030121-Covid_Special_Issue

VOL. 133 ISSUE 17: COVID SPECIAL ISSUE

We became editors-elect of The Maroon on February 10, 2020. One month and one day later, we helped our predecessors break the news that the University would pivot to remote instruction for the spring quarter. The specter of COVID-19 has hung over our entire tenure, and the issue in your hand or on your screen is a product of remote collaboration.

We have not had access to our office in Ida Noyes since March 17, 2020. To produce The Maroon, the three of us became a “bubble,” and at times it’s felt like things have always been this way: a world the size of three apartments and the grocery store; the faces of our staff seen in inch-high boxes on a computer screen with the day’s news in another box beside them. It’s a strange experience to see your own life captured in a series of news articles, but that’s what this year has been.

We look back on this year as one of so much, and so little. Our daily routines have often felt like unending monotony, and we know we’re not the only ones to have felt the joy and intellectual community of a place like the University of Chicago muffled and compressed into a series of Zoom meetings and emails. Though losing a year of college pales in comparison to the loss of life that has resulted from the pandemic, we find ourselves experiencing a shared grief over the loss of immaterial elements of non-pandemic life. No matter its cause, grief takes up the space available to it and demands a reckoning. This issue is an account of how our worlds have changed over the past year and an attempt to record what we have lost, both big and small.

While we were putting together this issue, a copy editor currently living outside the U.S. remarked to us that this country is a singular example in its choice of consumption over lives and its dismissal of bare minimum public health requirements around travel, masking, and other mitigation measures. We’re living in a country in which half a million people are dead because of the virus and almost one in three Americans have contracted COVID-19.

Through this pandemic we continued to produce a printable newspaper in digital form despite the fact that it would never actually find itself on a page. Our reporters, most of whom we haven’t seen since last winter, worked from bedrooms across the world, having to adjust to communicating across time zones and reporting on a city they were thousands of miles away from. They are nothing short of remarkable and their commitment pushed us to continue doing all we could to document this time.

This issue is a result of their perseverance. It is by and for everyone who weathered this year, whether they are affiliated with the University or not. It contains stories of learning to adapt, advice for when things feel insurmountable, and memories of those who lost their lives and livelihoods to the virus. It also has some glimpses of what our lives will look like when this comes to an end.

We are proud of our staff beyond the words we could put on this page. They have sat for hours with us on Zoom, met us for masked walks when it was far too cold to be doing so, and shared photos of their pets. They balanced their schoolwork, Maroon commitments, and caring for siblings, parents, and roommates. They dropped bread on our doorsteps and sent meticulous reporting to our inboxes, and helped The Maroon tell the story of this—dare we say it?—unprecedented time. We are preparing to leave the paper to new editors-elect: three astonishingly driven and capable student journalists who have weathered this year with so much grace. We are so excited for them to return to the basement of Ida Noyes.

CAROLINE KUBZANSKY, managing editor MILES BURTON, editor-in-chief EMMA DYER, editor-in-chief 2

THE CHICAGO MAROON — JANUARY 27, 2021

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 6

BUMMED ABOUT A PANDEMIC BREAKUP?

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FRIENDSHIP DURING COVID-19 REQUIRES COMMUNICATION AND CONSENT

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4

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“HERE FOR EACH OTHER”: HOW COVID-19 HAS CHANGED COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

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20

“A FATIGUING JOURNEY”: A FRONTLINE WORKER AT UCHICAGO HOSPITAL REFLECTS

PAPER FINDS RISING “DEATHS OF DESPAIR” DUE TO COVID-19

FIRST-YEAR EXPERIENCES DURING A QUARTER OF FIRSTS

THE TALKER VERSUS THE TEXTER

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NCAA OVERLOOKS DIII ATHLETES

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HOW UCHICAGO’S CLASS OF 2025 NAVIGATED AN UNPRECEDENTED APPLICATION CYCLE

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

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STUDENTS COLLECT ORAL HISTORY OF FRONTLINE WORKERS DURING PANDEMIC

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32

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PRACTICING FOR AN UNCERTAIN SEASON

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OLDER ADULTS SHOW RESILIENCE, MAINTAIN REGULAR SOCIAL INTERACTIONS DURING PANDEMIC, STUDY FINDS

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BELLS BELLS BELLS BELLS BELLS BELLS BELLS BELLS

CHANGING THE SCRIPT ON LOVE AT UCHICAGO

$100 MILLION AND 1 MILLION TESTS: HOW THE NFL PLAYED THROUGH A PANDEMIC

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KENJIRO LEE’S PRIMAL SAYS IT’S OKAY TO SCREAM

PUBLIC SCHOOL DURING A PANDEMIC

9,300 MILES AND 14 HOURS AWAY: INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS STRUGGLE WITH ATTENDING UCHICAGO VIRTUALLY 5

VIEWPOINTS

Bummed About a Pandemic Breakup?

It May Be an Opportunity for Growth SYLVIA EBENBACH viewpoints columnist

For better or for worse, human relationships have been altered by the COVID-19 pandemic. While some people’s relationships are accelerating as social circles become more limited, others are experiencing a more difficult shift in their love lives, otherwise known as the pandemic breakup.

Spoiler alert: Breakups are never fun, no matter how necessary. In the middle of an already difficult pandemic, the feelings of confusion and sadness from a split are intensified by the circumstances. Despite this unfortunate timing, if you find yourself thinking about a breakup or in the midst of one, there are still opportunities for recovery, and chances are it will yield growth in the end.

If you feel like you’ve been hearing about a lot of breakups recently or have experienced one yourself, that may be due in part to a trend of breakups catalyzed by the pandemic. The jury’s still out on the impact of the pandemic on separations, but there has been an increase in divorce-related inquiries.

A poll found that nearly one-third of married or partnered respondents felt more annoyed with their partner or spouse than normal, and one-fifth said they were fighting more than normal.

Historical trends during similar periods of economic downturn suggest that the increase in separations and strife is not all that surprising. While married and partnered couples may face challenges different from those of most

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college students, it’s not difficult to see how the pandemic could cause similar issues for those of us still on campus.

The pandemic introduces a wide variety of stressors on any kind of relationship. Partners may not be able to see each other in person if either faces high levels of exposure to the coronavirus or if one of them is immunocompromised. For some couples, the pandemic has revealed that one person in the relationship takes the virus more seriously than the other,

“While it may be easy to point to the pandemic as the reason for a breakup, there is a good chance the relationship was meant to end either way.”

leading to tense situations when partners disagree about safety. Other likely pandemic-linked causes of tension are increased stress and mental health challenges, which make maintaining a relationship more difficult, especially from a distance.

Lastly, if a couple spends more time together, fundamental differences and annoyances that were not as obvious before might be revealed. If a relationship had “invisible issues” prior to the pandemic, these drawbacks may become more apparent without outside

distractors. After the surface-level issues have been stripped away, a deeper lack of compatibility in the relationship might be revealed. While it may be easy to point to the pandemic as the reason for a breakup, there is a good chance the relationship was meant to end either way. In the same way that some are reevaluating their career goals or considering whether to relocate, people are being forced to take a more serious look at their relationships and the qualities important to them in a partner.

The pandemic won’t last forever, and perhaps a relationship experiencing difficulties right now will improve after it ends. But if you’re questioning the longevity of the relationship, it likely won’t last.

While in some cases people may become closer while experiencing hardships, in other cases those hardships become the reason the relationship ends. That being said, not all relationships are meant to last for a long period of time. It is possible for partners to know that things aren’t ideal but to agree that they don’t need an ideal relationship for the moment. Furthermore, relationships offer a sense of security during a time period when so much is uncertain, and the ability to rely on people in your life is important. However, if you discover that you cannot find ways to manage difficulties in the relationship, it might be time to end things.

Recovering from a breakup during the COVID-19 pandemic also presents unique difficulties. Prior to the pandemic, one might deal with a recent

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

breakup by going out on the weekend with friends to distract themselves and maybe meet new people. Obviously, everyone is much more confined to their living spaces than before. This is further complicated by the need to be extra transparent with whoever is in your quarantine circle, whether they

be partners, roommates, or family members, with regard to who you are seeing. This diminishes privacy when beginning to date again. Between the increased difficulty of meeting new people in person and the extra time spent indoors, it might also be harder to distract oneself from thoughts of the

breakup or of an ex. The idea of moving on is daunting when the timeline for a return to true “normalcy” is so vague.

However, there are silver linings and ways to move on, even during a pandemic, so don’t stay in a relationship you’re not enjoying to avoid a breakup.

When trying to get over the breakup,

of love. With “normal” social lives on pause, there is more time to turn to platonic friendships by reconnecting with old friends and forming deeper connections with new ones. Even after a romantic split, your life can overflow with love for family, close friends, and yourself. Before the pandemic, people may have felt pressure to move on and rejoin the dating scene quickly; now, there is truly no rush because of the

limitations affecting everyone. Additionally, there are still many ways to meet new people in a COVID-safe way.

Although a breakup may feel isolating, especially now, recent inductees to the pandemic split club should remember that they’re far from alone.

While there are additional challenges, they are certainly not too difficult to overcome. Present and future love still exists after a split, even in 2021.

illustration by jad dahshan

the most important thing to remember is to be kind to yourself. Do activities that make you happy, whether that means watching movies (may I recommend Under The Tuscan Sun?), learning a new skill (consider something creative like painting), or listening to whatever music you need to hear (you can’t go wrong with Adele). However, the pandemic is also an opportunity to seek out and celebrate other types

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NEWS

Paper Finds Rising “Deaths of Despair” Due to COVID-19 BASIL EGLI news reporter

Deaths due to alcohol, drug abuse, or suicide—otherwise known as “deaths of despair”—occurred more frequently during the pandemic and may have been exacerbated by stimulus payments, according to a working paper first submitted to the National Bureau of Economic Research in December 2020 by Casey Mulligan, a UChicago economist and the chief economist of the Council of Economic Advisors during the Trump administration. This preliminary paper also noted a rapid rise in fatal opioid overdoses in Cook County since March 2020.

In his paper, “Deaths of Despair and the Incidence of Excess Mortality in 2020,” Mulligan claimed that the government’s response to the impending COVID-19– related recession—specifically the CARES Act—provided people with funds that were sometimes used to buy drugs and alcohol.

While the rise in the rate of deaths of despair has been confirmed by multiple sources, Mulligan’s proposed link between that rise and federal stimulus checks has yet to be peer-reviewed. In past recessions, higher rates of unemployment were not alleviated by direct stimulus to individuals to replace or supplement their lost income.

According to Mulligan’s paper, deaths of despair may become a problem to consider when providing direct stimulus to private individuals in the future.

Mulligan believed that COVID regulations, such as stay-at-home orders and mandates on keeping businesses closed, prompted people to spend their stimulus checks on things that could be used in solitude, including drugs and alcohol. Princeton University economists Anne Case

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and Angus Deaton reported that deaths of despair are often the culmination of years of drug and alcohol abuse and suicidal thoughts, and both previously stated that a rise in deaths of despair after the summer of 2020 was unlikely. Mulligan strongly disagreed with their conclusions, especially their assertion that projects like his were “pet theories about the fatal dangers of quarantine.” He saw an intersection between these deaths of despair and the ongoing opioid crisis, about which he has authored several other papers.

Mulligan’s work is not without controversy. Case and Deaton were in opposition to any argument that placed the blame for the rise in deaths of despair on responses to the pandemic, stating that the pandemic was not the main cause of the rise in deaths of despair, but rather the continued spread of fentanyl across the U.S. On this point, Mulligan does not yet have a conclusive answer.

According to data from the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office that was compiled in Mulligan’s recent paper, the opioid crisis was exacerbated by the pandemic. In 2019, fatal opioid overdoses numbered in the hundreds every month; in 2020, this increased to the thousands in Cook County as strict lockdowns were being implemented across the country.

He told The Maroon that despite the well-documented spate of fentanyl overdoses and abuse, the presence of the drug both legally (such as those administered by an anesthesiologist or through prescription) and illegally (such as those manufactured illegally abroad for eventual sale on the street)—like many other common pain-relieving opioids—has made fentanyl very hard to root out as a factor entirely.

“So you have these two facts, and these

Casey Mulligan. the university of chicago

facts are like bookends: When anesthesiologists administer fentanyl, it’s super safe,” Mulligan said. “When, say, a user who is not medically trained uses it, they say it’s much more dangerous.”

He added that fentanyl’s low production cost and the ineffectiveness of attempts to curtail its recreational use have also contributed to the jump in “deaths of despair” and to the opioid epidemic as a whole.

However, Mulligan’s prognosis is not all doom and gloom. Populations in cities and states eventually adapt to epidemics, and fentanyl has not proven to be an exception to this rule.

“If you’re looking at national averages, you’re going to be averaging some markets where they’ve got used to fentanyl and the deaths are coming down, and other places where they’re just getting it for the first time—maybe they’ll learn from the others. So that could be a factor in bringing the deaths down and giving people other things to spend their money on,” he said.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

MARCH 2020 • The Maroon breaks the news that UChicago will have an entirely remote spring quarter on March 11.

• University of Chicago Laboratory Schools pivot to a remote spring quarter.

• Dining halls serve their last sit-down meal on March 16.

• A Chicago Booth student is the first case of COVID-19 reported at UChicago on March 17.

• University libraries close.

• Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker issues a stay-at-home order on March 20.

• Residence halls close on March 22.

• The University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC) enacts a universal masking policy.

• Mayor Lori Lightfoot closes the lakefront to facilitate Chicagoans’ social distancing.

• University administrators announce that campus buildings will start to have restricted access.

APRIL 2020 • UCMC taps perioperative nurses to cover staffing shortages due to COVID-19 on April 15.

• The University announces that the 533rd convocation will not be held on campus.

• Provost Ka Yee Lee announces that the University will not reduce tuition in response to remote learning after a month-long campaign by UChicago for Fair Tuition.

MAY 2020 • The University announces it will begin resuming research activities.

• President Robert Zimmer announces the University will lose about $220 million due to the pandemic, not including losses in the medical division.

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VIEWPOINTS

Friendship During COVID-19 Requires Communication and Consent MANYA BHARADWAJ viewpoints columnist

As Thanksgiving was approaching, Chicago had recorded more than 1 million cases of COVID-19 and over 22,000 deaths. That’s a scary statistic for UChicago students. It was enough to make even my most COVID-in-d i f f er ent roommate put on a mask when a good friend knocks on our door—not because she was worried about herself, but because she couldn’t risk testing positive on Sunday before she got on her flight back home. Out of respect for her, and based on city guidelines, my other roommates and I had been social distancing a little extra to avoid any unnecessary risk. I’ve come to realize that a lot of consent and communication-related issues, which you’d normally associate most with sex and relationships, surprisingly translate into everyday

pandemic discussions with friends and roommates.

That can often be a pretty hard thing to figure out. I remember how important COVID-19 guidelines and social distancing rules were back in June, as students were figuring out who to live with off campus. I have many good friends with whom I would have loved to live with, had this been any other time—but because we couldn’t consent to the same social distancing rules, we simply couldn’t live together. When I signed my current lease with three friends, we had our rules written down in a color-coded apartment spreadsheet: a soft maximum of four non-roommates in the apartment at once, no big gatherings, and no interacting mask-less with people who have been to big gatherings.

But we probably should’ve considered that, as with any other form of consent, the rules need to be specific and

illustration by jad dahshan

illustration by jad dahshan

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are subject to change. We never outlined a specific definition of a big gathering, whether it means six close friends or 60 strangers. We also never really communicated about what we were comfortable with one another doing. Recently, I camped out on ourcouch waiting to talk to one of my roommates about the fact that she’d snapped at me and our other roommate the previous night because she was upset that we’d visited our neighbors’ apartment. I want to listen to what she wants and follow the rules to which we’d each consented. But I hadn’t been able to do that this time, because I had had no idea that she wasn’t comfortable with us visiting next door.

I’ve come to realize how crucial it is that we communicate and assert boundaries and consent with each other before things happen, even if we think it’s something the other person doesn’t want to hear. The argument that she and my other roommate have a lot is related to the idea that consent is always an ongoing matter. Because we decided to regulate our attendance at gatherings on a case-by-case basis (before the most recent stay-at-home order), one roommate is always confused about whether something is allowed, while the other thinks it’s based on whatever decision we made a few weeks earlier. It’s made me realize that communicating what we’re comfortable with is an ongoing process, and it’s important for us to respect those changing boundaries no matter what. Although it seems like sex and dating aren’t as active a scene right now, consent is still important in these other areas.

Respecting boundaries is no different when it comes to friendships. One of my best friends lives 15 minutes away

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

“When it comes to COVID-19 rules and consent, you’ve got to follow whatever the most cautious person is comfortable with.” from me, but I haven’t really seen her since March, because she’s extremely cautious about the virus and is in almost complete isolation. She even gets her groceries delivered to her house instead of going to stores. As someone whose love languages are physical affection and quality time, I’ll be the first to admit that this isn’t my ideal scenario.

I’ve been frustrated and confused about not hanging out sometimes—she isn’t

immunocompromised or high-risk— especially when I’ve tested negative in the past 36 hours, haven’t seen anyone other than my roommates, and wear a mask. At the same time, I love my friend.

So if she doesn’t want to take even the smallest risk of catching a potentially fatal virus, that is completely valid and I would never do anything to jeopardize that.

A pre-med friend of mine likes to

analogize situations like these to the concept of “limiting reagents” in chemistry. She’s not wrong. When it comes to COVID-19 rules and consent, you’ve got to follow whatever the most cautious person is comfortable with, because their need for safety outweighs your want for fun. There are ways to compromise when spending time with friends, but there aren’t ways to compromise on someone’s health and well-being. Social time is hard during a pandemic. My roommates and I often feel like broken records when we talk about that—but it’s true, and it’s definitely led to a fair amount of tension between us over the past few months. I think the one thing that’s important as we continue to navigate this is the fact that we have to keep communicating to each other about what we’re comfortable with and what we can consent to.

Love and Longing in Hyde Park: Rev. Maurice Charles The Reverend Maurice Charles misses his students and congregation. Charles misses the people filling up Rockefeller Chapel and the students visiting his office. He misses knocking on doors and asking people about their feelings.

“I just officiated my first Zoom funeral. It was a secular, beautifully done service by Zoom, and I really felt it deeply afterwards, in part because people were kind of hanging around and not saying anything. You can’t quite mingle in the same way; it needed to end, and there were no hugs or anything, so that was tough. And when we signed off, I immediately felt it because I was here alone,” Charles said.

The pandemic made it harder to connect for multiple reasons. One thing Charles noticed was that the Church did not have a registry of its congregation. No longer able to mingle at the back door, Charles also could not send out messages of support to everyone.

“Some of the most meaningful conversations I have are conversations where I bump into people. Because of my role, if I bump into you, if I ask how people are doing, people tell me the truth. Or, shall I say, they tell me the details. I feel like I’m missing a lot. I feel like I always have a pervasive feeling of feeling like I’m not doing enough for people, no matter what I’m doing, and I truly miss it,” Charles said.

Charles’s feelings about virtual connections are complicated. While he reminisces about the days where he could interact with people in person, he also thinks fondly of the virtual interactions he has had with old friends.

“Everything went virtual, and those barriers dropped. So I’ve had more conversations with close friends, some of whom were students here... and had a kind of an informal mini-reunion. So suddenly my circle of friends has expanded, because we’re all virtual, which has been nice,” Charles said.

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NEWS

“A Fatiguing Journey”: A Frontline Worker at UChicago Hospital Reflects RACHEL WAN senior news reporter

Gena Lenti did not expect her medical school experience to be shaped

by COVID-19. A fourth-year student at UChicago Medicine, Lent i is now working on the front line as a research assistant in UChicago Medicine’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU), but nothing could have prepared her for the strain, both professional and emotional, of the past few months.

In an interview with The Maroon, Lenti recounted the case of one COVID-19-positive patient who has been alone in the ICU for more than two months. One of the unique difficulties that patients and families face during the pandemic is the strict no-visiting policy implemented in many hospitals to prevent the further spread of COVID-19. This can be especially difficult for long-term patients, who have been living in the ICU wards for months. Without visits from his wife, the patient’s mental health suffered, and he developed anxiety and depression.

“I just remember how downtrodden he was. I would try to call his wife every day, but later on he wouldn’t even allow me to call her anymore,” Lenti said. “At one point the patient’s wife gave me a letter and told me to read it to him... It was a wonderful love letter reminding him to stay strong, and that his whole family is waiting for him on the other end.”

“Reading that letter is one of the most emotional experiences I’ve had in my whole medical career,” Lenti recalled. “By the time I finished read-

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“By the time I finished reading, I was crying, and the patient was crying too. I remember thinking...that was beautiful.”

ing, I was crying, and the patient was crying too. I remember thinking...that was beautiful.”

Lenti’s work during the pandemic is also informed by the inequality and disparities within Chicago. Besides working at the ICU, Lenti is involved in a series of volunteer projects, such as answering Uchi cago Medicine’s COVID-19 hotline and delivering food to South Side communities. Lenti and other medical students have also taken the initiative to do weekly check-in calls with COVID-19-positive patients in the South Side that are under home quarantine.

“We wanted to do justice to the communities that are plagued the most by this pandemic. As medical workers, we have this craving to contribute, and to do justice to the people fighting this disease,” she said.

Looking back on this year-long fight against COVID-19, Lenti acknowledges that it has been a hard year. Though it has admittedly been challenging, Lenti sees the experience of working at the ICU as a powerful learning experience for her development as a health worker. “A lot of what we learn in medical school is about how to interact with patients,” she said. “This experience has allowed me to truly empathize with patients and tap into not only the academic side, but the social side of medicine.”

“This is a fatiguing journey that we’re all going through. I miss my family and friends, and it has affected my own mental and emotional health too... but I’m still hopeful that we are inching towards the end,” Lenti said. “We must stay hopeful. We must have faith.”

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

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GREY CITY

Here for Each Other: How COVID-19 Has Changed Community Organizing MICHAEL McCLURE grey city reporter

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The incident was filmed by an onlooker, who posted the footage online; within hours, the video was trending.

South Side activists were among millions worldwide to take to the streets throughout what The New York Times branded the “summer of racial reckoning,” joining in calls to defund or abolish the police.

But this wave of activism was not only remarkable for its scale: It also took place during the deadliest pandemic in a century. COVID-19 forced many activists into digital organizing—a shift which, South Side activists attest, has offered both challenge and opportunity.

THE ADVENT ORGANIZING

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ONLINE

As COVID-19 began its march through the United States in March of

2020, Chicago residents had to adapt to an unprecedented set of circumstances. For the activist groups who had sustained themselves through gatherings and canvassing, the transition to virtual modes of organizing proved challenging.

“We used to do all of our meetings and canvassing in person,” John Hieronymus, an organizer with Tenants United Hyde Park/Woodlawn, told The Maroon. “When COVID first came and no one really knew what the public health implications were, we had to come up with new ways of getting neighbors talking to each other that didn’t involve being in the same space.”

While COVID-19 impeded the group’s ability to organize, it also exacerbated housing instability, Tenants United’s primary issue of concern. The economic downturn caused by the pandemic meant many tenants suddenly found themselves unable to pay rent. As such, Tenants United Hyde Park/Woodlawn worked to organize them into unions and create Zoom accounts and Slack channels to help

“We had to come up with new ways of getting neighbors talking to each other that didn’t involve being in the same space.”

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them communicate virtually.

Both internal and external social networks have helped spread the word about Tenants United’s efforts. “There are people who’ll be in the neighborhood who won’t have come into contact with a member or an organizer but who will see what we’re doing and then reach out via Twitter DMs [direct messages] or Facebook,” Hieronymus said.

Remote organizing has also prompted Tenants United to begin thinking about making in-person work more accessible, particularly for its members with disabilities or underlying health conditions. “[We have been] incorporating disability justice principles into some of our organizing work, things like making sure that…when we’re doing in-person direct actions, [we’re] also having concurrent actions for folks who don’t feel safe going out into the public because of their risk,” Hieronymus said.

Michael Stablein Jr., a Ph.D. student at UChicago and an elected steward with Graduate Students United (GSU), noted that the pandemic quashed opportunities for happenstance interactions.

“Prior to COVID, we were able to table outside of buildings on campus.

We were able to have very informal meetings that came from just running into fellow members on campus,” Stablein said. “So for us it’s been accepting the Zoom format as our sole method of organizing and figuring out what it means to do synchronous organizing versus asynchronous organizing.”

But one perk of organizing online, he said, is that members of GSU no longer have to travel to congregate in the

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

Protestors with #CareNotCops stage a sit-in in the lobby of the UCPD headquarters. caroline kubzansky same space.

“With the inclusion of Zoom, we were finding that our attendance at [committee meetings was] going up because people weren’t having to get themselves to an office or to a classroom in order to have those meetings,” Stablein said.

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS The switch to remote platforms has also opened other doors. Stablein said that online meeting spaces have made it easier to involve outside community members in organizing work.

“At our mutual aid committees, we’re able to reach out and meet with local organizations,” Stablein said,

listing the #DefundCPD [Chicago Police Department] campaign and GoodKids MadCity as groups that GSU has invited to its programming. “And that’s just been great. Through Zoom, that’s meant that we can have these people around more frequently and [have them] basically giving us better feedback on how we can be a better union to the community.”

At the onset of the pandemic, the #LetUsBreathe Collective formed partnerships with several other organizations in Chicago, including Free Write Arts & Literacy, Envisioning Justice, Kuumba Lynx, and the Old Town School of Folk Music. Together they launched the Stimulus Package for Humanity, a stipend for Chica-

go-area artists.

“We basically started to fundraise money to support this large microcommission program at the intersection of social justice and pandemic. Essentially, it was a program to support artists and creatives directly,” Jennifer Pagán, cofounder of #LetUsBreathe, told The Maroon. Through the Stimulus Package for Humanity, the organizations collectively distributed more than $9,000 to about 80 artists and creatives, according to Pagán.

C h r i st opher “ T houg ht Po et ” Brown, a creative director and community organizer involved with both the #LetUsBreathe Collective and Black Youth Project 100 (BYP 100), used his art to tell the story of Chicago in 2020.

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“A lot of folks are still very much under the assumption that Chicago means ‘Chiraq’ or anything that’s violent,” he said, “and it’s the complete opposite. I feel like Chicago is the same as a New York, as a [Los Angeles]. You have your very gentrified, very crooked…parts about it, but you also have very beautiful parts about it.”

The pandemic may also have worked to the benefit of the protest movements, as homebound Chicago residents trained their focus on the injustices at hand.

“I was really just focused on letting the city know what was going on. If there wasn’t a protest downtow n, it would be on the South Side of Chicago. I tried to make it my business to be there,” Brown said.

During the summer, Brown was arrested and beaten by police in Hyde Park. The ordeal made him focus his organizing efforts on “people power,” or mutual concern for the well-being of others.

“There was a big ask for jail support and trying to make sure that folks had the ability to make at least a phone call

“Everything kind of snapped because the system itself was built in a precarious way.” once they were being processed,” he said.

People power also took the form of spontaneous, grassroots efforts to help local communities heal from the stress of the protests.

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JUNE 2020 • The University an-

nounces that it will adopt a hybrid model for the autumn quarter, with a mix of virtual and socially distanced, in-person classes.

• The University ac-

cepts $6.2 million of CARES Act funding to cover institutional costs and distribute financial support to students.

• To mitigate the pro-

jected $220 million deficit, the University announces optional and mandatory staff furloughs, pay cuts for administrators, and hiring freezes.

JULY 2020 • The Maroon learns

that faculty will have the chance to choose between an in-person or remote format for their classes.

“People were looting…right up the street from my house, [at] a corner store. And the next day, [people in the neighborhood] were actually helping clean up the corner store because that legitimately was the only spot we could get food from at least within a ten-, fif-

“It became... this space where folks could engage in healing conversation.” teen-mile radius,” Brown said.

Pagán, who was also arrested this summer, believes that the events of the past year have made it easier for local organizers to work toward common goals.

“It almost felt natural in a sense for us to be in community…because of what was happening and because of how the state and government was showing us overall that they do not have our best interest [in] mind, and they do not care about our wellness and protection,” she said. “So we came together and built a space and built systems and structures that are able to fulfill and hopefully expand and actualize our larger abolitionist movement.”

“AN UNDENIABLE PROBLEM” As spring turned to summer and the initial surge in COVID-19 cases attenuated, the racial justice movement began to dominate the national consciousness. Activists returned to in-person organizing to protest the re-

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

cent deaths of Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and other Black people, in what was viewed by many as a turning point in race relations.

“I think we were uniquely positioned with being in the house, being in the pandemic, and really just seeing inequity so clearly,” Pagán said. “And then seeing a man murdered again I think activated people in ways that we hadn’t been when Mike Brown was murdered or when countless other people have been murdered by the police.”

Longtime activists like Brown, however, see this year as just a continuation of a long history of racial injustices.

“Police brutalizing and hurting Black and Brown lives is nothing new. If anything, you were able to see it [through] a better viewing glass,” Brown said. “I think one of the big reasons why it was so different than a couple years ago is that everyone had no choice but to view what was going on because of COVID.” The pandemic also rendered stark existing inequities in Chicago’s housing landscape. Hieronymus traced the precarious living situations of many tenants back to the aftereffects of the global financial crisis in 2008, and the economic recession last year became the breaking point for tenants who were already struggling to stay afloat.

“I think it’s just become an undeniable problem,” he said. “I don’t look

“We were uniquely positioned.”

- Jennifer Pagán

at [the developments of the past year] as ‘Why did it take so long?’ but more like ‘Wow, everything kind of snapped because the system itself was built in a precarious way.’”

Hieronymus explained that in Chicago’s most affluent neighborhoods, those issues rarely bubbled to the surface, even when large numbers of residents were threatened by the effects of the pandemic.

“Those neighborhoods actually have a whole class of service workers,” he said. “And those are the people who got hit with ‘Oh, you’re a service worker, all of a sudden no one is coming into your job, into the restaurant or maybe the bar you work at, or getting their hair cut,’ these sorts of things.”

The Center for Disease Control has issued a federal eviction moratorium due to the pandemic. Nevertheless, with evictions continuing to take place across Chicago, Tenants United has had to increase its advocacy efforts in response. Throughout the spring and summer, Tenants United organized protests against Hyde Park property management companies,

“People power also took the form of spontaneous, grassroots efforts to help local communities heal from the stress of the protests.”

claiming that the landlords increased rent during the pandemic and failed to protect tenants from unsafe living conditions.

“We have a variety of different actions, everything from just talking with tenants, with the landlord, and explaining the eviction moratorium, to helping tenants change locks and then doing de-escalation with police, because CPD is not supposed to be carrying out evictions even in normal times,” Hieronymus said.

As the racial justice protests arose, #LetUsBreathe pivoted much of its work to support the #DefundCPD movement and to collaborate with the Black Abolitionist Network. Additionally, the Breathing Room—a space that hosted #LetUsBreathe’s multidisciplinary Breathing Room Series before the pandemic—was reopened for community members.

“It really just became this space that we always imagined,” Pagán said, “This space where folks could come and engage in healing conversation after a really traumatic event.”

Pagán said that caring for other members at a difficult time was essential to creating a thriving network of community organizers. The relationships formed among community members embodied an “abolitionist politic”: the attitude that “we just take care of each other and we’re here for each other in times of need and times of uncertainty,” she said.

“It was a beautiful coming together of folks…who were reactivated by this larger moment of global uprising and felt compelled to be back in this movement sphere.”

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LESSONS LEARNED For Pagán, who served as a lead on #DefundCPD’s art propaganda committee, social media proved an important tool for informing and educating others.

“A lot of our strategy was around… using this as a platform to educate folks about abolition, as a platform to really push people and really challenge people to pick a side in this moment. Because if you are not on the side of defunding the police, then that also means that you do not care about Black lives.”

Pagán also mentioned the importance of self-care, particularly in the challenging and fast-moving world of community organizing.

“A lot of our strategy was... using this as a platform to educate folks about abolition.”

- Jennifer Pagán “One thing that this larger moment or this past year and this summer has taught me is that we move at the speed of our healing. A lot of times we cannot just continue to organize and continue to just do, do, do or just respond, respond, respond to all these crises when we’re not doing

well or we’re not whole or we’re not healthy,” she said.

The uprisings occurring over the summer meant that Tenants United had to adjust the scope of its activism.

For example, the group held free protest safety trainings for community members in order to better integrate

UChicago for Fair Tuition demonstrates in front of University President Robert Zimmer’s house. julia attie

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THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

itself into the South Side activist sphere.

The group also faced challenges due to the sheer volume of tenants requesting housing assistance, according to Hieronymus. “I think we weren’t quite prepared for the surge in people who were going to show up, and it took a lot of work to get everyone sorted into spaces,” he said.

Stablein said that GSU’s biggest successes came from embracing the online format. Both the walk-out/

“We move at the speed of our healing.

A lot of times we cannot just continue to organize and continue to just do, do, do or just respond.” teach-in GSU held in June and the conversation on defunding CPD hosted by its Mutual Aid Committee in November took place in primarily virtual spaces, with activists from local community organizations joining as guest speakers. “I think it was a moment where our membership was like ‘This is why I want to belong in a union. This is really powerful,’” he said.

“Prior to the Zoom era, it would

have taken us months to put something like that together. I think for us to bring all those various threads together would have felt impossible, or it certainly would have felt like a drain on our capacities and energies in a way for a one-day turnout. Whereas now, we can turn these kinds of things around much more quickly, and the rewards are great.”

Stablein contended that the online format still has room for improvement, particularly for maintaining a sense of community.

“I think there are things we still have to figure out about what that looks like so it doesn’t feel so formalized all the time, [because] a lot of the casual community-building atmosphere does get lost in the shuffle.”

With many community members struggling to buy groceries or pay rent, mutual aid also became a centerpiece of BYP 100’s plans. “The best way to explain it is that…whether you were an organizer or someone who was kind of just watching COVID and the second uprising, [it] affected everyone. It was definitely hard for folks, I guess you could say, to navigate mentally,” Brown said.

Given the pandemic-related restrictions, #LetUsBreathe repurposed its Breathing Room to serve as a food distribution hub and expanded its garden and farm on the site.

Community organizations like the Getting Grown Collective, the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, Everybody Eats Chicago, and the South Side Food Distribution Network have partnered with #LetUsBreathe in its mutual aid efforts.

“Just because of the nature of a lot of things that are going on right now, a lot of our work has pivoted towards land-based health and wellness and larger healing work,” Pagán said. “So we’re trying to figure out…how to make holistic health and transformation more accessible to the folks we are in community with.”

AUGUST 2020 • Lee announces the UChicago Health Pact. Students must complete a COVID-19 training program and submit a form attesting to their compliance with the University’s new policies.

• Members of the UChicago community are encouraged to urge those not adhering to COVID-19 measures to follow the UChicago Health Pact. The UChicago Forward page outlines different scenarios for dealing with students and faculty. To avoid confrontational situations, campus community members are advised to report incidents—in detail— to supervisors or to the University’s Accident/Incident Reporting (UCAIR) System .

• Lee announces testing, tracing, and isolation measures that will be in force during the school year for University members.

19

VIEWPOINTS

The Talker Versus the Texter EMMA-VICTORIA BANOS viewpoints columnist

Unless you’re one of the lucky few who live within the same pandemic bubble as their significant other (which, let’s admit it, is unlikely in a truly closed bubble; people with expansive bubbles are usually lying to themselves about their degree of safety), you’ve likely found yourself turning to digital means of communication to bridge the gap. And for those of us who are single and looking to mingle, that means sliding into the DMs of people you don’t know anything about besides the few polished images they have on display and maybe the college in their bio. With all this digital communication, whether on a social media platform like Instagram or a dating platform like Tinder, a question arises: Is there a correlation between how well you hit off digitally and how you’ll hit it off in person? To new couples who have only interacted digitally, the answer will make or break their relationship. After all, nobody wants to waste time on a relationship that won’t last after the pandemic. With this in mind, I ran an experiment so that you don’t have to. My finding: If there is a correlation between how people interact digitally and how they interact in person, it isn’t a strong one. And while you may think you know somebody well because you’re constantly communicating with them online, it could just be an illusion of connectedness.

The following is an explanation of how I came to this conclusion. Newly single this winter, I unknowingly did a sort of experiment. There was an eclectic get-together of teens from various local New York City high schools I went to in March 2020, a few days before the world fell apart and we all suddenly found ourselves homebound.

There, I met two people who both ended

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up asking me out. Let’s call them John and Jane. I met both of these people at the same place and at roughly the same time and I only ever saw them in person once, at the party. So last week, as we finished up the quarter and headed into winter break, I decided to pick up where I left off with both of them. Little did I know that this would be a great way of answering

“While you may think you know somebody well because you’re constantly communicating with them online, it could just be an illusion of connectedness.” my question of whether there’s a concrete correlation between the depth of your connection in cyberspace and the depth of your connection in meatspace, a.k.a. the “real world.”

Jane and I have A-plus connectedness.

We have such great connectedness that we shared a few passionate, butterflies-inducing kisses at that party in March. When I had to go and told her “let’s pick up where we left off sometime soon,” I thought “soon” would be in the next week. I didn’t

realize that in-person dates wouldn’t be an option then, because the shutdown started just a few days later. So we texted every other day for four months until I started dating my now-ex-girlfriend and things sort of just fizzled out between Jane and me.

I stayed on good terms with John (though we’re hardly close the way Jane and I are), so I decided to cash my rain check for a date with him when winter break started (I hardly think that when he made the offer before the pandemic, he expected it to be socially distanced, but oh well). Prior to the date, we had an incredible, engaging conversation over text. Humor? Top-notch. Sweetness? The sweetest. Intellect? Thought-provoking but not pretentious. But when we met up for a stroll from SoHo to Union Square, I felt like I was talking to a whole different person. Our in-person chemistry was wholly different from our chemistry over text. It felt like I was being interviewed, and not in a fun way. The dynamic we had built digitally just fell flat. And I’m not saying that’s either of our faults; it just shows that sometimes, two people seem compatible over text but are awkward in real life. I was too preoccupied with Jane at the party to have any idea whether John and I were compatible in person, so the date with John was truly a blank slate. And as much as our text conversations led me to believe that we would be compatible in person, it didn’t work out that way. I think that we’ll be good friends, but I didn’t feel the kind of romantic chemistry we had over text.

Following my date with John and reminiscing about the feelings for Jane I never had the chance to act on, I texted her for the first time in six months and asked to spend some time together over winter break. To this day, I don’t know what it was we had for those four months at the start of the pandemic. We weren’t formally dating,

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

“The pandemic has blurred the lines between what’s considered dating and what’s not.” so was it friendship, or was it something more? Obviously, I felt obligated to tell her when I started dating someone a few months after we met. Why was that? Why did it feel like a break-up, sans drama? The pandemic has blurred the lines between what’s considered dating and what’s not.

If we had been seeing each other in person like we would’ve if disaster hadn’t struck, it would’ve been cut and dry, because the relationship we had would’ve clearly been romantic under normal circumstances.

Jane and I have a lengthier digital history than John and me, so I’m familiar with how she texts. Once you get her attention, sparks do fly, but she goes through spells where it can be difficult to get her attention in the first place at all. That was frustrating; I thought she genuinely cared about me, but when she didn’t reply for long stretches, it left me wondering how important I actually was to her. Both when it comes to how electrifying she is and how rare an occurrence it is, getting her immediate attention is like being struck by lightning. In summation, John is a more active texter than Jane is, and Jane is a more active talker than John is. Because of this, Jane and I simply exchanged pleasantries and arranged when and where we were going to meet up. We decided to meet at the Brooklyn Bridge at 2 p.m. She looked beautiful. From there, we played it by ear, and we had such a great time I didn’t even notice that we were walking for five hours straight. Our date turned into a full-on pilgrimage. She mentioned that she felt like going thrift shopping. I said I knew a place in the heart of Brooklyn, and we set off—but we wound up making a few stops on the way.

After a peek at Fat Kid skatepark (an old skateboarding haunt of Jane’s, where she had once planted a patch of now-dor-

mant begonias); a pit stop at an abandoned Chuck E. Cheese straight out of Five Nights at Freddy’s; a look around a couple of winding, gargantuan malls of the sort that don’t exist in Manhattan; and a successful mission to find a public restroom, Jane and I reached our final destination: glorious racks on racks of abandoned clothes waiting for new owners. I put on a skirt that was so long I could wear it as a dress, made out of a material similar to that of a duvet. It was a look to say the least (and not in a good way), but she didn’t seem to mind. There was a lot of flattery along the lines of “you look good in absolutely anything” even when we were wearing the most absurd, oversized get-ups imaginable. After a fair amount of playing dress-up, I got a denim bomber jacket, and she got a T-shirt with a totally nonsensical slogan that we couldn’t decipher, hoping it’d confuse the hell out of her friends.

Giggling, we left and took the R train back to Manhattan. We found a secluded spot in Thomas Paine Park, sat and chatted for a while, and then I walked her to a nearby subway station, and we parted ways. We both glanced over our shoulders as she descended the stairs to the station and I walked in the opposite direction, through the arches of New York City Hall.

Under my mask, I grinned. And although it’s hard to tell these days because of the masks, I think she smiled too.

Regardless of how much fun Jane and I had, with distance being such a major issue for so many people during the pandemic, one might want to date somebody more like John, with the texting chops to carry a conversation even during quarantine. But the truth of the matter is, investing time in a person like John now may not pay off once you finally see each other in person.

By contrast, bad texters can truly shine on in-person dates. Jane and I had such a good time on our date that time flew; one second it was 2 p.m., and the next it was 7:30 p.m. John and I barely made it from noon to 2 p.m., and I swear that somehow the date with John felt longer than it did with Jane.

So, what should we be looking for? In terms of a significant other, should we want a good texter or a good talker? Of course, some people excel at both, and there’s no reason to assume that a good texter will be vapid or unpleasant face-to-face. Instead, it’s important to remember that the engaged and communicative texter you met online may disappoint on a date and that the spotty and disinterested texter you’ve been playing phone-tag with might sparkle in person. But should we prioritize, or should we insist on finding somebody who shines in both ways?

Right now, first and foremost I should want to date a good digital communicator, but for how long will that be the case?

My ex-girlfriend and I texted all the time, to the point where it felt like

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symbiosis…but not in a good way. I was too emotionally reliant on whether she had time to talk to me before I went to sleep, to the point where I started getting on the same night owl sleep schedule as she was (even though I’m a natural early bird) because she never had much time to communicate during the day.

Maybe Jane’s approach to texting (in moderation) is refreshing. COVID-19 has erased the concept of “date night.” Now it’s “date 24/7.” It seeps into every aspect of your life because it’s not like there’s a scheduled time when you’re going to see them again. It fosters a kind of neediness that could be avoided when you were looking forward to date night in pre-COVID-19 times. Picking out what you were going to wear, where you were going to go, thinking about what you’d talk about…all that is gone. Now, it’s so much more fluid than that. Personally, I liked the structure.

There was more mystery. Now, it feels

as though you have to tell somebody else about every single thing that happens, from brunches to sneezes. This is what I call vomit-texting, which is a symptom of living in the era of COVID-19. We feel so emotionally and physically distant from everyone that we overshare every little detail of our meaningless lives.

I think the question of whether I want a good texter or a good talker might be irrelevant. All I know is that I fell head over heels for Jane. Which wasn’t sensible, because she has reservations about long-distance relationships. When she returned to her West Coast college two days after our date, that marked the end of whatever beginning we might have had.

I’m still in New York City, attending UChicago remotely.

Of course, my little experiment was not a scientific study. Jane doesn’t represent every “good talker” out there. But, if we’re using these rigid archetypes of

talker versus texter, I guess my advice is to find the perfect balance between John and Jane. I know it sounds difficult, but I can definitively tell you that it’s possible.

A week after Jane left for the West Coast, I saw Jack, an acquaintance of mine from high school, and realized that I already knew somebody who has that perfect balance. For the past few weeks, we’ve been dating.

Maybe finding yourself someone with that perfect balance is good advice in general, not even just for the era of COVID-19.

What happens when your significant other gets a job that takes them too far away to see each other consistently? Do you have to end the relationship altogether? Not if you have the perfect balance—somebody who you connect with both in cyberspace and in meatspace. Find yourself a Jack.

Emma-Victoria Banos is a first-year in the College.

illustration by jad dahshan

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THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

Love and Longing in Hyde Park: Rebecca and Carol Krucoff Though Hyde Park resident Carol Krucoff and her daughter Rebecca have been together in Hyde Park since October, the mother and daughter have not hugged since Carol’s March 7 birthday party last year, which included guests from all over the country. Just after Rebecca returned to her Brooklyn home, New York’s lockdown began.

Before the pandemic hit, Rebecca flew to Chicago often to visit her parents and sister in Hyde Park. During the spring and summer, they were unable to see each other at all.

“It didn’t change the quality of our relationship, but it changed how frequently we could see each other,” Rebecca said.

In October, Rebecca flew to Chicago to spend the month with her mother, but chose to stay in a separate apartment. At the time, the City of Chicago’s Travel Advisory did not list New York on the orange or yellow list; the state was re-added to the list on November 13. During the October trip, the Krucoffs’ emotional relationship flourished, although they struggled with not being able to physically interact. Carol is considered high-risk due to her age and has remained six feet apart from other households with a mask throughout the pandemic. This included her daughter, who also wore a mask and kept her distance from her mother during their Zoom interview with The Maroon.

“Because [I’ve been] working remotely, my husband and I were able to come and spend the entire month of October [in Hyde Park], and I got to see my mom actually more often than I normally do. You can see we’re sitting far apart from each other. Normally, I would be sitting next to her,” Rebecca said.

Even six feet apart, Carol and Rebecca turned toward each other for connection. They smiled under their masks and finished each other’s sentences.

The excitement of being able to see each other again was overshadowed by coronavirus concerns. Carol and Rebecca continued to take many precautions when visiting and meeting each other.

“Before COVID, I could just get on a plane and come here and not worry. When we see each other inside, we have masks on…things that you don’t normally think about if you’re with your family. That’s a strange thing, but I still feel just as close emotionally to my mom as I did before,” Rebecca said.

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SPORTS

NCAA Overlooks DIII Athletes ALISON GILL sports editor

Division III athletics is an exclusive but large club: Less than 5 percent of high school athletes will compete in collegiate sports at any level, but over 194,000 student-athletes suited up for Division III teams last year. Overall, Division III athletes constitute 36 percent of all NationalCollegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) members.

Yet the NCAA seems to have forgotten about this significant portion of its membership. The last Division III opportunity to compete for a National Championship occurred on December 21, 2019, and the next opportunity to compete for one could, optimistically, be May 2021, representing a 17-monthlong layoff between consequential competition for Division III athletes.

Meanwhile, the NCAA continues to march forward with plans for all Division I and II athletes to play for winter sports championships in March.

The prolonged absence of Division III competition begs important questions about the future of the division and the collegiate sports model.

The primary differentiating factor between the divisions boils down to the availability of scholarships. At the Division III level, student-athletes compete without receiving athletic scholarships, unlike at the Division I and II level. Division I athletics generate most of the nearly $1 billion revenues for the NCAA in 2016, whereas Division III uses $31.5 million (or just 3.18 percent) of the annual NCAA operating budget.

Division III student-athletes have made significant sacrifices to get to

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compete this year, just like their Division I and II counterparts. They have balanced 20-plus hours of practice with academics each week, adhered to strict COVID-19 protocols, and managed pandemic-induced stresses for the chance to compete, motivated by nothing more than the love of their sport.

Unfortunately, the lack of revenue-generating Division III champi-

onships is the likely culprit for their cancellations. The decision to host national championships for Division I sports has been motivated by financial considerations. Last year, the cancellation of the Division I men’s basketball championships led to the

NCAA losing $600 million. The NCAA has made it clear that it will be pushing forward with Division I March Madness this year, despite the troubling emergence of new strains of the virus and a myriad of postponed and cancelled regular season games.

The NCAA defines its mission as an effort “to govern competition in a fair, safe, equitable and sportsmanlike manner, and to integrate intercollegiate athletics into higher education so that the educational experience of the student-athlete is paramount.”

Few could argue that any division fulfills this core purpose better than Division III. Due to off-season restrictions, Division III athletics allow student-athletes to better focus on their academic programs and the achievement of a degree in comparison to other divisions while enabling student-athletes to experience all aspects of campus life.

Individual NCAA institutions, including UChicago and the entirety of the Ivy League, made the justifiable decision to suspend all competition in the fall and winter seasons. In these cases, protecting the health of athletes and larger campus communities necessitated suspensions.

It should be up to individual schools and athletic departments to make the best decisions possible for their communities, including athletes, as UChicago has.

The NCA A cited low participation numbers as the explanation for the cancellation of Division III winter championships. Currently, about half of Division III teams have made the choice to compete and are in the midst of their competition seasons.

By contrast, the NCAA affirmed that all Division I winter championships

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

“[Division III student-athletes] have balanced 20-plus hours of practice with academics each week, adhered to strict COVID-19 protocols, and managed pandemic-induced stresses for the chance to compete, motivated by nothing more than the love of their sport.” will proceed without any change in their bracket size. If any Division I sport had participation at less than 50 percent—the level that called for the elimination of Division III championships—there would still be winter championships, held at 75 percent of the bracket size. There is no reason that Division III athletes alone should be bearing the burden of COVID-19 cancellations.

Some Division III member institutions and coaching associations are taking it upon themselves to replicate the thrill of the postseason. Wartburg College will invite the top 16 individual performers and top 12 relay teams in track and field to compete in the “DIII Elite Indoor Championships.” The National Wrestling Coaches Association Division III Leadership Group is planning on hosting their own national championships in Iowa. Rumors of other events have circulated on social media and could come to fruition in the next few weeks. Perhaps Division III schools will decide to form their own governing body that prioritizes their interests and values.

But, before we ask “what’s next?” for Division III sports, we should think of the Division III student-athletes and coaches who have been robbed— twice now—of NCAA postseason play.

Their hard work and commitment deserve recognition, but more than that, they deserve the opportunity to compete for trophies. It’s a shame that the NCAA decided that a few million dollars was too costly to grant its membership that chance.

Love and Longing in Hyde Park: John and Monica Flynn John and Monica Flynn have been married for 42 years. They met as freshmen in college and now have seven adult children. Now the resident deans of Renee Granville-Grossman East, their first year as resident deans has been challenging. However, that does not stop John and Monica from looking back on quarantine with smiles.

“If you were to ask me, these past seven or eight months have been just a gift. John works quite a bit. He’s always in the office six, seven days a week, so to have them always be in the house or in the dorm has been a real treat for me. You know how lucky you are to have that time with your best friend?” Monica said.

John is the chief physician and dean for clinical affairs at UChicago Medicine. Since COVID-19 hit, he has been working primarily from home. He enjoyed spending time at home and being able to see some of his kids for a few weeks at a time. His work schedule often prevented him from spending significant amounts of time with his wife. When asked about spending long periods of time with Monica, he jumped into a story of a trip the couple took a few years ago where they had uninterrupted quality time together.

“We circumnavigated Lake Michigan in a counterclockwise fashion. That was great fun, just the two of us and the dog. We basically had no strong itinerary, we just knew we wanted to go around the lake, and we stopped wherever we were ready to stop. [We] biked throughout many national parks, and it was great fun,” John said.

Both John and Monica were grateful for the extra time together.

Their experience of quarantine was significantly better because they had each other, they said.

“We’ve done a lot of baking and a lot of eating it,” Monica laughed.

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GREY CITY

First-Year Experiences During a Quarter of Firsts

Move-in 2020. courtesy of uchicago news

SOLANA ADEDOKUN AND RJ CJAKOWSKI grey city reporters

In a year filled with upsets and uncertainty, it might be hard at first glance to find what connects the Class of 2024, who for their first quarter in college have been separated from each other by great distances and time zones. Yet, the class’s common thread is conveyed in the experiences of the students either on or off campus, here in Chicago or abroad, and how they’ve created an especially unique first quarter of college.

One of the few traditions of years past that did remain undisturbed for

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the Class of 2024 was the culmination of their hard work for the past four years of high school: opening college decision letters.

First-year Themis Frigo is an international student from London who was accepted into UChicago Early Decision I. He was visiting family in Chicago when he got his decision.

“The first thing I did was that I called one of my friends who’s a second-year. And we FaceTimed while I opened it, and we went crazy, because I live in London, she lives in Columbus, Ohio. And the acceptance letter meant that we were about to spend the next three years in person for the first time together, which was super sweet,” Frigo said.

With all the meticulous planning the University did in preparation for autumn quarter, Frigo knew the quarter would look different than expected, but also knew he wanted to come to campus and experience life as a college student in the U.S. “I’ve lived in London my whole life, and it’s a new chapter. For me moving to the U.S., I really wanted to come here and experience college. There was nothing I could really do if I stayed home. And I also wanted to meet all of these cool new people from all around the world who I also knew were coming to campus,” Frigo said.

Nikki Solanki was off campus this quarter at her home in the Bay Area.

When she got her acceptance letter in

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

March, she did not think COVID-19 was going to affect her autumn quarter plans. But now, Solanki is wondering what the rest of her tumultuous first year will look like.

“I really thought we were going to open up. But now the second wave is hitting and I don’t really know how we’re going to handle it. And I do think that people are really tired of this pandemic.

And so who knows if people are really going to follow the rules?” Solanki said.

Makayla MacGregor was on campus for autumn quarter, but has decided to move back to her home in Maine for the winter quarter. She was accepted Early Action as an Odyssey scholar. MacGregor, like many students when they first heard the plans for a more restrictive autumn quarter, altered her expectations of what the fall would look like.

“I didn’t want to get my hopes up for a social scene that we clearly weren’t going to have this quarter. I know there’s restrictions on campus from socializing, but obviously there’s still ways that kids can connect indoors,” MacGregor said.

Felicia Pang was off campus in her hometown of Shanghai, China, though she had a different off-campus experience than most. Pang and around 45 other students from the surrounding area have set up a “Zoom Center” at a hotel in Shanghai where they have access to facilities like study rooms and a gym to give distance learning a community feel.

Pang and other Chinese students who decided to study remotely for autumn quarter created the Zoom Center over a group text after the U.S. imposed

“I really wanted to come here and experience college.” strict travel restrictions on China. The students take classes, study, and live at the hotel “Zoom Center” much like students would at a UChicago residence hall. Yet, unlike on campus, students have roommates, allowing them to forge deeper connections with one another.

“I wake up at around nine and I stay in my room and read or do homework until 12 and go out for lunch. I eat lunch with other students at the Zoom Center and after we return, some of us would go to the study room to work together.

At around six, we go out for dinner together. Sometimes I go to the gym with my roommate afterwards,” Pang said.

Though living in the “Zoom Center” has allowed these students to forge a community and make close friends while abroad, Pang wishes the University had been more helpful to its foreign students.

“The University could have opened more class sessions that are convenient for foreign students at different time zones. At the same time, it would have been a much better college experience if UChicago collaborated with local schools for foreign students who cannot be on campus,” Pang said.

The summer before the start of autumn quarter was a confusing time

“Social distancing is not conducive [to] or compatible with what we typically think of as communal living.”

for many. Awaiting information about UChicago’s fall plans, students and their families had to make difficult decisions about whether or not they would come to Chicago. Despite the uncertainty, members of the Class of 2024 were trying to connect with their peers as best they could online, despite their uncertainty about the near future.

“I really had to get over that awkward barrier of DMing people. Once you get over that, you’re fine. I tried to talk to as many people as possible,” Solanki said.

The air of uncertainty for autumn quarter surrounded not just the students, but the University’s staff and administration as well. Michele Rasmussen, dean of students in the University, explained how a group of administrators led by Richard Mason, assistant vice president for campus life, met almost every day over the summer, planning for students to return to campus.

The group would come up with policies and consulted with infectious-disease experts at UChicago Medicine and examined the City of Chicago guidelines before making a final decision.

“Social distancing is not conducive [to] or compatible with what we typically think of as communal living. The whole purpose of our residential communities is to have people gathered together socially. All of those things do not work in a pandemic,” Rasmussen said.

“Intense planning went into everything from how to safely open and operate residence halls and dining halls to more minute details like bathrooms,” she said.

Rasmussen explained how densi-

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ty in the residence halls was driven by each hall’s number of communal bathrooms. The setup of a dorm’s bathrooms, which varied depending on the residence hall, determined how many students were allowed in each bathroom. The administrative team used recommendations from UChicago Medicine and came up with a ratio of three students per shower fixture.

This ratio was able to determine the percentage of the normal capacity the University could safely accommodate students in the residence halls, which was around 59 percent.

The summer before autumn quarter, Pang, who was attending high school in Texas, decided to travel back to her family’s home in Shanghai as COVID-19 cases started to increase in the United States. She had to travel almost a day, making a stop in Germany, before arriving in China for a mandatory 14-day quarantine.

“I was scared because there was no one I could rely on during my journey

“I’m just hoping that this becomes home because it just feels very alone.” back home. But once I stepped my feet on China, I felt secure again,” Pang said.

Concerned about the infection rates in the U.S. and the growing possibility of contracting COVID-19, Pang and her family made the difficult decision for her to stay home for the beginning of autumn quarter.

Anyone’s first day of school, whether

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starting first grade or freshman year, is filled with a poignant mix of excitement, worry, and anticipation. Yet, this fall seemed to be a rougher adjustment than usual for the incoming class.

Though her expectations of autumn quarter had changed, MacGregor still felt the struggle of COVID-19’s impact her first few weeks, which she conveyed through her college move-in vlog.

MacGregor has been a vlogger on YouTube for about a year, sharing aspects of her life with her online audience. One of her more recent videos detailed her trip to UChicago then moving into her dorm with her parents. Though most of her video is happy and upbeat, towards the end the music shifts and MacGregor opens up about some of her worries regarding the pandemic.

“There is a very small part of me that really wants to go home. It’s just so hard saying goodbye and not knowing when I’m going to see my family again because I don’t know if we’re going to get closed down because of COVID-19.

It’s saying goodbye for an indefinite period of time. I’m just hoping that this becomes home because it just feels very alone,” MacGregor said.

Despite the difficulties MacGregor and many other students faced in their first few weeks in Chicago, Pang shared a more positive experience she had in her first few weeks.

“Thanks to the Zoom Center, I am able to make friends with college classmates even with remote learning. But I am looking forward to meeting a more diverse group of kids after coming to campus,” Pang mentioned.

Frigo also shared his positive experience making friends at the beginning of the quarter.

“Because I met so few people it

meant that we kind of formed such a close-knit friend group, and we really got to know eachother in a deep and profound and honest way. And they’re still my best friends here. So my first week, honestly, I think I found in my first week what a lot of undergraduates try to find in their second, third, and fourth year,” Frigo said.

As usual, the incoming freshmen were expected to hit the ground running this quarter, so students on and off campus found their work-life balances tilting sharply toward their studies after nearly seven months away from the classroom.

For Frigo, the academic demands often cut off the outside world entirely.

“Sometimes you go a whole day studying. And you forget that there is a pandemic, because all you’ve been doing is writing a Sosc paper or joining a lecture,” Frigo said.

MacGregor agreed, mentioning that the lack of in-person collaboration adds greater difficulty to her study habits.

“COVID-19 is definitely going to enhance the [academic] challenge, and it’s going to put your capabilities to work independently to the test,” MacGregor recalled telling herself.

In addition to complete physical isolation, students living off campus faced many scheduling difficulties.

This dilemma was especially true for students living abroad, like Pang, whose local time is 14 hours ahead of her peers in Chicago.

“My classes usually start at around 10 p.m. I finish [my classes] a little lat-

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

SEPTEMBER 2020 • Prior to arriving on campus for the 2020–21 academic year, students are required to complete a COVID-19 training program and submit a form attesting to their compliance with the University’s new policies.

• Dorm room assignments—including those within apartments—are single-occupancy, and dining halls are capped at a maximum capacity of 75 percent. A meal-delivery program provides students in quarantine with their meals.

• Snell-Hitchcock and Stony Island hall are turned into “isolation housing.”

• First-years move into housing for a mostly remote O-Week. Arrival testing shows two out of 910 tests positive in the first batch of 1,588 tests.

er than midnight and go to bed. I think remote learning is very inefficient because it is hard for me to get help when I need it, and it is hard for me to focus while learning with Zoom,” Pang said.

Despite these newfound obstacles, students like Frigo aren’t taking their opportunity for granted.

“If I look back at the education that I’m receiving, and the tangible and transferable skills that I am learning and developing, I can’t even assign a value to them. They’re priceless,” Frigo said.

Despite these new sets of challenges, first-year students joined the rest of the University community in finding creative solutions to continue their academic pursuits, Dean of the College John Boyer told The Maroon .

“There’s been a remarkable amount of [initiative] going on at this University in the last six to seven months: figuring things out, redesigning courses, students managing to juggle things

and to come back from the fear and the immobilism. And I think to the extent we’ve succeeded, it has a lot to do with individual innovation and creativity on the part of thousands of people, unsung heroes,” Boyer said.

Faced with the enormous social toll of remote workloads, many first-years have sought out mechanisms for safe interaction with their peers. RSOs, socially distanced sports, and even trips to the dining hall have become the new hubs of social life.

While running for College Council earlier this year, Solanki saw symptoms of loneliness woven throughout the Class of 2024.

“There are a lot of people who are feeling isolated. I was talking to kids who are off campus; they were saying they wanted more activities to integrate them into campus,” Solanki said.

This all amounts to a new social playbook, with unfamiliar norms and expectations. When discussing how

she made new friends, MacGregor mentioned that she tried to find opportunities to safely meet up with people she has met virtually.

“A lot of the time it’s been students that are bolder than I am. They’ll reach out to me if we’ve talked a little bit and say, ‘Hey, you want to grab lunch?’”

MacGregor said.

Solanki took advantage of UChicago’s many RSOs to meet new people and interact with upperclassmen.

“I really threw myself out there because I was at home and I didn’t really have to balance going out with friends or making time to see people on my floor,” Solanki said.

For many first-years, social life meant not only finding opportunities to meet new friends between assignments, but also balancing common interactions with health and safety.

“Can small compromises be made, where people are still safe and there’s a little more social interaction for the benefit of our mental health? Absolutely,” Frigo said.

Still, University officials, such as Rasmussen, continue to stress the importance of physical distancing regulations during winter quarter.

“Now is not the time to let down our guard as administrators, students, faculty and staff. We have to continue to remain vigilant, even though we might be getting really sick and tired of having to do all the things we have to do. The vaccines are coming, and while that may be very encouraging, that doesn’t mean that you now can let loose,” Rasmussen told The Maroon .

Historically, student resources and services have offered much-needed guidance to first-years as they begin their college careers. The pandemic presented unique difficulties for these departments, who faced both heightened obstacles and increased demand.

Unfortunately, some resource limitations are simply unavoidable for safety reasons. MacGregor, for example, looks forward to the day when she

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can finally take full advantage of what the library system has to offer.

“We can’t study with peers in the library. On my way back from Spanish [class], I can’t just stop at a library on a whim. But of course, I can schedule in advance if I have the foresight,” MacGregor said.

Even after the whirlwind of fall quarter, UChicago’s first-years find themselves experiencing an all-too-familiar sense of uncertainty. While a vaccine sits on the horizon, cases continue to multiply throughout the United States, particularly in the Greater Chicago Area. Anticipating the repercussions of this third-wave, the University released a series of precautions regarding the remainder of the academic year.

“We are encouraging students on campus to consider remaining in Chicago for the week of Spring Break to reduce unnecessary travel. The potential for a vaccine to be available before the end of the academic year is unlikely to change our plans in the near-term,” Provost Ka Yee Lee wrote in a community-wide announcement on October 29.

“I felt like I was giving up on college if I went home.”

In a more recent message, Lee said that students 16 and older are expected to be eligible for the Phase 2 vaccination cycle, which is “tentatively scheduled to begin May 31, 2021 for the City of Chicago.” In addition, the announcement stated, “The University is also planning to establish its own vaccine clinic that will be utilized for Phase1c…and Phase 2 vaccine distribution.”

The idea of long-term separation from loved ones during an already-isolating time prompted many first-years to opt-out of on-campus living for the winter quarter. MacGregor said she made this decision because winter weather will inhibit outdoor events— one of the few opportunities to safely interact with her peers.

“I deliberated over it for a while

because I had this guilt about it. I felt like I was giving up on college if I went home. But I feel like I’m going to be sitting in my dorm alone all winter because there’s going to be no way I can safely social-ize with people and feel comfortable. Or I can do [my classes] at home where I’ll be able to cook my own meals and enjoy the company of my family,” MacGregor said.

With a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, UChicago’s first-years continue to place health and safety atop their list of priorities.

“And at the end of the day, it is challenging having a social life, but health comes before that, and safety comes well, well, well, before that,” Frigo said.

OCTOBER 2020 • The University activates three testing programs: a symptomatic test-

ing program for those who have been in close contact with someone who has tested positive for the virus or are themselves experiencing symptoms, a weekly mandatory surveillance testing program for all asymptomatic members of the campus community who are living in UChicago’s residence halls, and a weekly voluntary surveillance testing program for faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and staff who will frequent the campus but do not live in residence halls.

• Lee announces that winter quarter will begin a week earlier than

scheduled for every division but the Law School and says University members should expect to retain the “hybrid” model for winter and spring quarters.

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THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

NEWS

How UChicago’s Class of 2025 Navigated an Unprecedented Application Cycle MICHAEL McCLURE news reporter

Like the thousands who come each year to see the University of Chicago’s Gothic architecture, famed libraries, and arboreal landscapes, Natalie Larsen remembers being enraptured by her campus visit last March.

“I had the most amazing visit. I got to meet with students, and I went on the tour, and I just absolutely loved everything about it.” she said. “Visiting was definitely a huge factor in feeling like it was a community where I wanted to be.”

Larsen never had the opportunity to visit another college campus. Just a couple of days later, schools around the country closed as COVID-19 relentlessly marched across the globe. Meanwhile, at UChicago, classrooms emptied as students adapted to the virtual model. Those with hopes of becoming the College’s newest members were left on the outside looking in.

For members of the Class of 2025, the process of applying to UChicago has looked radically different due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the eight months between the onset of the pandemic and the submission of their early applications, these students became guinea pigs for an admissions season like no other.

Summer oppor tunities, like pre-college programs, camps, and internships, were especially affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. While these offerings would normally provide fodder for an application essay, a few lines

on a résumé, or simply good memories, they looked much different last summer—and in some cases, nonexistent.

Both of Larsen’s summer activities, an Arabic-language immersion program and an offshore-drilling internship, were cancelled. “That was my whole summer that I didn’t have anymore,” she said. “But I did some virtual things. I started learning Arabic on my own, and I picked up other hobbies.”

“This year... a very small percentage of people know where they’re going at this point.”

Another challenge for applicants has been the increased competitiveness of college admissions this year.

Many of the country’s top universities have reported an applicant pool that grew by more than 20 percent compared to last year.

At St. John’s School, the private K-12 school in Houston where Larsen attends, a lower rate of early accep-

tances proved demoralizing to seniors.

“There’s been a lot of stress,” she said. “When we saw the statistics and stuff, it was kind of crazy. Because usually at our school, the majority of our kids go early to places, but this year…a very small percentage of people know where they’re going at this point.”

The spike in competitiveness is also being driven by the number of students who graduated high school in 2020 but who decided to take a gap year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of those students opted to apply to college this year, concurrently with this year’s seniors, which increased the size of the Class of 2025 applicant pool.

Those who applied and received admission to UChicago, however, found themselves drawn to the school by the same combination of quirk and rigor as previous generations of Maroons.

UChicago professors hosted a variety of model classes over Zoom, giving applicants a sense of the classes and academic opportunities awaiting them.

In previous years, these classes would be geared towards admitted students, but opening them up to prospective students meant that they enticed people to apply in the first place. “[UChicago] already was first on my list…but then I attended the virtual classes, and I was like, I really want to go there.

Those were super, super interesting,” Early Decision I applicant Emmett Reid said.

This article can be read in its entirety on chicagomaroon.com.

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NEWS

9,300 Miles and 14 Hours Away: International Students Struggle With Attending UChicago Virtually DANYA WANG news reporter

International students who decided to take virtual classes from their home countries have faced a unique set of disadvantages with online learning. As a result of time-zone and cultural differences, many have faced additional challenges toward reaching their full potential in school.

Christopher Cheung, a second-year, has been taking classes from Hong Kong, which is 14 hours ahead of Chicago. Rescheduling classes that take place late at night in Hong Kong has been a difficult process for Cheung. “As an international student, it’s impossible to go to office hours due to the time difference,” he said. “While professors may be open to [changing office hours], [the] process is democratic, so it always ends up in U.S. time.”

For Cheung, the difficulties of studying internationally were complicated by sometimes unaccommodating professors. Last quarter, one of Cheung’s classes held weekly office hours at 6 a.m. in Hong Kong. Upon asking his professor whether office hours could be moved to a more convenient time, he received an email saying, “5 a.m. on Friday for you…is not exactly the middle of the night.”

Second-year Zachary Lee, a Singaporean citizen also taking classes 14 hours ahead of Chicago time, found the demands of balancing his university obligations so difficult that, in fall quarter, he switched to living entirely in Chicago time. He slept at 4 p.m. and woke at 1 a.m. in Singapore time.

“Your body isn’t used to sleeping during the day. I did night shift in the Singaporean army for two years, sleeping during the

32

day, and it’s still bad. Obviously, sunlight has a big impact on mood, at least for me, and I try to make it a point to go out in the morning so I can see the sun. Otherwise it’s really depressing.” Sleeping for most of the day has also caused Zach to miss meals with his family.

Nevertheless, Lee has found his professors to be flexible toward his situation. “All my professors are quite accommodating with exams, and you just have to manage your schedule for problem sets,” Lee said.

He also commended one of his professors for “really going as far as he can to help us in this virtual format: it makes you feel less garbage.”

Beyond the classroom, attending the College with a 14-hour time difference has complicated international students’ ability to pursue extracurricular activities.

Most RSOs schedule their activities around Chicago time, making it difficult for some international students to participate. “We comprise such a small proportion of the student body it doesn’t make much sense to cater to us specifically,”

Lee said.

The impact of being virtual has also limited the course options of international students, although some students say one solution might be to offer more evening courses.

Sophia Koock, a Korean American who has been studying in Seoul, South Korea, since the beginning of the pandemic emailed six professors asking if she could take their classes asynchronously because information about time flexibility was not widely disseminated. “It can be really disappointing because there are classes I really wanted to take, but when it’s at 3 a.m., it’s hard,” she said.

Going into next quarter, Koock hopes more courses will be offered that meet in the evening in Chicago. Her Sosc class, offered late in the day in Chicago, had West Coast students an hour or two behind, as well as Chicago students who preferred evening courses. “I really appreciate that because it can’t be fun to teach until 9 p.m., but I really appreciate having a more normal class experience,” Koock said.

NOVEMBER 2020 • Students who leave campus for Thanksgiving must remain away from campus until the beginning of winter quarter.

• The University announces a projected $150 million loss for the coming year.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

NEWS

Students Collect Oral History of Frontline Workers During Pandemic DANYA WANG news reporter

Students from professor Amy Dru Stanley’s U.S. labor history class embarked on a unique final project during the fall quarter: they conducted interviews with frontline workers across the country, using them to analyze essential work in the pandemic for their papers, and archived the tape recordings at Regenstein Library’s Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center.

Stanley, an associate faculty member within the history department, came up with the idea because she wanted to connect the students’ learnings of history to the present.

“I felt it was crucial…for students to make that bridge between past and present, and look at the world around them, to see what the work entailed, [and] how vital it was to social existence,” Stanley commented. “At a time of remoteness [when] we’re also distanced with one another, I wanted students to make contact with people outside the walls of the University.”

Stanley and her colleagues discussed implementing the project in late August.

They wrote a proposal to obtain financial support from the College’s Curriculum Innovation Fund and Chicago Studies, for the extra work that would go into the course as a result. According to Stanley, that included new research changes to the course and “modest honorariums” for the essential workers that gave their time for the project.

When looking for workers to interview, Stanley and her colleagues reached out to the labor community and unions all over the country. A teaching assistant for the class attended a nurses’ strike in September 2020 and asked around as well.

“He was out there…peddling our project on the picket line,” Stanley said.

According to Stanley, many of the workers they reached out to were receptive and “delighted” that members of the University were creating a permanent archive.

Students prepared extensively to interview those workers, including learning about a historical precedent for oral history research. Second-year Theo Gardiner said that he and his classmates learned that their project was based off of a Works Progress Administration project in the 1930s, where the government sponsored a collection of oral history from ex-slaves.

On Election Day, Gardiner interviewed a nurse at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Gardiner was able to get a different perspective on the University after learning about a strike she had participated in during 2019, mentioning that students don’t normally see those events.

He was also able to learn about how nursing has changed—and stayed the same—over the centuries. According to Gardiner, nurses have taken a much bigger role in society compared to the 1800s, but still suffer the same struggles.

“There’s a common kind of mistreatment and lack of equity given to [blue collar workers] that you could clearly see in the history of nursing…even to this day, and that tied in with the huge over-representation of minorities and females in the profession, and drew together a lot of equity [and] equality issues,” Gardiner stated.

Stanley similarly spoke about how the jobs of some workers changed dramatically due to the pandemic. But for others, their work was already “dirty, hard, dangerous, [and] poorly paid.”

Frontline worker Brian Kelly, who works as a nurse at the University of Chi-

cago Medical Center, was interviewed by one of the students for the project. He said that more colleges and universities should engage with the people they learn about in class.

“It’s a significant historical point in time that we’re dealing with right now… and it is nice to have voices that can speak to the experience of what they were dealing with at that time,” Kelly said.

“We’ve created a permanent archive, a treasure trove for future scholars to be able to have resources to understand the experience of essential work during the pandemic,” Stanley added.

According to Daniel Meyer, Director of the Special Collections Research Center, archives of the oral history project are still being transferred over. After it is all received, archivists will begin their work of organizing and making it available.

Apart from the research component, Gardiner also hopes that the greater UChicago community can learn from the workers’ stories and demonstrate change through actions.

“It’s always valuable to tell stories and humanize situations…there’s a value to putting a face on statistics,” Gardiner said.

“The pandemic is a chance for a reset, a chance to reevaluate and redistribute wealth and welfare. And I think that’s the hope for the future.”

Beyond the pandemic, Stanley wants the project to reveal the value of essential work that has often been obscured.

“Look around you and realize the ways in which work that’s often hidden from view is utterly central and crucial to the functioning of our lives, whether it be the janitors…the transit workers, nurses, teachers…having the broader community understand that work is essential. And, it needs to be honored,” Stanley said.

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VIEWPOINTS

Changing the Script on Love at UChicago RACHEL ONG

viewpoints columnist

At some point in eighth week, with clothes strewn across my half-empty suitcase and my Hum paper nowhere near finished, I came across this fun fact on the Wikipedia page of the College: Nearly 50 percent of UChicago students end up marrying each other. As someone who has spent far too much time internalizing the aesthetics of glossy ’80s rom-coms and

predictable tropes from badly written teen dramas, I was intrigued. Although the Wikipedia page also notes that this “fact” is merely a fabrication, it raises the question of finding love at UChicago. Universal loneliness and a noncommittal dating scene seem to be hallmarks of our school’s culture, but I’ve grown convinced that this is due to a fundamental misunderstanding of connection and love on campus. With the arrival of cuffing season, I propose that we take the time to find a different kind of

love in our life: not the kind crafted by social media or found in recycled narratives from Hollywood executives, but non-romantic love in places more familiar than we think.

These days, the notion of “love at first sight” or settling down young seem prehistoric. This isn’t just a symptom seen in the UChicago student body, either: Gen Z has abandoned orthodox ideas of love and readily embraced an era where young people are too busy being careerists to worry

illustration by jad dahshan

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THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

about their love lives. With our stacked, color-coded Google Calendars and mounting pressures from school and work, romance is often left out of the equation.

Not surprisingly, the advent of social media has skewed our expectations of finding connection as well. We romanticize relationships that have been filtered and cropped, glamorize performative gestures while cringing at genuine ones, and receive transactions of validation through likes and Tinder swipes. The cultural norm has shifted to adjust to this age of opting for efficiency and surface-level connection, and as a consequence, it’s possible that we’ve lost touch of the idea of love at its core. But what if we viewed love not as something intangible and selective, but as something simple, fulfilling, and easily incorporated into our lives?

If you’re struggling to find your place here or wondering why reality isn’t matching up to the movie’s stories of finding love and friendships in college, not all hope is lost. I urge us all to think back to Vice Provost Melissa Gilliam’s powerful speech delivered during this year’s Aims of Education Address, and especially this quote: “If you ever doubt your value or your magnificence, take a biology class so you can see the wonder of the human body.”

She spoke about how we should value the love that exists not only in romantic relationships, but in our institutions, our education, in friendships, and, most importantly, within ourselves. At UChicago, we can reconceptualize love and should take the time to figure out what it means to us rather than straying away from it. What if we romanticized self-love in the way that we romanticize love in the movies? Perhaps you will find solace by having a meal by yourself, walking through idyllic parts of campus, or learning to enjoy your Sosc reading and that one concept you learned that you find particularly fascinating.

These new avenues might just be what we need in a time where love and connection feel out of reach.

It’s second nature at UChicago to poke fun at our collective experience of struggling in this competitive, rigorous

Love and Longing in Hyde Park: Jasper Koota While Jasper Koota began talking about the friends he made while working for the Biden presidential campaign, the conversation resulted in him waxing poetic about his car. Koota was in Nevada when he got the news that the Biden campaign was suspending in-person events. He jumped in his car and drove from Arizona to his hometown of Delmar, New York. On the way, he slept in his car to avoid hotels and potential COVID-19 exposure. His relationship with his car, which he nicknamed Zeke, started when he first arrived in Iowa on the first day of his Biden campaign fellowship in September.

“It was September [of 2019] and I flew there with one duffel bag, which was so dumb.... My worldview has changed a lot. But I was coming with one duffel bag out of a very small town and I forgot how the world operated.… I was picked up at the airport and dropped off at this dude named Bruce’s house,” Koota said.

After being hired as a full-time organizer, he realized he needed a car to get around the state and later travel the country. Koota called Bruce to ask about getting a car that would fulfill his needs without breaking the bank. He was directed to a friend of Bruce’s who showed him a 2005 Ford Escape. Zeke was a bit of a fixer-upper, but accompanied Koota from Iowa to California. In March, Koota again took Zeke across the country, this time from Arizona to New York.

“I drove basically 3,000 miles from Arizona to New York. I was very afraid to sleep in hotels because at this point, we didn’t really know anything. I think the first night, I was sleeping in my car at a rest stop in New Mexico because it was terrifying,” Koota said.

His fondest moments over the last few months have included Zeke. He went on a pre-COVID road trip with his girlfriend at the time, ate chicken nuggets in the backseat before almost being towed, and watched the sunset every night during the long drive back. Koota smiled fondly when remembering the sunsets.

academic environment. It can be a helpful coping mechanism, but this isn’t the be-all and end-all. UChicago’s students are not a monolithic group that subjects itself to a preestablished culture; we each have the capacity to care and love, to foster an environment that is more welcoming, and to set a new precedent. We must become comfortable with the idea that love—of your partner, friends, Foucault, or quantum physics—is as important to the College’s culture as its “quirkiness”

and intellectual inquiry.

For all the romantics reading this: The pixelated Zoom classmate you see twice a week or the house ghost you have yet to bump into might not be “the one,” but perhaps that’s not what we should be seeking right now. When it comes to love, I encourage us all to consider a new perspective—after all, it’s what UChicago students do best.

Rachel Ong is a first-year in the College.

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SPORTS

Practicing for an

Uncertain Season ALI SHEEHY

assistant sports editor When the University Athletic Association (UAA) made an announcement on January 12, 2021 cancelling all formal spring competition for the 2020–21 season, those on the baseball and women’s lacrosse teams started to wonder: “What does that mean for us?”

The baseball and women’s lacrosse teams do not compete in the UAA. Instead, the baseball team competes in the Midwest Conference (MWC) while the women’s lacrosse team is a member of the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW). As a result, the UAA’s announcement did not provide any clarity on the state of their seasons.

As a member of the lacrosse team myself, even though almost a year has passed, I can still remember being called to an urgent team meeting with our athletic director in the middle of March. I can vividly see my coaches, teammates, and myself crying as we realized that our season was over and that we had to say goodbye to our amazing seniors.

This year has presented many challenges for college athletic departments all around the country across all three divisions. The University of Chicago and its athletic department have done and continue to do all that they can to find a way for teams to have the opportunity to practice and compete. Unfortunately, fall and winter varsity teams were unable to play games, but they were allowed to hold practices. However, spring sports teams were hoping that they would not lose another season to the pandemic.

Both the baseball and women’s lacrosse teams were among the first sports to have their seasons taken away from them last

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courtesy of uchicago women’s lacrosse

year due to the risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. For the baseball team, that meant having their season canceled after just six games. For the lacrosse team, that meant only being able to play three of their 16 scheduled games.

So far this year, baseball and lacrosse have been able to start holding practices and team lifts. However, with times continuing to be uncertain, the fate of these teams and their spring competition remains a waiting game.

But while these athletes, such as myself, wait to hear the verdict on whether or not we will have the opportunity to compete, it is still essential that we mentally and physically prepare to do so. Practicing during these uncertain times presents unique challenges. Teams need to be phased into larger groups and longer practice times over the course of several weeks. Additionally, it is difficult to keep up the intensity in practice when you are unsure if you will be able to showcase all of your hard work in a game setting. But even the simple things, such as bonding as a team and getting to know the new members, are tougher than

usual. Teams must be flexible and deal with these obstacles while putting in the work.

Overall, it is important to remember that each practice is an opportunity to spend time with the team and improve, both as an individual and as a collective.

“It has been so fun to be able to work with the team again more consistently, and it’s bringing a sense of normalcy during these uncertain times. We are looking forward to growing as a team, getting better and [hopefully] being able to compete,” explained Kate Robinson, the head women’s lacrosse coach.

From my experience and through conversations with my teammates, it is clear that we understand the importance of controlling what we have the power to control.

We cannot change the course of the pandemic nor can we decide whether or not it is safe enough to compete. All we can do is go to practice, put forth our best effort, and enjoy the time that we have with our coaches and teammates playing the sport that we love. I know that we are all hoping for the best, but in the meantime, all we can do is work hard and wait.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

Bells

Bells

Bells Bells Bells Bells

CHI IAN (JESS) IP arts contributor

As a f lutist, I often hear complaints from other instrument players about how difficult it is to travel around with their heavier brass or string instruments. Well, you can’t really complain in front of a carillonneur—what are you going to do when your musical instrument is literally an entire bell tower?

It has been ten months since the last time I climbed the 271 stairs and played the carillon in Rockefel-

Bells

ler Chapel. When I found out that classes would be virtual again this year, I decided to stay with my family in my hometown of Macau, and I have been separated from the carillon ever since. When I told João Shida, my recital buddy from last year, how much I missed the carillon, he sent me this picture and told me, “just a sea and a pandemic away.” Yes, the closest carillon near me is in the Philippines.

There is nothing more frustrating to a musician than to be isolated from their instrument. There is certainly a sense of anxiety associated with losing my skills and the techniques that I have accumulated over the last year,

Bells

ARTS and I miss being able to play in the tower and create that timeless atmosphere with the bells for the campus community. Even more than that, I miss my fellow carillonneurs. I miss spending an evening practicing and improvising with my duet partner, Yibo Pan, in the basement of the Rockefeller Chapel. I just miss all the fun things we got to do together as a guild.

During the lockdown, Joey Brink, our carillon instructor and the university carillonneur, was the first and only member togain access to the carillon. “I was very fortunate to be given access to the carillon again in June and resume daily recitals,” said Brink. “Having spent the previous three months in carillon withdrawal, I was eager to get back on the bells.

“I don’t think I’ve ever played as much carillon as I did this past summer. I was the only player approved to enter the tower all summer, and I wanted to provide as much music as possible for the community that had been starved of live music in all forms for so long. I set a goal for myself to

The 2019–20 Guild before UChicago’s closure. courtesy of chicago guild of carillonneurs

37

refresh as much of my repertoire as possible and managed to play 25 hours of music (over five weeks) before repeating myself!”

During the spring quarter, as a replacement for in-person classes, the guild would meet as a group once a week to learn more about the history of carillon and composers from Brink. But in terms of performance, remote learning was not an option.

Brink shares his concern as an instructor: “As glad as I was to be back on the instrument over the summer, I was truly heartbroken that the guild could not play the carillon for seven months. Could you imagine asking a

“There are also no recital buddies this year— meaning we will have to climb the tower and perform alone.” violinist not to play the violin for half a year? It was devastating for me, as a teacher, but despite this, I’ve been amazed and inspired by how resilient and passionate the guild is, how determined they were to play music for the campus and pick up right where they left off.”

Although the pandemic has kept a few carillonneurs like me away, the rest of the guild members who are on campus have fortunately gained access to the carillon again during fall quarter. They have all adapted well to the change and were able to keep

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the music of the carillon alive again.

Like most other RSOs, there were a lot of adjustments that needed to be made in the fall. We didn’t get to hold auditions in the fall to take in new members, and we can no longer lead tours. There are also no recital buddies this year—meaning we will have to climb the tower and perform alone.

All guild members whom I have spoken to have agreed that climbing the tower alone was not a pleasant experience. As one of our members, Emily Nigro, put it, “Climbing the tower alone was kind of scary at the end of fall around the solstice because my recital time is at five and it would already be very dark outside when I went up. Also, so many spiderwebs and dead bugs.”

Performing alone is also more challenging for members who were admitted to the guild last year, since we only had about a quarter of experience playing in the tower before everything came to a halt. Without a recital buddy, it can be hard to have enough music to fill during the thirty-minute recital. However, Emily later said that performing alone has gotten easier for her as she has learned more music and improved her carillon playing, an experience she has been enjoying: “I’m so grateful that we’ve had access to Rockefeller this year because now I’ve grown a lot as a carillonneur, and playing is also just really fun! It’s a wonderful break from staring at screens all day, and walking to Rockefeller forces me to leave my apartment and go outside.”

In order to maintain public health requirements, the guild introduced some virtual events, such as live streaming recitals and virtual tours.

We also hold virtual and outdoor events to keep in contact with each other, including guild nights every two weeks over Zoom.

Overall, the guild really has done a great job adjusting to the pandem-

DECEMBER 2020 •

UCMC begins its vaccination campaign among staff.

JANUARY 2021 •

The University announces that it will open a vaccination clinic for phases 1c and 2 of the vaccine rollout.

ic. As our guild president, Emily Kim, said, “I was worried the sense of community within the guild would waver.

I have been pleasantly surprised with how things have turned out though!

I’ve really enjoyed getting to brainstorm new creative ways that we can connect with each other and with the greater campus community (and even beyond that!) I’m so proud of the guild for adjusting to this new situation, staying close during these often isolating times, and adhering to protocols to keep everyone safe and happy.”

No one in the guild will ever get used to climbing the tower alone. We are all eager to lead tours and hold concerts again, and hopefully resume our audition process next year. As for me, I am looking forward to the day that I can be in the presence of the music of the bells again.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

$100 Million and 1 Million Tests:

SPORTS

How the NFL Played Throughout a Pandemic THOMAS GORDON sports editor

The 2020–21 National Football League (NFL) season concluded earlier this month with a Super Bowl that was billed as a titanic matchup between the new and old guard of the sport but instead was a largely forgetful game, evidenced by the worst ratings since 2007. While the ending may have been forgetful, the season will long live in our memories due to the occurrence of the season during a pandemic. The monumental task of playing a 256-game season without a bubble was not an easy task, and there were multiple times where the original plan had to be adapted. However, in terms of playing all the games and for the most part having them played without a team at a significant disadvantage, the season was a success.

How did the NFL manage this without a bubble?

First and foremost, the NFL needed a robust testing infrastructure for the players, staff and other essential employees at each of their teams’ home complex. Through the NFL season, it was discovered that conducting more tests does not actually mean more cases. Since August, the league positivity rate was only 0.076 percent with 726 cases out of nearly 960,000 tests on about 7,500 employees per week, according to ESPN’s Kevin Seifert. One strong complaint has been on the number of tests used on professional athletes versus frontline workers. With stories that nurses are unable to get

tested or have to still work while waiting for their results, nearly a million tests to allow for a football season to occur seems difficult to justify. However, Allen Sills, the NFL chief medical officer, insisted that “[w]e’ve set up a completely independent supply and logistic pipeline,” and therefore they were not taking tests away from frontline workers. This daily testing allowed for the teams and the league to crack down on any outbreaks occurring.

In addition to a testing infrastructure, the league invested in their contact tracing program as well. According to the NFL COVID-19 protocols, “Players and personnel wear mandatory proximity recording devices when at the club facility, during practices, and during team travel. Players also have them built into their equipment for use on-field in practice and games.”

This equipment aided the NFL and teams in determining close contacts and whether a player had to be put into isolation for five days, and requiring negative tests throughout isolation to be cleared back to play. This resulted in some intricate planning to get players on the field when cleared, such as when former Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford was isolated in a hotel for a week, traveled by private plane to Minneapolis, and then started a game all without taking a single practice rep.

The contact tracing did result in some competitive imbalances, such as when the Broncos had to start a rookie wide receiver at quarterback due to their entire quarterback room being deemed close contact after a positive test and

lack of mask wearing at a prior meeting.

Additionally, as the season progressed, mask wearing became increasingly mandatory in different spheres such as on the team planes(most teams used two to aid social distancing) and on the sidelines during the games.

Furthermore, to protect players and staff, all positive cases had to undergo cardiac screening. COVID-19 has caused myocarditis, a condition marked by inflammation of the heart muscle, in some cases. In fact, Major League Baseball (MLB) pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez missed the entire MLB season after developing the condition from COVID-19. Favorably, this was not a common occurrence throughout the NFL. Sills stated that “there was an incredibly low incidence of any kind of cardiac abnormality, and thankfully we did not have anyone who had a severe outcome from that.”

In terms of health of their players, the NFL season was a tremendous success given the low positivity rates and lack of severe cases among their players. Clearly, the nearly $100 million spent to mitigate the coronavirus worked. Moreover, there was not a single instance of a player catching COVID-19 from another team’s player during a game, likely due to the lack of continued contact. The plan for next season is still unclear. Will the NFL require all of its players to be vaccinated?

Will training camp have to begin virtually, as it did last year? Many questions remain to be answered, but the NFL has seemingly created a framework to play safely in our current environment.

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NEWS

Public School During a Pandemic CPS’ plan to resume in-person instruction comes after nearly a year of online learning.

TESS CHANG news editor

After months of negotiations, Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) finally reached an agreement for returning to in-person instruction on February 7. But this news caps a tumultuous year for students, parents, and teachers who have had to adjust to remote learning.

CPS’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic began on March 17, 2020, when the school system closed for two weeks in accordance with the statewide stay-at-home order. On March 30, CPS announced its remote learning plan, which included modifications to grading policies and regularly scheduled office hours for teachers. CPS also provided thousands of laptops and iPads, grab and go meals, and high-speed internet for students. In April, CPS decided that remote learning would continue through the end of the school year.

On August 5, 2020, CPS announced that the first quarter of the 2020–21 year would be remote. The announcement emphasized that online learning in the fall would be more structured than it had been in the spring, aiming to engage students for “the entirety of a typical school day” through both live instruction and independent study.

Scott Witherspoon, whose son is a sophomore at Kenwood Academy, has noticed a clear difference in his son’s

40

“This school year has been like night and day [compared to the spring].” schooling since the new school year began. In the spring of 2020, he said, “Things were new, in terms of adjusting to COVID. People were scrambling to figure things out. But from a learning standpoint, this school year has been like night and day. Teachers have been much more organized with remote learning.”

In December of 2020, CPS announced their intention to resume in-person instruction on January 11, with increased COVID precautions including air purifiers, social distancing, contact tracing, and cleaning measures. The CTU protested, claiming that these policies were not enough to protect students and teachers. CTU members voiced concerns about a lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and cleaning supplies provided. Many also argued that their classrooms were significantly larger than the spaces that the air filters were designed for.

In spite of these concerns, CPS schools officially reopened on January 11, 2021, though approximately 150 CTU teachers refused to return to

their classrooms. In response, CPS suspended those teachers’ pay and locked them out of their Google Classroom accounts. On January 28, CPS returned to remote learning due to the number of teachers staying home.

CPS and CTU repeatedly met for negotiations throughout the last week of January and first week of February.

CPS defended its decision to return to in-person instruction, emphasizing their adherence to federal, state, and city-wide health and safety standards. CTU argued that CPS had not supplied basic health and safety supplies for classrooms. They asked that educators have the option to continue teaching remotely, at least until more teachers are able to get the vaccine, and threatened to strike if their demands were not met.

While opinions on the issue are wide-ranging, some recent polling suggests that a majority of parents are hesitant about resuming in-person instruction. Witherspoon said that many parents’ long-standing distrust of the school system has made them sympathetic to CTU’s demands.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

CTU members during their 11-day strike in late 2019. adrian mandéville

“I don’t think that CPS has made enough investment to make sure that classrooms are safe.”

“CPS doesn’t have a good reputation with being transparent and honest with the community,” he said. “The community has felt the brunt of that over the years. I don’t think that CPS has made enough investment to make sure that classrooms are safe.”

Still, students in grades Pre-K–8 returned to in-person classes on Thursday, February 11, per the agreement

CPS and CTU reached. The agreement included provisions for vaccinating thousands of teachers and a benchmark for the COVID test positivity rate at which CPS would switch to online learning. The deal did not include a plan for high schoolers to return to schools. Union leaders have warned that another standoff is possible if CPS refuses to listen to teachers’ concerns.

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NEWS

Older Adults Show Resilience, Maintain Regular Social Interactions During Pandemic, Study Finds The research study initially hoped to compare older adults’ mental wellness in the pandemic with that in 2015.

LUKIAN KLING senior news reporter

During the COVID-19 pandemic, older adults have been mentally resilient and have not altered their social habits as much as expected, according to a recent study conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago.

The study, an extension of NORC’s National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, was initiated with the hopes of comparing the mental wellness of the elderly during the pandemic with that in 2015.

Mental health was measured using interviews conducted over the phone or through web surveys with nearly 1,500 participants aged 55

to 99. Another cohort of paper and pencil respondents will be analyzed soon.

Nine percent of respondents claimed they had “fair or poor overall mental health” this October, marking only a slight increase from seven percent who answered the same in 2015. Louise Hawkley, the lead researcher of the study, added that overall, respondents also did not report a greater frequency of feeling left out or lonely, although their answers indicated that depressive symptoms had increased, and overall happiness levels had decreased.

“They were more robust than we might have expected in terms of their mental health,” Hawkley said.

Indeed, many older adults fared bet-

“They know how to handle it, they know it’s not forever.

There is another side. They know they’ll get to that other side.”

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ter than their younger counterparts in terms of mental well-being.

Hawkley said that a possible explanation for these phenomena was that, even in non-pandemic times, older adults tend to respond to stress better than young adults.

“People actually get happier the older they are and part of it, I believe, is their experience having dealt with stressors. They’ve learned some of the ropes. They know how to handle it, they know it’s not forever. There is another side. They know they’ll get to that other side,” she said.

Elderly folks have also been socializing more often than was initially expected (and recommended) by public health officials.

“We thought that given the constraints on social activity that older adults in particular would be very careful about how much contact they had with others in a face to face sense,” Hawkley said. “And surprisingly, about half of the people reported they haven’t really changed their in-person contact. It was still quite regular, at least weekly.”

Researchers speculated that high levels of mental resilience may stem from increased social interaction.

“One of the ways people deploy resilience strategies is to rely on other

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

“It is important not to lump such a large age cohort (55 to 99) together.” people. So maybe there’s a trade-off.

Yes, it might be less healthy to have more in-person contact, but maybe that’s the part of life that really protects you from mental health decrements,” Hawkley said.

Researchers have yet to find out how safer alternatives to in-person socializing, such as video or phone calls, bolster coping among older folks. For example, a weekly Zoom call with grandchildren could provide a similar effect as an in-person get-together for mental well-being.

It will take a while for Hawkley and the rest of the research team to develop a more intimate understanding of trends and the quantifiable reasons behind them. In addition to this complication, she said that in doing research, it is important not to lump such a large age cohort (55 to 99) together.

“We would never say that how [the pandemic] affects a child is how it affects a young adult, cause there’s a 20 to 30-year difference. The same is true at the other end of the life spectrum,” Hawkley said.

Responses from the pencil and paper crowd of participants have yet to be factored in, and there is a good chance that they may be less likely to utilize technology to replace or supplement in-person interactions. The overall results and conclusions of the study are thus subject to change.

Love and Longing in Hyde Park: Saba Ayman-Nolley Saba Ayman-Nolley first feared for developing countries as COVID-19 began rapidly spreading across the world last year. Ayman-Nolley is the president of the Hyde Park and Kenwood Interfaith Council, which oversees community food banks and refugee aid projects. As the coronavirus made its way to Chicago in March, she was increasingly concerned about its impact on her own community and the people she serves. She is sociable and typically energetic, but the responsibilities and fears of late have taken a toll on her.

“I think you would have to be scientifically blind not to be frightened.

I always get concerned worldwide, because I know how often this hurts developing countries and communities in need. So I had that kind of fear,” Ayman-Nolley said.

Ayman-Nolley’s father, whom she and her sister help care for, is 90 years old. In the early days of the pandemic, she described the experience as “intense.” “[My sister] moved in with my father. We all live next door to each other, and my sister and I share the care of my father. She’s the primary caregiver. But then, my sister fell in the kitchen and called me, and there was no choice—I had to go over there, I had to pick her up. I had to put stuff on her arm and finish cooking the dinner she was cooking,” Ayman-Nolley said.

Ayman-Nolley also had to manage her adult children’s exposure to the virus. She describes the conversations they have about who to see and how to stay safe. She and her adult children, who live nearby, did not meet in person and exchanged food by dropping it off outside the door. Her daughter moved in with Ayman-Nolley and started showing symptoms, adding to the anxiety.

“It feels very strange when your own adult gets out of a chair. And then you go with an alcoholic wipe and clean everything she touched on the chair because she was sick. I continued to apologize to her and she finally got tested, but it was an early time. Those tests were taking weeks to come back. So I was scared to hear. We waited two weeks or more; I cannot remember how long it went on, but I was afraid,” Ayman-Nolley said.

By the time the test result came back negative, three weeks had passed.

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ARTS

Kenjiro Lee’s Primal Says It’s Okay to Scream ALINA KIM arts editor

In March 2020, the University of Chicago’s Class of 2020 was told to cope—with senior spring, convocation, and student artists’ exhibitions canceled, their ultimate (and penultimate) quarters ground to an unexpected and sudden halt. For Kenjiro Lee (A.B. ’20), that also meant bidding farewell to University Theater in March after a last bow as the director of The Old Man and the Old Moon (or, as he endearingly called it, OMOM).

From the physical absence of UChicago and the frustrations that come with a purely virtual world sprung the formula for his Zoom performance Primal, which runs just over three minutes.

Lee sits alone on a Zoom screen, the popular “This is Fine” meme flaming as his background, and shouts into a megaphone pointed directly at the audience.

“SOMETIMES WHEN I’M IN THE SHOWER, I COVER MY EARS AND JUST COWER FOR A FEW MINUTES, IMAGINING THE SPRAY OF WATER

CASCADING ONTO MY HEAD IS ALL THE TROUBLES IN THE WORLD GETTING DEFLECTED!” Lee yells in one part of the monologue, followed by a softer reflection, “My hair’s not very absorbent. When I exercise, I’m covered in sweat.”

Quick, chaotic, and accessible, Primal addresses the tension that comes with an ongoing pandemic. Its messiness is simultaneously jarring and comforting, relatable in its sporadic switches between political anger to a discussion on alcohol as we all navigate a seemingly directionless social milieu.

Despite the distance between audience and performer, Primal’s unpredictable, in-your-face, and loud message rings clear for those who tune in: At least we all stay connected through a brief catharsis.

Ultimately, the play concludes with encouraged audience participation, in which Lee and the audience scream (to the point of breaching and breaking Zoom’s audio capacity) for five seconds.

“Thank you for indulging me,” he adds before turning off his Zoom camera.

“Quick, chaotic, and accessible, Primal addresses the tension that comes with an ongoing pandemic.”

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On January 29, Lee performed Primal at the Smart Museum as part of the Beyond Pomp and Circumstance to the Problems of Our Time initiative. The Maroon sat downwith Lee to discuss the inspirations behind his play, the world of virtual theater, and his theater career after UChicago.

Chicago Maroon: Where were you when the idea for Primal came about?

Kenjiro Lee: Primal was an assignment. I was doing the National Theater Institute Theatermakers Summer Intensive program. The National Theater Institute is an academic program from the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. I applied for it when it was going to be an in-person program. Obviously, that…did not shape out well in 2020, so I took it virtually. I took a class [called Structure] with Sarah Einspanier, a New York–based playwright. She gave us a challenge to write five plays over the course of five days, which is inspired by Suzan-Lori Parks’s 365 Days/365 Plays. These plays could be literally about anything. Anything.

So, I thought, “Okay. What am I feeling right now? What am I feeling about the current situation I’m in? I feel like…I wanna scream. I feel like I was cheated out of a senior spring. My graduation?

Entirely virtual. I’m upset and would love nothing more than to scream about it in a play…Maybe this play can just be my screaming at the top of my lungs!”

That’s when I basically word-vomited [onto] a Microsoft Word document.

The main bulk of Primal is pretty much what I wrote down on that day what I was feeling.

CM: Why the word “primal” instead of,

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

say, “scream”?

KL: [The title] Primal came about after I wrote it. The scream [at the end of the play] was already in there, but then I thought that this play is basically a primal scream. It reminded me of the UChicago tradition of going out to the [Nuclear Energy] sculpture near the Quad during finals week and just screaming. Now, that probably hasn’t happened recently on campus. I personally never participated in it because I was always studying. (Sorry.) In a way, I was thinking of UChicago by calling my play Primal.

CM: Was the megaphone originally part of the play, or did it come in much later?

KL: Ah! The megaphone! I’ve actually been trying to figure out [when I put it in]. Mainly, this was inspired by a play by the Neo-Futurists in Chicago. In their Infinite Wrench show, one of the performers was screaming into a megaphone in front of the audience.

“If screaming already puts you in an elevated state of mind, the megaphone just takes it up to an 11.”

I thought, realistically, “If I’m ever going to perform Primal, I don’t think I even own a megaphone. I don’t even want to go out looking for one. I think it will be effective just as is if I just shout at the top of my lungs.” But when I was preparing for an actual performance of Primal, my director Sophie Sam [at the National Theater Institute] told me, “I’m reading this and I’m picturing a megaphone. Do you own one?”

I responded, “Uh, no, I don’t really think I do? But I can look around.” And wouldn’t you know…. We actually did

have a megaphone in the basement. I think the megaphone helps elevate it all.

If screaming already puts you in an elevated state of mind, the megaphone just takes it up to an 11. If someone’s holding up a megaphone, everyone’s gonna look at that person and that person will have your complete and utter attention. You won’t look away from that person.

CM: There are points in Primal where you just shout into the megaphone. But there are other times where you speak much more softly. Walk me through how you envisioned that: Is the screaming an

Kenjiro Lee performs Primal. courtesy of kenjiro lee

45

internal monologue, while the softer interjections are the calmer external shell?

KL: There are two things at play here.

One is my love for contrast. I love playing with contrast and anything I write, or anything I love, has something really funny, followed by [hitting you] with something really serious. It makes the serious part punch out more to my audience. But I’m also borrowing from neo-futurism and [its] aesthetic of truth and storytelling. Their saying goes, “You’re always playing yourself.

Everything you say is the truth.” But that doesn’t mean you don’t get to be creative with that saying. Take the Neo-Futurists [in Chicago]: although they are based in telling truths, they often do bits where they are really exaggerated versions of themselves, or they amp things up to get them into a very heightened state. But they mix in honesty, too. So that’s what I was getting at when I screamed in Primal. It’s all how I’m actually feeling but it’s a very heightened, very exaggerated state.

And the quieter moments where I’m just talking normally is more or less monotone. It’s just me trying to be myself.

I’m not trying to play some character.

I’m just Kenjiro. Kenjiro Lee talking in Kenjiro Lee’s normal voice.

“I love playing with contrast and anything I write, or anything I love, has something really funny, followed by... something really serious.”

CM: I think I also see contrast between Primal and your interpretation of Yellow Face a couple years back. Primal is extremely short and created by you, while Yellow Face is much longer. Was the way you developed Primal different from how you directed Yellow Face?

KL: Both plays are about discoveries you make along the way. But it’s still hard to connect the two processes, it’s two very different beasts with two different paths.

What attracted me to Yellow Face is how it plays with concepts of truth and fiction. Yellow Face has a main character called David Henry Hwang. And there are a lot of real characters in it. And it’s in a real world setting. The play riffs off of real events. But spoiler alert! It’s highly fictional. What I love about what Hwang does with that is that he tells a story by creating that contrast between

A Zoom performance of Primal. courtesy of national theater institute

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the real and fictional. And the two kinds of muddle. It’s a very powerful message that I think tells a strong story.

So, in a way, Primal is similar [in playing] with contrast. I play with exaggerated states of frustration, and a calm, calm state. And it can be muddled in getting my feelings on this pandemic across. It sounds pretentious, but the artist I was when I directed Yellow Face is very different from the artist who wrote Primal. Contrast. (Laughs.)

CM: In the text itself, there is a common theme of drinks, fluidity, water. You mention shower water, coffee, alcohol.

What is the reason behind fixating on drinks and substances?

KL: The alcohol is my current situation. I’m in a situation where I’m actually not permitted to drink. But when you’re isolated like this, and you’re alone, you don’t have a whole lot to do.

And I think any UChicago student can attest to drinking copious amounts of coffee at various cafés when they were open. It helps pass time, and we always drink too much coffee. I remember ordering five cups of coffee in an hour while in Harper Library to keep myself engaged. For both coffee and alcohol, I’ll say that when you’re in a situation like the pandemic, some people are driven to take comfort in—for the lack of a better word—substances. I think it’s important to acknowledge the role that decision can play. Why is it that you’re taking some sort of risk by trying to distract yourself?

What I would like to say is that there’s no intentional point, but it’s just really reflecting my own actual experi-

THE CHICAGO MAROON — MARCH 1, 2021

ences. I’m still a coffee and caffeine addict. If you can draw from my experiences, I hope that is why Primal resonates.

CM: Primal is public domain. Do you see this play being translated to a post-pandemic setting?

KL: Does it exist in a post-pandemic setting? Can it? A lot of what I write is very much written for the moment, and in-the-moment. For some, that might make them think, “Is there longevity for pieces like this in the future after the moment is gone?” Honestly, I’m okay with it not lasting past one particular moment.

The main reason I put it in the public domain is because I think my experiences with this pandemic are reflected in others’ experiences. I think everyone has had that kind of primal urge to scream about all that’s happening and all that continues to happen. If this play gives people a chance to release that urge, then what I’ve done is something good for this world.

CM: Is there anything you learned from this process of creating virtual theater over the course of the pandemic that you took to heart and will continue to keep using?

KL: I think it’s just that art is highly malleable. I’ve always thought of theatre as something that relies on an audience being present in the moment for the per-

formers to respond to. It is absolutely how I’ve thought about everything I’ve written. When I write straightforward, full length plays, or even 10-minute plays, I’m imagining an audience responding in my head. And what I’ve had to contend with in the virtual space is that sometimes you don’t have that audience. So, it’s, it’s about creating things that audiences can respond to without necessarily being completely vocal. I also think one big takeaway I’ve gotten from this is that just because you can’t hear or see the audience doesn’t mean they’re not there. As long as you’re putting on something for them, regardless of whether you’re getting something back in the moment from them, you can still touch people’s lives in some way.

CM: And what other projects are you working on right now or planning on doing in the future?

KL: I just wrapped up [Socially Away: A Studio Ghibli Podcast]! Right now, I’m at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. I’ve got two full length plays in the works, one that is a finished draft. I can’t say a whole lot about it! But we are talking in terms of physical performance. It might be put on in a physical space, like a reading or a workshop. I also wrapped up a residency with the Citadel of Playwrights. They’re based in Dallas and I was their first artist-in-residence. I also have a YouTube channel where I make puppet videos, Soft-Shell Productions.

It’s a remote way of producing material to present to people…In a loose way, this is like getting my senior spring back.

CM: Thank you for indulging us, Kenjiro.

Kenjiro Lee is a New Jersey–based playwright, director, puppeteer, and performer. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 2020 with a major in Political Science and minor in Theater and Performance Studies.

Primal is open to the public domain.

Find more of Lee’s works at Soft-Shell Productions.

FEBRUARY 2021 • The University announces it has removed several students from their housing in Campus North. Offenses are categorized based on location (housing or dining halls) and whether students live on campus. Depending on the severity and frequency of the offenses, consequences range from written warnings to expulsion.

• UChicago Forward’s FAQ page states, “Ignoring the public health risks associated with gatherings, as well as serious violations of other requirements, will have consequences for individual students and their groups— whether they are part of an RSO or other type of group (including off-campus Greek organizations). Violating the requirements in the attestation could result in severe disciplinary action, including but not limited to suspension of access to campus.”

• The University announces that the 534th Convocation will be mostly remote, with a socially distant, in-person diploma ceremony tentatively planned.

• The University vaccinates almost 900 people against COVID-19 as part of phase 1b of Chicago’s immunization program.

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