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WHAT WOULD IT MEAN IF ILLINOIS OUTLAWED CASH BAIL?

FEBRUARY 10, 2021 FIFTH WEEK VOL. 133, ISSUE 15

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GSU: No Graduate Student Services Fee

Former Ph.D. Candidate Alleges Title IX Retaliation, U.S. Dept. of Ed. to Investigate

By ALEX DALTON News Reporter Nearly 500 graduate students at the University of Chicago have pledged to withhold payment of student services fees in a boycott organized by Graduate Students United (GSU).

Participating students have pledged to withhold payment until the University fulfills a list of demands, including waiving the student services fee of $416 per quarter or reducing it to no more than $125 per quarter for the entirety of the 2020–2021 academic year. GSU has also demanded that the University release more detailed information on the use of student services fee, including the percentage of funds allocated to each University service, and that it notify prospective students of the student services fee in advance of their enrollment.

The graduate student services fee, which was due on Wednesday, February 3, is used to “provide and promote educational, social, cultural, and recreational programs and services for all students throughout the year,” according to the Office of the University Bursar.

CONTINUED ON PG. 4

Miles Burton

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Suah Oh

UChicago Community Reacts to GameStop Rally

By FINN HARTNETT Senior Reporter UChicago trustee and donor Kenneth Griffin helped inject billions into hedge fund Mel-

NEWS: Obama Center Set to Begin Construction in April PAGE 5

vin Capital last week after the fund lost billions in January on a bet that the share price of GameStop would fall.

The bet, or “short,” by Melvin Capital on GameStop caught the

VIEWPOINTS: Grad Students Need Relief from Student Services Fees PAGE 7

attention of the Reddit forum r/ WallStreetBets, a community of day traders who share tips for investing, often while calling one another derogatory names.

Short selling is a form of

GREY CITY: Meet Maurice Charles, Rockefeller’s Dean

investing in which an investor, or “short seller,” makes a profit if the value of a stock declines.

Shares of stock are borrowed to short sellers from lenders, which CONTINUED ON PG. 4

ARTS: COIN Shows the Promise of Virtual Concerts

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Like our Facebook page at facebook.com/chicagomaroon and follow @chicagomaroon on Instagram and Twitter to get the latest updates on campus news.

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Dept. of Education Investigates Alleged Title IX Violation

By CAROLINE KUBZANSKY Managing Editor Editor’s note: This piece is a collaboration between the Hyde Park Herald and The Chicago Maroon.

The U.S. Department of Education (E.D.) will investigate the University of Chicago Title IX Office following a retaliation complaint by a recently dismissed Ph.D. student, whose allegations and fundraising efforts have gained a high profile on social media over the past few weeks.

Zain Jamshaid, a former Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, contacted the E.D. after the University dismissed him from his program, citing a lack of academic progress. In March 2020, Jamshaid filed a Title IX complaint against a faculty member in his department; the complaint detailed an alleged sexual assault and a pattern of harassment in 2015 and 2016.

The University’s Panel on Unlawful Harassment rejected Jamshaid’s complaint in August, finding that the faculty member had not violated the school’s Policy on Harassment, Discrimination, and Sexual Misconduct.

Jamshaid, who had been placed on academic probation in May 2020 for

lack of progress on his dissertation, was withdrawn from his program in December. He characterized his removal as retaliation for filing the complaint.

“To me, this is just slam-dunk retaliation for the sexual assault disclosures, because the program’s behavior toward me changed immediately…after I made it,” he told the Hyde Park Herald and The Maroon.

University spokesperson Gerald McSwiggan responded to Jamshaid’s assertion in a written statement.

“Retaliatory actions in response to any report of sexual misconduct would violate the law, University policy, and the expectations we have for all faculty and staff,” he wrote. “Any student or other person at the University who makes a report of sexual misconduct is legally protected from retaliatory action, and the University does not tolerate such actions.”

Jamshaid filed a complaint with the E.D. in late December. In a response letter shared with the Herald and The Maroon, the E.D.’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) wrote: “Because OCR has determined that it has jurisdiction over the allegation, OCR will investigate the complaint. Please note that opening an investigation in no way implies that OCR has made a determination with

regard to the allegation’s merits.”

The OCR is responsible for enforcing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. OCR investigations are meant to determine whether an institution is in compliance with Title IX requirements.

Because the University receives federal funding from the E.D. tied to its enforcement of Title IX, an investigation finding evidence of University negligence or retaliation could result in a reduction of federal funds. No college has ever lost funding for violating Title IX, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, though some have had to pay court fees and damages.

The University confirmed that it had been notified of the investigation.

McSwiggan said that “the allegations in the complaint are without merit” but wouldn’t release details about the case, citing privacy considerations.

E.D. investigations are not uncommon: According to data from ProPublica, there were 18 investigations of the University between 2013 and 2017 over alleged civil rights violations. Two of those cases were settled through Early Complaint Resolution, a process in which the two parties involved voluntarily resolve the complaint; other cases were resolved with “no violations or

corrective changes.” (The ProPublica database shows similar numbers for peer institutions like Harvard University and Columbia University.)

In the weeks since his dismissal from the University, Jamshaid, an international student whose University-sponsored visa was terminated, has set up a GoFundMe page to help replace his academic stipend, cover costs of applying for asylum, and pay for a potential lawsuit against the school.

In his GoFundMe description, Jamshaid writes “A return to rural Pakistan, a region I have not seen in 25 years, would mean a sure death for me as an out gay man.”

The campaign, which had raised nearly $27,000 as of February 3, has garnered considerable attention on social media, with activist groups like UC United pledging to match donations to the fund. Mike Van Der Naald, the president of Graduate Students United (GSU) said the union helped organize a petition for Jamshaid to remain in the Ph.D. program and met with him to discuss his options before his visa termination.

The E.D. did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Illinois Could Be the First State to End Cash Bail. Here’s What You Need to Know

By TESS CHANG Senior Reporter Both houses of the Illinois State General Assembly passed HB3653, a criminal justice–reform bill, on January 13. The bill is now pending signature from Governor J. B. Pritzker. The legislation was advanced by the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus despite opposition by Republican lawmakers. State Senator Robert Peters, whose 13th Legislative District includes much of Hyde Park, was among the bill’s sponsors and a vocal proponent of its policies.

In a criminal court case, bail is a set of terms determined by a judge that the suspect must satisfy in order to be released before their trial. Cash bail requires that the suspect pay a sum of money in order to be released. If the suspect shows up for their trial, the money is returned. If they do not, they forfeit the bail money.

Bail-reform activists claim that the system criminalizes poverty and punishes defendants with fewer financial resources. According to research by the Bail Project, a nonprofit organization, the vast majority of those in jail are

low-income and cannot afford to post bail.

Critics of cash bail also argue that the practice violates constitutional principles, such as the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, because it assumes guilt before the individual is proven innocent. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, 70 percent of prisoners in jail have not been convicted of a crime. This contributes to the overcrowding of jails, a concern that was highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many Cook County officials have

publicly endorsed the bill. In a tweet, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx wrote, “Cash bail was never about public safety. For far too many people, their assessment was based not on their risk but on their amount that they could afford to pay, so eliminating cash bail makes this about risk and not about poverty.”

Proponents of the cash bail system argue that releasing suspects pre-trial is a risk to public safety. They worry that, they worry that crime rates will increase without cash bail and that fewer CONTINUED ON PG. 3

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 10, 2021

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“If it passes, the bill would abolish cash bail in Illinois.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 2

defendants will show up to their trials.

In the case of the Illinois bill, Republican legislators have opposed it on the basis of it being “confusing” and “inoperable.” They voiced concerns about complications the new regulations would pose for law enforcement and judiciary officials, and argued that law enforcement officials were not involved in writing the bill.

If it passes, the bill would abolish cash bail in Illinois, making it the first state to do so. Other states and cities

have limited the use of cash bail or drastically reduced bail amounts. California passed a law abolishing cash bail in 2018, but the reforms were halted by a ballot measure, resulting in the cashbail system remaining in place. New York abolished bail for many misdemeanors and nonviolent crimes in 2019.

In addition to ending cash bail, HB3653 includes numerous other criminal-justice reforms. If the bill is signed into law, it will require that all law-enforcement agencies investigate and report all deaths in custody. It will

also require law enforcement to give arrestees to make three phone calls instead of one. In addition, the bill will reduce barriers to victim compensation, impose new certification requirements for police officers, and require police officers to wear body cameras while on duty. These reforms would be phased in over the next years, with deadlines ranging from 2023 to 2025.

In a statement earlier this month, Pritzker signaled his support for the bill, saying, “This criminal justice package carries with it the opportunity to shape

our state into a lesson in true justice for the nation by abolishing cash bail, modernizing sentencing laws, instituting a certification and decertification system for police officers statewide, requiring body cameras, reforming crowd control response, and amplifying law enforcement training standards.”

Pritzker will not be able to request amendments to the bill due to the adjourning of the current General Assembly session.

44 New COVID Cases Reported in Fourth Week

By CAROLINE KUBZANSKY Managing Editor The University reported 44 new cases of COVID-19 this week, including a cluster of nine cases among undergraduate students living off campus. Those students are now isolating off campus, according to the weekly UChicago Forward email update. The

total number of students isolating off campus is 27. Six on-campus students are currently isolating.

This week’s reported cases have 55 close contacts.

10 of this week’s cases were identified through the surveillance testing program for a 0.17 percent positivity rate. The program has identified a total of 169 cases since September for an

overall positivity rate of 0.23 percent.

Two weeks ago, the positivity rate was 0.22 percent.

This week also saw the beginning of phase 1b for Chicago’s vaccination program. The University reported that it vaccinated more than 400 eligible people on January 31 and expects to vaccinate 450 more on February 7, the only other day available to sign up for

a vaccination in phase 1b.

Chicago’s seven-day rolling positivity rate was 5.2 percent Friday. Chicago has vaccinated about 234,000 people so far, or about 1 in 17 city residents.

Illinois vaccinated just under 75,000 people yesterday, a new record.

The state’s seven-day rolling vaccination rate is hovering around 50,000.

“I Thought I Was Endangering National Security,” Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis Said of His Decision to Resign

By ANUSHKA HARVE Senior Reporter Former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis spoke about how education currently promotes disunity in America, why the military’s problems are a microcosm of society’s, and why he left the Trump administration at an Institute of Politics (IOP) webinar hosted by IOP Executive Director David Axelrod last Thursday.

After he retired as a four-star general in 2013, Mattis said that he strived to live by World War II general Omar Bradley’s words. “When you retire your uniform, you should retire your tongue when it comes to any kind of partisan political statements,” Mattis said.

Taking this desire to avoid politics to heart, Mattis did not meet former President Donald Trump until he was called to interview for the position of Secretary of Defense in 2016. Two years after becoming the Secretary of Defense, however, Mattis resigned because of his belief that the Trump administration did not internalize yet another clear lesson from history: that countries with allies thrive and those without them die.

“There came a point when I was no longer enabling the security of the country—I thought I was endangering it,” he said. Mattis spoke about how progress on many social issues requires strong, nonantagonistic alliances, and that the goal of demonstrating American “reliability as a security

power” had been harmed under the Trump administration.

The fraying of American bonds is not limited to the United States’ international relationships, Mattis said.

In 2017, Mattis stated that the most significant threat to the United States was disunity among Americans. When asked about where the U.S. is now on that issue, particularly in light of the recent Capitol riots last month, Mattis reiterated the words of an article written by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright several weeks ago: “The two most dangerous words in the human vocabulary [are] ‘us’ and ‘them.’”

He also said that in order to address disunity, the U.S. needs to educate children about national history with a more positive lens.

“As I look at the way we teach history today, all the way from elementary through graduate level, I wouldn’t have much affection for America, the way it’s taught,” he said. “And I’m worried that if we don’t teach people the good, as well as the bad and the ugly, there is no mental model for how we bring this back together.”

Mattis also commented on the fact that some of the people who participated in the Capitol insurrection had military training, explaining that issues that show up in the military are a microcosm of societal problems.

“The military services recruit from American society. So, if we think we can recruit from a society with, for example, sexual harassment, and not CONTINUED ON PG. 4

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“The two most dangerous words in the human vocabulary are ‘us’ and ‘them.’”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 3

have it show up in the military, then [we’re] living in a dream world,” he said.

Mattis further spoke about how the military can avoid, as much as possible,

falling into those societal problems.

“It’s going to take training, education, accountability, all the way through. And I’d make certain that people who think [they] can opt out of the military and then be shocked and

outraged that people without [their] values are represented there need to look in the mirror for part of the solution,” Mattis said.

Mattis also said that patriotism during a time of increased partisan-

ship means striving for a better society. “Defending this country and its freedoms, so long as you use those freedoms to make this country a little better, a little fairer, is worth it,” he said.

GSU Organizes Boycott of Student Services Fee CONTINUED FROM COVER

Student service fees also fund student health and wellness programs and Recognized Student Organizations (RSOs). These programs serve both graduate and undergraduate students.

The University previously reduced the fee to $125 for Spring 2020, but the amount has gone back up for subsequent quarters.

In an email to The Maroon, Universityspokesperson Gerald McSwiggan highlighted the University’s inclusion of the graduate student services fee in the cost of attendance for students, which is published annually, and added that “graduate students generally receive notification of applicable fees when they are admitted to the University.”

GSU, which remains unrecognized by the University administration, cited financial strains on graduate students caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

“As virus cases climb and many graduate workers and their families are facing lost income due to the pandemic, those hundreds of dollars make a dramatic difference,” GSU members wrote in the pledge.

GSU Media Liaison Laura Colaneri told The Maroon that graduate students should not be charged the same amount for scaled-back services, citing restrictions put in place to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus.

“Virtual events simply are not replacing the expense of on-campus events,” Colaneri said.

Confusion, Bemusement, and a $2 Billion Bailout of Melvin Capital CONTINUED FROM COVER

the short seller then sells at the market price. The stipulation is that the short seller must eventually return the shares they borrowed from their lender. Until a short seller does so, they need to regularly pay interest to their lender. If the short seller bets correctly, and the value of the stock declines, the seller can buy the shares again at a cheaper price than they sold them for and return them to the lender, keeping the difference as profit.

There’s no doubt that betting on stocks to fail can be a risky practice. In the event that the shorted stock goes up in price, the short seller is faced with two choices. The first option is to “cover” their bet, or buy shares to return them to their lenders immediately. While the short seller loses money, having paid more to reacquire their shares than they did selling them, this option lets them exit the trade, preventing further loss no matter how high share prices become. Option two is to try to wait out the rally in the hopes that prices will fall back down eventually.

As short sellers who choose option one cover their bets, purchasing shares to do so, the increased demand causes the market price of the stock to continue to rise—meaning the potential losses

of investors who choose to wait out the rally rise higher and higher. This motivates more short sellers to scramble to cover their bets and causes share prices to rise again, which motivates even more short sellers to cover, and so on. This positive feedback loop is known as a “short squeeze.” As there is no theoretical limit to how high a share price can go, the potential loss from a short is unbounded.

However, short squeezes do not last indefinitely, and share prices often decline eventually.

After users on r/WallStreetBets noticed the extraordinary short interest in GameStop—on Tuesday, January 26, more than 139 percent of all shares available for trading were sold short—the forum’s band of day traders realized they could engineer one of the largest short squeezes in history. On the other end of the trade were hedge funds like Melvin Capital, who had amassed substantial short positions in the video-game retailer.

For hedge funds like Melvin Capital, betting that GameStop’s shares would decline seemed like a no-brainer. In a world where video games can increasingly be downloaded online through virtual platforms like Steam or the PlayStation CONTINUED ON PG. 5

The UChicago economics department was renamed for Griffin in 2017 after the billionaire donated $125 million to the University. Suah Oh

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 10, 2021

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“All answers (including mine) are pure speculation.

I have nothing intelligent to say about it.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 4

Store—or even streamed from the cloud through services like Google’s Stadia or Nvidia GeForce Now—the concept of walking into a physical store to buy a video game seems outdated. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic devastated retail stores, GameStop reported net losses for two of the past three fiscal years.

What GameStop’s hedge fund short sellers—and their legions of sophisticated financial analysts—failed to take into account, however, was the thousands of internet citizens ready to pounce.

Some were savvy enough to understand that they could make massive gains by engineering a simultaneous short and “gamma squeeze.” Some liked the idea of making billion-dollar firms bleed. And

some just thought that the idea of buying GameStop shares was funny.

On Wednesday, Ja nua r y 27, GameStop’s stock (GME) reached a high of $380 a share, compared to just $19.25 on December 31. Melvin Capital had taken 30 percent losses. To prevent their disastrous GameStop short from incurring even greater losses, the hedge fund needed billions of dollars to close their position. That evening, Melvin announced it was accepting a cash injection of $2.75 billion from hedge funds Point72—led by New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, who provided $750 million—and Kenneth Griffin’s Citadel, who transfused $2 billion into the beleaguered fund. Griffin is a trustee of the University of Chicago and the namesake of the Kenneth C. Griffin

Department of Economics, among other things on campus.

By Friday, January 29, the damage to Melvin Capital became clear. The firm reported its total January loss was 53 percent in January. As GME’s price reached $325 on Friday, its short sellers had lost a combined $19 billion.

The sudden spike in the price of GameStop stock caused many investors and economists to scratch their heads at the absurdity of the situation.

Booth economist Eugene Fama, whose pioneering research in asset prices—including the development of the efficient market hypothesis—won him the 2013 Nobel Prize in economics, thought it was too early to determine precisely what was happening on Wall Street. “All

answers (including mine) are pure speculation,” he wrote in a comment to The Maroon. “I have nothing intelligent to say about it.”

Alex Imas, an assistant professor of behavioral science at Booth, had more to say; though like Fama, he emphasized that only time could tell what would happen to the markets.

Imas wrote in an email to The Maroon that the attack on Melvin Capital “could be the beginning of a brave new world.”

The squeeze could signal the start of a period of increased “volatility and ‘democracy,’” Imas wrote, even though “there will still be winners and losers.”

“Or it could be a fluke,” he said. “We’ll see in the next 6 months.”

Obama Presidential Center to Break Ground in April

By KATE MABUS News Editor On Wednesday, former president Barack Obama announced via video message that his foundation will begin construction on the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) after receiving approval from the National Park Service and the Federal Highway Administration to build in Jackson Park. Construction is slated to start in summer 2021.

The federal review process was launched in 2017 to inspect the OPC’s impact on the environment and the surrounding Woodlawn neighborhood.

Jackson Park, the site for the presidential library and museum complex, is on the National Register of Historic Places, which means it requires federal approval for any construction project.

The OPC will occupy a 19.3-acre area of the 540-acre Jackson Park space, according to the Obama Foundation’s video.

The city has scheduled pre-construction work, such as relocating pipes and electric cables, for April and plans to begin construction as early as August. Construction costs, including

those to redevelop parkland, are estimated to be $500 million.

Since construction plans were announced in 2016, some South Side organizations, such as Protect Our Parks (POP), have vocally criticized the OPC, citing concerns that the complex will destroy park space and disrupt traffic on South Cornell Drive.

Other South Siders and community groups have opposed the OPC on the grounds that it will accelerate gentrification. Throughout 2018 and 2019, community organizers demanded that the Obama Foundation and the City of Chicago sign a community benefits agreement (CBA) that would preserve affordable housing and establish a community trust fund to offset the negative impacts of the OPC. Obama and his foundation have been steadfast in their refusal to sign a CBA, arguing that the center will improve the South Side’s economy.

In its Wednesday announcement, the Obama Foundation called the complex “a catalyst for long-overdue investment in and around historic Jackson Park.” The OPC is expected to attract 700,000 visitors each year and have a $3.1 billion economic impact for Cook

County, per a publication by the Obama Foundation.

Some provisions of the CBA were won in September when the city council passed the Woodlawn Housing Preservation Ordinance to better accommodate the neighborhood and preserve park space. Still, the Obama Foundation has only conceded to the community demands by adding to the original building plans.

The OPC has committed to maintaining 90 percent of Jackson Park as a free and publicly accessible green space. It will also include a branch of the Chicago Public Library, a fruit and vegetable garden to mirror former first lady Michelle Obama’s White House garden, and a recreation center that will replace Hyde Park Academy High School’s track and field complex, which is being removed for construction.

The OPC expects to create 5,000 jobs, including direct and indirect employment during and after construction, according to the Obama Foundation. The Obama Foundation has committed to employing primarily South Side residents and has promised to award 50 percent of subcontracting packages to diverse, minority, and

women-owned businesses. In his video message, Obama said, “We believe the team that’s building the center should look like the community it calls home.”

Despite receiving approval for construction from the federal government this week, the OPC continues to face opposition from some community groups, which are unwilling to let the Obama Presidential Center break ground on Jackson Park. In an interview with The Maroon, POP president Herb Caplan expressed his confidence that the group will be able to block the construction on legal grounds.

“Not only has the pending lawsuit not reached a final conclusion, but we’re also planning to file additional lawsuits,” Caplan said.

POP has drafted a complaint under the Federal Administrative Review Act contesting the findings of the federal review, which it plans to file with the Supreme Court. “Instead of an end to a litigation, there’s going to be more litigation. And as a consequence of all of the pending litigation, the Obama Center, the city, the [Chicago] Park District will have no rights to start construction. Certainly, there will be no groundbreaking in April.”

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 10, 2021

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Scholar, Spiritual Leader, Dean of Rockefeller Chapel: Meet Maurice Charles (M.Div. ’90, Ph.D. ’13) Dean Charles discusses his return to Hyde Park and his experience of racism on campus.

By MYRA BAJWA

Grey City Reporter

As dean of Rockefeller Chapel, the Reverend Maurice Charles sees himself as a spiritual leader first and foremost. When people are hurting, celebrating, or asking questions about life, he is the first person they call. But he’s also used the position to raise questions about race and the role of policing at UChicago—questions which, as a Black man, he’s grappled with for his entire life.

Charles grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, in a family that was heavily involved in the church. His mother’s family had migrated to Cleveland during the first Great Migration and, according to Charles, left their past behind.

“I come from a family that came from the Jim Crow South. And they never talked about Jim Crow. They never talked about the fact that my mother’s side of the family left Georgia right around the time of an election that Governor Clifford Walker was elected,” Charles said.

The election of Walker, a prominent member of the Ku Klux Klan, drove the family’s decision to leave. His family’s history and his own childhood in the 1960s shaped how he dealt with adversity early on, whether that was adjusting to a college environment while an undergraduate or racial prejudice throughout his life. “[My family’s] attitude was that you just stay focused. If you’re not welcome here, you find a better place, and you keep moving forward and you don’t look back.

And so that’s how I dealt with the situation as a student,” Charles said.

After high school, Charles attended

Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in Cleveland but struggled to find his footing during his first year. He sought out a non-denominational seminary where he could surround himself with scholars. That search eventually brought him to the University of Chicago Divinity School, where he received his master’s and his doctorate.

“I had a great experience in my last couple of years. But it wasn’t that great upon entering. I was a first-generation, low-income college student getting adjusted,” Charles said. “But when I came to visit Chicago for my master’s degree, I immediately fell in love.”

The first time Charles stepped onto the University of Chicago campus, he was attending Sunday service with his sister as they toured universities in the Midwest.

He was in his 20s, just having graduated from CWRU. While on campus, he had an informal interview at the Divinity School and asked his interviewer what kind of student does well at the University. That was when he knew he had found the academic haven he was seeking at UChicago.

“They said, ‘Students who do well are tough-minded, strong-willed, and realize that whatever values you have, whatever values you cherish—if you make those ideas public, they will be challenged in the free marketplace of ideas.’” Charles said, “Sign me up.”

The lifelong friends Charles made during this period left a lasting impression on him; with a smile, he recounted that one of them walked across town last year at the age of 90 to give Charles cranberry-nut bread after his back surgery. But this period was also pivotal for Charles because the University served as a guide as Charles

mapped out his career path. He found mentors that led him to decide on what kind of clergyman he wanted to be and where he wanted to serve.

He spent six years at Stanford University as associate dean for religious life before being named dean of Rockefeller Chapel in July 2019. He is the first African American to hold this role.

Charles describes himself as a happy alum who has fallen in love with both the academic atmosphere and the physical grounds of campus itself.

“The campus for me is a bit of a haven.

I breathe a sigh of relief when I’m on the campus. It’s a beautiful campus. And it’s even more beautiful than it was when I was [a student] here,” Charles said.

However, the decision to return to Hyde Park as dean of Rockefeller Chapel was not a simple one. While still a student, Charles was racially profiled by both the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD).

This past summer, Provost Ka Yee Lee invited Charles to speak at a webinar entitled “Taking a Stand Against Racism: Our Shared Values and Responsibilities.”

Charles described his experiences of being followed by police officers on campus and being stopped at campus apartment buildings. As a doctoral student, he remembers being stopped by UCPD on 53rd Street.

Over time, he began to question the racial prejudices held by campus police.

“When I was young, I accepted being trailed by the police as just the cost of doing business in a major city,” Charles said. “After a while, you get old. And you say, ‘Wait a second. What profile could I possibly fit, a

man with a beat up Saturn [car] with a ton of books on his way to Regenstein library?

I don’t understand how stopping me is going to solve any problems of crime on the South Side.’”

These experiences provide a framework for the work Charles aims to do as dean. His past work has looked at the intersection between religion and violence, as well as the difference between authorized force and violence when police forces engage civilians. This research continues to inform his approach as dean of Rockefeller Chapel.

“One of my first meetings as dean, I wanted to meet with the [UCPD] chief of police because I need to address this head on because it’s still with me. I was surprised [that we could meet], because while I was a student I was just focused on getting through the program and getting on with my life,” Charles said.

During that meeting, he learned that, in his student days, UCPD officers were not employed full-time by UCPD, and were mostly Chicago police officers moonlighting for the University. Since then, UCPD has increased the training of officers and tried to improve police-campus relations.

Crisis intervention training was introduced in 2015, along with expanded police training to try to help officers understand the effects of racial prejudices on their work and the community.

Charles has already noticed the changes between his time as a student and now as dean of Rockefeller Chapel. “I can see the difference [between my time as a student and now as a dean], just in the way that I feel on the campus,” Charles said.

CONTINUED ON PG. 7

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“I accepted being trailed by the police as just the cost of doing business in a major city.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 6

Despite this improvement, however, Charles believes that the state of campus policing is far from perfect, as he explained in the webinar.

“Does a university community require an implicit vow from its officers to enforce long-standing racial inequalities? Until that question is answered honestly by each

and every member of this community, all talk of reform is meaningless,” Charles said in the webinar.

One of Charles’s main goals as dean of Rockefeller Chapel is to help everyone on campus have a fulfilling experience as he did as a student. He describes campus as a “sanctuary” and is committed to making all students feel safe and welcomed at the

University.

Much of his work as dean involves working with students by providing spiritual and emotional guidance. As a chaplain, he sees himself as a resource in the community for celebration, for grief, and for difficult conversations. Many of the conversations he has had with students lately have centered around the feelings

of isolation brought on by social distancing.

“I had these wonderful professors. I had this community of friends, and I’m just going to stay focused and keep looking forward. Now that I’m back here in this role, I feel some responsibility to address the barriers that [prevent] people…[from] enjoying this place as much as I did,” Charles said.

VIEWPOINTS Graduate Workers Shouldn’t Be Forced to Pay the Student Services Fee During the Pandemic GSU members call for graduate workers to withhold their Student Services Fee in protest.

By GRADUATE STUDENTS UNITED

Miles Burton, Editor-in-Chief Emma Dyer, Editor-in-Chief Caroline Kubzansky, Managing Editor Jessica Xia, Chief Production Officer The Maroon Editorial Board consists of the editors-in-chief and editors of The Maroon.

NEWS

Tony Brooks, editor Peyton Jeffersion, editor Matthew Lee, editor Yiwen Lu, editor Kate Mabus, editor Pranathi Posa, editor Justin Smith, editor Brad Subramaniam, editor GREY CITY

Alex Dalton, editor Laura Gersony, editor Avi Waldman, editor VIEWPOINTS

Gage Gramlick, editor Ruby Rorty, editor ARTS

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Despite persistently claiming that graduate workers are not workers, the University of Chicago pays doctoral students to take courses, teach, conduct research, organize events, and much more each quarter. And each quarter, like clockwork, graduate students are expected to pay a portion of their paychecks back to the University in the form of the Student Services Fee (SSF).

They are told that this fee funds “essential student services” and activities on campus, but the University is adamantly evasive about what it actually pays for, citing a nebulous assortment of benefits like “student health and wellness, recreational facilities and activities, and student programming.”

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have highlighted the vague and problematic nature of the SSF. In spring 2020, under pressure from student organizers, including UChicago for Fair Tuition, the administration reduced the SSF to $125 for the quarter, acknowledging that students were unable to access on-campus services. Since the fall, however, the fee has been restored to the full amount, $416 per quarter, even though many of the services and facilities supported by the SSF are still operating at severely reduced capacity and some are not available at all.

The SSF has always been an onerous and dubiously justified tax on UChicago students generally and graduate workers in particular. The fee is significantly higher than those paid at comparable universities: Northwestern

University typically charges a student activity fee that is one quarter of UChicago’s SSF, but has waived fees for all graduate students during the pandemic.

By contrast, our fee has increased by 20 percent since 2014. This means that over the course of an academic year, graduate workers are now charged over $1,200 for an ill-defined bundle of services.

The expense is even higher for those enrolled in summer classes, who must pay the SSF during summer quarter as well as autumn, winter, and spring.

The administration’s unwillingness to reveal what this fee actually pays for is highly disturbing. Even under ordinary circumstances, graduate workers feel that it is well within their rights to know what they are being asked to subsidize with their stipends; during a pandem-

ic, this is all the more urgent. If the services funded by the SSF are truly essential to “student life,” they ought to be included as part of graduate-worker funding packages and, for undergraduate students, should be covered by their already exorbitantly high tuition. If the University wishes to advertise its financial support for graduate programs, it should make good on that promise and fully fund graduate students’ basic costs of living, including healthcare and (under non-pandemic conditions) access to University facilities necessary to complete their jobs.

As everyone continues to endure pandemic conditions and many graduate workers, undergraduates, and their families continue to face lost income, the hundreds of dollars spent on the SSF make an enormous

difference. Now, more than ever, graduate workers need relief. Students working from home have absorbed electricity and networking costs from the University, facing higher utility bills and often purchasing new equipment to establish effective home offices. For UChicago to continue to charge the full fee is not only nonsensical but exploitative. This is a cynical gesture from a university with a multibillion-dollar endowment signaling that the administration views students as little more than disposable sources of income.

In light of the ongoing and unprecedented burdens resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, UChicago GSU is demanding the immediate suspension of the Student Services Fee for the 2020–21 academic year, and refunds for those who have already paid for

the autumn and winter quarters. We, the graduate workers, demand complete transparency regarding the uses of funds collected from the Student Services Fee in the future. We are asking for the administration to ensure that all incoming students be made aware of this fee within their offers of admission. Hundreds of graduate workers have signed a pledge to collectively withhold payment of the Student Services Fee until these demands are met. The graduate workers of the University of Chicago stand united in this pledge of refusal and call on the University’s administration to immediately adopt our demands.

The authors are members of Graduate Students United at the University of Chicago.

Free Time for Free Thought To live up to its values, UChicago must take steps to give its students more free time.

By NATHAN CAIRN GOLDTHWAITE

If you are like me, you came to the University of Chicago to be a free thinker, or perhaps to become a better one. Either way, UChicago promised four years of learning and intellectual growth, of shared excitement and discovery among some of the brightest teachers and young people in the world. Alongside academic rigor, UChicago values include “bold, self-confident questioning” and “intellectual engagement” designed to prepare students for thoughtful and reflective lives. But these values do not correspond with the reality of a Chicago education today; our community is often more exhausted than excited, more hesitant than courageous,

and demonstrably unwilling to put UChicago’s nominal values into practice. In its unyielding pursuit of academic rigor, our community has failed to sustain the other necessary conditions for meaningful liberal education.

One of these necessary conditions is free time, and here I argue that we need more of it at the University of Chicago. We can protect free time with a number of policy adjustments at the administrative, classroom, and individual levels.

Where do we see this disconnect between the undergraduate experience and University values?

We see it distilled in the recent computer science cheating scandal: During a final coursework review last quarter, CS 121 instructors were “shocked and dismayed” at the number of students

who had plagiarizedtheir assignments. Copying the work of others is the opposite of free thinking; it shows disregard for the UChicago principles of curiosity and genuine learning and betrays the panic of students who, overwhelmed by work and desperate to maintain good grades, decided to forgo learning altogether. We also see the absence of UChicago values in the way students bargain with one another for seats in certain Hum, Sosc or bio core classes known to be “easier” than others, sometimes offering to pay tens to hundreds of dollars for these seats.

That students here would seek out the easiest courses instead of the most interesting or transformative ones—and spend more money on top of tuition for them—shows that a number us view the Core

primarily as a GPA booster instead of the transformative intellectual experience it is designed to be. Finally, we see it in a social culture of aversion towards “That Kids”—an aversion which extends far beyond censuring the truly rude know-italls and is instead painting enthusiastic students with the same broad brush. These behaviors signal that our classrooms are not the bastions of “fearless learning” we expected as first-years, and that the actual state of our undergraduate experience does not reflect UChicago’s values.

This problem exists in part because UChicago students don’t have free time. We need free time in order to reflect upon what we have learned, to integrate our knowledge, and to generate meaningful opinions about our

subjects. With barely enough time to complete our work and well below what we need to engage deeply with it, we cannot produce the sort of good, original, and valuable thinking that our university prides itself on. We cannot begin to pursue “bold questions” if the pressure of this place compels us to choose easy courses or cheat our way to success. Free time is essential for realizing the nominal values of UChicago; without free time, we cannot truly think freely.

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and shuts down opportunities for genuine reflection, engagement, or enthusiasm. We are constantly studying for endless exams, reading hundreds of pages for class, or writing papers. High-density courses in the College encourage students to memorize and regurgitate material and embrace academic vocationalism (like buying spots in easy courses) and outcome-oriented studying (or cheating) in order to stay afloat.

In addition, current campus mental health resources do not address the structural causes of student stress and take even more free time away from students.

UChicago Student Wellness routinely offers study breaks, therapy dogs, and other therapeutic activities, but students cannot reasonably be expected to ping-pong between intense studying and these recovery sessions to repair the damage done by a ruthless education. This unsustainable approach to student mental health adds activities to students’ already-crowded schedules instead of reducing their burdens. It’s a “Band-Aid” for these problems, not a cure. With further constraints to free time masquerading as solutions, students are even less likely to form sustainable relationships with their workloads or engage in the quality of thinking our UChicago values stipulate.

How can we encourage free time and free thinking? First, by removing one unit—a single text from a humanities syllabus or one weeklong topic from a STEM

course—professors can improve classroom engagement as students cease to be choked by their work and remember their excitement for learning. Next, the administration should evaluate whether current departmental major requirements are helping or hurting the College’s overarching aim of educating the whole mind of the student.

The administration should also consider offering pass-fail grading for Core classes, as one student from the Class of 2022 suggested to me in conversation. Finally, UChicago should seriously consider joining with many of its peer institutions by adopting the semester system. These decisions would all give students crucial time to think about their learning and return earnest enthusiasm back into our classrooms: an enormous benefit well worth a relatively small reduction in rigor.

As students, we can create free time for free thinking by ourselves. We can drop our second majors. We can take leaves of absence. We can study and read what we like during our vacations instead of rushing into careerism. We can engage fully and patiently with four years of unfamiliar and challenging courses that reward us with experiences of true learning, our GPAs notwithstanding. We can keep free time in our schedules and rediscover what it feels like to be genuinely excited about our college experiences every day. If we truly want a value-aligned Chicago education, we must be willing to demand and covet the necessary conditions—including some measure of free time—which make that experience possible.

ANGIE ZHU Not every student would benefit from having more free time. There are many students who would gladly shrug off voluntary reflection and enjoy a slightly easier ride to a UChicago diploma. But who should we be catering to here? If our university strives to produce future thought leaders, we should not be educating with mindless rigor by default at the expense of genuine intellectual engagement, lest we raise a generation of scholars who produce nothing more than cheap and shallow ideas. Instead, we should

elect to provide enough free time for the truly self-directed students among us to think deeply and develop as free thinkers, creatives and change-makers. An environment that can balance academic rigor with thoughtful free time will help such students engage the UChicago values of bold questioning and intellectual engagement and share them with the world after graduation.

Nathan Cairn Goldthwaite is a third-year in the College.

ARTS The Surprising Reverie of COIN’s Virtual “Dreamland” Concert

By ISABELLA CISNEROS Associate Arts Editor I’ll be honest—I’ve been avoiding virtual concerts. After my first in-pe rson concert at ag e twelve, I never stopped going. I spent my high school years doing my homework days in anticipation or risking the odd assignment or test just to spend a night watching indie artists in

a packed local venue, surrounded by an energetic crowd, bass rattling my ribcage.

While the concept of a virtual concert appealed to me at first, it felt like something that couldn’t come even close to emulating that experience I had come to love so much. So, for a few months, I ignored any mention of a virtual concert, even for artists I enjoyed or hadn’t had a chance to see live. It wasn’t until COIN announced

their own virtual concert that I finally caved and decided to bite the bullet.

2020 was supposed to be COIN’s year.

In February, they released their third studio album, Dreamland, which was meant to be followed by the Dreamland Tour, a sprawling cross-country tour composed of the band’s biggest headlining shows at venues they had previously only dreamt of performing at. They man-

aged to squeeze in a few shows before the cancellations swept in, which effectively ended the tour before it could ever really get off the ground. Despite the initial dismay, the band bounced back with the release of the Indigo Violet EP, the first of a series of EPs, in October. Then, on November 20th, COIN performed their first virtual concert.

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The unconventional nature of a virtual concert begins not with the concert itself, but with its preparation. Usually, my concert prep involves a wardrobe change, lots of water (I usually give my throat a run for its money at concerts), and a jam session on the way to the venue. On this particular Friday, I instead completed my genetics lab, assumed the most comfortable viewing position possible, and connected my laptop to the TV for an optimal viewing experience.

The concert started with a reflection video of sorts. Footage of COIN’s first tour in 2015 juxtaposed footage of the band contemplating their 2020 tour’s possible cancellation as they traveled from concert venue to concert venue last February. It was chilling to see the band at its beginnings, celebrating streams on a song, only to be followed by the members discussing their grim prospects on a tour bus, the uncertainty of which concert might be their last, an unspoken, yet palpable, thing between them. It was yet another reminder of just how much has changed in so many ways, and in so little time.

Despite its somber beginnings, the familiar feeling of giddy anticipation crept in as the video ended and the concert truly began. The camera came up on a shot of four platforms, one for each band member. Crew members walked around the set, putting finishing touches on instruments and stage components as the band’s overture-like track “Dreamland Sequence” played overhead. The lights then switched off, with the band making its way to the platforms using flashlights. As the last lyrics of “Dreamland Sequence” faded out, lead singer Chase Lawrence welcomed fans with a simple greeting: “Hello from your TV, we’re COIN.” While a virtual concert has its pitfalls, COIN created a show with a minimalistic yet highly engaging set design out of the new medium, the efficacy enhanced by the high quality of the cinematography. The band took advantage of the space in every way possible, spreading out and combining the platforms in a variety of patterns. They also made sure

COIN performs at their virtual concert. From left to right: Chase Lawrence, Matt Martin, Joe Memmel, Ryan Winnen.

Courtesy of RIFF Magazine to utilize multiple angles, from stageDespite the inevitably odd feeling in- previous concerts, I didn’t find that it dewide shots to focused angles of the band herent in performing to an empty room, tracted from the experience; seeing the members’ faces using GoPros attached the band members seemed to appreciate passion these artists had for their craft, to mic stands. While every aspect of the the opportunity to connect with fans and their gratitude for the opportunity to show bore the meticulous attention and after such a long time away. Lawrence, perform and share this concert with us detail given to it, the light design was usually the most energetic of the group, made the experience all the more special. what truly made the concert unforgetta- jumps and dances his way through live Ultimately, whether a virtual concert ble. The design featured a myriad of fix- performances without ever missing a can live up to or even surpass a live contures, from a moon-like circle that came beat. Here, he was more contempla- cert is a question that I don’t believe necup behind the band to a disco ball that tive and drawn into the music, though essarily has an answer. While a live chat gave an otherworldly feel to the space. he didn’t miss an opportunity to inject in which fans typed “WOOO” at the end The different colors used in the light- his usual charm into the performance, of every song doesn’t necessarily equate ing—from a soft baby blue to an electric bringing in a mini-trampoline to bounce to screaming alongside fellow concertteal to a rosy pink—gave an added touch around during a particular song. Guitar- goers, the central ingredient that makes to each song and made the setlist distinct ist Joe Memmel was more immersed in these experiences so special is still there: in a way unique to the medium. I was es- the music as well, grinding out complicat- community. For one moment, both artist pecially moved by the design for one of ed guitar riffs and stylizing on his usual and fan were able to experience the magic my favorite songs off Dreamland, “Babe playing where possible, in addition to of live music and relive it together, albeit Ruth.” The band opted for a black and providing beautiful harmonies and back- through a screen. Though it looks like we white filter while old footage of the track’s ing vocals. Drummer Ryan Winnen also may still be months away from live munamesake played behind the members. gave an energetic performance akin to sic, in its absence virtual concerts have Given the song’s dreamy sonic quality, his usual playing on tour. Tourist bassist proven worthy alternatives capable of the pared-down design took center stage, Matt Martin, a recent addition to COIN, engaging their watchers while pushing giving an added emphasis to the rawness is slightly more on the reserved side as the artists’ creative limits, resulting in a of the music. Mesmerized by the visuals, a performer, but seemed attuned to the unique experience that manages to disI found that my awe at what the band had group and its music in a way I hadn’t seen tract us from the times we’re living in yet accomplished overtook the doubt I had the last time I saw the band live. While is wholly a product of them. In the words had coming into the concert. this performance was mellower than of Lawrence, “This is weird… but nice.”

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Patrick Jagoda Talks Experimental Games: Critique, Play, and Design in the Age of Gamification

By EMMA-VICTORIA BANOS Arts Reporter Patrick Jagoda, UChicago professor in English and cinema and media studies, Guggenheim fellow, and executive editor of Critical Inquiry, is a highly achieved academic. But his investigation as to what defines a game in a world in which the line between games and productivity is increasingly blurred is not so conventionally academic; it is awash with pop culture references, memorable quotes, and pithy commentary.

Jagoda’s discussion of his new book, Experimental Games: Critique, Play, and Design in the Age of Gamification, fittingly began with active engagement of the audience. Just as most games demand a certain level of constant attention, Jagoda and his cohosts Alenda Chang, author of Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games, and Ashlyn Sparrow, assistant director of UChicago’s Weston Game Lab, requested that the usually passive Zoom participants participate in the talk through a Kahoot quiz.

Jagoda joked, “You probably weren’t expecting this at a book event, but here we are.” The enthusiasm with which the audience responded to a glorified quiz poses a question: How does Kahoot manage to make quizzes feel like games, rather than the kind of imposition that one would normally associate with quizzes?

The process that Kahoot has mastered is that of gamification, and Kahoot isn’t alone. As Sparrow put it, “The process of using game mechanics in traditional nongame activities is all around us. We have Fitocracy, Fitbit, My Fitness Pal, and Nike Plus gamifying exercise, Khan Academy gamifying education and learning, and consumer rewards programs actually even gamifying loyalty…. The language of competition, leaderboards, and points have taken over mundane aspects of our lives.”

Sparrow and Chang explained how in Jagoda’s view, this “language” developed alongside neoliberalism. Chang said that Experimental Games reflected on how the “post-industrial growth of neoliberalism and informatics informed the develop-

ment of games.” Sparrow was of a similar opinion. “These psychological and developmental design practices are not a recent development. In Experimental Games, Patrick Jagoda has definitely connected the rise of games and competition to neoliberalism,” she said.

But what exactly is so experimental about games when they’re integrated into our daily lives? Sparrow notes that Jagoda doesn’t believe that all games are necessarily experimental: The title merely indicates his wish that more games were. According to Sparrow, Experimental Games intends to answer a major question: “How might we push the simple idea of gamification and neoliberal thought and use games as a form of experimentation that allows its players to shift its relationship with the world?”

Although Sparrow touched on Jagoda’s motivation for writing this book through that key rhetorical question, Jagoda had the opportunity to share his direct inspiration: “Every book I’ve worked on or want to work on begins with a concept that causes me discomfort.” When it came to Experimental Games, the discomfort he experienced was the “tension between what games are and what games can be.”

However, the experience of writing the book was invaluable to Jagoda, helping him determine “what kind of game designer…to be over the next decade.”

Jagoda is exceedingly aware that the world of gaming is riddled with inequities, showing concern about how to most effectively diversify games and eliminate the bigotry often seen in video game storylines. He asked himself, “If video games are complicit with militarism, sexism, racism, and so forth, what does it mean to make games that both acknowledge and exceed those kinds of coordinates?”

Writing Experimental Games forced him to ponder “what a game does to you as a player in a medium-specific way: how it impacts your body, your thinking, your habits, your beliefs, your ways of moving through the world.”

In Experimental Games, Jagoda discusses three sorts of difficulty: mechanical difficulty, affective difficulty, and interpretative difficulty. When audience

members were asked the question, “What makes a game difficult?” on Kahoot, a majority of the respondents provided examples of mechanical difficulty in games, like “inconsistency,” “platform jumping,” “poor control scheme[s],” and a “need for precision.” Jagoda described them as “basically things that involve difficulties with hand-eye coordination, difficult enemies, [and] unforgiving numbers of extra lives.”

To boil it down to its essence, mechanical difficulty manifests in a “physical sort of way.” Many other respondents provided examples of affective difficulty, like “emotional challenges,” “fear of dying,” “willpower to improve,” and “banal repetition” (in other words, boredom). Affective difficulty, Jagoda explained, encompasses “experiences of boredom, curiosity, complicity, uncertainty, and in some cases these intensities can be difficult to encounter.”

Too often, players think of a game’s mechanical difficulty or affective difficulty rather than its interpretative difficulty.

In fact, nobody in the audience provided any examples of interpretative difficulty, even though, as Jagoda pointed out, the storylines of many art games and independent games are difficult to interpret.

One may read a novel or an informational text like an encyclopedia and say, “That was difficult,” but Jagoda finds that “people tend not to use that kind of language in a nuanced way around games.” He encourages people to see past the physical and emotional challenges, to also see the message the creator is trying to get across,

or even to learn lessons from a game that the player can independently discover.

At the core of Experimental Games is the question of how games can affect not only our virtual lives but also our real ones. “There’s a real value in games that raise complex problems and make problems that didn’t previously exist, which seems like a bad thing, but I argue [that it] is a very good thing,” Jagoda said. To him, game designers are mad scientists, cooking up unlikely scenarios and observing people’s gut instincts when put under extreme pressure and given a series of binary choices.

The way Jagoda uses “experimental” in his book doesn’t merely refer to a subset of avant-garde games. As a mad scientist (a.k.a. game designer) himself, he uses the term in the sense that one would in a laboratory: He sees games as sandboxes that are useful for playing with future realities and believes that these controlled digital environments can yield important information that could influence which of those potential realities we choose. “Hypothesis generation and hypothesis testing are not the province purely of the sciences, but do play out in the arts in a number of different ways…. I really think of games as artificial constructions that nudge and modulate reality’s potentials…. If we only understand better how it is they do that with computation as a component, then there are better directions we can go with game design in the next 10 to 50 years.”

“Every book I’ve worked on or want to work on begins with a concept that causes me discomfort.”

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SPORTS Booth Professor Lives Out an NBA Dream

By ALISON GILL Sports Editor

Booth professor John Huizinga never realized his boyhood dream of playing in the National Basketball Association (NBA). As the son of a professional football player, sports were a part of his family and his first love. He learned math from the back of baseball cards and became a self-proclaimed gym rat, “completely captivated by” and “obsessed with” basketball. He spent his free time playing in gyms around San Diego, bumping into members of the now-defunct San Diego Rockets. Yet, after seeing the “immense pleasure [the NBA players] had in beating the crap” out of him, that childhood dream flamed out, replaced by a growing love of mathematics.

Huizinga attended Pomona College, where he played basketball—a “disappointing” experience—before he went on to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to earn his Ph.D. in economics in 1980. The same year, he joined the faculty at UChicago’s Booth School of Business.

Yet, he never entirely abandoned that first love, and, as a result, he has lived a charmed life as an NBA junkie.

“I just lived in the gym all throughout high school. I played in college, then at MIT, and in Chicago up until about 2002.

It’s just something I love so much, and [it] has given me a huge diversity of great experiences,” he said.

He saw Bill Walton “sit in the corner and clean the floor at junior high tournaments” when growing up in San Diego.

He played against—and was repeatedly trounced by—Pat Riley during Riley’s time as the hotshot Rockets guard (before he became the hotshot Lakers coach and, now, the hotshot Miami Heat executive).

He helped to bring Yao Ming to the U.S. and called him after every game of his Hall of Fame career with the Houston Rockets.

Not too bad for a consolation prize.

How exactly did all of this happen?

“Luck, being in the right place at the right time,” according to Huizinga.

In the spring of 2002, Yao Ming was on the verge of superstardom. At 7’6” with deft shooting touch and shocking mobil-

ity, he was destined to be one of the faces of the NBA—if he could navigate his way through the Chinese government’s red tape.

Erik Zhang was a student at Booth and Yao’s cousin. He was the one to organize Yao’s tryout with the NBA in Chicago, and another Booth faculty member offered Huizinga the opportunity to attend. After the tryout session, Zhang asked Huizinga to come to dinner with him and Yao. “Of course, I said yes: one of the easiest yeses of my life,” Huizinga admitted.

There, the duo approached Huizinga with the job to get Yao out of China and into the NBA. Why Huizinga? “Another Booth faculty member recommended me.

I knew a lot about basketball, I am a good negotiator, and [Yao] could trust me to do the right thing,” Huizinga explained.

Once Huizinga helped to win Yao’s release and his right to pick his own agent, the professor figured that his work was done and that Yao would pick a real agent.

However, Huizinga had earned his spot in the athlete’s inner circle and became a

critical part of “Team Yao,” representing the player in all basketball-related activities and shoe endorsements while serving as an adviser on all other activities.

The entrance of Yao Ming—the first-ever Asian player drafted and only fourth-ever international player drafted with the top pick—is seen as an inflection point in the league’s history, ushering in a global era that is responsible for its massive popularity. Yet, Huizinga is quick to downplay his own part in creating NBA history.

“Yao made all the contributions.

He’s the one who changed the game and changed the NBA, who made the Hall of Fame. I helped him get to America, and I helped him acclimate to the culture….

Yao is the person who is responsible for it all,” he asserted.

Of course, Huizinga does recognize the sheer surreality of his work. “To help Yao felt great, but, on a personal level, being an agent allowed me to meet my childhood hero, Bill Russell,” Huizinga admitted.

At a reception for the 2003 All-Star Game, Huizinga saw the legendary Celtic and mustered up the courage to introduce himself. This conversation became the catalyst for a friendship that has continued throughout the years.

“I got to meet and befriend my childhood hero, and each time I speak with him about civil rights, or education, or anything, my admiration for him only increases,” Huizinga professes.

Beyond his personal experiences, Huizinga has used his professional platform to explore the sports realm. Along with professors Kevin Murphy and Toby Moskowitz, he piloted the Sports Analytics course at Booth, a class that routinely draws rave reviews and has launched several alumni into front-offices around pro sports.

“I have had a couple of former students come back and show me their World Series rings—rub it in my face a little bit,” he said with a laugh.

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Professor John Huizinga’s interest in basketball began in his childhood. courtesy of the university of chicago

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“There is so much more context available nowadays to not just show who hit the shot, but [also] how the shot was created.

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dents how “the sausage gets made” in data analytics, using sports as an example.

While leagues allocate wins, the students focus on team-specific trends to identify competitive edges. Advanced metrics have exploded in recent years, and Huizinga sees “considerable remaining upside” in their application.

“The first analytics were really primitive, not much more than counting. But we know that not every basket is created

equally; not every hit is the same. Where analytics are headed is increasing sophistication,” he said.

During one of his post-game conversations with Yao, Huizinga remembers noting that Shane Battier was one of the best shot blockers in the NBA, but using counting stats like total blocks didn’t recognize him as such. So he ran his own analysis that incorporated the expected value of the blocked shots. Lo and behold, Battier rose up the rankings relative to

counting stats and Tim Duncan surged past Dwight Howard. Huizinga points to this as an example of how analytics will continue to progress.

“There is so much more context available nowadays to not just show who hit the shot, but [also] how the shot was created. We can assign context to the stats to create better analytics and know how to properly allocate credit among various players,” Huizinga explained.

Yet, for all the ways that sports have

advanced in the last decades, Huizinga remains “positively, absolutely certain” that the best basketball player of all time is Russell: “Nobody will ever compete with Bill. Eleven NBA championships in 13 years. Two NCAA championships when his coach was so racist that he didn’t even nominate [Bill] as the best player in the conference. To do what he did in the circumstances that he did it in is beyond incredible—it cannot be compared to anything else.”

We want YOU!

By CHRIS JONES Across 1. Chatter 6. Stuff (with) 9. Stated 13. Violinist’s supply 14. Rice-like pasta 15. Gateway Arch designer Saarinen 16. “___ even” 17. Ancient sailor 18. ___ rock (genre) 19. Part one of the message 22. Historical periods 23. Wished 24. Home of the Ho Chí Minh Mausoleum 25. UChicago org. providing sign language interpreters 26. Ct. 27. Aladdin monkey 29. Sketchy major?

30. Tag role 32. Follows 34. Part two of the message 36. Athens’s counterpart 38. Vendors of some quick bites 39. ___ of 1812 40. They (Sp.) 42. Space filler?

43. Undergoes 46. Hot passion 48. Shape of a track 50. Mil. leader 51. Part three of the message 54. Gin fruit 55. Bark source 56. Captain Picard’s first officer 57. Cannon ending 58. Fabled megabirds 59. Regale 60. Inquires 61. “Uh??????”

62. Basil sauce Down 1. Values... or evaluates 2. Save for later, in a way 3. Yoga poses 4. Triangle noises 5. Threshold (Abbr.)

6. On the whole quite pleased 7. Rhododendron’s kin 8. Qatari capital 9. Popular filter 10. Balloonist 11. What mines mine 12. Watches a

neighbor’s puppy, say 14. Nearest Canadian province to Chicago 20. Like the sight of wilted flowers 21. Booming sound 26. Haute ___ 28.Emission-producing hybrid 30. Conjunction with neither 31. Special care, in brief 33. Bro’s partner 34. Troweling, etc.

35. Moves out 36. Welsh port city whose name looks like an apt description 37. Let’s go early 41. “Parting is such sweet ___”: Shakespeare 43. Short-form poems 44. Exam with a five-pt. scale 45. Sound system 47. Like yesterday but not tomorrow 49. Shirt style 50. Misdemeanor 52. Trailrunning gp.

53. Saran ___

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13

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30

31

34 36

11

12

44

45

29

32

33

35

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39 46

28

10

40

41 48

47

42

43

49

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51

52

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61

62

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