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NEWS: UCMed Lays Off 180 Employees

FEBRUARY 22, 2024 EIGHTH WEEK VOL. 136, ISSUE 11

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Weathering the Storm: University Presents Plans to Close Budget Deficit by 2028

By ELENA EISENSTADT | News Reporter Provost Katherine Baicker and Chief Financial Officer Ivan Samstein, along with President Paul Alivisatos, hosted a second invitation-only town hall for faculty and staff on February 6. The presentation included a four-year plan to eliminate the budget deficit by 2028. Their plan focuses on financial restructuring, moderating expenses in administrative and supportive “central” units, and working

with “academic” units to reduce spending.

The Maroon watched the town hall live.

The biggest addition to the plan focuses on revenue growth through initiatives such as expanded degree offerings, extension programs, philanthropic reach, and potential “research sponsorship.” In a Q & A session following the presentation, faculty and staff criticized the University for straying from its academic principles, and

raised concerns about how the plan would affect an ongoing staff hiring freeze and funding for specific units.

The University’s current $239 million deficit is a result of expenses growing faster than revenue, the University claimed. The University estimates that slowing spending growth and increasing revenues by 1–2 percent each over the next four years will allow the financials to break even.

Baicker, Samstein, and Alivisatos

each stressed the University’s ongoing commitment to its core values, including a love for learning and freedom of expression, as it reevaluated strategies to close the budget deficit and more closely align revenue costs and spending. According to Alivisatos, this commitment to the values over time has made the University a model for building trust with society.

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IFK Director Announces Shutdown, University Fails to Confirm

GSU-UE Willing to Strike, Collects Over 1000 Pledges

By EMMA JANSSEN | Deputy News Editor

By CELESTE ALCALAY | News Reporter

The Institute on the Formation of Knowledge (IFK), the University’s interdisciplinary center for the study of knowledge, is shutting down, according to its director, Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer.

However, despite Bartsch-Zimmer announcing the closure to employees of the IFK and on the social media platform X on Tuesday, the University declined to confirm whether the Institute was being shut down.

“Today I learned that the University of Chicago is shutting down the Institute on the Formation of Knowledge for budgetary reasons. I’m so sad for all the people who will be impacted by this,” read Bartsch-Zimmer’s post on X. Bartsch-Zimmer, who is also the Helen A. Regenstein Distinguished Service

Professor of Classics and the Program in Gender Studies, told The Maroon over email that she first learned of the IFK’s closure during a meeting with University Provost Katherine Baicker on Tuesday, February 6.

“She called me to her office saying she wished to discuss budget cuts and the replacement for our executive director, who was hired by [Alivisatos’s] new climate engineering initiative. I was looking forward to telling her about the possibility of a merger between IFK and [the Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science] that would save the University money. I had no idea she planned to tell me IFK was being shut down,” Bartsch-Zimmer wrote.

Graduate Students United–United Electrical (GSU-UE) has collected over 1,000 signatures for a strike pledge it launched on February 8, becoming the second labor union on campus preparing to strike if negotiations with the University reach a standstill.

If GSU-UE were to move forward with the next step—a strike authorization vote—they would be joining UChicago Medicine nurses, represented by National Nurses United (NNU). The Nurses Union proceeded with a strike authorization vote on February 20.

A GSU-UE general membership meeting to launch the strike pledge took place on Thursday at Hyde Park Union Church, less than an hour after their latest eighthour bargaining session with the Univer-

sity. Around 500 members attended the 6 p.m. meeting, comprising both in-person and Zoom attendees.

“We will be out on your picket lines if you guys make [the] move [to strike],” UChicago Medicine nurse and NNU representative Amber Turi announced in a show of full solidarity for GSU-UE. GSU-UE first notified the University of intent to mobilize at a January 22 bargaining session. “At the mere mention of our strike pledge, the University put five new benefits on the table,” read the Union’s February 9 general membership newsletter, “A Storm is Brewing! (Sign the Strike Pledge).”

“If management doesn’t move, we know how to make them move. This is

NEWS: CFO Ivan Samstein and Provost Katherine Baicker Talk University Finances With The Maroon

NEWS: McCord, Rubenstein, Vashist, and Leiter Elected to Lead The Maroon in 2024— 25

GREY CITY: From Midway Nuisance to Midway Plaisance

VIEWPOINTS: Ando/Boyer Debate: A Student Responds

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

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THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 22, 2024

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“Alivisatos recharacterized current University financial pressures as a ‘manageable thunderstorm.’”

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course as a payoff of past investments to strengthen the school’s principles. “We’re in a position to capitalize on those investments to make sure we have the resources to continue to invest in eminence,” Baicker said.

While Baicker hopes long-term investments in the graduate and undergraduate student experiences will eventually prove profitable through alumni philanthropy, she stressed the need to think about optimizing and capitalizing on investments in the immediate future.

A previous town hall held on December 7 contextualized the University’s 2023 budget deficit of $239 million by comparing it to the school’s overall financial health, as well as to peer institutions.

The meeting presented the University’s investments as strategic assets that now require sacrifices for the institution to keep up to speed with older peer institutions that often have larger endowments.

When reviewing the similar material in the second town hall, Samstein said that deficit growth was primarily a result of the University’s aggressive investment strategies, as well as the University’s decision to prevent layoffs during the pandemic and freeze tuition and fees in 2020.

Overall, expense growth outpaced revenue growth by 1.2 percent over the last fiscal year. “We need to be as judicious as possible” to get growth rates in line, Samstein said.

Samstein also cautioned that previously stable interest rates are unlikely to remain stable going forward. While Fitch Ratings assigned the University a strong AA+ credit rating in 2023, the ratings agency specified that “UChicago’s capacity for material additional new debt beyond the current issuance is limited at the current rating.” Financial statements for 2022–23 show that the University has increased debt levels significantly over the past year.

Noting that he had been asked at a previous meeting whether the budget challenges were of “tornado scale,” Alivisatos said, “the budget challenge is real, it is important, it does demand our attention, but it does not register as a tornado on the

Fujita scale.” After noting that the Fujita scale was invented by UChicago professor Ted Fujita in 1971, Alivisatos recharacterized current University financial pressures as a “manageable thunderstorm.”

According to the presentation, moderating expenditure growth and promoting revenue growth “is eminently doable….

But this is not easy,” said Baicker. With 60 percent of the University’s budget dedicated to salaries, some of which the University pays at a fixed amount under contractual obligation, expense mitigation necessarily entails reducing nonobligatory expenses.

Baicker and Samstein presented a set of “financing efforts” which they believe will begin deficit reduction in 2025, the first year of the plan. The University will focus on “reducing short-term debt and converting to lower-cost and lower-risk medium-term debt,” according to presentation materials. The Budget Office will keep assessing new ways to reduce risk and spending, aided by improved data from a new enterprise resource management program the University has been implementing in an effort named the “financial systems transformation project.”

Internally, the University will focus on “central administrative efficiencies and spend[ing] reductions.” Baicker stressed that the University understands the need to take the “hardest look” at central units, which she defined as consisting of the Communications Office, Office of the Provost, Financial Services, General Council, Alumni Relations and Development, and other units that provide support and oversight to academic units.

While these units only comprise about 15 percent of the spending budget, the plan prioritizes sourcing 30–40 percent of the proposed cuts from within these central units, resulting in them being a smaller share of total spending by 2028. Spending reductions will come from items such as “assessing non-personnel spending” and “improving pricing in [employee] benefit provider contracts.”

The next part of the plan is to “empower divisions and schools to pursue priorities.” According to Baicker, this entails empowering academic divisions to

devise their own strategies for growing their respective bottom lines. Baicker said the University understands that the best ideas for improving the budget can come organically from these divisions and wants to supply them with “real-time information and analytical tools to support decision-making.”

According to the presentation, the biggest single initiative would be “growth and new initiatives.” Some initiatives the University is considering include “growing masters programs, 4+1 joint degrees,” and “seeking opportunities for research sponsorship.” The presentation also mentioned the further development of executive education and similar programs to reach nontraditional student populations and the strengthening of philanthropic approaches across the University.

Baicker explained that continued investment in the University is crucial, despite constraints placed on the current budget. “We could close the budget deficit immediately by ceasing things immediately, [but] that would be incredibly short sighted,” she said. The four-year plan to close the budget deficit will allow for growth while increasing efficiency.

For the remainder of this month, the University will continue to source input from various University constituencies, including the Committee of the Council and Undergraduate Student Government (USG) representatives, before releasing and finalizing the 2025 budget.

In March, the office will hold a third town hall and release initial budgets to individual units. In May, they will finalize the overall budget for the new year.

At the end of the presentation, Baicker and Samstein fielded questions and concerns from the audience. These included the University’s ongoing staff hiring freeze and skepticism around the University’s ability to continue growing while placing constraints on its academic units.

One faculty member said that staff morale and hiring freezes put pressure on some of the best, most efficient people in academic departments across the University. From his experience, these people tended to leave and find jobs elsewhere.

Due to these concerns, he inquired wheth-

er the University would lift its staff hiring freeze that went into effect this past September.

Baicker and Samstein responded that the staff hiring freeze will continue while the University plans for the 2025 budget release, but stressed that no faculty hiring freeze was on the table. Baicker added that the University was looking for ways to make the freeze more flexible, and that hiring has continued for externally funded and critical positions.

In response to a question about the voluntary retirement incentive, which also went into place last fall, Samstein said that it will not extend past its original end date of February 15. He also noted that there has been a larger-than-expected uptick in voluntary retirements.

The town hall occurred the day after UChicago Medicine (UCM) publicly announced layoffs of 180 employees, which prompted questions about whether these layoffs would influence the University’s budget decisions. Samstein explained that UCM’s decision was ultimately to focus on their cost structure, which is separate and distinct from the process that the Budget Office is considering.

Another faculty member critiqued the University’s new plan for undergraduate tuition revenue among academic units.

The University plans to divide the revenue among academic units by the number of students enrolled in that unit’s courses.

The University explained that this method was the most effective way of lining up costs and revenue. The faculty member, who helped create the previous system, criticized the new model for incentivizing “adjunctification”—where tenure-track and research faculty positions are eliminated in favor of lower cost adjunct and instructional positions—as units look to teach the largest number of students at the lowest cost.

Despite the University’s repeated message that the financial pressures are not yet at a “tornado level,” a Q & A participant expressed frustration with the effects of the current staff hiring freeze and other steps taken by the University to reduce costs. “It feels like a tornado, full-force.”

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 22, 2024

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UCMed Lays Off 180 Employees

By OLIVER BUNTIN | Senior News Reporter The University of Chicago Medical Center (UCM) laid off 180 employees on Thursday, February 1. The move affects fewer than 2 percent of the institution’s 13,000 employees.

In a statement to The Maroon, UCM officials emphasized that the affected po-

sitions were mainly administrative.

“The majority of affected positions are not direct patient facing and these changes will not affect the quality of patient care. Affected employees were notified throughout the day on February 1 and are being provided a severance package,”

the statement read.

The statement also said that UCM was facing “the same challenges as many other health systems across the country.”

The layoffs follow a trend that has hit other medical centers, including George Washington University and Rush University on the same day. According to Fierce Healthcare News, regulatory changes,

the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, and inflation have made recent years extremely difficult for hospitals, with over 100 hospitals announcing major layoffs in 2023 alone.

The move comes after UCM broke ground on a new $815 million cancer care and research pavilion late last year.

CFO Ivan Samstein and Provost Katherine Baicker Talk University Finances With The Maroon

By NIKHIL JAISWAL | Editor-In-Chief and ERIC FANG | News Editor In an interview with The Maroon, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Ivan Samstein and Provost Katherine Baicker discussed the University’s financial condition.

The pair outlined their plan for increasing University revenues and moderating spending.

The interview occurred in Baicker’s Levi Hall office on February 6, a day after Samstein and Baicker hosted a budget town hall that introduced a plan to eliminate the University’s budget deficit by 2028.

First addressing the University’s hiring freeze, which was implemented in September 2023, Baicker emphasized that the hiring freeze only affects staff and not faculty.

“The staff hiring freeze was always and remains flexible in that there are some positions that are absolutely mission-critical, that are funded by grants, that are patient facing, that are necessary to comply with contracts,” Baicker said. “So there was an exception process to make sure that we could be careful in how it was implemented, and that remains in place but adaptable as we go along to try to be responsive to what the pressing needs are around the University.”

Baicker next outlined the financial plan that theoretically would allow the University to eliminate its budget deficit.

In terms of revenue drivers, Baicker identified new degree programs, executive education, federal grants and contracts, and full utilization of the campus. However, she highlighted that it may take a year or more before revenues from these initiatives can

be actualized.

“The plan that we’re developing involves both slowing the growth of spending and increasing the growth of revenues,” she said. “The reality is that it probably takes longer to grow revenues than it does to moderate spending growth…. So our best estimate is that the revenue growth will come after a year or so, although—of course—we’re starting now.”

Samstein looks forward in particular to implementing strategies for generating revenue from the physical campus during the summer.

“If you see our campus in the summer, it’s pretty dramatic… the reduction in people,” Samstein said. “If you go to many peer campuses, you’ll see a lot more programming throughout the summer….

I think that’s where the academic enterprise is looking at all the areas where we can grow revenue, to your question, but in a way that’s consistent with the academic values.”

Samstein further feels optimistic about the impact of a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) financial system, which he says the University is currently working on bringing online.

“Big, complicated organizations tend to use ERPs, or enterprise resource planning systems,” Samstein explained. “They are sizable investments, and the computer program will do what you tell them to do. The challenge is your underlying data, making sure you’ve trained all your people to configure in a way that meshes with the way

CFO Samstein (left) and Provost Baicker (right) are aiming to place the University in a sound financial situation by generating more revenue for the University. eric fang.

you do things, and so we’ve embarked on a multi-year journey.”

Ultimately, the University is targeting the year 2028 to equalize revenues and costs.

“We’re working on developing a plan with input from students and faculty and staff that we’re envisioning being something like a four-year plan,” Baicker said.

“We’re in a position of strength such that we can have that planning horizon.”

Addressing the risk of a credit downgrade if the University takes on additional debt, Samstein expressed confidence in the ability of the University’s strong “competitive position” and donor support to buttress the University’s credit rating even as it takes on more debt. In 2023, Fitch Ratings cautioned the University against taking on additional debt if it wishes to maintain its current AA+ credit rating.

“We will naturally take on some debt over time, as we have to focus on investing in the mission and the organization over those years,” Samstein said. “I think the

conversations with credit agencies around credit quality will unfold, and I think we have a lot of elements that will conversely support the credit rating and there’s an element of subjectivity and objectivity in their metrics. I think the quality and demand of our student body is off the charts, triple-A in their nomenclature, and that helps support us even as we work to invest in the University and rightsize the deficit over a multi-year plan.”

In response to a question about whether the University’s “competitive position” has been weakened by U.S. News & World Report dropping its ranking of the University of Chicago from sixth place among American colleges to 12th place, Baicker questioned how accurate rankings are for reflecting quality of education.

“I don’t believe the students who are applying or are here see any drop in the quality of education that we’re delivering here, or the quality of students, or the demand for students to come, or the yield of CONTINUED ON PG. 5

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 22, 2024

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“We’re working on developing a plan with input from students and faculty and staff that we’re envisioning being something like a four-year plan.”

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students,” Baicker said. “I think all support the really enduring quality of the University and its very strong position…. There were some elements of the U.S. News rankings that changed in a way that don’t match my view or the view of the University about key elements of providing an exceptional education.”

In regard to whether the University plans to cut the University of Chicago Police Department’s budget, Baicker responded with a definitive “no.” She further noted that, according to the University’s budget plan, “we’re not talking about spending going down. We’re talking about spending growing more slowly than it otherwise would, and revenues growing more

quickly than they otherwise would.”

In contrast to previous years marked by high spending, Baicker pointed out that high interest rates have made this year uniquely appropriate for initiatives aimed at reining in spending and closing the deficit.

“The University made a huge amount of strategic investment over the past 10 years that is paying off in our impact, in our eminence, in the quality of our faculty and students, and in our investment in the community,” she said. “All of those are great investments and they were the right thing to do along the way. They put us in a position of institutional strength. But now, given the external interest rate environment and given where we have gotten

to as a university, this is the right moment to close the deficit.”

Despite the challenging macroeconomic environment, Baicker expressed confidence that the University could eliminate its deficit with a combination of initiatives generated by the central administration and individuals at a department or team level.

“The team that we have at the University is a very strong one,” she said. “And in enlisting all of them collaboratively to think about how we grow spending a little more slowly and about how we grow revenues a little more quickly, of course it has to be consistent with University priorities. But it’s an enormous asset to have the incredibly talented officers and deans figure out

what would be best in their areas.”

Baicker concluded the interview by speaking about how the University’s plan may change within the next four years and beyond as new investment opportunities arise.

“4+1, [Master] in Management, [Master] in Finance—great ideas are underway now,” Baicker concluded. “The world evolves, and a learning organization as we are should be constantly taking new looks at the world to say, where are the opportunities? What are we doing now that we should be doing differently?… The [budget] plan needs to create the resources or ensure the resources to invest in those new, exciting things, and that requires being on this path for fiscal strength.”

UChicago Alum Philip Venticinque Named Incoming Dean of Students in the College

By TIFFANY LI | Deputy News Editor and STUTI SHELAT | Senior News Reporter

Dean Melina Hale named Associate Provost Philip Venticinque as incoming dean of students in the College beginning February 1 in an email sent to the College community on January 5.

Venticinque earned a Ph.D. in Classics at UChicago in 2009. Prior to becoming Dean of Students, Venticinque was an associate professor of Classics at Cornell College. He then joined the Office of the Provost at UChicago, where he worked with Hale until her appointment as dean of the college in 2023.

“I am thankful to Dean Hale and all those involved in the search for the trust placed in me,” Venticinque said in a statement to The Maroon. “I am eager… to champion student success, to support academic and personal development, and to empower and guide students in and out of the classroom.”

“Many things about Phil impressed me as a candidate. He was a UChicago College student and Ph.D., so he has a better understanding than most of the life of

students here,” Hale said in a statement to The Maroon.

According to a statement sent to The Maroon by Director of College Communications Katelyn Yoshimoto, the search for a new dean of students was conducted by a small independent committee. The committee included “members of the Dean of Students Office and the wider College community, not just senior leaders, and additional interviews with campus partners.” Candidates both internal and external to UChicago were considered, with the goal of finding a suitable appointee on a short timeline while also protecting candidates’ privacy.

Hale spoke with students in the College for several months leading up to the decision to determine what was desired in a potential appointee.

“She was looking for… someone student-centered, appreciative of the varied pressures students face today, focused on learning, growth, and creating an outstanding College experience for stu-

courtesy of the university of chicago.

dents in our community,” Yoshimoto’s statement said of Hale’s selection process.

Hale said she believed Venticinque’s history of working with and advocating for students, ability to find creative solutions to problems, and connection to UChicago would make him an effective dean of students.

“He has a deep historical understanding of the University and the College that is incredibly helpful in considering moving forward while honoring the wonderful character of the College and our in-

credible history,” Hale said.

Yoshimoto’s statement laid out various aspects of Venticinque’s new role.

“The Dean of Students in the College is responsible for providing strategic vision, leadership and oversight for all aspects of student life and support services within the College,” the statement read. Departments such as the College Academic Advising Office, College Programming and Orientation, the Center for College Student Success, and the Office of College Community Standards report directly to the dean of students in the College.

Prior to Venticinque, John “Jay” Ellison held the position of dean of students in the College. During Ellison’s tenure, controversy arose over his welcome letter to the incoming class of 2020, in which he denounced trigger warnings and the creation of safe spaces. The letter found support among College Republicans and free speech absolutists but was criticized by other students and faculty. Ellison left the role in August 2023 to become a senior advisor to Hale, and the role remained vacant throughout the 2023 autumn quarter after Ellison’s departure.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 22, 2024

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“I never imagined that the University of Chicago would be shutting down its flagship cross-divisional program.”

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Bartsch-Zimmer also claims that Baicker told her there would only be funding for the initiatives the president wanted to support under the University’s current budget constraints.

In a recent budget town hall hosted by the University, Provost Katherine Baicker told faculty members that the current plan to address the deficit was focused on moderating spending growth while increasing revenue.

As of the writing of this article, Bartsch-Zimmer told The Maroon that she had received no answers to her questions from the administration.

In response to a set of questions from The Maroon, which included a request to confirm Bartsch-Zimmer’s claims or give a reason for the shutdown, a University spokesperson declined to confirm the shutdown.

“Thoughtful conversations are ongoing with many University offices, academic leaders, and faculty members with the goal of stewarding our resources to advance our mission,” the spokesperson wrote. “One way our university remains vibrant and healthy is by using centrally-held seed resources to launch new programs, centers, and institutes. Part of doing this responsibly requires periodically taking stock of such programs, assessing

eric fang.

ongoing activities, and empowering the expertise of divisional and departmental faculty. Decisions will be the result of deliberate engagement with program and academic leaders. Discussions that will impact the coming academic years are underway.”

Bartsch-Zimmer told The Maroon over email that she is a prolific fundraiser and has raised $10 million specifically for the McKeon Center, an initiative housed within the IFK whose funds are not able to be shared with the broader IFK. Two $15 million pledges from donors that had been earmarked for the IFK did not come to fruition, in part due to the scandal surrounding unfulfilled pledges made by former trustee Steve Stevanovich. Beyond that, Bartsch-Zimmer wrote that the IFK receives an annual $175,000 from donors.

Status of IFK staff, faculty, and researchers The IFK opened in the fall of 2015 as an interdisciplinary center focused on the study of knowledge production and formation. Listed on the IFK’s website as a guiding question for its scholars is “What do we know?”

In its nine years of operation, the IFK grew to include around 40 scholars from the University across 11 of its 12 schools and divisions. Additionally, the IFK offered postdoctoral positions, faculty and graduate fellowships, visiting professorships, and an undergraduate thesis prize.

As of February 7, the IFK’s website listed 10 current fellows and affiliates, seven postdoctoral researchers at the rank of instructor, 50 core faculty members, and nine administrative staff.

Faculty members who are affiliated with the IFK “will lose a community, research grants, our heavily attended workshops, and conference support,” said Bartsch-Zimmer, but their positions within their home departments and their salaries will not change.

According to Bartsch-Zimmer, the IFK’s administrative staff will lose their positions.

Bartsch-Zimmer noted that it’s unclear what support the IFK’s postdoctoral

researchers will receive from the University, or whether Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS) students pursuing the Formation of Knowledge certificates will receive their certificates upon graduation.

Though Bartsch-Zimmer informed faculty members of the closure on Tuesday evening before posting about it on X, postdoctoral researchers were notified of the IFK’s closure on Wednesday via an email from IFK operations manager Stefanie Rothman White.

“I was hoping to get details on timing before reaching out to you. Please forgive me for not speaking with each of you yesterday to share this devastating news,” one paragraph in Stefanie R. White’s email read.

According to a postdoctoral researcher with knowledge of the situation, the rest of the current academic year will proceed as planned. The same postdoctoral researcher told The Maroon that White will meet with members of the Office of the Provost on Friday to learn more about the timeline of the institute’s shutdown and what transitional support postdoctoral researchers can expect.

Kristine Palmieri, a postdoctoral researcher at the rank of instructor with the IFK, told The Maroon that the abrupt nature of the announcement has left her in limbo. Currently in her second year of a two-year fellowship, Palmieri explained that she was eligible for a renewal of her fellowship for a third year at the IFK, contingent on positive reviews.

That extension would have kept her employed through July 2025.

“There’s no possibility for us to find anything for the next academic year because all the deadlines are over. Presumably the University knows this. They could have told us in the fall,” Palmieri said, explaining that most academic jobs conduct their hiring processes then.

“I personally did not apply to a number of positions because I thought that my time and energy were better spent on my research and publications,” she said. “To me, that’s what is most egregious, because the other [second-year] postdoc and I are looking at being unemployed in July.”

History of the IFK The founding of the Institute was not without its controversy.

Under late former University president Robert Zimmer in 2014, then University trustee Steve Stevanovich pledged to donate $10 million, which was later designated for the creation of the socalled Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge.

In 2018, The Maroon found that Stevanovich was late on over $12 million in pledges to the University. When it became clear that Stevanovich would be unable to make good on his financial pledges to the University, his name was dropped from the name of the IFK. Since its founding, the IFK has influenced nearly all aspects of academic life on campus. Pedagogically, the IFK has been involved in the Inquiry and Research in the Humanities (IRHUM) major and the Graham School and created a certificate program for MAPSS students.

According to Bartsch-Zimmer, the IFK has taught around 1,000 undergraduate students in courses that transcend disciplines while blending theory and practice.

Additionally, the IFK has published a journal, KNOW, which is going into its seventh year. According to Bartsch-Zimmer, KNOW will end publication with the closure of the IFK. The future of conferences and awards that the institute would grant to faculty, undergraduates, and graduate students are unclear.

“At IFK, doctors could (and did) think with lawyers, anthropologists with economists, chemists with English professors,” wrote Bartsch-Zimmer.

“I never imagined that the University of Chicago would be shutting down its flagship cross-divisional program, especially since we never asked for any of our own teaching revenue but gave it back to the divisions,” Bartsch-Zimmer wrote, who is the widow of Zimmer.

“Being Bob Zimmer’s widow makes it all particularly poignant for me. Bob saw IFK as a great credit to the University’s reputation and had a powerful vision for UChicago’s thriving. I’m discouraged and sad,” said Bartsch-Zimmer.

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“If management doesn’t move, we know how to make them move.”

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how we do it,” said GSU-UE bargaining committee member Valay Agarawal.

A statement from Provost Katherine CONTINUED FROM PG. 1

Baicker released the day after the meeting indicates the University is taking the potential for a strike seriously.

“A strike would be harmful to graduate students and the University community. Striking graduate students would not be paid during a strike, and progress toward their academic degrees might be affected,” the statement read. “However, should GSU-UE decide to strike, the University will be prepared to minimize disruption to our campus community.”

GSU-UE’s last major labor action, a 2019 work stoppage conducted before the Union won federal recognition, lasted three days. While the Union did not win the voluntary recognition it sought at the time, GSU-UE garnered national media attention when supporters of the Bernie Sanders primary campaign joined the picket line.

Earlier in the meeting, bargaining unit committee members Evan Yamaguchi, Maniza Ahmed, Joseph Rathke, and Soham Sinha debriefed general mem-

bers on the current state of negotiations, highlighting sticking points between the Union and the University.

Bargaining has been split into economic proposals, such as wage considerations and health insurance benefits, and non-economic “language” proposals, such as union rights to collect dues and who is included in the bargaining unit.

Many of the noneconomic issues have been resolved, but the University has refused to budge on one demand in particular: codified anti-discrimination language.

Specifically, the GSU is demanding protection against caste-based and political belief–based discrimination and protection from abuse of authority and sexual harassment. Resistance appears to be “due to several prominent donors who are against that language,” said history Ph.D. candidate and GSU-UE member Joe Yalowitz in an interview with The Maroon. Yalowitz said UChicago Law School professors have lent their expertise in an attempt to advance efforts. Since GSU rejected the University’s counterproposal, the issue has not been further addressed.

In a statement to The Maroon, the University denied the claim that donors had any influence over the bargaining process.

Wide gaps also remain on many economic proposals.

The two sides are in a deadlock over minimum annual compensation. Most recently, the University proposed a $41,000 minimum compensation level for the 2024-25 academic year. GSU-UE countered, asking for $44,000 starting next academic quarter (which would mean a stipend of $11,000 for spring and summer quarters), and a 6.25 percent increase, or $46,750, for the 2024-25 academic year.

Yalowitz said that while it’s true the University has run into financial issues, it has been using the situation as an excuse for stalling in the bargaining process. “It seems a little bit convenient that in the middle of these major bargaining sessions with four or five unions across campus, the University [says], ‘we are in such a financial pinch.’”

Graduate students are also limited in the number and type of classes they can teach for compensation. GSU-UE views the teaching structure implemented in 2020 as a “failed teaching experiment.”

That structure lumped together what they call “mentored teaching experiences” and “pedagogical training plans,” labeling them as academic requirements for degree-seeking students. This moved those requirements out of the employment context where they would have been negotiable.

Yalowitz called it a “clever financial maneuver [by the University] that, by having postdoc fellows [teach], they can have both professors and grad students do less teaching.”

Bargaining unit committee members

demanded that future changes in teaching structure be developed in collaboration with the Union, castigating the University for assuming “unilateral control over how we teach and when we teach.”

Graduate students went up to the front of the room to give testimonials after the main presentation at the meeting.

Briana, a third-year doctoral student at Crown Family School of Social Work studying social welfare, introduced herself as the daughter of a single mother forced to drop out of graduate school because she couldn’t live on the allotted stipend. Her rallying cry to sign the pledge: “Do it for me, and also for my mom!”

Biological Sciences Divisions graduate student Sandra recalled her memories as an elementary student in Detroit, Michigan, where she was first introduced to the topic of labor rights. She used to stand on the picket line with her teachers.

Yalowitz explained that the University’s obstinacy made sense to him, as a fair contract would mean “a renegotiation of power.”

“It’s not in the University’s interest for graduate students to see any of that power, because that might mean a different kind of university,” he said. University employees would have more of a say in the way their workplace is run.

After the meeting, GSU-UE communications director Sierra Schwabach emphasized that the goal is a fair contract, not a strike. “[A credible strike threat] is a tool we can use as leverage in negotiations. We want to give the University every opportunity to come to us with reasonable offers.”

There was a consensus among meeting members that the University’s next steps will determine whether a strike takes place. “Ultimately, the ball is in their court,” Schwabach said.

Students React to Israeli Consul General’s Meeting With Alivisatos, Chabad, and Hillel

By TIFFANY LI | Deputy News Editor University President Paul Alivisatos met with Consul General of Israel to the

Midwest Yinam Cohen on January 23.

According to Cohen’s X and LinkedIn, the

purpose of the meeting was “to further enhance the partnership between UChicago and Israeli research institutions and to make sure that every Jewish or Israeli

student feels safe on campus.”

Cohen also met with students from Hillel and Chabad, two Jewish organizations CONTINUED ON PG. 7

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“The University has developed a consensus aginst taking social or political stances on issues outside its core mission.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 6

that aim to promote “a diverse and pluralistic Jewish community” and to create “a space on campus where [Jewish students] can feel comfortable, without labels or judgment,” according to their respective websites. The Hillel chapter at UChicago is part of the larger organization Hillel International.

The Maroon reached out to students who had attended the Cohen meeting for comment. One of these students responded under conditions of anonymity with a written statement.

“We spoke about our feelings during this time of increased global antisemitism, and more specifically about antisemitic experiences on campus that we’ve had to deal with,” the student wrote about the meeting. “Despite our long history of persecution, Jews have historically been excluded from our national conversation on discrimination. This unfortunately continues today when the same groups that advocate for equity and inclusion are putting out statements that claim that Jews’ experiences and trauma are not real. Why is it so unfathomable to them that antisemitism exists on this campus when Jews are the number one target of religious hate crimes in the U.S. by a landslide? The simple answer is that because of their stances on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the existence of antisemitism in the conversation doesn’t align with their narrative or agenda, so they shamefully fail to acknowledge it.”

According to FBI statistics, anti-Jewish incidents comprised 54.9 percent of religion-related hate crimes in the U.S. in 2022. The next largest category was anti-Sikh incidents, which made up 8.9 percent of the total. Axios reported that 2023 saw a rise in both anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate crimes in the U.S.’s largest cities.

The student’s statement continued, “What I want people to know is that no one in our meeting was considering legitimate criticisms of Israeli policies as antisemitic, despite how a few students are trying to frame it.”

The student also criticized the Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement. Ac-

cording to the BDS website, the Palestinian-led effort calls on participants to boycott “companies that play a clear and direct role in Israel’s crimes and where we think we can have an impact.” As part of these boycotts, UChicago students involved in UChicago United for Palestine (UCUP) recently staged a die-in at Pret A Manger to protest its alleged expansion in Israel.

“It’s only with Israel that a select group of students become enraged and are encouraged to protest and boycott everything pertaining to it,” the student wrote. “Can anyone imagine this occurring to any other nationality?… This dehumanizing behavior is not helping anybody, and in my opinion, does damage to the Palestinian cause.”

Other boycott movements surrounding recent conflicts include Boycott Russia. Numerous companies also withdrew operations from Russia following the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.

In response to the meeting, UChicago Jews for a Free Palestine (UJFP) released a letter sent to UChicago administrators.

In the letter, UJFP denounced the Cohen meeting and requested that Alivisatos heed pro-Palestinian students’ calls to publicly meet about UChicago’s investments and partnerships related to Israel.

“We are writing as Jewish students, alumni, faculty, and staff to denounce President Paul Alivisatos’ recent meeting with Yinam Cohen, the Israeli Consul General to the Midwest, and to request that President Alivisatos grant UChicago United for Palestine and [UChicago] Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)’s demand for a public meeting,” read UJFP’s public statement. “By meeting with Cohen and entertaining his aims, the UChicago administration has taken a stand in support of genocide.”

In response to Cohen’s X post stating that the meeting aimed to make Jewish students feel safer on campus, UJFP wrote, “The administration’s purported focus on the safety of ‘every Jewish and Israeli student’ suggests a false threat in order to distract from the ongoing genocide in Palestine. There is no reason to believe that we as Jews on the UChicago campus are under threat.”

The Maroon spoke to a member of

UJFP, a student at the Law School who requested to be identified by her first name, Katja. In response to the University’s stance that the meeting was a neutral, routine event that did not represent political endorsement, Katja said, “I don’t think you can be neutral about genocide, apartheid, or colonialism. I don’t think that’s a real thing.”

The University’s view regarding the meeting was expressed in a University spokesperson’s recent statement to The Maroon.

“The University has developed a consensus against taking social or political stances on issues outside its core mission,” the statement read. “University leaders routinely meet with international

leaders from the public and private sector to discuss a range of subjects in research and education, and such meetings do not represent political endorsement.”

Katja said she did not believe that the University was truly practicing neutrality, but rather that it was selectively using the notion of neutrality as a cover to defend its actions.

“According to the University, investment is neutral, but divestment is not neutral. According to the University, partnering with Israeli institutions that create arms and surveillance for the Israeli occupation, partnering on projects that greenwash the actions of Israel to ethnically cleanse Palestinian Bedouins…, meeting CONTINUED ON PG. 8

Solana Adedokun & Nikhil Jaiswal, Co-Editors-in-Chief Michael McClure, Managing Editor Allison Ho, Chief Production Officer Astrid Weinberg & Dylan Zhang, Chief Financial Officers Eva McCord & Kayla Rubenstein, Co-Editors-in-Chief–elect Anushree Vashist, Managing Editor–elect Zachary Leiter, Deputy Managing Editor–elect Kaelyn Hindshaw & Nathan Ohana, Co-Chief Financial Officers–elect The Maroon Editorial Board consists of the editors-in-chief and select staff of The Maroon.

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THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 22, 2024

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“I don’t think you can be neutral about genocide, apartheid, or colonialism.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 7

with a state envoy who supports Israel’s genocide and who is representing the state in the midst of this genocide, and everything else, is neutral. But meeting with pro-Palestine students—that’s not something the University will do,” Katja said.

“The Board of Trustees, the President, and the administration more broadly like

to claim neutrality whenever it suits their purposes. But it seems very clear that this photo op was a convenient way to satisfy donor pressures.”

Despite the University administration declining so far to meet with pro-Palestine students, Katja expressed that UCUP, of which UJFP is a member, would continue to demand such a meeting.

“We’re not going to back down. These requests have never been more urgent, and our views are not the minority here,” Katja said. “They are the majority on this campus, but they’re being repressed and denied. So we won’t stop.”

Katja also referenced a recent Chicago City Council vote approving a ceasefire resolution to the conflict in Gaza, as well as

a preliminary ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) finding the classification of the genocide was plausible.

“The City of Chicago, as well as international bodies, almost every nation in the world, the UN, and the ICJ all should make it quite clear that the University’s actions… are just not neutral. [The University is] not just complicit, it’s culpable,” she said.

Martin Luther King III Delivers Keynote at Annual MLK Commemoration

By ERIC PARILLA | News Reporter Martin Luther King III delivered the keynote address during the University of Chicago’s 34th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration, held January 30 at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel. In his speech, King III addressed gun violence, voting rights, income inequality, and political activism, calling for an end to vio-

lence around the world.

Before a full audience, the commemoration commenced with a rendition of the hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing”— often referred to as the “Black national anthem”—by Uniting Voices Chicago, formerly known as the Chicago Children’s Choir. University President Paul

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Alivisatos then spoke about the need to include diverse voices to accomplish the University’s mission of maintaining free and inquiring dialogue.

“Diversity is not just a complement to these principles but a true cornerstone….

We are enriched by a diversity of experience,” Alivisatos said.

In recognizing King Jr.’s work and legacy, Alivisatos asserted that the University is duty-bound to help fulfill the society he envisioned.

“We are called as an institution to further Dr. King’s vision,” Alivisatos said.

After Alivisatos’s speech, King III, the oldest son of King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, was called to the stage. A lifelong activist, King III has followed in his father’s footsteps in fighting for civil and voting rights. He has led events and protests across the nation commemorating his father’s legacy and opposing racial injustices. As recently as mid-January, King III launched a community service initiative called “Realizing the Dream” in collaboration with the NFL, aiming to achieve 100 million community service hours before his father’s 100th birthday in 2029. “Realizing the Dream” is also the name of a nonprofit organization he founded in 2006 with a mission of commemorating King Jr.’s legacy.

During his life, King III has made three addresses at the Rockefeller Chapel: in 1956, 1959, and 1966.

King III’s visit to the Chapel for the commemoration came at a particularly somber time for him. His younger brother Dexter passed away a week earlier from prostate cancer, and the day of the

commemoration, January 30, marked the 18th anniversary of his mother’s passing.

King mentioned his personal misfortune during his speech but explained that it would not stop him from sharing his father’s message in forums like the University. He recounted his family’s history of overcoming misfortune, describing how his mother continued to protest racial injustice in Memphis in the immediate aftermath of her husband’s assassination.

“I chose not to postpone my participation [in the commemoration] because both my mother and my brother want me to carry on and share my father’s message of sharing peace,” King III said.

King III addressed how working to change society for the better can be a grueling process, often attracting resistance.

“Every time there’s a perceived win, somehow there’s pushback, but that should not dissuade us from doing what is right,” he said. “Let’s never fall into the trap of discouragement because we don’t get what we want right away…. We have to be in it for the long haul.”

King reiterated and defended his father’s call for nonviolence in seeking to enact change. Pushing back against the viewpoint that achieving change through nonviolence is too “utopian,” he pointed out that “ending segregation” and “having a Black president” were also once seen as utopian. He then turned his focus to the men in the audience, urging them to welcome and support the greater participation of women in society and the workforce.

“I want to appeal to all the men to stop CONTINUED ON PG. 9

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“We are enriched by a diversity of experience.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 8

fearing the rise of women in our society and do what we can to encourage our sisters to become leaders,” he said to applause from the audience. “We need their wisdom and peacemaking skills for humanity to survive.”

King then urged greater civility and open-mindedness when engaging in political dialogue with people of different views: “Let us always be courteous and respectful and good listeners and hear other

people with an open mind and heart.”

Addressing the current state of the country, King protested its endemic gun violence and called for a ban on assault weapons. He also highlighted the country’s pervasive income inequality and the disconnect between its prosperity and the conditions of its poor. King expressed concern over recently passed measures in numerous states that have restricted the ease of voting, particularly impactful for minorities. He called on Congress to pass

the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would reinforce provisions of the original Voting Rights Act his father advocated for.

Despite the increasing hurdles to voting, King called on the audience, particularly the youth, to engage politically and vote.

“Take your love of country to the ballot box…. Let us make 2024 a year of energetic voter registration and education,” he said.

Following his father’s advocacy for peace, King called on the country to urge for an end to deadly conflicts persisting around

the world.

“Let’s call an end to the violence of Israel and Gaza and the violence in Sudan and the Congo and 28 other countries you don’t hear about,” he said amid applause.

In closing, King reemphasized the importance of taking a stand for what is right despite the costs and setbacks. “The ultimate measure of a human being is how one responds to the challenges of others.

Sometimes we need to take positions that might not be popular or politic,” he said.

McCord, Rubenstein, Vashist, and Leiter Elected to Lead The Maroon in 2024–25

By CASEY KIM | Deputy News Editor Third-years Eva McCord and Kayla Rubenstein will become co-editors-inchief of The Chicago Maroon, and fellow third-years Anushree Vashist and Zachary Leiter will become managing editor and deputy managing editor, respectively, per election results finalized on Sunday, February 4.

The four incoming executive board members ran on a platform prioritizing holistic coverage of campus and the South Side community, bolstering writer retention, and maintaining The Maroon’s welcoming environment. All the elections were uncontested.

“What makes The Maroon so special is the people who make it thrive: from parsing out an obscure grammar consideration with the copy editors to being all hands on deck with the news team, and gossiping about the latest athletic news with Sports, my experiences with each section have only bolstered my belief that The Maroon offers a place for people from a variety of backgrounds to converge and grow,” Rubenstein said in her speech.

Rubenstein and McCord will replace fourth-years Nikhil Jasiwal and Solana Adedokun, while Vashist will replace fourth-year Michael McClure. Leiter will assume the position of deputy managing editor, a newly restored title.

Rubenstein, McCord, Vashist, and Leiter all joined The Maroon in the fall of 2021. Rubenstein served as a copy chief,

news editor, sports editor, and member of the editorial board before being elected co-editor-in-chief. She most notably spearheaded The Maroon’s coverage of UChicago’s clandestine abortion ring.

McCord served as a sports editor, head of the Viewpoints section, and member of the editorial board. During her time at The Maroon, McCord most notably spearheaded a special insert for The Maroon that highlights the experiences of first-generation and low-income students on campus. Her illustrations have also been published on the paper’s cover and interior pages.

“I will work to ensure that The Maroon is always an example of how journalism can empower UChicago students

eric fang.

from all backgrounds in the face of this very unequal campus,” McCord said in her speech. “I will work to ensure that The Maroon is where staffers not only find their own voice but take pride in working in service to this campus and to Hyde Park. The ultimate service of being a journalist [is] to give others the space to share their story.”

Vashist served as a news editor, design editor, associate copy editor, and member of the editorial board, while Leiter served as a head arts editor, Viewpoints illustrator, DEI board member, and news and Grey City reporter. The two hope to expand coverage, improve writer retention, create an alumni directory, and strengthen section integration.

“I’ve talked a lot about expanding content, but how do we do that? In some ways,

I think we need to dedicate more time to generating new ideas,” Vashist said in her speech. “Often, we write pitches in isolation, but we’ve seen time and time again that cross-section collaborations can close some of the gaps in our coverage.”

The Maroon also reelected thirdyear and current chief production officer Allison Ho. Ho hopes to build on her goals from last year and continue to expand The Maroon’s print design catalogs.

Third-years Kaelyn Hindshaw and Nathan Ohana were elected chief financial officers of The Maroon, replacing fourth-years Dylan Zhang and Astrid Weinberg. Hindshaw and Ohana pledged to adjust their strategy to accommodate a post-COVID media landscape and protect The Maroon’s long-term financial future.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 22, 2024

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From Mudway Nuisance to Midway Plaisance The Midway Plaisance: midway between the World’s Columbian Exposition, uncompleted projects, and a quiet rebellion against car-centric planning.

By FEIFEI MEI | Grey City Reporter Don’t get hit by a car flying down the road. Don’t jump into a puddle. Don’t stand still for too long lest a bird attacks.

This is what goes on inside the mind of a Crossy Road chicken, and also that of a Woodlawn resident on her journey to class every morning.

The sheer variety of things you encounter every day on the Midway Plaisance—cars, pond-sized puddles, flocks of geese, soccer goal posts, a monument to Carl von Linné—resembles the pixelated chaos of a game interface. A quick Google Maps survey leads to more questions than answers: Hyde Park Summer Fest Stage? Original Ferris Wheel of 1893?

Chicago United Football Club? A skating rink?!

The Midway Plaisance clearly isn’t your average green space on a college campus. In fact, the Midway, despite

its location at the center of UChicago’s sprawl, isn’t even owned by the University. Instead, it belongs to the City of Chicago and is maintained and operated by the Chicago Park District.

But living next to the Midway and being honked at by congregations of territorial geese can only advance your knowledge so far. Beneath that humble strip of patchy, muddy grass linking Jackson Park and Washington Park, Hyde Park and Woodlawn, there is a surprisingly grand story.

The Great South Park Midway Plaisance was first conceived as a connection between Jackson Park and Washington Park, funneling people from across Chicago into a massive envisioned South Side greenspace known as “South Park.”

Old Vienna on the Midway Plaisance. courtesy of the hanna holborn gray special collections research center.

feifei mei.

For the project, the City of Chicago commissioned Olmsted, Vaux & Company, a prominent landscape architecture firm that had designed iconic American public spaces like Central Park and Prospect Park in New York and the Emerald Necklace in Boston. Frederick Law Olmsted, the country’s preeminent park designer, envisioned South Park as a web of lagoons, bringing the waters of Lake Michigan into the heart of Chicago. The Midway would function both as a conduit of this water from Jackson Park on the lake through a canal to Washington Park and as a plaisance, an old French word describing a pleasing, secluded garden.

Olmsted’s vision for this undeveloped stretch of dirt on Chicago’s South Side was a grand one. “In the center will be a magnificent chain of lakes the entire length, bordered by planting spaces, adorned with exquisite flowers, trees, green swards, winding walks, etc. The lakes will be embellished with pretty bridges, beautiful fountains, artificial islands, white swans, etc.,” a newspaper

reported in 1875.

But construction in those years was slow. The Great Chicago Fire in 1871 had diverted money away from the South Park project, and development was delayed significantly and was halting even once work began years later.

In 1891, the city started prioritizing the South Park once again. The sprawling South Side green space was to host arguably the biggest event in Chicago’s history: the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The eyes and people of the world would be clustered on the Midway.

Mudway Nuisance In order to accommodate more attractions and visitors for the Columbian Exposition, the Midway was leveled by layering sand on its clay base. Since clay is impermeable, however, rainwater that collected on the Midway could not filter further into the ground. Water accumulated on the surface of the Midway instead, earning it the nickname “Mudway CONTINUED ON PG. 11

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Once again, an ambitious Midway project ended up forever midway through completion.

CONTINUED FROM PG. 10

Nuisance.”

The Midway’s attractions were decidedly more lowbrow than the magnificent White City in Jackson Park, but it turned a handsome profit, and “midway” became synonymous with any area in a fair providing fun and games. It featured the first Ferris wheel in the world, as well as ethnological exhibitions—“villages” recreating living scenes of different communities from all around the world. Old Vienna, for instance, had a row of Austrian-style buildings lining its side, while food stalls populated the central marketplace in an attempt to recreate the old city.

The influence at the time of social Darwinism added a racist slant to the Midway’s exhibitions. The Exposition’s planners, led by Daniel Burnham, designed the Midway such that, as visitors walked from west to east through the Midway towards the White City, they would supposedly progress from “less evolved” societies to “more evolved” societies. American civilization, apparently, marked the pinnacle of human evolution.

Visitors were invited to observe a mock-up of a Chinese residence to view “simple parlor slavery of the most agreeable type” of the average Chinese woman’s life. Arabs were “truly remarkable horsemen [who] deserve credit for that much, although there are characteristics peculiar to these people that are not

particularly commendable.”

Public responses to the racist display varied during the time of the Exposition.

Some framed the exhibitions as an intellectual inquiry into the evolution of human civilization—the visitor with a “scientific mind” could “descend the spiral of evolution, tracing humanity in its highest phases down almost to its animalistic origins,” the Chicago Tribune wrote in November 1893—while some considered it an invaluable opportunity to gawk at other cultures. “The Midway Plaisance is a sort of curiosity-shop, in which the curiosities are mainly men and manners,” Julian Hawthorne wrote in Lippincott’s Magazine in August 1893.

On the other hand, Black-run newspapers called out the organizers for their blatant racism. The Cleveland Gazette slammed the Exposition for being “the great American white elephant” in March 1893, and a group of civil rights activists—Ida B. Wells and Frederick Douglass among them—released a booklet titled “The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition” the same year. The booklet’s exposition of racial discrimination in the U.S. to outsiders humiliated the organizers of the Exposition.

Park for the People Once the Exposition had ended in 1894, Olmsted wrested back control of

A “group of Arab horsemen and camelmen” on the Midway. courtesy of the hanna holborn gray special collections research center.

A Chinese residence on the Midway. courtesy of the hanna holborn gray special collections research center.

the park and tried to realize his vision of the lakefront park network. Workers dug down the center of the Midway to make room for the canals, giving it the concave shape that we’re familiar with today.

Construction proceeded haltingly, with setbacks like fluctuations in Lake Michigan’s water levels and right-of-way issues with the Illinois Central Railroad (today the 59th Street/University of Chicago Metra station). By the time the Great Depression hit the country, South Park was no longer a top priority for the city, and the shortage of funds meant that neither of these problems were effectively addressed.

Another architect, Lorado Taft, presented a majestic plan for the Midway that involved magnificent fountains and bridges, including the Fountain of Time, which was unveiled in 1922. Unfortunately, his financial backer—La Verne Noyes, who also funded a building on UChicago’s campus in honor of his late wife Ida— passed away before Taft’s sculptural visions could be fully realized. Once again, an ambitious Midway project ended up forever midway through completion.

At the same time, the University was quickly growing beyond the capacity of the land that Rockefeller had originally provided. It expanded southward, and new buildings were erected along 60th Street: for instance, the Crown Family School was built in 1920, Burton-Judson Courts in 1931, and the Harris School of Public Policy in 1988. Attention returned to the Midway as more people had to cross it every day.

In 2000, the Chicago Park District unveiled the Midway Plaisance Master Plan.

The plan envisions the revitalization of the Midway to become a more accessible and welcoming space for the mid–South Side community.

“The development of park facilities, the improved management of traffic, and the creation of year-round gardens will support new and diverse programs that will draw people from all over the city,” the Master Plan’s Vision Statement read.

“The plan will recreate the Midway; integrate it with the revitalized Burnham, Washington, and Jackson parks, and help make the South Side park system an exCONTINUED ON PG. 12

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Who’s to say the Midway Plaisance won’t truly be “a park for body, mind, and spirit” one day?

CONTINUED FROM PG. 11

citing place for all Chicagoans to relax, socialize, and play.”

Evan Carver, an assistant instructional professor on the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization trained in urban design and planning, agrees that efforts have been made to make the Midway more conducive to social gatherings: the Midway now has activity hubs such as the skating rink and events like the Hyde Park Jazz Festival and the RBC Race for the Kids at Comer Children’s Hospital, which bring people to the Midway.

However, these initiatives can only go so far. “I would argue that [the Midway] is not a highly functional public space,” Carver said. “The primary reason is that it’s cut off by two very busy roads.” The Midway was never designed to be pedes-

trian friendly to begin with. “The two one-way lanes, in terms of design, share more in common with airport runways than neighborhood streets. [They] invite cars to drive extremely fast, and pedestrians have to be brave and just hope that the cars stop,” he added.

However, the sheer quantity of students crossing the Midway every day has led to a qualitative change in how drivers and pedestrians interact. “The fact that there are more people on these raised crosswalks is a good thing [because that] reminds drivers that there are people walking here. Through a thousand little, tiny acts of rebellion, you guys forced the city to build crosswalks,” Carver said.

The second reason that the Midway is a dysfunctional public space, Carver argued, is that activities “have to follow historic preservation rules…. It was built

specifically for [the Columbian Exposition] 130 years ago, but there is no [Exposition] anymore.”

He considers the plan for a new universally accessible playground between Stony Island Avenue and the Metra tracks, however, to be a step in the right direction. “Playgrounds are extremely important for making a neighborhood family friendly,” he said. “But if it’s still cut off [by car lanes] I can tell you I’m not excited [to] brave the 50-mile-per-hour traffic and stop signs with young children. It will probably get used more if it is contiguous with the neighborhood.”

Coming from Singapore, where there are designated “school zones” in which motorists must slow down, I’m still surprised that despite everything—the abundance of roads parallel to the Midway, the many young children attending the Labo-

ratory Schools, and the historical significance of the Midway—the cars still seem to be the true “Monsters of the Midway.”

Traffic accidents happen aplenty on the Midway. And all the signage in the world would do little to assuage the feeling that you’re nothing more than a Crossy Road chicken.

These road safety issues make the Chicago Park District’s vision for a pleasant Midway attracting people to actively come to it seem a little far into the future. But a brief survey of the past tells us how the Midway Plaisance of today has already vastly evolved since the days of playing host to Olmsted’s original plan or the World’s Columbian Exposition. Who’s to say the Midway Plaisance won’t truly be “a park for body, mind, and spirit” one day?

The Maroon Launches UChicago Police Department Incident Reporter The project strives to paint a more nuanced picture of incidents reported to UCPD and any patterns that may exist within the incident data.

By MICHAEL PLUNKETT | Technology Editor Project Background and Motivations Crime rates in and around the University are a prime concern for many University community members and prospective students. This past October, the University saw a slew of armed robberies in Hyde Park and on campus. Posts on Reddit surrounding the University of Chicago regularly consist of questions about how safe it is to attend the University and live in the Hyde Park area. However, research shows that there generally exists some level of misalignment between actual crime rates and perception of crime rates.

According to a 2023 study by the American Psychological Association, the perceptions of local and national crime rates

vary distinctly based on the type of media a person takes in, with users of crime reporting applications like Citizen reporting higher local crime rates independent of a local area’s actual crime rate. Gallup polls show that people’s assumptions of local crime rates around the country are at a 30-year high. Despite this perception, national violent crime rates are 53 percent of what they were 30 years ago, and property crimes are 39 percent of what they were, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, generally called the Clery CONTINUED ON PG. 13

This map presents the incidents reported by the UCPD Incident Report from the last 30 days and is updated regularly every weekday morning. courtesy of michael plunkett.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 22, 2024

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The project strives to paint a more nuanced picture of incidents reported to UCPD and highlight any patterns that may exist within the data.

CONTINUED FROM PG. 12

Act, stipulates that universities report crime statistics relating to general criminal offenses, violence against women, hate crimes, and arrests or deferrals for disciplinary action as well as campus safety information to the student body.

The federal act also requires universities to maintain a daily crime log and fire log, which the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) releases on the University’s behalf.

However, the UCPD’s crime and fire log only shows up to five incidents at a time, does not have a built-in map to show incident locations, and does not allow users to filter searches by any factor other than date ranges. While it is some-

what cumbersome to navigate, it is worth noting that UCPD does give its users the ability to access the historical record of crime and fire logs. In comparison, DePaul University’s crime and fire log only shows a brief description of the event and the date in the format of month and day, e.g. January 27.

To make the data more accessible, The Maroon’s Technology team developed the UChicago Police Department Incident Reporter, a web application consisting of two distinct components: one to scrape and clean the data for every incident reported to UCPD from July 2010 to the present, and another to visualize it. The project strives to paint a more nuanced picture of incidents reported to UCPD

An example of UCPD’s crime and fire logs that displays information from January 1, 2024 to January 18, 2024 taken on January 26, 2024. courtesy of michael plunkett.

A screenshot of DePaul’s crime and fire log taken on January 26, 2024. courtesy of michael plunkett.

and highlight any patterns that may exist within the incident data.

What is web scraping?

Web scrapers are applications that download webpages, parse out meaningful information, and typically save data for later analysis. It is typically done using an application due to difficulties regarding the required work. For example, suppose one wanted to get all UCPD incident data between January 1–22, 2023. In that case, one would have to manually navigate through 21 pages of the log and do an immense amount of copying and pasting.

A cumulative and seasonal picture, broken down by hour, that shows the type of incidents that are reported to UCPD. Some incidents have multiple categorizations, so it should not be interpreted as precisely the raw count of incidents. courtesy of michael plunkett.

Meaningfully parsing that data (getting latitude and longitude points for the location, creating dates based on reported times, standardizing incident types, etc.) would take at least an hour. Using a web scraper for this task takes under 20 seconds.

UCPD Web Data Reporting Application Current features of the scraping web application are: • Scraping: Incidents are scraped at regular intervals based on the reported date of the last saved incident.

• For example, if the last saved incident took place on September 30, 2022, the scraper application will download, parse, and save the incident data from this date forward.

• Incident formatting: The incidents are formatted from raw text into various data types to make them more conducive to current and future analysis.

• All addresses are searched for and labeled according to the results returned from the Google Maps API. • Incident types are normalized to ease user readability and machine learning categorization in future analysis. The normalization process includes lemmatization, addressing spelling errors, and capitalization consistency.

• Incident categorization: Incidents solely categorized as “Information” are sent through an XGBoost machine CONTINUED ON PG. 14

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The Maroon firmly believes in the power of open data and that all public UCPD data should be easily viewable.

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learning model in hopes of finding incident information not recorded by UCPD’s categorization model.

• Incident visualization: Incidents are saved for rendering on graphics that update as new incidents are added to the cloud datastore.

The Maroon firmly believes in the power of open data and that all public UCPD data should be easily viewable.

However, because the platform is built for data transparency rather than investigation, incident reports relating to sexual assaults, medical evacuations, domestic violence, and the like have been omitted from the map. Such incidents, however, are helpful in aggregate for analysis and can serve as indicators for overall safety in Hyde Park regarding reported incidents of a sensitive nature.

The data in the UChicago Police Department Incident Reporter visualizations are updated every weekday morning. In addition, any bugs in the processing pipeline are addressed on a regular basis and new features are added as time allows.

A breakdown of the incident types listed in the UCPD Incident Report over the last 365 days. Similar to the map, this visual is updated every weekday morning. Some incidents have multiple categorizations, so this is not intended to be taken as a raw incident count.

The project intends to provide residents of Hyde Park with a more objective view of neighborhood crime rates and build trust between the people who patrol the area and those who live within its borders.

Technology editor’s note: If you’d like to see any analysis in this project going forward, The Maroon invites you to leave an issue on the UCPD Incident Reporting GitHub repository. We cannot

promise we’ll be able to get to all requests.

Still, The Maroon welcomes any recommendations or pull requests to help make this application more beneficial for the UChicago and Hyde Park communities.

“We’re real, we’re happening, now is the time”: UChicago’s Complicated Indigenous Past and Present Breaking away from classroom matters, Indigenous students are strengthening communal ties on campus.

By AGATHE DEMAROLLE | Grey City Reporter As an international student from France, I had never heard of land acknowledgements—until I started the college admissions process in the United States.

Hearing each university’s admissions representatives begin events and tours, both online and in person, with these statements soon became familiar. But when I first virtually toured UChicago in July 2022, I was surprised when the information session skipped it. The absence of this mark of awareness toward the history of the United States was troubling,

but I quickly dismissed it to focus on the slideshow.

One year later, as a disoriented international student running to numerous O-Week events such as the Opening Convocation or the Aims of Education address, I again started noticing that the University did not feel the need to remind us of the tribes who originally lived on this land.

The land acknowledgements of peer institutions like Stanford, Harvard, and Yale—as well as other Illinois universities like the University of Illinois Urba-

na-Champaign and Northwestern—are easily found online and feature in official documents and statements from their administrations.

At UChicago, certain departments and offices employ land acknowledgements.

The Office of Civic Engagement, for instance, cowrote a land acknowledgement with the American Indian Center of Chicago in 2021, and the Chicago Center for Teaching and Learning issued an online statement about the “historical context” to their diversity and inclusion policies.

The University of Chicago at large, however, remains officially devoid of

land acknowledgements. The Laboratory School’s student newspaper reported in October 2023 that the University barred the high school’s science department from adopting an official land acknowledgement because it violated the 1967 Kalven Report, a university document that suggests an official “independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures.”

“It is disheartening that the smallest step, the littlest gesture of acknowledgment isn’t even taken here,” said Elijah Bullie, a third-year in the College who descends from the Omaha tribe and cofoundCONTINUED ON PG. 15

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“‘A lot of people think of Chicago and the Midwest, and even the U.S. overall, as very separate from an Indigenous past,’ Bullie [said]. But in reality, the two pasts are tightly intertwined.”

Dr. Sol Tax, professor of anthropology at the University, in front of the Social Science Research building in 1939. He organized the AICC (American Indian Chicago Conference), bridging theory and concrete action. courtesy of the hanna holborn gray special collections research center.

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ed the Indigenous Students Association (ISA) at UChicago.

But Indigenous student opinion is mixed. Lukas Borja, who is also part of ISA and of Indigenous descent, believes that land acknowledgments often feel hollow. At universities, they often act as a placeholder for concrete changes to the curriculum—a token gesture, rather than a meaningful one. “Land acknowledgments are one step and how they operate at most universities now, in my opinion, is that they come in the absence of any concrete changes to curriculum or procedure,” Borja said.

Todd Henderson, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who studies Indigenous law (but is not of Indigenous descent), is of a similar mind. “I don’t think land acknowledgments do anything other than assuage people’s guilt,” he said. “If the University of Chicago was to

erect a statue of Native people who made contributions... or have a Native American history requirement, yes, I would love it.”

But concrete changes are, of course, difficult, given the University’s refusal to adopt what it sees as political speech.

This official obstinacy, Borja argued, is “even more absurd for the city of Chicago, in the state of Illinois.”

“A lot of people think of Chicago and the Midwest, and even the U.S. overall, as very separate from an Indigenous past,” Bullie added. But in reality, the two pasts are tightly intertwined.

The name “Chicago,” for instance, comes from a French rendering of the Miami-Illinois word shikaakwa, meaning “wild onion” or “wild leek,” plants that were widespread in the area we now know as the eponymous city and University of Chicago. This swampy region by the lake was originally a complex and diverse fur trading center for more than thirty tribes. Among them, the Ojibwe, Odawa, and the Potawatomi—together known as the Council of the Three Fires and representing approximately 58,000 individuals— were the most influential in the Great Lakes region. This economic, political, and military alliance lasted almost two centuries and played a key role in trade and wars between tribes and European powers.

However, starting in the 1760s, the Great Lakes native tribes experienced a decline in their populations as warfare and disease spread. This phenomenon was amplified by migration—both forced, after land concession treaties following the War of 1812, between roughly ten tribes, including those forming the Council of the Three Fires and the young, growing United States, and voluntary, as some tribes anticipated American expansion and others remained nomadic.

By the 1840 census—the first to include Chicago—no Native Americans were recorded as living in the area (although Indigenous people underreporting their own numbers is partially to blame for this dearth). As a consequence of their demographic decline and lack of appearance

in official records, it is very unlikely that Native students were admitted when the University was founded, although no ethnic records were kept.

Today, the number of Native students at UChicago is only 0.1 percent—roughly one or two students entering per class—a number which is around average for the University’s peer institutions. By contrast, Chicago is believed to be home to the third-largest urban Native American population in the United States with over 34,500 individuals (1.3 percent of the city’s total population) according to the 2020 Decennial Census.

One explanation for this is the federal government’s 1952 Urban Relocation Program which encouraged Native Americans to leave reservations for seven cities, including Chicago. It was formalized through the 1956 Indian Relocation Act. The government’s goal was to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream American society. As better life conditions were promised to them by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), over 120,000 Native Americans left their reservations for cities between the 1950s and the 1970s. But the reality which awaited them in the cities was bleak as they faced unemployment, poverty, culture shock, and racism with little help from the BIA. Once the Bureau had directed Native Americans towards housing, often in underprivileged neighborhoods, and a job, often offering small revenue, it left them on their own.

The University’s relationship to this Indigenous history and presence is equally complicated and largely grounded in academics and theory. The most substantial option to study Native history and current issues is the new Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity (RDI) major. Replacing the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies major, which was last offered to the Class of 2025, the RDI major requires students to take Foundations of Indigeneity, a course about the evolution of Indigenous identity and the political and environmental concerns facing Native people. For students interested in the field but reluctant to commit to the

major, a few civilization courses such as America in World Civilizations and Human Rights in World Civilizations also examine the topic.

The AICC, a moment of change in Indigenous matters organized by UChicago Despite these options, most graduates of the College will never study Indigenous culture. Currently, only 20 undergraduate students major in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies and only 13 major in RDI, according to the University’s Winter Quarter 2024 Census Report. (For reference, 1498 study Economics, the most popular major.)

But the University has long supported research and events in the field. In 1961, the American Indian Chicago Conference (AICC) was held on campus and partially funded by UChicago. Organized by Dr. Sol Tax, professor of anthropology at the University, the AICC put into practice Tax’s theory of “action anthropology,” the study of cultural and social challenges that promotes self-determination for the communities involved. The conference was one of the first events to promote Native self-determination, encouraging Native Americans from various tribes to confront their issues and formulate their own solutions.

Over 500 Native Americans from 90 tribes attended the conference, where they discussed issues such as preserving Native cultures while adopting some elements of American culture and designing programs to improve their collective future. The conference resulted in “The Declaration of Indian Purpose,” a document advocating for the protection of Indigenous rights and identities against forced acculturation, which delegates from the AICC presented to President Kennedy at the White House in 1962. Reflecting on the conference’s legacy, Henderson said that “it was incredibly important in the Indian Civil Rights Movement and in getting it started.

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“But that was what they were yelling at us on the quad: ‘Christopher Columbus is a hero.’”

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the publisher of Indian Voices, a periodical born of the AICC newsletters and coordinated by Dr. Tax. Any Native American could send a letter to the editor, Robert K. Thomas, a Cherokee who was trained as an anthropologist at UChicago, and it would be published. Every issue of Indian Voices was accompanied by copies of treaties and policies concerning Indigenous people to provide them with extensive background on the political relationship between the government and Native people and to expand their English vocabulary.

An opportunity for law students to support the Hopi tribe In recent years, the University has expanded areas of research in Native American studies through its support of an innovative Law School program. Everything started when Henderson, a Law School professor, and Justin Richland, a UChicago anthropologist and associate justice on the Hopi Appellate Court, met at a Little League baseball game. Both were interested in Native American law and reinvigorated the Law School’s interest in the field by teaching a Native American law seminar.

In 2016, they went further by starting a practical course entitled “The Hopi Law Practicum” which enabled Law students to act as a “legal aid clinic,” as Henderson described it, for the Hopi Court. There, students assisted judges and worked on land disputes, contracts, and disciplinary action cases pending in the Hopi Appellate Court.

Henderson said that the students loved the Hopi Law Practicum, describing the chance to witness living conditions as “eye-opening.” A cornerstone of the program was also realizing the distinctions and similarities between Native American reservations and the rest of the United States. “Going there... it is unmistakable that you are in America, but you also feel that you’re in a completely different place,” Henderson explained.

The Hopi Law Practicum was spearheaded by Richland, who used his relationship with the Hopi tribe to enable students to enter a “very closed society,” as Henderson put it and witness the intri-

cacies of their “different-but-the-same” legal system. Once he left UChicago for the University of California, Irvine, in 2018, the program ended, although Henderson still aims to revive the program, perhaps with another tribe.

Indigenous students create their space at the University beyond the classroom On campus, the University also supports events and programs involving Indigenous people (even if they are not necessarily widely advertised outside of the involved departments). UChicago is one of 21 member institutions of the Newberry Consortium in American Indian and Indigenous Studies, a program for graduate students across fields to conduct research, dive into Indigenous archives, and present their work at a conference. For undergraduates, the RDI department also organizes events about Indigenous history and current issues.

For instance, Raymond Orr, a professor at the University of Miami of Potawatomi descent, gave a talk entitled “Indigenous Polities: Flexibility Across Time and Settler State” on October 26, 2023, on campus. There, to a crowd of largely RDI students and faculty, he began with an acknowledgement of the tribes who used to live in the Chicago area. Orr explained how federal legislation limits the ability of Native Americans to break apart from their tribe, start a new one, or join another tribe to which they are not related.

Outside of academics, Native American and Indigenous presence and heritage are now embodied by a newly created RSO: ISA. Bullie recalls that when he arrived at UChicago, he and Danielle Lopez, a third-year of Lenca and Tagalog Filipino descent, were shocked at the lack of an Indigenous student group: “Oh my gosh, everyone has a group! Where is ours?” he said. The former Indigenous group, the UChicago Native American and Indigenous Association, was no longer active.

The two friends decided that “if they’re not gonna make a space for us, then we’ll just make one ourselves,” Bullie said. ISA, cofounded by Bullie and Lopez, finally came to be during Winter Quarter 2023.

President John F. Kennedy met with delegates from the American Indian Chicago Conference at the White House on August 15, 1962. The groundbreaking conference was held on the UChicago campus the year prior and resulted in the “Declaration of Indian Purpose.” courtesy of the john f. kennedy library.

Reflecting on the tiny proportion of Native students at UChicago, Bullie recalls touring the Law School and discovering that only one Native American student was enrolled. “It’s just things like that that remind you just how alone you are,” he said pensively. But for Bullie, ISA has been particularly important because “it gives a space for people like me to not feel so alone.”

Consequently, as a cofounder of ISA, it has been crucial for him to build a sense of community between Native students and raise awareness that despite their small percentage, they are present and active on campus. Their last event, held on Indigenous People’s Day—October 14, the same date as Columbus Day—was entitled “Pie a Colonizer.” On the Quad that Saturday afternoon, ISA members could throw a cream pie in the face of a man dressed up as a 17th-century colonizer. Bullie said that this event helped ISA gain visibility. Indigenous students who had not previously heard about it were excited to discover that such an RSO existed at UChicago.

However, he was surprised at the amount of reproach that the group faced on the quad. As he considers the University to be a “very accepting campus where people, for the most part, are culturally

aware,” he was shocked to witness some passersby yell at the group from across the quad and give them dirty looks. “If people know history, I don’t think there’s a way to say that you’re a fan of Christopher Columbus,” Bullie said. “But that was what they were yelling at us on the quad: ‘Christopher Columbus is a hero.’”

Concerning these conflicting perspectives on history, Borja argues that universities have a duty to advocate for truth and historical awareness. “So much of our active struggle is demanding historical recognition and the right for our historical realities to be viewed as such,” he explained, noting how Native students across the country often encounter false narratives about their past and culture in class. Even at UChicago, he said, there is still work to be done about the historical representation of Native people in certain American history courses.

As expectations grow for universities to raise awareness of Native American history, Bullie wanted to remind students that the Native American community is present on campus—and not simply an object of study: “We’re real, we’re happening, now is the time.”

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VIEWPOINTS

Ando/Boyer Debate: A Student Responds The debate in The Maroon between Clifford Ando and John Boyer illuminates how changing financial needs have transformed the College. As undergraduates, it’s time for us to wonder whether the administration’s plan is the future we want.

By NOAH GLASGOW As a humanities and social sciences student in the College, I have closely followed professor Clifford Ando’s public inquiry into our University’s precarious and increasingly harmful position.

In an early assessment, Ando estimated that about half of all undergraduate tuition—the mainspring of the University’s discretionary budget—simply went to servicing, not even paying down, about $6 billion in principal owed on major capital expansion projects. His most recent assessment, published in The Maroon, suggests that “the tuition of approximately 6,350 undergraduates, around 85 percent of the student body, is needed merely to service the University’s debt.”

University trustees have taken on that debt not to expand the historical divisions of the University or, indeed, restore the historical divisions’ failing infrastructure. Instead, the University has gobbled up the Marine Biological Laboratory; built towering highrise dormitories; and increasingly pursued capital-intensive corporate partnerships like Hyde Park Labs. Its new investments generally prize expansion, located largely in preprofessional initiatives and student amenities, not incremental improvements on existing programs.

Undergraduates pay for this very particular kind of expansion, Ando argues. The question

then is: Do we want it?

Former Dean of the College John Boyer would like us to think that—yes—two decades of debt-financed University expansion lie in the interest of University undergraduates. Or at the very least, the University’s undergraduate experience has significantly improved during the period of expansion.

In a response to Ando published late last year in The Maroon, Boyer recounts the major gains made by the College over the last two decades. These include a larger freshman class, higher freshman retention rate, higher admissions yield rate, and an applicant pool with increased “size and academic strength.”

Lest these statistical gains appear impersonal, Boyer notes that the growth of the undergraduate population has made possible “a flourishing profile of student-life and cocurricular programs.” Major improvements in student life include increased “student career preparation,” “major new resources in residential life,” and a “greater agency” to take classes across the University’s professional schools.

I recap Boyer’s argument in such great detail because it is a thorough and coherent account of what the University has accomplished over the past two decades. The University has settled in squarely with its “peer institutions.” But this argument obscures the fact that the University of Chicago does not simply have peer institutions; it chooses them.

leo vernor.

The decision of University trustees to issue an ever-increasing supply of bonds was fundamentally a choice designed to put the University on a par with, say, Harvard and Yale.

In his most recent review of the University’s financial position, Ando suggests that University trustees ought to have recognized, at some point, that the University of Chicago is not Harvard or Yale. The University has not had and does not have the same capital resources at its dis-

posal as its self-appointed peers, as Boyer himself points out in his defense of the University’s aggressive borrowing policies.

Now, facing the rising costs of debt, the University has turned to what Ando calls “socializing the costs of their own risk-taking.”

In other words, they are tightening budgets across all University departments, not just those that have benefited from expansion.

As Ando points out, we are now stuck in the position of “less well-resourced” universities like

those that made national headlines last year for budget cuts to the humanities.

It seems clear that our position as an “undercapitalized” university should have demanded some financial responsibility—or at least foresight—on the part of the trustees. Now, as hundreds of millions of dollars in principal approach their refinancing dates, the University risks resembling a financial bubble: the inflated value we have boasted CONTINUED ON PG. 18

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The school we build for ourselves is a choice.

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for the past decade will collapse, and we will have traded a serious intellectual reputation for a rapacious and short-sighted one. And in the most selfish terms, we undergraduates will have paid our tuition money for a fiercely devalued diploma.

But it is important to consider aspects of the College experience beyond reputation and big-picture financial crisis. Whether or not that crisis comes, the desire to place the University of Chicago among a certain cadre of other elite Universities impacts our daily life.

I am not unique among Uni-

versity of Chicago students to come from a family that takes tremendous pride in the College’s unyielding character and sense of tradition. I grew up in the shadow of nine technicolor volumes of Readings in Western Civilization (edited by no one other than Boyer himself). When I applied, I had the sense that despite its rising reputation, the University of Chicago still clung to a longstanding intellectual culture and a measure of self-selectivity that once distinguished the school from its “peers.”

What Boyer’s argument makes clear is that intellectual culture and self-selectivity are,

at best, vestigial organs in the College. His case for the strength of the College is founded in our increasingly competitive admissions, not our self-selectivity.

His case for flourishing student life is rooted in the rise of preprofessional opportunities long eschewed by a school that prized academics above all else. Our admissions process and student life have assimilated to those of the Ivy League schools. As we have grown into our peer group, we have grown out of what set us apart.

I do not mean to suggest that the collapse of a certain kind of education in the College has

proceeded separate from the reinvention of University finances.

The opposite is true. The aims of undergraduate education have not simply changed; undergraduate education itself has been instrumentalized, transformed into a weapon in the University’s fight for growth and status. New dormitories and preprofessional programs demand massive outlays of cash just as they draw in the students who provide that cash. As Boyer notes, the growing undergraduate population “contribute[s] powerfully to the financial stability of the University.”

What Boyer calls an increasing “instructional staff” is an army of

adjunct workers called in to bear the brunt of teaching as funding to the classical divisions remains stagnant.

We, undergraduates, are the engine of meaningless expansion, of growth pursued for its own sake. As a consequence, our experience is rapidly losing meaning. But even with the looming threat of economic crisis, the University administration has room to change course. The simplest reallocations of funds, a handful of new hires, a shift in the objects of future investment; all can keep the College distinct.

The school we build for ourselves is a choice.

Student Safety Should Be About Students

By THE MAROON EDITORIAL BOARD “Your campus is on the South Side?” We all know that expression of concern from well-meaning relatives and neighbors when we tell them where we go to school. This is not to imply that there is something intrinsically unsafe about this part of Chicago, because there isn’t. But the unfortunate truth is that many people at UChicago know someone who has been mugged, assaulted, robbed, or otherwise threatened with crime during their time in Hyde Park. The University’s Lyft Ride Smart program, implemented in 2021, was a major step toward mitigating students’ chances of becoming victims of crime, but reductions to the program’s scope and discounts have set that progress back. Amid a spike in crime this past autumn and recurring questions about the future of the Lyft program, the University must both improve its existing transportation infrastructure and center student voices in its efforts to keep them safe.

The Chicago Police Department reported a 25 percent in-

crease in robberies citywide in 2023 compared with its 2022 figures. Hyde Park is no exception to this trend, as the past autumn quarter’s spate of robberies demonstrated. But the timing was particularly notable given the University’s decision to scale back the Lyft Ride Smart Program for the 2023–24 school year from 10 rides with a $15 discount to seven rides with a $10 discount—a reduction in value of more than half.

In a safety webinar following the autumn robberies, Dean of Students Michele Rasmussen justified the decision by saying that the program “was never intended to be a standalone transportation system… but rather more of a complement” to the University’s UGo shuttle system and CTA buses. “[The Lyft program] was suggested to us by students as a late-night alternative, especially on weekends, to shuttles or walking to get from point A to point B, particularly off campus,” she explained.

Rasmussen’s arguments assume that all of the alternatives

to Lyft are entirely functional, convenient, and safe—which, unfortunately, none are. The dangers of walking at night with such robbery statistics need little explanation. Additionally, the two CTA lines that service the UChicago area, the 171 and 172, run only on weekdays and never at night. While reliable and efficient when they do operate, their limited window of overlap with the Lyft Ride Smart program’s window of 5 p.m. to 4 a.m. makes them hardly a suitable alternative. Excluding the east-west 55 bus, no other CTA lines approach UChicago’s campus.

Though UGo shuttles run concurrently with the Lyft program, they are difficult to use. Few students use the University’s Transloc app designed for tracking campus buses and shuttles, and that’s not without reason. The app’s cumbersome interface and propensity to freeze or crash makes it difficult to navigate—literally—at the best of times. Other students have been spurned by “ghost buses,” which either don’t show up or blast past students waiting at labeled stops. For these reasons,

the Lyft program is far superior to alternatives in both reliability and speed of transport, not to mention a far safer option than walking alone or waiting on the curb for a bus to arrive.

From the University’s perspective, the Lyft program’s main downside is the cost of offering the associated discounts to some 20,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. The University’s attempts to find the sweet spot between student safety and the bottom line have yielded various changes to its student transportation offerings over the years, and another one—a wholesale switch to point-to-point shuttle service Via—has been proposed. Already in use at Northwestern, Harvard, and NYU, Via allows students to book point-to-point rides with multiple riders in a vehicle at the same time. The vehicles’ routes are planned based on student requests, and the Via app notifies a user if a shuttle is coming to their location.

Via seems promising; it offers a compromise between point-topoint service and mass transit.

However, given the University would be in charge of how drivers are chosen and managed, there’s a risk that Via would repeat the UGo shuttles’ mistakes. Whether a change to Via would meaningfully improve things or if it’s simply a way to fix what isn’t broken remains to be seen. If it fails to improve the status quo, the administration can expect students to demand a return to discounted Lyft rides.

What is clear in any case is that we students want agency over our safety and well-being, and the University must center our voices in aiming to keep us safe. Through protests, negotiations between administration and USG, and UChicago Transit Enthusiasts’ recent campaign to compile data on ghost buses, students have demonstrated time and time again that they are invested in devising efficient and effective safety-oriented transportation programs.

Hyde Park, and the South Side as a whole, is rich with history and culture. We want to explore it safely.

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ARTS “Lifespan of a Fact”: Something out of the Reg “The University of Chicago is in the bones of this play,” Jeremy Kareken, alum and co-writer of The Lifespan of a Fact, says.

By MIKI MUKAWA | Deputy Arts Reporter TimeLine Theater’s The Lifespan of a Fact is a quintessentially UChicago play, for better and for worse. That is to say, it is a play that questions what journalistic integrity is through a series of moral and ethical debates.

The Lifespan of a Fact was adapted from the book of the same name written

by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal, with the play written by UChicago alums Jeremy Kareken (A.B. ’91) and David Murrell (A.B. ’90) and Gordon Farrell.

The story follows Jim Fingal (Alex Benito Rodriguez), a Harvard graduate and fact-checker at a major magazine who is assigned to an essay written by John D’Agata (PJ Powers). When Jim begins to discover that the essay is riddled with inconsistencies and false facts, what ensues is a frenzy of fact-checking and debates between John, Jim, and his boss Emily Penrose (Juliet Hart).

“I don’t think we could have written this play without our time at the University of Chicago,” said Kareken.

When Kareken says that, he means it literally in that he would not have met his co-writer David Murrell if not for their time at the University.

“We met in 1987,” Murrell recounted. He was a sophomore, Kareken a freshman. “He was also at Burton-Judson. And we just met the standard way you meet people in college because we were in the same dorm, you know.”

“I remember the Dodd-Mead table in [the] Burton-Judson dining hall, circular table,” Kareken smiles. “And I remember his gray sweatshirt.”

Just from watching the two, their closeness is obvious. You can see it in their casual tone and the way they effortlessly bounce off each other’s points.

But it was only later in their friendship, after their time in college, that they de-

cided to become artistic collaborators.

“Jeremy was known more at that time [for his] writing. I was not writing in college, really. He and I tried collaborating on something I think in our junior or senior year, but it never really went anywhere. And that was pretty much it for me,” Murrell says.

But there’s another way in which the play is quintessentially UChicago.

“The University of Chicago is in the bones of this play. It’s a very dialectical play,” Kareken said. Over the course of the play, there’s a lot of back and forth between the three characters: about which facts are technically correct, how far truths can be stretched, and what the definition of “truth” even is.

Admittedly, this element of the play made the production feel repetitive and frustrating at times. But in light of my conversation with Kareken and Murrell, perhaps that is the point, that as an audience member, you can’t help but feel slightly annoyed at this debate that feels like it’s leading everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

“There are no bad guys. These are three people who are definitely interested in intellectual inquiry, and it gets into something deeper, more difficult than mere intellectualism,” Kareken explains. Murrell adds that “there’s a rigorousness to [the play] and a lack of sentimentality” that has made The Lifespan of a Fact successful. (The show enjoyed a Broadway run back in 2018, starring Daniel Radcliffe and Cherry Jones.) Perhaps that much is true; the play does successfully explore the debate that it sets out and leaves you wanting more. It’s the type of play that, for a UChicago student, feels familiar in its discourse, language, and almost nitpicky technicalities.

From left, Emily (Juliet Hart), Jim (Alex Benito Rodriguez), and John (PJ Powers) negotiate and compromise through a long night of editing on deadline. liz lauren.

Kareken attributes this to his and Murrell’s friendship: “We knew enough about each other’s processes that we could take each other’s positions well enough because so much of this play is about debate. There’s a bunch of voices going on in this play, [so] it helps that we knew each other so well, I think.”

Is it a play for everybody? Perhaps not. It’s not exactly a feel-good play, and it leaves you feeling neither satisfied nor content. But it is a play that makes you think, not only during the show as you

watch the actors shout at each other from across a well-lit stage but long after the curtain has dropped when you’re walking home through the dark streets.

TimeLine’s Theater’s production of The Lifespan of a Fact by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Gordon Farrell, based on the book by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal, directed by Mechelle Moe, ran from November 1 to December 23, 2023.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 22, 2024

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MAR 14-APR 21

PURPOSE WORLD PREMIERE BY

BRANDEN JACOBS-JENKINS

DIRECTED BY

PHYLICIA RASHAD Featuring ensemble members ALANA ARENAS, GLENN DAVIS and JON MICHAEL HILL with AYANNA BRIA BAKARI, HARRY LENNIX and TAMARA TUNIE A spirited, funny and epic drama about a Chicago family who are pillars of Black American Politics

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STU IMENTARY TICKDENT M A R E TS 19U SE C

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The Regulators Perform for the Logan Center’s Jazz Series Arts Reporter Celeste Alcalay attends Logan Center’s Third Tuesday Jazz concert, featuring The Regulators.

By CELESTE ALCALAY | Arts Reporter The ladies in the oil sketches on the wall appeared to strain their necks in the direction of lilting melodies, funk fusion, and jazz-influenced, hard-driving grooves at Logan Café the night of Tuesday, January 23. The audience watched The Regulators with rapt attention. The trio didn’t seem to notice.

On guitar was Michael Allemana, director of the University of Chicago’s Jazz Ensemble and professor of ethnomusicology. On bass was Matt Ferguson. At his drum set sat Gerald Dowd. The low glow of Logan’s pendant lighting framed the men, nestled in the cafe corner as they played their strains, the bare wintry Midway Plaisance concealed by reflective glass windows.

The hour-and-a-half-long set consisted of eight original compositions, all of a protean genre. One song’s arc gave no indication as to how the arc of the next one would unfold. “Just One Week” was experimental and began tempo rubato; traversing the neck of the guitar to utilize its upper register, Allemana bent sustained notes which lingered dissonantly in the air and tapered out in reedy whispers. A repeated melodic figure from the bass anchored the group.

Dowd gripped his brush and pressed it down against the surface of the snare to cause friction so that the bristles resisted, creating scraping, grating murmurs.

The heartbeat of “Wide-Mouthed Bottle” was a memorable guitar riff. Accompaniment appeared halfway through when Dowd pulled out a tambourine. Other mo-

ments were quieter. A softly arpeggiated guitar chord began one piece.

Unafraid of where the music might lead them, the musicians seemed to surprise themselves: a head bob to the propulsive beat, a shared look, and the absence of any overt communication—subtle acknowledgements of a trio that has been playing together for more than 15 years.

They formed in mid-2008, during the Great Recession: their name alludes to the crisis, but Allemana didn’t spell out the relationship between band name and economic disaster. After all, the only topic too taboo for the band, they announced, was “Politics!”

In each song, the trio transitioned between disparate sections with a casual ease that contrasted the music’s concentrated intensity. Fragments of rhythms and melodies from the tunes were springboards, when the time came for improvisation. Allemana launched into flurries of topographically even sixteenth notes, balanced by his sassy, assertive, more melodic statements.

The Regulators ran free in their odd-meter constructions, unphased by wonky rhythmic cycles of their own creation. The three friends always journeyed back to beat one together.

After naming one of his newly composed pieces “Mr. Carter” on the spot, Michael Allemana shrugged into the mic, smiling, and looked out at the Logan Café crowd. “See?” he said. “We just make it up!”

$15 Student Tickets for entire run: Use code STUDENT15 steppenwolf.org | 312-335-1650 |

Attendees at The Regulators’ concert. celeste alcalay.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 22, 2024

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SPORTS DEI Programming Highlights Cultural Issues in Cross Country Teams Students on the UChicago Women’s Cross Country team are speaking up about the lack of support and inclusivity in the locker room. As both the men’s and women’s teams begin spearheading an increasing amount of DEI programming, they approach a pivotal crossroads.

By FINN HARTNETT | Head Sports Editor The University of Chicago’s women’s cross-country team has enjoyed a great deal of success in recent years. Coming into the 2023 season ranked second in the country, the Maroons started strong and held the No. 1 ranking for multiple weeks before ultimately placing third in the NCAA national championship.

While the men’s cross-country team didn’t have as obviously impressive of a season, finishing second-to-last in their national championships, they placed third in their UAA conference tournament, with graduate student Jack Begley winning the tournament altogether. They were also able to snatch up an invite to nationals to begin with—something only 30 other colleges across the country could say.

But a larger issue than a lack of gold looms over the team. Following the institution of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programming in team spaces last year, some members of the cross-country teams have spoken out about pushback to the programming, inappropriate comments made by others, and a generally unsupportive locker-room culture that has persisted for a long time.

Cross country running in the United States has historically never been a diverse sport. Data from the NCAA backs this up—the organization reported that in 2023, 73 percent of female and 71 percent of male cross country runners were white.

This number has decreased only 3 percent and 5 percent since a decade ago respectively, showing the slow rate of change in the teams.

The UChicago team doesn’t exactly

buck this trend. “My [high school] team in North Carolina was more diverse,” a former member of the cross country team told The Maroon.

Of course, the team has no control over its own demographics. UChicago’s status as a DIII school means it does not give out athletic scholarships; as such, the school can only recruit from the homogenous pool of high school cross country runners who either have a preexisting academic scholarship or can afford to attend a prestigious university. Such conditions lead to an exceedingly white team that does not look like it will be changing anytime soon.

Mónica Ruiz House, a fourth-year on the women’s team who helps spearhead DEI programming for the men’s and women’s teams, told The Maroon that students of color on both teams began hosting small spaces for themselves in 2021 to speak about their experiences on the team. Since then, she has seen a slow shift in the culture of cross-country, as the teams look to become a more inclusive space.

“It used to be, honestly, taboo,” Ruiz House said of discussing race. “Some of the upperclassmen who were minority folks would joke about it, that [there] was a constant racial blind spot.”

An anonymous source similarly spoke of a culture in the women’s locker room that could feel unwelcoming for people of color. “There has historically been a really high turnover from minority women on our team,” they said. “It’s not necessarily that there’s some horrible, racist atmosphere. I think it adds up in a way that’s

almost like a death by a thousand paper cuts.”

A different source said that they too often felt unsupported as a person of color on the women’s team. “I guess I never really thought it was a problem before coming to college. And then I just remember, there was this one time… me and some of my other POC teammates. We just had a little heart to heart. And we’re like, ‘Oh, my God, we all feel this way.’ And then we’re all just crying in the locker room,” she told The Maroon. Because of such a history, the cross country team looked to prioritize conversations about race and class in 2023.

Many members of the cross-country team embraced this new philosophy.

However, there has also been pushback.

During one DEI event, the cross-country teams hosted a shoe drive for migrants who had recently crossed the Mexico-U.S. border in collaboration with the Arizonan advocacy group No More Deaths. But not all students were in favor of the initiative.

An anonymous source on the team stated that they were taken aback by snide comments from members of the team.

“Comments like ‘Why are you helping illegals?’ popped up in that space,” they told The Maroon. They also stated that they have heard similarly offensive remarks before. “It happens in the locker room, or it happens in a team-adjacent social setting,” they said.

Ruiz House expressed dissatisfaction with the team’s past chemistry and culture for similar reasons. “The general sentiment from minority students was like a feeling of… not discomfort, but the ways in which you can’t show up authentically as yourself the whole time you are in the

space,” she said.

The former member of the team highlighted similar considerations. “They’re supportive and try to be understanding,” they said of white athletes on the team.

“But I guess I never realized how much I needed community, and being away from white spaces, until I came to college and I was away from my family.”

Recently, the team tried another exercise, in which they listed types of people that they do not often see on the cross-country track. “The point was about, I think, considering how our sport is very geared towards one type of person.

Typically, you’re going to be really thin, you’re going to be whiter, you’re probably going to be from a higher socioeconomic status,” an anonymous source said. “And I remember one person wrote down ‘quitters.’”

A more serious example of a cultural issue in the cross-country team arose last October, when second-year Nora Holmes dropped out of the Augusta Invitational and withdrew from the team for about two weeks following offensive remarks made in team group chats regarding Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7.

According to Holmes, some participants changed others’ display names in the chat to make light of the conflict. “Let’s Nuke the Middle East” and “Hamas” were two nicknames Holmes specifically cited seeing in group chats. “I called people out on it in the chat. And no one responded or said anything,” Holmes told The Maroon. “The captains didn’t say anything. I talked to the coach, and he didn’t say anything. And then I ended up just saying, ‘Until this gets addressed, CONTINUED ON PG. 22

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 22, 2024

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“I’m optimistic because I think things in our culture have shifted a lot.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 21

I’m not running.’”

Holmes’s decision caused a stir within the cross-country team. Following her statement, the team’s captains quickly reached out to her, and the offending parties on the team sent long messages apologizing in the team’s group chat.

After a few weeks, Holmes rejoined the team, although she only competed in one more race, a time trial, until the season concluded. The experience as a whole distressed Holmes and affected how she currently views the team. “I’ve kind of distanced myself from the team, in some instances, because I find the social aspect really hard to handle,” she said.

Despite such internal controversy during the season, the cross-country teams continue to host more DEI programming than ever. In addition to their shoe drive, the team recently received a $1,000 grant from the University Community Service Center to work on bettering their relationship with the South Side.

Ruiz House said that it was essential the team become more aware of how they engaged with the often underprivileged and primarily Black neighborhoods that encompass the UChicago campus. She expressed a desire for the team to be “good stewards” of the surrounding areas rather than looking at them with a fearful or voyeuristic eye.

Ruiz House pointed to the men’s team’s annual run to and around the Parkway Gardens Apartment Homes, better known as O-Block, as an example of a

decision made without the community’s best intentions in mind. The site of the first Black-owned apartment cooperative in Chicago, O-Block became notorious for violent crime and gang activity in the early 2010s. While “there’s nothing wrong with wanting to run down South Shore, [and] there’s nothing wrong with wanting to run West Town,” as Ruiz House said, the team choosing O-Block as an annual running route felt like a loaded form of tourism. “It’s almost like you want to go see a monument to violence and segregation,” she said. “It’s trivializing, I think, the pain and the history there. You have an all-white team… and they’re in their booty shorts, and they’re running to O-Block. It’s a ridiculous image.” Others on the women’s team agreed. “I think fetishizing the crime of the South Side is not a good look,” Holmes said.

As such, the team’s DEI coordinators plan to use the grant to help the team better understand the history of the South Side. Various team activities have been scheduled to this effect. For Black History Month, the team has bought multiple copies of the book Running While Black by Alison Mariella Désir, a work which examines the ways in which race intersects with running, specifically the hardships Black runners face as they compete and train. Ruiz House also mentioned that the teams are planning a cleanup of Washington Park in conjunction with the Chicago Park Service.

Ruiz House was generally positive about the effects of DEI programming

on the team’s culture. “I’m optimistic because I think things in our culture have shifted a lot. I think the fact we’re even having conversations about race is something we’ve really never had before.

It started, like, two years ago,” she said.

Others on the team agreed, at least somewhat. “Some people might not take it seriously. Or they might do it just for show.

But that’s still better than nothing,” an anonymous source said.

In addition to newer DEI initiatives, increasingly diverse recruiting classes have played a role in improving team culture. Ruiz House pointed out that recently, the team had “one of the most diverse men’s recruiting classes” they had ever seen.

Holmes opined that it is an increase in diversity more than anything else that has helped improve the team’s culture.

“I wouldn’t say that actually, pursuing DEI initiatives has been responsible for that change,” she said. “I think it’s more just people starting to graduate and new people coming on. I think it’s kind of a turnover thing.”

She expressed a general skepticism towards the DEI programming. “There’s a lot of microaggressions that are happening that need to stop happening, but I don’t think that reading Running While Black and having a team forum alone is enough to get us there,” she said.

Like others, Holmes mentioned off-color jokes made in the locker rooms or in conversations between the men’s and women’s teams as examples of a

problematic culture that occurs in the moment. The DEI initiatives, which are optional and operate externally from team practices and meets, can be seen as compartmentalizing the issue. “It’s like ‘Okay, since we did the seminar, we can go on our run now,’” Holmes said.

The cultural problems the cross country team faces are similar, to an extent, to all insular collegiate communities.

Whether it be sports teams, fraternities, sororities, RSOs, or other campus groups, a tight-knit community can become a haven for all kinds of exclusivity. But a homogenous roster has seemingly made the issue worse than normal in the cross country team. “There’s a certain kind of casual cruelty that gets thrown around,” Holmes said. “I remember last year, my grandfather died. And that same week, one of the seniors was like ‘Let’s go on [a] cemetery run.’”

On no other UChicago varsity team in recent memory has an athlete excused herself from an event because of offensive comments made in an internal space. At the same time, the cross-country teams are clearly working hard to improve their own internal team culture. Such a culture is changing for the better, according to those on the team, and that may be a route to all kinds of positive alterations in UChicago Athletics. “I think the danger of appreciating sport just as sport is we forget the ways sport can almost be a bridge to outside communities,” Ruiz House said. “It can be a way, I think, to do really cool things.”

A comparison of racial demographics for women’s and men’s cross-country athletes to the racial demographics of all women’s and men’s sports for the years of 2013, 2018, and 2023. michael plunkett.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 22, 2024

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Student by Day, Scrabbler by Night: Cooper Komatsu Fourth-year Cooper Komatsu opens up about how his hobby became more than just a hobby.

By JULIE XIE | Sports Reporter There’s a Scrabble champion amongst us! UChicago fourth-year Cooper Komatsu recently competed in the 12th Annual Crescent City Cup, a 20-game Scrabble tournament hosted in New Orleans. The tournament took place over the course of three days. Despite a flight mishap resulting in two missed games, he ended the tournament placing second.

Komatsu started playing Scrabble at just five years old, and by eight, he was already playing competitively against adults. Starting at a young age allowed him to develop a strong grasp of twoand three-letter words, a very useful asset in the game. Komatsu cites multiple influences that developed his interest in Scrabble: his mother’s passion for the game, refrigerator letter magnets, and a general fascination with words.

This January, Komatsu competed at the Crescent City Cup for the first

time. The tournament experience was a “whirlwind,” Komatsu told The Maroon. Due to a storm, there were no flights out of Midway or O’Hare International Airport, forcing Komatsu to fly out on the day of the tournament.

Despite waking up at 2:45 a.m. and missing the first two games, Komatsu was unfazed, bouncing back to win five games that same day. Komatsu’s extensive word knowledge helped him win the first game after spelling “czarism.”

Komatsu reflected upon his performance after the first day. “I hit a little bit of a bump on day two, but I rebounded toward the end of the day and carried that momentum into day three, and by the end of the day I had come in second place in the tournament,” he told The Maroon.

Despite his dominance, Scrabble is not as simple as Komatsu makes it look.

Komatsu notes the importance of strat-

egies such as understanding higher- or lower-frequency words. For example, a word like “erasion” with high frequency vowels and consonants appears more often than a word like “quizzed” with the double Zs. Along with accumulating an extensive bank of words over time, Komatsu also studies other players.

“One of the things I do more casually is that there are a number of Scrabble YouTubers who play games and comment on what they’re doing, so that’s a really good way for me to learn strategy,” he said. He cites two YouTubers that he has found especially insightful: Will Anderson and Mack Meller. He also uses Aerolith, a site for practicing anagrams.

Komatsu enjoys playing Scrabble for many reasons, saying he could play for “hours on end.” Most of all, Komatsu likes words and finding patterns. “You get seven letters in the bag, but nobody tells you how they fit together or what words they form, so thinking about patterns and trying to find what words are

on your rack is exhilarating,” he stated.

As well as words, Komatsu finds the complexity of the strategies and gameplay interesting. “A lot of the endgame strategies are not completely well understood…. With around seven tiles left in the bag, the computer and the experts are all going to disagree on what the best move is.

When asked about what his favorite word is, Komatsu had an interesting answer: “Cacomixl.” He said, “The most common spelling is “cacomistle,” but I spelled it that way because you usually don’t study more than eight letter words in Scrabble, so I had just seen that and thought it was weird, and it stuck with me.”

In the future, Komatsu plans to keep playing and improving but not at the expense of school and social life. He said, “I don’t want Scrabble to come before having fun and being a person, but it’s important to me that I keep the community that I’ve made through Scrabble.”

Analyzing the NCCooper Komatsu (center) pictured with Austin Shin and Lindsay Crotty Shin, two of the Crescent City Cup tournament organizers. courtesy of cooper komatsu.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — FEBRUARY 22, 2024

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CROSSWORDS 72. From the Ashes

By DAVID LITMAN | Guest Contributor

ACROSS 1 Sweet Home ___ 8 Produces produce 13 Disappointing location for a date 14 Brainy 16 Maroon 18 Manning of ESPN’s “ManningCast” 19 Dining hall food, stereotypically 20 TALK LIKE THIS 21 “It ain’t over ___ it’s over” 23 Obama opponent 26 Perhaps 27 Word preceding “black” or “pack” 28 “World __ Z” 29 “That looked like it hurt” 31 “…but don’t take it from me” 35 Japanese energy healing 39 Maroon 41 Tendon 42 Tex-Mex dish you might get in a crunchy bowl 43 De-lighted?

45 “Gah!” 46 Gymnast Raisman with three Olympic golds 47 ___ Arbor, Michigan 50 City of which Cory Booker was the mayor 53 Reddit Q & A 54 (Hi, please let me outside so I can eat a bird) 56 Card targeted by some hackers, familiarly 57 Grass sold in rolls 59 Maroon 65 Vacation expense 66 Hole-y site 67 Compound with a fruity smell 68 Premier League club with a cannon in its logo DOWN 1 “Fighting Hate for Good” org.

2 “This is the very first down clue,” e.g.

3 “Sweet but Psycho” singer ___ Max 4 Cut at an angle 5 Victim of the first murder in the Bible 6 Fish with a reduplicative name 7 “7 Rings” artist, familiarly 8 “I’m your biggest ___!”

9 Name on Woody’s sole in “Toy Story” 10 Space Mountain and Expedition Everest, to name two

11 12 14 15 17 21 22 24 25 27

For more puzzles, visit chicagomaroon.com/crosswords.

Gibbs with eight NAACP Image Awards In a clandestine way Seed in an acai bowl Ham ___ Brand behind Hummers and Yukons “Sherri’s identical twin on “The Simpsons” “Oh, we’re doing this now!”

Colgate competitor Complaint about an incomplete board game collection?

What Samuel Barber, Charlie Baker, and Octavia Butler’s last names all

28 30 32 33 34 36 37 38 40 44

are Like a deal from which everyone walks away happy Agcy. behind evacuation plans Was in debt “Oh, THAT’S how it works!”

Toy that comes with a remote, for short Religion whose fifth pillar is hajj Marsupial that spends 18–22 hours asleep each day Famous UChicago alum Jones, for short “Red Dead Redemption 2” studio The highest form of flattery?

47 48 49 51 52 53 55 58 60 61 62 63 64

Tickle Makes out Like a pitcher’s dream game Flips out “Te ___” Discombobulate Erase, like a hard drive We got this!

Lightning McQueen, to name one Word before level or lion A loooooong time Grp. with Wizards and Magic ___ Aviv