the nuclear threat remains at the forefront of the board’s mind. “Today, hardly anyone talks about it,” Rosner said. As a result, policy has become weaker to the point that the physicist described the current era as a “replay of the 1950s,” when the hydrogen bomb was created, in terms of the threat of nuclear warfare. Improvements in nuclear launch technology have also decreased the time needed to mount (and therefore the time available to respond to) a nuclear attack, increasing the risk of an impulsively instigated catastrophe. “The timescale on which you have to respond is no longer 20 or 30 minutes,” Rosner explained. “It’s minutes. You have minutes. Who are you going to consult in minutes?” Holz also contrasted the threat of nuclear annihilation, which could be diminished with rhetoric and treaties, with that of climate change, for which the impact of our actions is often delayed. “The CO2 [from past decades] is still in

the atmosphere,” he said. “We’’re screwed for the next 20 or 30 years no matter what we do, because the damage is already done.” Climate change and nuclear Armageddon aren’t the only threats that the Bulletin considers. In fact, when considering the utter destruction of humanity, its members have no shortage of ideas: bioweapons, nanobots, artificial intelligence—you name it. “Everyone has their favorite doomsday scenario,” Holz said. “We’d rather not be surprised.” But one danger has risen above others in recent years, no doubt intensified by the recent pandemic and the political tensions leading up to the election. This, of course, is the spread of false information. “The thing that I think we’ve been most concerned about over the last few years, and I have to say the last few months have really validated these concerns, is this disinformation and correction of information,” said Holz. “If you can’’t agree on very basic facts… it’s really hard to address them.” Rosner concurred. “This ability to basically spread misinformation has made all the things that we’ve been talking about traditionally as problems even more problematic,” he said. This was confirmed when the 2021 Doomsday Clock announcement named disinformation as a “threat multiplier,” intensifying the risk posed by other dangers such as nuclear annihilation and climate change. Regarding the purpose of the Doomsday Clock, Holz emphasized the role of scientists such as those on the Bulletin in saving the world from cataclysm. But he also stressed that they couldn’t solve the world’s problems alone. “Many of the issues and threats we’’re facing are scientific or technological at their heart…and scientists have a role to play in those,” Holz explained. “That being said…a lot of the issues are now sociological, political, policy corrections, international treaty type…and those are extremely important and relevant in the discussion.” Ultimately, Rosner describes the Doomsday Clock as “a call to arms.” “I think for a large fraction of Americans, we’re kind of sleepwalking through the present period and wishing it were different,” he said. “I think we have the technical capabilities to deal with the kinds of problems we face and the only question is,

‘Will we do it?’ And that’s not a question, unfortunately, for science.”

The End of Whose World?

If science offers the tools to prevent apocalypse, then the humanities offer the ability to make sense of it. Apocalypse has long been a fertile theme for works of literature, art, and philosophy. Perhaps no one knows this better than Mark Miller, a professor in UChicago’s English department who teaches a class about the long history of apocalyptic literature. The course, Some Versions of Apocalypse, studies texts ranging from the Book of Revelation to zombie apocalypse novels from the 2010s. One of Miller’s main lessons is that in many works, the allure of the “end times” is not just fatalistic. “It’s not entirely traumatic; there’s also desire,” he said. “The allure is in the fantasy of navigating a hostile environment…. There’s fear, but it’s also a manifestation of a desire to have that ‘solo-survival’ world, to project yourself into it successfully.” When reading apocalyptic literature, Miller mines the text for its “kernel of fantasy,” or the aspect of the text that readers find alluring. In the zombie-apocalypse series The Walking Dead, for example, he sees this kernel as a white-nationalist, gun-rights fantasy; the series entertains the prospect of a world in which citizens must fight for their own survival against zombies’ physical attacks, thereby justifying gun ownership. The theme of individual preparedness is also present in the zombie-apocalypse novel World War Z by Max Brooks. Brooks has said in an interview that what draws Americans to survivalist fiction, such as his work, is their conviction that “with the right tools and talent…we can survive anything.” So, what’s the “kernel of fantasy” to be found in our present day? Miller said that it depends on who you ask. “Part of what makes 2020 so ripe for apocalyptic meaning, or fantasy, is that there’s no single answer to that question,” he said. “I don’t think there’s the same kernel of fear or desire for everyone.... There’s so many things that are overlapping at once.” Another lesson about doomsday situations that Miller put forward was an idea from acclaimed science fiction author N. K. Jemisin—that “the end of the world is always the end of somebody’s world.” CONTINUED ON PG. 5

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“Apocalyptic thinking tends to be concerned in judgment.” CONTINUED FROM PG. 4

“Historically speaking, there has never been an actual end of the world…. So you have to ask, whose world is ending? What does it mean to call that ‘the world’?” he said. “If I were to look at [2020] apocalypse bingo sheets and do a close reading of them, that’s the question I would be asking: What actually is coming to an end, and why does that thing feel like the world to somebody?” He noted that humanity’s ability to completely destroy itself through nuclear warfare or climate change adds a caveat to Jemisin’s quote (though of course, he explains, these scenarios would not constitute the end of the world for many of Earth’s non-human species). Nonetheless, Miller believes that Jemisin’s idea provides a useful framework for earthly scenarios. “When people look at the George Floyd protests—let’s call them riots, just to enter into the perspective that some people view them from—when that looks like the end of the world, what world is that the end of?” he said. “That’s the end of a world in which people who don’t have to face police brutality as a routine part of their lives get to think it’s not real.... It’s a very specific world that’s being ended there.” Similarly, Miller discussed why the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency felt uniquely harmful and world-ending, as opposed to, for example, the presidency of George W. Bush.

“Part of why Trumpism seemed like the end of America, in a way that Bush didn’t, is that the majority of the damage done by George Bush happened far away from here. It happened to people living in Afghanistan and Iraq; it happened to U.S. military who got sent over there, none of whom I know,” he said. “So there, too, my privileged, insulated relationship to that suffering was leading to a way of reading the moment now that’s very partial. It’s incumbent on us to interrogate why we’re reacting the way we do—why certain things read apocalyptically to us.”

Apocalypse as Disclosure

One person engaging in this precise act of interrogation is William Schweiker, a professor of theological ethics at UChicago’s Divinity School. Like Miller, Schweiker is a scholar of apocalyptic thinking, analyzing it from a historical and spiritual angle rather than a literary one. And where Miller sees fantasy in apocalypse, Schweiker sees something else: hungers of the human spirit. “Apocalyptic thinking tends to be concerned in judgment. That is, that what has been wronged will be just wrong, and what is good will be restored, redeemed, or enhanced,” he said. “Lying in the depths of our lives, since you see this genre [of apocalyptic literature] in most cultures, is this hunger for justice. This hunger that things be balanced out, that evil not triumph.”

Schweiker said that one common thread among all major cataclysms of history is the human yearning to make sense of a seemingly cruel, merciless world: to pose the terrifying question to oneself, “what does my suffering mean?” He illustrated this with the example of a family coping with the death of a child. “What immediately happens is the question, ‘How do I understand this? How do I interpret this? How do I make sense of it? Because if I can’t make sense of it, I will go crazy with despair,’” he said. “The same thing happens with cataclysmic events: It sparks the human need to make sense.... We are creatures that have to interpret our lives.” The ties between the concept of apocalypse and sense-making run deep. The word’s etymological roots come from the Greek word apocalyptein, meaning “disclosure”—an etymology to which the title of the apocalyptic Book of Revelation from the Christian Bible can also be traced. In keeping with this theme of “disclosure” or “unveiling,” Schweiker said, many disasters of history have been interpreted as revealing the structure of reality. For example, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 inspired major developments in theodicy, the branch of theology concerned with why a loving and powerful God would permit tragedy. The question at hand, then, is one that Schweiker posed in an article published in

a Divinity School journal, Sightings, as the pandemic was worsening in April of last year: “What has our Apocalypse disclosed to us?” His answer to this question is manifold. The pandemic, he writes, has disclosed that “the economic order of wealthy nations is dependent on the poor who are subjected to the unrelenting gallop of the pandemic”; it has disclosed “the pain of loneliness and isolation”; and it has brought to light “the fragility of life.” Pestilence is often interpreted to bring divine justice, he notes. But rather than interpreting the pandemic as a form of retributive justice, Schweiker suggests that it could also be viewed as a form of restorative justice, which aims to heal wounds from the past rather than punish wrongdoers. “I would hope that we could see the pandemic more in those terms—that is, what do we need to restore to the environment, to the poor, to those who don’t have access to medicine?…. As a religious thinker, I would like to think that we could be humbled enough to realize that we need to restore some measure of justice in our world. Is that gonna happen?” Schweiker laughed. “I’m also a realist.” “But if there’s something one can take away [from the pandemic], it would be, look, this has disclosed the incredible injustices of our world, and our responsibility is to help address those.”

VIEWPOINTS Declare UChicago a Sanctuary Campus By declaring itself a sanctuary campus, the University would uplift our immigrant community on campus. By JENNIFER RIVERA Against the backdrop of an unstable political environment that has besieged the immigrant community with uncertainty, the University of Chicago has yet to announce any plans that prevent companies such as Palantir—an entity that helps Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) set up raids—from recruiting on campus. This is

contradictory to the message on its Center for Identity and Inclusion website, which states that it is “working to promote a[n] inclusive and healthy experience for undocumented students.” Continuing ties with an organization that terrorizes immigrant communities and undocumented students is not cultivating the environment that this so proudly conveys, and it is most definitely not providing a “healthy experience” for

those who have been personally impacted by such an organization. Undocumented folks and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients are often only portrayed as being in need of legal and financial resources; however, this narrative does not reflect the extent of the difficulties that they experience in a country facing a wave of fluctuating immigration policy. Undocumented students and DACA

recipients face a plethora of challenges when it comes to obtaining a higher education, and with the utter discrimination they encounter due to legal status, these experiences are often minimized. Moreover, the undocumented community does not just need resources; they also need vocal support from campus administration. Specifically, our university needs to declare itself a sanctuary campus CONTINUED ON PG. 6

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and sever ties with ICE. The University of Chicago has a responsibility to protect each and every single one of its students, regardless of immigration status. By declaring itself a sanctuary campus, the University would uplift our immigrant community on campus and amplify undocumented voices. When ICE announced plans to impose restrictions on international students with F-1 visas back in July, the University of Chicago was swift in its decision to sign an amicus brief opposing the restrictions. However, when it came to calls to label itself a sanctuary campus, their response was not met with the same urgency. Instead, the campus administration chose to make a statement saying that it is not considering declaring UChicago a sanctuary campus because it’s not a “well-de-

fined term.” If the sole reason is that “sanctuary campus” is poorly defined, then the University should have turned to on-campus student activist organizations and to the many universities across the country who have established themselves as sanctuary campuses despite this perceived hurdle. The University should examine its place in the political climate that denies undocumented migrants their humanity, while also working to ensure that students are guaranteed a campus free of intimidation. The idea is neither radical nor a far step from various initiatives on campus, which have been supported by campus administration. From the resources we currently offer undocumented students—such as the annual “Know Your Rights” workshop, financial support, and the Butterfly Support Group—it would not be a

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drastic decision to move towards designating ourselves a sanctuary campus. If there is one thing that the Kaleidoscope Collaborative—a coalition comprising UChicago Without Borders, New Americans UChicago, Partnership for the Advancement of Refugee Rights, and UChicago Coalition for Immigrant Rights—wants to emphasize, it’s that the University is going against its pledge to provide support for undocumented students. ICE is an organization that terrorizes immigrant communities and spreads a fear campaign against them; it is an agency that is notorious for its long list of human rights violations. Both UChicago administration and students are familiar with ICE’s actions, so the University’s unwillingness sends the message that such violations are not of concern to the campus administration. A report by the Congressional Committee on Homeland Security revealed that the conditions of confinement that migrants endure are appalling, to say the least. From unsanitary conditions to medical neglect during a pandemic, the U.S. government treats migrants as less than human. No campus should uphold its so-called legal obligations to ICE when such an agency violates and strips migrants of their humanity and are antithetical to progress. Moreover, under an administration that repeatedly threatened the presence of our undocumented community and unlawfully attempted to terminate DACA, many institutions designated themselves sanctuary campuses to ensure that their undocumented community knew that they were cherished and protected against an immoral system. Because UChicago acknowledged the need to address undocumented students on the Center for Identity and Inclusion’s website, you would think that it would’ve adopted a sanctuary campus label to affirm its espoused values and firmly stand against the atrocities

RACHEL ONG committed by the Trump administration. But instead, it remains steadfast in its lukewarm commitment to immigration justice. Even with a Biden presidency, the challenges the immigrant community faces are far from over. When I asked members of the Kaleidoscope Collaborative why UChicago should consider adopting a sanctuary campus label, their statement was as follows: “If four years under the Trump administration have taught us anything, it’s that political hostility towards immigration can yield real and terrifying consequences for vulnerable immigrant populations. UChicago has a responsibility to protect all of its undocumented and immigrant staff, faculty, and students, who are valued members of our community and have come to call UChicago home. UChicago needs to claim the title of a sanctuary campus and demonstrate a proactive and enduring commitment to keeping all of its community members safe, regardless of their immigration status, to earn the weight of that title.” Student activist groups are cognizant of the fact that these issues are not going to disappear under a Biden

administration, as immigration policy isn’t a bipartisan issue—it’s a humanitarian one, and one that the UChicago adminstration must reconsider its place in. There is a growing need for sanctuary campuses; they signify resistance to racist, inhumane systems that refuse to be transparent and need to be abolished (but that’s a different column). UChicago cannot continue any type of association with an organization that fails to acknowledge its own abuses and violent actions. As shown by the nearly 1,000 responses on UChicago Without Borders’s petition, students are demanding the administration sever its ties with ICE and declare UChicago a sanctuary campus. It is not enough to just claim we accept undocumented students. We need to demonstrate that labels are in fact representative of our mission to protect all students, and we need to provide an environment where we aren’t allowing the same entities that threaten our communities on our campus. The first step towards this imperative is to declare UChicago a sanctuary campus. Jennifer Rivera is a second-year in the College.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 3, 2021

Light Shows, Pageants, and Creating Connection UChicago’s Winterfest should be the first of many creative mental health initiatives on campus. By ELIZABETH WINKLER UChicago is infamous for its lack of substantive mental health resources, so when I first heard about the College’s Winterfest, I was surprised. This series of interdisciplinary creative events is intended to foster a sense of community throughout winter and spring 2021, and it is the kind of initiative that demonstrates a commitment to support students struggling in quarantine. While the pandemic gave the school a clear reason to create a program like this one, it would be naive to believe that only the pandemic made such a program necessary; at an institution with the intellectual rigor of the University of Chicago, creative outlets have always been essential to students’ mental health. The administration must continue to prioritize better mental health resources when we return to campus every quarter, both by making Winterfest an annual event and by establishing smaller ongoing projects to spark student creativity and connection throughout the year. After the inauguration on Wednesday, the name I heard most often was not Biden’s. It was not Harris’s. Our attention was captured, not by Lady Gaga, JLo, Garth Brooks, or the outgoing president, but by Amanda Gorman, the inaugural poet. Gorman’s words made sense to us. Reciting her poem, she spoke of our potential, of being better than we are and better than we have been. She spoke of creation. The focus of her poem was national, if not global, but the idea of creation should resonate with us at the individual and community lev-

els, too. In quarantine, many of us have realized how important creative practice is and have begun working with our hands in new ways. Some bake bread, some have learned to embroider or make jewelry, and some have done not-entirely-sober Bob Ross tutorials (absolutely not me and my roommates). Just yesterday, I went to Yarnify! with a friend who has decided to take up knitting. Winterfest is the University’s version of this practice. With options ranging from “Light Fantastic,” a competition to create collaborative art installations around campus, to the “Decameron Redux” writing prompts, to “Spring Forward,” a pageant of student theater and visual art projects, and the lectures of “Chicago Futures,” Winterfest has the potential to appeal, in one way or another, to every student on campus. This makes it different from Scav and other campus-wide events that tend to attract only small pockets of students across campus. The potential to tap into wide-ranging creative power and have a lasting positive impact on student mental health raises an obvious question: Why didn’t resources like this exist at UChicago before the pandemic? While that’s not a question I can answer, it prompts a pivot: Offering resources like this one must be a priority for the University in the future. The Winterfest website states explicitly that this program is intended for “the winter and spring quarters of 2021,” an acknowledgment of the strain the pandemic has put on student creativity and social connection. Though such challenges may have intensified as a result of isolation and virtu-

al schooling, they have always been present in our lives. I, and most UChicago students I know, have experienced feeling community-less and disconnected at some point. Making a tradition of collaborative, art-based events like Winterfest could make a real difference. This suggestion does not in any way cancel out calls for improved and expanded access to mental health resources through the counseling center; that is a pressing issue, and it has taken the University far too long to answer students’ pleas. Rather, making Winterfest an annual offering would be an additional way for the University to support its students. The University must strive to foster connection and mental decompression through the arts in other, smaller ways as well. For example, many of us are familiar with the Little Free Library project—there are quite a few scattered throughout Hyde

Park and I, at least, get great joy from the give-and-take of literature that they allow. The University could set up a version featuring miniature art by students, following the model of Stacy Milrany’s Little Free Art Gallery in Seattle. Each of her galleries is a dollhouse-sized box set on top of a post, and it has a glass door that visitors can open. Milrany created works of art to start it off—tiny paintings, a miniature table—in the hope that others will take one of these artworks and leave one of their own in its place. Constructing these gallery spaces would require only a one-off commitment. Creating the boxes to set up around campus could even be an opportunity to involve UChicago students in collaborative wood-working. Once the physical spaces exist, the galleries would become self-sustaining opportunities for inspiration and creation. Winterfest is a great re-

source for a student body facing the unprecedented challenge of winter quarter in isolation. Such resources need not, and should not, disappear when the coronavirus does, though. The University must make a concerted effort to increase their mental health resources, as students have urged them to for so long, and to incorporate artbased collaboration into those resources: Winterfest should be annual, and the University should establish ongoing smallscale creative projects for students to participate in throughout the year. Such projects will not only add to the beauty of our physical campus, but also, more importantly, make deliberate space for the healing, creation, discovery, and exchange of beauty that so many of us crave. Elizabeth Winkler is a third-year in the College.

DARYA FOROOHAR

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 3, 2021

ARTS Shawn Mendes’s In Wonder Is Not Very Wonderful The new Netflix film fails to capture the magic of great pop star documentaries. By JENNIFER MORSE Arts Reporter

Shawn Mendes has been a major pop star for over five years now, releasing four chart-topping albums mostly defined by clichéd songs about love and heartbreak. Despite his success— he has never been nearly as distinctive an artist as many of his peers. Mostly he comes off as nice, the kind of guy you would want to take home to your parents, but not much else. Mendes’s new documentary, In Wonder, was released on Netflix this past November. Coming on the heels of two other major pop star Netflix documentaries, Taylor Swift’s Miss Americana and BLACKPINK: Light Up the Sky, In Wonder purports to crack through that inscrutable outer veneer and show audiences the “real” Shawn Mendes: his hopes, fears, and concerns. All three documentaries seek to humanize the larger-than-life artists, combining behind-the-scenes clips and one-on-one interviews to narrate the central artist’s struggles with fame and success. Miss Americana documents Swift’s constant struggles

to please the public and reinvent herself after her public downfall in 2016. Light Up the Sky depicts K-pop girl group Blackpink’s rise through the grueling K-pop training system to become an internationally successful girl group.  But In Wonder struggles to present a coherent narrative about Mendes, mostly because it refuses to actually reveal anything interesting about him. The documentary centers around Mendes’s experiences in 2019, portraying his personal life, the recording process of his fourth album, Wonder, and his experience touring for his third album. These three narratives never tie into each other but are haphazardly slapped together with no apparent reasoning behind what goes where. The songwriting sessions are too short and unfocused to reveal anything about his recording process, the backstage clips consist of mostly just scenes of Mendes rehearsing and aimlessly chatting with friends and tour mates, and the snippets into his personal life reveal nothing more than what has already been reported on. In Wonder occasionally includes glimpses of a more interesting Mendes. In one scene,

Shawn Mendes by Glen Luchford. courtesy of island records.

Mendes shows pages from his diary where he used to compulsively and repetitively write reaffirming phrases like “I control my brain and voice” and “my chest voice is strong and healthy.” It’s a genuinely interesting detail that hints at an unhealthy obsession with success, but this habit is instead presented as Mendes “manifesting” his success. The film frustratingly never returns to this, as Mendes occasionally hints at being obsessed with perfection. But In Wonder draws back from presenting a more nuanced picture of Mendes and his struggles with success, missing out on an opportunity to humanize him. In another scene, Mendes is back in his hometown of Pickering, Ontario. His younger sister reminisces that when Mendes first started singing, he was “disgusted” by the idea of being famous. His sister’s story suggests he’s changed his mind on fame or has had some internal dilemma about it—one that would be interesting to explore. But all Mendes offers in return to this anecdote is that he “doesn’t remember that,” not discussing it any further. Mendes seems unwilling or unable to discuss the topic of fame beyond superficial pop star platitudes about wanting a “normal life” or being tired of touring. This is especially frustrating considering that the downside of fame is a common theme for pop star documentaries, and one that has been done well many times before. In one scene in Miss Americana, Swift cries while talking about how “intrinsically insecure” she and other celebrities are that they need constant validation from others. In Katy Perry’s 2012 documentary Part of Me, her husband, Russell Brand, divorces her over text backstage. She’s sobbing right up until the moment when she has to perform when she plasters a fake smile on her face. These moments offer real, relatable insights into the struggles of Swift and Perry, and how fame has affected their lives. Most people watching these documentaries will be unable to relate to being a pop star but can relate to being insecure or dumped. These instances of struggle make each film feel like more than a vapid account of the life of an incredibly successful person; they perform

the essential task of humanizing the artists to offer a glimpse into who they are as “normal people” and how fame affects their “ordinary” experiences. The closest that In Wonder gets to such an intimate moment is when Mendes cancels a concert afterlosing his voice. He’s devastated, but this isn’t exactly a huge revelation. No one needs to watch a documentary to learn that Mendes would be sad about canceling his concert. And unlike the Swift and Perry documentaries, it fails to offer any insight into Mendes’s inner life. Most pop stars have had to cancel a concert, and most of them have probably not been happy about it. So while it is an unfortunate incident, it doesn’t humanize him beyond what we already know. In Wonder’s failure to reveal anything new about Mendes results in a documentary that mostly depicts a man who lives a very charmed life. He wanted to be successful, and now is, which he’s very happy about. That’s fine, but it doesn’t make particularly compelling material for an hour-and-a-halflong film. The film itself doesn’t seem to realize this though and is far too self-serious for its own good. There’s a long shot at the end of Mendes standing by the ocean, looking up at the sky while pensive music plays. The framing of the scene suggests some kind of grandiosity to Mendes and his life, some kind of intense revelation, but in the end, the film’s only real revelation is that he’s just another pop star, pining about love. As the film ends, Mendes says, “I wish I had some profound thing to say,” but “the truth is…I’m just a guy who really loves music.” This could be a thesis statement for the film, which itself has nothing to say, and seemingly no reason to exist. All it shows is that he really is just a guy who likes to sing, play guitar, and perform music. Perhaps that’s the appeal of Mendes though; he’s attractive, has a good voice, and is nice, but indistinct enough that fans can project their own hopes and desires onto him. That’s all well and good, but doesn’t exactly inspire wonder.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 3, 2021

Disney Singers No One Talked About Until a Love Triangle The releases of “Drivers License,” “Lie Lie Lie,” and “Skin” reveal a public fascination with the personal lives of celebrities and the lengths to which PR and marketing will go to push certain By VERONICA CHANG Arts Editor

High School Musical may be 15 years old now, but high school drama never dies. Co-stars Olivia Rodrigo and Joshua Bassett, along with actress and singer Sabrina Carpenter, are embroiled in a new love triangle—what’s more, all three have released individual songs alluding to the situation. For those not up to date, Rodrigo and Bassett play couple Nini Salazar-Roberts and Ricky Bowen in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, the mockumentary musical drama series based on the original High School Musical film series. The two were rumored to be dating before Bassett was spotted with Carpenter, dashing fans’ hopes for a Gen Z Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens, who dated while starring as Troy and Gabriella in the original High School Musical. Some people thought Rodrigo and Bassett had been linked together for marketing purposes, others thought the two had quietly broken up, and everyone forgot about it. That is, until Rodrigo released “Drivers License” earlier this year. Obliquely referring to both Bassett and Carpenter, Rodrigo sings about getting her heart broken, crying while she drives alone through the suburbs (as teenagers do). The song was a massive hit, debuting at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and drew everyone’s attention to the Rodrigo-Bassett-Carpenter drama. Bassett then released “Lie Lie Lie,” and Carpenter soon followed with “Skin.” Fans started connecting the dots between all three songs, pointing out lyrics and social media posts equally as “evidence.” So how do the three songs compare? In terms of musical and lyrical quality, “Drivers License” is the clear winner by far. Rodrigo’s lyrics reveal a gift for storytelling not unlike early Taylor Swift releases such as “Fifteen” (incidentally, both Rodrigo and Carpenter have cited Swift as a musical influence), while musically, “Drivers License” plays to its strength of simplicity. Piano is the main instrumentation, with little background percussion to back it up, highlighting Rodrigo’s voice in all its teenage angst; a key-

board also appears in the music video, a nod to both Rodrigo’s relatability as just another heartbroken teenage girl (when she’s sad she writes songs about her feelings!) and her immense vocal and musical talent (unlike most of us, she actually sounds good when she sings about her feelings!). This retreads common ground from “All I Want,” which Rodrigo wrote for High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, but “Drivers License” surpasses its predecessor with its soaring bridge. Rodrigo lists completely mundane objects like “Red lights, stop signs” before desperately singing “’Cause I still fuckin’ love you,” juxtaposing the normalcy of heartbreak with its isolation. It’s classic Gen Z all the way up to the song’s popularity, initially exploding on TikTok before crossing over to radio airwaves. “Skin” is, in some ways, the antithesis of “Drivers License.” Part of the mass appeal of “Drivers License” is its ability to tell a common story with just enough personal details to make it uniquely Rodrigo’s. Everyone can relate to “Drivers License” because everyone knows the feeling of being 17 and feeling like the world is falling down around you, but only Rodrigo sees Bassett “in the white cars, front yards” because everything that reminds her of him is ordinary and boring like he is. Conversely, “Skin” is a diss track thinly veiled as an empowering self-love song that literally no one can relate to. To give Carpenter some credit, a few Google searches reveal a budding acting resume (she’s recently starred in Netflix’s Work It, and like Rodrigo and Bassett, got her start on Disney with the series Girl Meets World) and significantly better songs than “Skin.” Perhaps the lazy songwriting in “Skin” can be excused by Carpenter’s need to capitalize on the Rodrigo-Bassett drama while it’s still relevant, or perhaps it was Carpenter’s PR team that forced this lackluster response. This, however, brings up an interesting argument of whether PR and marketing influence a singer-songwriter’s narrative autonomy; people love “Drivers License” because they believe Rodrigo genuinely had her heart broken, but to what extent is the animosity in the lyrics of “Skin” and “Lie

Lie Lie” an attack on Rodrigo, and to what extent are corporate machinations pushing the narrative of a heartbroken girl? Given the amount of control PR teams frequently have over celebrities’ lives, it’s likely everyone is reading too much into this drama—which has certainly benefited Rodrigo, regardless of her original intentions. As a result, “Skin” fails not only as a song but also at reversing the narrative surrounding Carpenter, who probably needs to hire a better PR team. Everyone wants to find out if Carpenter really is “that blonde girl” mentioned in “Drivers License,” but no one cares if “blonde was the only rhyme,” as Carpenter mockingly suggests in “Skin.” I wish I had more to say about “Lie Lie Lie” than the fact that it…exists. It’s a song, although it might be better called a product. “Lie Lie Lie” may not even be about Rodrigo; Bassett first started writing the song two years ago, and given the release dates for “Drivers License” and “Lie Lie Lie,” the visual similarities in the two music videos could be a coincidence. But fans and gossip magazines alike have latched onto this narrative, making the entire song sound like one long PR sound bite. Rodrigo and Bassett purportedly writing songs about each other is nothing new, but writing conflicting stories? That’s found money. I still think “Lie Lie Lie” is a better song than “Skin,” mostly because I appreciate Bassett’s production and PR team’s efforts to salvage it, but as with Bassett himself, I struggle to see any appeal. “Lie Lie Lie” just sounds like a rejected B-side from the debut album of a former boy band member who failed to reach the same individual success as his groupmates; it’s the sort of song that even the most diehard stan will only stream once or twice before admitting that it’s really boring. Of course, the drama surrounding these three songs is anything but. There’s the underlying theme of Rodrigo as the innocent victim and Bassett as the villain in this story, with Carpenter as Bassett’s somewhat sympathetic accomplice (depending on if you believe she wrote and chose to release “Skin”). Everything is “evidence,” up to and including Rodrigo and Bassett’s castmates

leaving supportive comments on Rodrigo’s release announcement but not Bassett’s. It’s a brilliant example of how narratives can drive and determine popularity and how traditional media outlets have been usurped by social media, further breaking down the barrier between celebrities’ personal and public lives. Marketing, narrative, and image have always been key to a celebrity’s staying power. It’s why the original High School Musical trilogy practically printed money: Efron and Hudgens’s onscreen chemistry translated into a real-life relationship built on the loving foundations of publicity, merchandise, and intense media scrutiny. It’s why K-pop idols, whose profitability frequently rests on wish fulfillment and public perfection, have notoriously strict no-dating clauses written into their contracts. It’s why, before Riverdale became a flaming garbage heap of lazy writing and a cast who frankly couldn’t care less, the media raved about Lili Reinhart (Betty Cooper) and Cole Sprouse (Jughead Jones)’s relationship (onscreen, they played high school students in love! Offscreen, they were young adults in love!) but tried not to talk about KJ Apa (Archie Andrews) actually dating a high schooler. For celebrities, everything can be a commodity. Pitting Rodrigo and Bassett’s solo releases against each other as two sides of a breakup creates a narrative of tension between the two. It invites people to wonder if their offscreen drama will be translated to their onscreen roles (with High School Musical: The Musical: The Series airing a holiday special to tide fans over until its second season). Carpenter’s “Skin” only fuels this tension: Carpenter is the “other woman,” not part of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series—by choosing to respond to “Drivers License,” she forces herself into the Rodrigo-Bassett drama, renewing interest in all three singer-actors and their songs. It’s especially interesting to note how social media scrutiny has both clarified and blurred the Rodrigo-Bassett-Carpenter story. Breakup and revenge songs are nothing new: just look at Taylor Swift’s “Better than CONTINUED ON PG. 10

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 3, 2021

“For celebrities, everything can be a commodity.” plenty of that.

CONTINUED FROM PG. 9

Revenge” and the Jonas Brothers’ “Much Better” or Britney Spears’s “Everytime” and Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” (both Spears and Timberlake are also former Disney stars). With the advent of social media, though, the narratives of these songs can be enforced in real-time, with each new post or fan theory snowballing into the next. Rather than wait for awkward, vaguely invasive interviews, celebrities (or their PR teams) can choose to have their own say through subtweets, stories, comments, and likes. For Rodrigo, Bassett, and Carpenter, all young, tech-savvy, and with arguably greater social media freedom than more established names, this outlet is all the more important. With everything intensely scrutinized and memorialized on ~the internet~, actions like Bassett’s praise of “Skin” can be perceived as both supporting Carpenter and slighting

There’s the underlying theme of Rodrigo as the innocent victim and Bassett as the villain. courtesy of Erica Hernandez Rodrigo. The narratives fuel themselves. Overall, the Rodrigo-Bassett-Carpenter drama is publicity genius for Disney; it’s great

for Rodrigo, as “Drivers License” becomes even more popular; less so for Bassett and Carpenter, who’ve been anointed as villains

by social media and who released mediocre, if not bad, songs anyway. But at the heart of it? All news is good news, and there’s been

The Witty City By CHRIS JONES AND NISH SINHA Across 1. ___ Brasi, Godfather villain 5. More masculine, maybe 10. Affirmative votes 14. Stratford-upon-___ 15. Vinegar prefix 16. Waikiki locale 17. Flat hill 18. Doesn’t get involved 20. Plaisance snowball fight? 22. Like 10 on the Mohs scale 23. Takes a chair 24. Class tour at Guaranteed Rate Field? 30. Foe 31. Suburban field 32. 1-Down sound 35. ___ Fey, creator of Mean Girls 36. Bulls player taking the Red Line? 38. Beatles album and film 39. Train stop (abbr.) 40. Milanese farewell 41. Work vigorously at 42. In Hyde Park?

45. Single audio channel 47. Small batteries 48. Latke-Hamantash Debate? 55. Kiddie carnival 56. Classic film genre 57. Divine name 58. Join forces 59. Trendy cabbage variant 60. It can be blown or thrown 61. Like a rock 62. Troubles Down 1. Young farm animal 2. Eye layer 3. The price you pay 4. Abhorrent thing 5. Capital of Lesotho 6. Electrical conversion 7. It’s on yew 8. Wd. src. 9. Baroque painter Alessandro 10. “Fine, I give up” 11. Bother 12. Pirate greetings 13. Word ending (abbr.)

19. Has too much of 21. Love of Tramp 24. Collections 25. “I’m ___, boss!” 26. TV warrior princess 27. Above it all 28. Sticky stuff 29. ___ Jima 32. Politician O’Rourke 33. Voice above tenor 34. Each 36. Set ablaze 37. “The way”, in Chinese philosophy 38. 1952 Olympics host 40. Actress Kaley of The Big Bang Theory 41. Connery of Bond fame 42. Walking 43. Setting for many Paul Gauguin paintings 44. Loathing 45. A lot, to Reina 46. Amazed spectator 49. Seasonal bugs 50. “Otherwise...” 51. Author Sheehy 52. A point, in soccer 53.The ___ (political

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metonym)

54. A lot, to Louis

55. Norm, briefly