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APRIL 6, 2023

THIRD WEEK

VOL. 135, ISSUE 12

Oriental Institute Renamed Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures

By NEIVE RODRIGUEZ | Senior News Reporter

The University of Chicago Oriental Institute (OI) has been renamed to the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia & North Africa (ISAC), per an email from the University Office of Communications to the University community on April 4. The OI Museum has also been renamed to the ISAC Museum.

According to the email, a committee of UChicago faculty and students from the Near East Languages and Cultures department (NELC) as well as faculty from peer institutions was formed in 2021 to decide on a new name for the ISAC.

In October 2022, ISAC members determined that alongside a new name, the Institute would have a different logo. The updated logo design was inspired by the lotus flower, a motif common in many of the cultures studied at the institute. Depictions of the lotus flower have also decorated the ISAC building since its construction in 1930.

“It was overwhelmingly decided that it was time for a change,” ISAC Communications Director Matthew Whelton said in an interview with The Maroon on Monday.

Whelton emphasized that the decision was made to reflect ISAC’s research and

collections more accurately.

“The word oriental doesn’t [reflect] our collections or our work. When people hear the word oriental, they think of East Asia, and our work doesn’t address East Asia at all. A big part of this was to combat this confusion,” said Whelton.

In 2019, as part of its centennial celebration, the Institute was already distancing itself from the Oriental Institute name. In a 2020 interview with The Maroon, then director Christopher Woods, who left the institute in April 2021, revealed that the Oriental Institute name was being phased out in official communications in favor of the OI abbreviation because the term Orient once used to describe Asia, had fallen out of common use. At the time, no further indications were given as to the timeline for renaming.

“We’re aware of the pejorative connotations of the word and thought it was a perfect time to change, both to bring awareness to what we do, and to create a name that more effectively speaks to the cultures that we represent,” Whelton said.

The institute, created with the aim of studying the progression of human history from the earliest civilizations in North

Africa and West Asia, traces its origins back to the Haskell Oriental Museum, cofounded in 1896 by former University president William Rainey Harper. James Henry Breasted, who succeeded Harper as museum director in 1901, eventually created the Oriental Institute in 1919 as the University’s first research institute. John D. Rockefeller Jr., son of University founding donor John D. Rockefeller Sr., funded both the creation of the OI and its 1931 move into its current headquarters.

Projects funded by ISAC include the excavation of Persepolis, located in modern-day Iran, in 1930–31; the compilation of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary and the Chicago Hittite Dictionary; and the construction of the Chicago House in Luxor, Egypt, in 1924. The Luxor site hosts ISAC’s Epigraphic Survey, which aims to record carvings in ancient monuments that are at risk of erosion. ISAC also has fieldwork projects in Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Sudan, Turkey and Spain, as well as the CAMEL lab, a digital mapping–focused project.

The ISAC Museum currently holds nearly 350,000 artifacts from West Asia and North Africa, the majority of which were found during the University’s excavations in the 20th century. More than 55,000 visitors come to the museum an-

nually, per ISAC’s website.

Among the artifacts are approximately 30,000 clay tablets that were discovered in the 1930 Persepolis expedition and that have been on loan to ISAC from the Iranian government ever since. The tablets were the subject of the 2018 Supreme Court case Rubin et al. v. Islamic Republic of Iran et al. ISAC was a respondent in the case, in which United States citizens who survived a terrorist attack carried out in 1997 by Hamas in Jerusalem sought possession of Iranian artifacts as compensation after the Iranian government did not pay the $71.5 million owed to them.

In the email, Interim Director of ISAC Theo van den Hout emphasized that the Institute’s work will continue as before. “Although the Institute’s name has changed, our mission remains the same,” he said.

ISAC’s new special exhibition, Artifacts Also Die, opens April 5 and will remain open until August 27, 2023. According to ISAC’s website, the exhibit is part of a current project titled Ruins, Rubble, and Renewal: Co-Existent Ruins—Exploring Iraq’s Mesopotamian Past Through Contemporary Art. The ISAC Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The Provocative, Polarizing Prose of 2023 Class Day Speaker Bret Stephens

By AUSTIN ZEGLIS | Senior News Reporter

New York Times opinion columnist Bret Stephens (A.B. ’95) is used to criticism. “I’ve been a contrarian all my life,

NEWS: ChatGPT Sparks Debate About Cheating in College Classrooms

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for as long as I can remember,” he told The Maroon

That criticism now echoes throughout

VIEWPOINTS: New Quarter, New Roots: Finding the Flavors of Home

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the University of Chicago campus. As was announced in a University press release on February 22, Stephens will return to campus in June as the speaker for the 2023 Class Day ceremony. His invitation has an-

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gered, among others, student groups like Students for Justice in Palestine, who have accused him of expressing anti-Arab sentiments in some of his published writing.

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SPORTS: Two New Assistant Coaches Join Football Team PAGE 14

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

Additional reporting by Michael McClure

From his decades of work in journalism, Stephens believes intellectual debates are

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Stephens, who graduated from the College in 1995 with a degree in Fundamentals, credits the University with influencing his worldview to this day.

“I think for most people, the college experience recedes as they get older. And for me, in a sense, it’s become more important in that the way in which I think about political and social problems is shaped by the way I learned to think about problems at Chicago. And I think that’s a different experience from many other universities,” he said in an interview with The Maroon

The pivotal role of the University in Stephens’s life inspired him to accept the invitation to speak at Class Day.

“It was very moving to me,” Stephens said of his invitation, “because the University means something to me personally that goes beyond simply the honor of giving a speech to a prestigious university and an accomplished graduating class.”

After graduating, Stephens worked at The Wall Street Journal. In 2002, he left the Journal to become the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.

Stephens worked at The Jerusalem Post for three years until the paper entered the process of being sold. He then got an offer to return to The Wall Street Journal, where he stayed from 2004 to 2017. While writing for the Journal, he won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize “for his incisive columns on American foreign policy and domestic politics, often enlivened by a contrarian twist.”

He went on to join The New York Times’s opinion staff. Stephens has been a columnist at The New York Times for the past six years.

From his decades of work in journalism, Stephens believes intellectual debates are crucial for a healthy democracy.

“The need for high quality, accurate, thoughtful reportage and analysis are as great now as ever—and in fact maybe even greater—because what I’ve learned is that societies don’t function without a common fact set,” Stephens said. “And from my vantage, which is opinion journalism, I think the opportunity to persuade, argue, contradict are maybe more important now than before.”

“I feel that as a society we’ve moved too

far into different ideological silos, so having the opportunity to show what it means to live in a society with plural viewpoints and plural perspectives is really important for the health of democracy.”

Throughout his time at The Post and The Times, Stephens has been lauded as one of the most influential columnists on foreign policy. But some of Stephens’ columns have also faced intense scrutiny and backlash.

“The

Meaning of an Olympic Snub”

In August 2016, Stephens wrote a column for The Wall Street Journal titled “The Meaning of an Olympic Snub” about Egyptian martial artist Islam El Shehaby’s refusal to shake hands with the Israeli athlete Or Sasson after a judo match.

“So long as an Arab athlete can’t pay his Israeli opposite the courtesy of a handshake, the disease of the Arab mind and the misfortunes of its world will continue. For Israel, this is a pity. For the Arabs, it’s a calamity. The hater always suffers more than the object of his hatred,” Stephens wrote in the column.

Readers, including New York Times columnist Max Fisher, claimed that the phrase “disease of the Arab mind” implied that Stephens was making a racist generalization about all Arab people. In a tweet that has since been deleted, Fisher responded to Stephens’ column, “I guess we just all have to agree to disagree as to whether it is acceptable or correct to call racial groups pathologically diseased.”

Stephens reflected about the backlash in conversation with The Maroon. “I do not suggest that antisemitism is a disease of all Arab minds,” he said. “If I had known that the line would read that way to so many people, in part because it’s so often taken out of context, I would have written it differently.

“The reason I wrote it that way is that if you look at extensive survey data, and the ADL produces a lot of this, you’ll find that antisemitic attitudes are extraordinarily pervasive—I don’t mean universal, but pervasive—in North Africa and Middle Eastern countries.” The ADL, or Anti-Defamation League, is a non-governmental organization with the stated mission “to stop

the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.”

Stephens continued, “People think I was making some biological argument— that’s completely false. It was a metaphorical turn of phrase. If I said, ‘racism was the disease of the white Southern mind in the Jim Crow South,’ I’m guessing you wouldn’t object to the statement. Now, it doesn’t mean that every white Southerner was a racist by any stretch. It simply means that it was way too pervasive and that it warped white Southern thinking in all kinds of ways—obviously above all with respect to their views about Black Americans. That was the sense in which I was trying to put that

“I’m sorry it was read the way that it was, but it was written without malice and certainly without trying to cast aspersions on all Arab people by any stretch.”

The Maroon spoke to representatives from the UChicago chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) regarding Stephens’s columns.

“This is not the only time that he’s used heavily racialized language to devalue Palestinian life in particular and Arab life more generally,” an anonymous SJP organizer said. “He’s conflating anti-Zionism and antisemitism. It’s been brought up to him that the Egyptian player refused to shake hands from a stance of anti-Zionism, and he essentially conflates the two and says that any form of anti-Zionism is antisemitism. It’s another example of propaganda used against anti-Zionists to make their valid critiques of Israel antisemitic in origin.”

Another SJP representative, Christopher Iacovetti, also commented on the column.

“The part about the ‘hater’ and the ‘hated’ fits into a wider pattern of constant victim-blaming of Palestinians—blaming them for being militarily occupied, blaming them for having their land stolen, blaming them for every misfortune that’s been visited upon them by the Zionist project,” Iacovetti said.

“The Secret to Jewish Genius”

In December 2019, Stephens wrote a column titled “The Secret to Jewish Ge-

nius” for The New York Times. He cited statistics from a 2005 paper titled “Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence” that put forth a genetic hypothesis for why Jews exhibited higher IQs on average. That paper was coauthored by former University of Utah professor Henry Harpending, a white nationalist and eugenicist who has a long track record of advancing racist, anti-Black theories and rhetoric, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Shortly after publishing, the references to Harpending’s paper were deleted from the column and an editors’ note was added saying that Stephens “was not endorsing the study or its authors’ views” and that it was “a mistake to cite it uncritically.”

“I objected to the changes at the time because I thought that readers deserved to see what I had actually written. But that’s water under the bridge,” Stephens said. “I had no idea who Henry Harpending was when I cited what was fairly common data from a paper whose thesis I otherwise rejected. The data that I cited was data that I could have cited from any number of other sources not tainted by Harpending’s odious racial views. The issue was that the hyperlink was inserted in the column, which I really regret.”

“20 Years On, I Don’t Regret Supporting the Iraq War”

This March, Stephens had a column published in The New York Times titled “20 Years On, I Don’t Regret Supporting the Iraq War,” in which he argued that the intelligence leading up to the war was sound and that “Iraq, the Middle East and the world are better off for having gotten rid of a dangerous tyrant,” referring to the execution of Saddam Hussein.

The column faced backlash on social media, with many pointing to the war’s death toll, which ranges from 151,000 to 600,000 depending on the source, the environmental harm, and the resulting political instability as evidence against the region improving.

“I think there are powerful arguments to be made against the Iraq War, particularly with the benefit of hindsight,” Stephens said. “But the suggestion that Amer-

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crucial for a healthy democracy.

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ica invaded Iraq on some kind of flippant motive, I think, is mistaken. The purpose of a column of mine is to hopefully make people a little less comfortable in their assumptions.”

Iacovetti also responded to The Maroon about Stephens’ column on the Iraq War. He criticized Stephens for ignoring “the suffering that the US inflicted on the Iraqi people” and for praising the United States for fighting against ISIS despite, according to Iacovetti, the group’s originating from the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“It is absolutely not for him or the US or Israel or anyone else to say whether Iraq or the region is better off as a result of the invasion that was a war of aggression they never asked for and actively opposed,” he said. “It’s for the people themselves. Bret Stephens is not interested in what Arabs think or feel or experience—he’s interested in what furthers the interests of his preferred Euro-American imperial projects.”

Reactions to Stephens’ Invitation to Campus

The same anonymous SJP organizer commented on the University’s decision to bring Bret Stephens to Chicago for Class Day.

“This is nothing new,” they said. “It’s once again an example of the fact that this campus has always been hostile to Palestinians—there’s a strong Zionist presence and Palestinians are constantly harassed and persecuted for any statement of support for Palestine. Bringing Bret Stephens in is a reaffirmation that this place is not for us.”

On the other hand, Rabbi Yossi Brackman of Rohr Chabad, one of UChicago’s Jewish student organizations, wrote in an emailed statement to The Maroon that he had cast his support behind Stephens’ engagement on campus and hoped students will engage with and grow from his ideas.

“As a rabbi, I am concerned about the

frightening rise of antisemitic attacks and sometimes violence toward our communities. As an American, I am concerned for all minorities that are victims of hate crimes and discrimination. Unfortunately, this is a symptom of the fact that people are not talking and listening to those with whom they think they may disagree,” he wrote.

“So, while it seems that some people find Bret Stephens’ writing to be controversial at times, I hope that the Class of 2023 will take the Chicago Principles with them into the world and engage with others and their views, instead of cherry-picking one-liners and casting away the substance and ignoring the issues.”

Stephens views his journalistic career, and the resulting criticism he has faced, through the lens of what he learned while at UChicago—lessons that he hopes to impart upon its next class of graduates.

“I’ve been a contrarian all my life, for as long as I can remember,” he told The

Maroon. “Being confronted with ideas you’re either not familiar with or that you have reasons to oppose is the way in which you sharpen your thinking. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to change your mind, but it means you’re going to think more clearly about what’s at stake.

“And this brings me back to the ultimate connection between my time at Chicago and my professional life, which is that Chicago taught me—and hopefully everyone reading this piece—never to be satisfied with a first, second, third, or even a fourth opinion. Learning and thinking and progress take place through a continual process of intellectual challenge, and that’s what Chicago for me was all about. And I hope it’s what it has been all about for the graduates to whom I’m going to speak,” he continued. “I’ve never asked anyone to agree with me in my columns. I’ve only asked them to try to think twice. And if I can succeed just at that, I’m succeeding as a columnist.”

University of Chicago Graduate Student Unionization Vote Passes With 92 Percent Support

By LAURA GERSONY | News Reporter

For the second time in six years, University of Chicago graduate students have voted overwhelmingly to unionize, a major victory in Graduate Students United–United Electrical (GSU-UE)’s 15-year push for formal recognition. The result was certified Thursday, March 16, at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Region 13 office in downtown Chicago.

Now, all eyes are on the University administration, which can file an objection about the election’s administration within five business days, or, as it did in 2017, challenge graduate students’ legal right to unionize. The University did not immediately respond to The Maroon’s requests for comment.

“We are really looking forward to meeting the University at the bargaining table and improving the working conditions for

graduate workers for the better,” GSU-UE spokesperson Valay Agarawal told The Maroon after the election result was released.

The vote to unionize received 92 percent support, with 1,696 “yes” votes and 155 “no” votes counted. In-person voting on campus took place January 31 and February 1, with mail-in voting open through March 15.

A total of 1,946 votes, including 95 ballots challenged by the University or the union for eligibility concerns, were cast, for a turnout of approximately 60 percent among eligible graduate student voters. Because the challenged ballots numbered fewer than the margin of victory, they were not counted.

The vote marks a decisive victory for decades of student organization against the

administration’s anti-unionization efforts. In 2017, the previous unionization vote, just under 70 percent of graduate student workers voted in favor of union recognition. Conflict simmered, however, when the University joined other schools in challenging the graduate students’ legal basis to unionize. The union eventually withdrew their appeal to the NLRB over fears that the board would reverse its stance on the question.

In 2021, President Joe Biden’s NLRB appointees withdrew a rule proposed under Donald Trump’s administration that would have hindered graduate student unionization at private universities. The GSU-UE vote is part of a nationwide wave of graduate unionization occurring since then. Graduate students at institutions such as Boston University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Northwestern University have successfully unionized without formal challenges from their employers.

To UChicago’s student organizers, successful unionization at peer institutions is an encouraging sign. “We have no reason to believe that [a legal challenge] would happen,” GSU-UE copresident Neomi Rao told The Maroon in February.

The University has not directly stated whether it plans to challenge the vote, as it did in 2017, though then University Provost Ka Yee Lee wrote in January that “the decision of whether to unionize ultimately will be made only by the eligible graduate students who vote in the election.”

GSU-UE has begun gearing up to govern and operate a recognized union since before the election. Elections for the bargaining committee, which will represent the union during contract negotiations with the University, are currently underway. Nominations for that election close on Friday, with voting set to take place between March 20 and March 23.

“Being confronted with ideas you’re either not familiar with or that you have reasons to oppose is the way in which you sharpen your thinking.”

SALC Announces Launch of South Asian Literature in Translation Project

By AUSTIN ZEGLIS | Senior News Reporter

The Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations (SALC) announced the launch of the South Asian Literature in Translation (SALT) project, a multi-year initiative to fund and support the translation of South Asian literature into English, in a press release on March 28.

The project officially launches on July 1, 2023, and will establish a literary translation summer school with a focus on South Asia, eight mentorships for translators working with South Asian languages, a series of workshops for publishers across South Asia, and multiple grant programs for both translators and publishers.

“With this project, we aim to bring some of the extraordinarily rich literature of the subcontinent to publishing markets where it has thus far been severely underrepresented,” codirectors Jason Grunebaum and Daniel Hahn said in the release. According to the SALT project website, less than 1 percent of translated literature published in the United States over the past 10 years was originally published in South Asian languages.

SALT will support written work from many South Asian countries, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, to be translated into English

for publication worldwide. Translators working with South Asian languages and English will be eligible to apply for support regardless of location or citizenship.

“SALT is an astutely planned effort to provide South Asian literature in translation with a much needed boost of funding and training,” Daisy Rockwell, SALT advisory board member and 2022 International Booker Prize cowinner, said in the release, “The impact will be felt not just in the United States, but also worldwide.”

The initiative will be run in partnership with organizations including the American Literary Translators’ Association, English PEN, the British Council, and Words Without Borders. Funding

for SALT came from a donor who wished to remain anonymous.

“This is the impetus that the extraordinary literatures of South Asia in translation needed to break into the Anglophone world. From translator training through publication to marketing, the support that these literatures will receive is historic,” said translator and advisory board member Arunava Sinha in the release.

More information about the SALT Project can be found on SALC’s website.

University Will “Bargain in Good Faith” With GSU-UE

By ERIC FANG | Deputy News Editor

In an email sent by Provost Ka Yee Lee to the University community on Friday, March 17, the University announced its commitment to “bargain in good faith” with Graduate Students United–United Electrical (GSU-UE). The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)’s certification of unionization election results on March 16 means that GSU-UE is set to become the exclusive bargaining unit for graduate students across the university.

Among the graduate students who voted in the election, 1,696 voted to unionize and 155 voted against it, reflecting approximately 92 percent support.

Those votes came from among the 3,287 of 9,904 graduate students eligible to vote in the election “based on their current or recent appointments under the election petition filed by GSU-UE,” per Lee’s email.

“I am thankful to everyone who engaged in this process, especially the students who voted, whether they voted for or against unionization,” she wrote.

“I congratulate GSU-UE on their suc -

cessful advocacy in this process. The University will bargain in good faith with GSU-UE with the goal of supporting the continued academic success of all graduate students.”

Lee’s statement signals that the University does not plan to contest the union’s certification. When asked by The Maroon to confirm that the University would not mount a challenge, University spokesperson Gerald McSwiggan wrote that “the University is committed to negotiating with the union in good faith to achieve a first contact.”

If there are no objections to the election’s administration or challenges to graduate students’ legal right to unionize, the NLRB will certify GSU-UE as the sole collective bargaining representative of all University graduate students on Thursday, March 23.

The University previously challenged a 2017 graduate student unionization vote in which just under 70 percent of graduate students voted to unionize. GSU, then affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers

(AFT) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), subsequently withdrew its bid to unionize over fears that a conservative NLRB under then president Donald Trump would deny graduate students’ right to unionize.

Prior to the election, Lee conveyed the University’s opposition to unionization in separate emails sent to the University community on November 29, 2022, and January 10, 2023.

The first of those emails was sent just before GSU-UE announced its intention to file a petition for an NLRB–conducted union recognition election. In it, Lee wrote, “The University’s position is that graduate student unionization is likely to bring more disadvantages than advantages in the form of additional costs, time, and bureaucracy. We currently engage with graduate students through many direct channels, which we believe are more flexible and responsive to students’ varied needs and better suited to our graduate degree programs than a collective bargaining agreement would be.”

In this morning’s email, Lee reiterated the University’s commitment to

the “principles of free expression and open discourse” and encouraged all graduate students to “continue learning about and engaging with GSU-UE to make sure their voices are heard and represented during the bargaining process.”

GSU-UE representatives did not immediately respond to The Maroon ’s request for comment on Lee’s email. In a statement released on March 17, GSUUE thanked workers who campaigned in favor of unionization ahead of the vote.

“This victory belongs to the thousands of workers on this campus who turned out to vote,” the statement read. “It was made especially possible by hundreds of organizers who built a campaign led by graduate workers from every division.”

Next steps for GSU-UE include forming a bargaining committee and, eventually, beginning contract negotiations with the University administration. Internal elections for the union’s bargaining committee will take place electronically from March 20 to 23.

At UChicago and Beyond, ChatGPT Sparks Debate About Cheating in College Classrooms

By NAINA PURUSHOTHAMAN | Senior News Reporter

The popularity of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot known for its detailed responses to human prompts, has resulted in heated discussions on many college campuses surrounding the potential for its misuse—namely, to cheat.

ChatGPT was launched in November 2022 by the research laboratory OpenAI. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT is a chatbot that interacts in a conversational way. It uses a large language model that has been fine-tuned over time. The technology’s versatility and ability to source information from a large variety of sources have led it to rapidly become popular. In January, the site reached the 100 million user milestone. However, the rise of ChatGPT has some universities concerned about the possibility of using the tech for cheating.

For example, faculty at Tufts University are split on whether ChatGPT should be used in the classroom. According to The Tufts Daily, some professors view usage of ChatGPT as academic dishonesty, while others see ChatGPT as an opportunity to revise syllabi in order to engage students in novel ways.

At UChicago, political science professor Ruth Bloch Rubin, computer science (CS) professor Borja Sotomayor, and Executive Director of the Chicago Center for Teaching and Learning Robin Paige spoke to The Maroon about their thoughts on the technology and unique ways instructors can reduce its usage for cheating.

Bloch Rubin has already begun considering how ChatGPT could affect her classes, such as Introduction to American Politics, which she taught in the winter quarter. Bloch Rubin noticed that ChatGPT is good

at aggregating content to produce coherent arguments.

“I wouldn’t say the concern is that ChatGPT can mimic exceptional or very good student work product,” she said. “I think the challenge is distinguishing between ChatGPT and more mediocre work.”

Bloch Rubin has heard about some ways in which professors can counter ChatGPT. However, those strategies come with trade-offs.

“I think the general advice has been to avoid take-home exams and essays, but I think that does students a disservice,” Bloch Rubin said. “One of the most important things a social science curriculum can teach students is how to communicate ideas about data or arguments made by others in writing. That’s a skill that is marketable in nearly every profession. So limiting essays and prioritizing in-class writing or evaluative assignments seems counterproductive, not to mention anti-intellectual.”

Bloch Rubin has adopted a strategy to counter ChatGPT instead of cutting assignments from her syllabi.

“I’ve accepted that some students may experiment with ChatGPT. But I want to avoid rewarding those who turn in a ChatGPT product as their own,” she told The Maroon in an email. “So I’ve tried to craft my assignments to confuse the AI or generate very bad output. In practice, this means creating elaborate essay prompts with fictional details specific to the prompt and asking for recommendations/assessments based on those facts.”

ChatGPT has also raised several questions within the computer science depart-

ment. Sotomayor believes ChatGPT can undermine introductory CS courses, but he does not believe the more advanced courses are at risk.

“While ChatGPT may be an expedient way to solve a problem and get credit for it, you’re missing out on the really valuable part of working on the problem: practicing your programming skills,” Sotomayor said. “Using ChatGPT in this way in an introductory course is like trying to learn how to play the piano by having a robot sit next to you and play the piano for you.”

Sotomayor also said the use of ChatGPT should not be banned entirely. “I don’t think we should try to ban ChatGPT, particularly in CS, where students will be allowed (and even encouraged) to use such systems in a professional setting,” he said. As for using AI for class assignments, he said that while students cannot use it to implement entire or substantial parts of a project, “consulting” AI is allowed.

For example, the policy given to a final project in CMSC 14200 reads: “You must not use AI systems, such as ChatGPT or GitHub Copilot, to write or generate any of your code. Using those systems in a manner similar to consulting online resources (e.g., asking ChatGPT something like ‘How do I play a sound using pygame?’) is technically acceptable, but you should take any answer with a healthy dose of salt, as these systems will sometimes provide unequivocally wrong answers.”

Instead of focusing on academic policies relating to ChatGPT, Sotomayor believes the issue at the root of academic dishonesty is a much broader problem. “I think the focus should be less on coming up with ChatGPT-specific policies and more on addressing a larger issue: the excessive

focus on grades, which leads students to focus less on their learning and more on finding the path of least resistance to an A,” he said.

To remedy this problem, the CS department has begun experimenting with “specifications grading,” which focuses on giving students substantive feedback instead of percentage grades and allows them to improve on their mistakes.

“These kinds of grading schemes tend to allow students to focus more on their learning, reducing the incentives for cheating. Our experience with it has been, so far, pretty positive,” Sotomayor said.

Paige agrees with Sotomayor that the temptation for students to engage in academic dishonesty comes from a larger problem than the introduction of ChatGPT. “We must recognize that most students consider violating academic integrity policies (using ChatGPT or another means) when they are experiencing an unhealthy amount of stress, they are unclear about expectations, and/or they don’t see the value in what they are learning,” she told The Maroon in an email.

To discourage the use of ChatGPT, Paige believes that professors should continue their dedication to creating an authentic learning environment, a piece of advice she would give not just for ChatGPT prevention but also for maximizing student engagement as a whole. She said actions such as providing prompts that are transparent about the learning goals, scaffolding major assignments and providing students with feedback at several stages throughout the assignment process could discourage academic dishonesty overall.

“These practices encourage authentic learning in all circumstances,” she said.

University Confirms Launch of Forum of Free Inquiry and Expression and Announces Leadership Appointments

By SABRINA CHANG | Senior News Reporter

The University will launch the Forum for Free Inquiry in the fall of 2023, according to an announcement from President Paul Alivisatos posted on UChicago’s Office

of the President website on February 27. The Forum will be led by inaugural faculty director Tom Ginsburg, UChicago Leo Spitz Distinguished Service Profes-

sor of International Law and Professor of Political Science, and inaugural executive director Tony Banout, who is making his

“Free expression is…an essential part of what makes us human.”

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return to the University after serving as senior vice president for Interfaith America, a religious diversity nonprofit.

This announcement confirms previous reporting by The Maroon regarding the University’s job posting for the “Executive Director of the Center for Freedom of Expression,” which was listed for over two months on myworkdayjobs.com before now being filled by Banout.

The Center, which was officially referred to as the Forum in the new announcement, aims to “expand and enhance the University’s engagement across the constellation of issues related to free inquiry and expression, in collaboration

with faculty and the broader University community,” according to the communication. This goal aligns with the Chicago Statement, which was cited on the job listing as a core principle of the Forum.

Ginsburg joined the University’s faculty in 2008, before which he worked in consulting and provided legal advice to many international organizations, development agencies, and government. He is currently a Professor of International Law and Political Science at the University, as well as a codirector of the Comparative Constitutions Project, research professor at the American Bar Foundation, and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Ginsburg has been a leading part-

ner in envisioning and developing plans for the Forum, according to Alivisatos’s announcement.

“I’m very excited to work with Faculty from across the University to help shape the new Forum,” Ginsburg said in a statement to The Maroon. “One of our main goals will be to expand opportunities for students to deepen their own experience and practice. The University has to do this actively, as there are so many forces in society and politics working against people’s ability to express themselves. Free expression is human right, and it’s an essential part of what makes us human.”

Tony Banout obtained his Ph.D. from the Divinity School, where he was a Mar-

tin Marty Center junior fellow and provost dissertation fellow. Before making his return to the University, he served as the senior vice president for Interfaith America, where he led the civic organization in the establishment and implementation of strategies and programs to promote democratic discourse and civil conversation across and beyond higher education.

Per Alivisatos, Banout has served as a “lifelong advocate for ideological diversity and inclusion in academia.”

Beyond the appointment of Ginsburg and Banout as leaders of the Forum, no other details on its specific priorities or initiatives were included in the announcement.

University Suspends COVID-19 Surveillance Testing, Contact Tracing, Dashboard on April 3

By ANU VASHIST | News Editor

Effective April 3, the University suspended COVID-19 routine surveillance testing, contract tracing, and its case monitoring dashboard according to an email announcement from Executive Vice President Katie Callow-Wright to the University community on March 23.

“As part of our evolving response to COVID-19, the University is taking steps that reflect the growing integration of COVID-19 testing and care into regular healthcare services,” the email read. “These steps are consistent with the relatively low levels of cases we have seen this academic year, along with steady decreases in our community’s use of many COVID-19 re-

sources, including asymptomatic testing.”

The email also cited the federal government’s plans to end the national public health emergency on May 11 as justification for the University’s changes in COVID-19 precautions.

The email noted that although routine surveillance testing would no longer be offered, COVID-19 testing would remain available to symptomatic individuals through their healthcare providers, pharmacies, and other testing centers.

Symptomatic testing is available at UChicago Medicine to individuals who already have a MyChart account; UChicago Forward’s symptomatic testing page directs

others to the City of Chicago’s COVID testing page for alternative testing locations.

Isolation-in-place will continue for students living on campus that have tested positive. However, people who test positive for COVID-19 will not be required to report their cases to C19HealthReport@uchicago. edu. Temporary alternate housing will remain available for their roommates.

The COVID-19 dashboard, which had been updated weekly to track COVID-19 case numbers and positivity rates since the start of the 2020–21 school year, was also shut down. The positivity rate from March 14, 2023 to March 21, 2023 was 4 percent, according to the dashboard.

The email said individuals who had been exposed to or tested positive for COVID-19

are to follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) exposure and isolation precautions. Individuals displaying symptoms of respiratory illness should get tested and wear a mask around others until they are asymptomatic, Callow-Wright wrote.

UChicago Medicine, which still requires masking in clinical spaces and has restrictions on visitors, will maintain separate guidelines.

“The University will continue to monitor disease trends through UChicago Student Wellness, UChicago Medicine, and with partners at the Chicago Department of Public Health. We will remain prepared to take additional measures if necessary,” the email read.

Faculty Forward Looks to Build on a History of Success

By JUSTIN WALGREN | Senior News Reporter

Since 2015, non-tenure-track faculty at UChicago have been unionized under UChicago Faculty Forward. The union brokered its first collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the University in 2018 and has since helped establish fairer wages and clearer promotion policies.

The Maroon spoke with members about the conditions that led to the formation of their union and the changes that have been won in the last eight years.

UChicago Faculty Forward is a part of the nationwide Faculty Forward initiative led by the Service Employees Internation-

al Union (SEIU) seeking to improve the employment conditions of all university instructors without tenure protections.

Non-tenure-track faculty at the University voted to unionize in December 2015 and affiliated with SEIU as the first branch of the Faculty Forward initiative in Chicago. UChicago Faculty Forward negotiated its first CBA with the University

in April 2018.

Jason Grunebaum, an instructional professor in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, represents full-time non-tenure-track appointees on UChicago Faculty Forward’s executive committee. He spoke with The Maroon about the conditions that moti-

“We see [ourselves] as part of a very similar struggle and similar position.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 6

vated unionization—namely, poor compensation, the lack of quarter-to-quarter job security, the lack of standardized performance reviews, and the increasing teaching obligations from the University.

“Before we were unionized, the University had sole discretion over our conditions of employment, which basically means they could do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted to,” he said.

According to Grunebaum, the greatest source of discontent among non-tenuretrack faculty at the University was the question of salaries. “We organized because our salaries were terrible,” he said. “We had colleagues who were working here for 10 to 15 years, and their salaries— their full-time salaries—were still stuck in the [40,000s].”

Darcy Lear, an instructional professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures who represents part-time appointees on the executive committee, echoed Grunebaum’s sentiment. In particular, she commented that the compensation of part-time instructors was too low. “If you were part-time, you got a per-course pay, so like $5,000 per course, year after year after year, maxing out at four courses.”

In addition to compensation, Lear commented that non-tenure-track appointees are often faced with poor benefits and job security. She said that before unionization, she and her colleagues did not have access to University healthcare, were not granted paid parental leave, and were often left waiting until the start of each quarter to figure out if they would be employed for the next term.

Grunebaum said these conditions made unionization desirable to many. “Given that environment, it wasn’t a very hard sell.”

“Back in 2015, that’s when we started our unionization drive, and that’s when we started our campaign,” Grunebaum said. The December 2015 unionization vote passed with over 81 percent support, according to the SEIU.

Dmitry Kondrashov, an instructional professor in the Biological Sciences Division who also serves on UChicago Faculty Forward’s executive committee, told The Maroon, “At the time, we were part of sort of a broader nationwide movement

to give representation and voice to faculty mostly without tenure protection.” He added, “Nationwide, we’re facing similar problems.”

Kondrashov described reaching a CBA with the University as a long process that involved multiple rounds of discussion and canvassing of UChicago Faculty Forward’s membership for bargaining priorities. “It was April 2018 when we actually got it together. We started bargaining in January 2016, and it took us over two years,” he said.

The first CBA expired after three years, and UChicago Faculty Forward is currently in its second year of its second CBA. The current CBA will expire in April 2024.

The benefits brokered in the first CBA were numerous and far-reaching, according to interviewees.

One notable improvement was the increase in minimum salaries for nontenure-track appointees, as well as the standardization of salary structure. Previously, salary structure had not been standardized, with significant variation between departments. “Once we got together as a collective and said, ‘Everybody with this job title is going to make this much money,’ [pay] went up by like 50 percent for most people in that contract,” Lear said.

Kondrashov added that the standardization of salary structure also came with a standardization of promotional progression structure, which had previously been poorly defined.

Another improvement was the standardization of performance reviews, which were previously unpredictable and applied arbitrarily, according to Grunebaum. “Now we have transparent guidelines for performance reviews.”

Grunebaum said the first CBA significantly improved job security by requiring that letters of appointment be sent to faculty members well before the start of their terms.

“Quite often before the CBA, we wouldn’t receive our appointment letters until after the start of our appointment dates,” Grunebaum said. “Sometimes you’re not absolutely certain that you have employment for the next year until you’re holding that piece of paper, so now the CBA stipulates that this actually has to

come well in advance of the start of your appointment.”

Other benefits conferred by the first CBA included access to University healthcare for all non-tenure-track appointees and paid parental leave for full-time appointees.

“We achieved bringing up the floor of our lowest paid members, we achieved a part-time benefits-eligible salaried position, we achieved parity in parental leave, and in our second contract, we built on that and achieved the same parental leave for our part-timers as well,” Grunebaum said.

Kondrashov said that in addition to the numerous benefits to non-tenure-track faculty at the University, unionization also benefited the University in some ways.

“The funny thing about this process is that the administration actually liked some of that process because it helped the central part of the administration, the provost’s office, standardize things and sort of get control of things, which wasn’t

necessarily always to our advantage, but having a contract in writing really regularized a lot of the process. They liked that; I think that’s one of the things that helped us get the whole thing done.”

Kondrashov also spoke about the recent graduate student unionization movement. “I would say that we’re all absolutely in solidarity with and supportive of GSU [Graduate Students United],” he said. “We see [ourselves] as part of a very similar struggle and similar position.”

“And what they do is work,” Lear said. “For some reason that’s been questioned, but we have no questions about that.”

With the graduate student unionization vote passing with over 92 percent approval, the bargaining process between GSU and the University is likely to begin in the following months.

Grunebaum offered a final note of support to graduate student unionization, saying, “It will strengthen the graduate student experience and enrich the University. There’s no doubt about it.”

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New Quarter, New Roots: Finding the Flavors of Home

By JESSICA ZANG

A few days before Chinese New Year, I eagerly picked up a long-awaited parcel in the Woodlawn mail room: a care package, the box tightly packed to the brim with heaps of snacks reminding me of home—sesame mochi, hawthorn leather candy, and sugar-glazed rice crackers. After I’d constantly complained over winter break about missing the food at home, my very lovely parents purchased some of my favorite snacks at our nearest Ranch 99 (a Chinese family’s go-to grocery store) and stuffed as many as possible into the cardboard box. Coming from the Bay Area, where the ample East Asian population invites an equally generous selection of Asian foods, I’ve developed a large appetite for these snacks. The package satiated my ever-increasing desire for a taste of home here in the Midwest—a region that, while possessing its own charms, does not offer the widest range of authentic Chinese foods.

Before coming to UChicago, I had never been that conscious of cultural food’s value in maintaining my identity. Whenever I occasionally ate out with my friends, we almost always opted for something I deemed new; whether it was Mexican, Italian, or Japanese, we would inevitably decide on non-Chinese cuisine. Throughout my first year at college, though, I found myself craving not only my parents’ dishes, but any and every Chinese snack that I ever had

growing up. I’ve grown nostalgic for the distinct flavors of my upbringing, even if I despised them as a child. Sour preserved plums, once hurriedly spat out when my grandma wasn’t looking, now shine like delicacies in my imagination.

In the absence of readily accessible options on campus— and in part due to my unwillingness to pay for Chinatown dim sum every week—searching for a taste of home has become a prominent piece of my life here. Late at night, I often find myself returning to the cardboard box, meticulously choosing from a variety of bite-size snacks to munch on as I work. My parents may not know it, but the small tastes of familiarity have become a lifeline amid the pizza-and-pasta–filled dining halls.

The package arrived just in time for Chinese New Year back in February, intended to provide me with a somewhat authentic holiday experience. This year was the first time I’ve spent Chinese New Year away from my family. Chinese New Year has always been a big deal in my household. My childhood is filled with memories of receiving red envelopes from relatives and watching the Chinese New Year Gala live on TV—complete with dancing groups of hundreds and silly two-person comedy skits. My most distinct image of Chinese New Year, however, is neither of a red envelope nor the colorful TV screen—instead, it’s my view sitting in front of our

wooden dining table, surrounded by chattering family members, staring out at the expansive assortment of colorful and traditional Chinese dishes in front of me. Our dining table is always packed from end to end with anything from plump, hand-wrapped seafood dumplings to soft, steamed snow fish to steaming, hearty chicken soup. With almost every dish’s name containing wordplay— fish sounds like surplus, tofu sounds like shared happiness, cabbage sounds like many riches—the table represents an auspicious prediction for the new year. These communal Chinese New Year dinners have always been the highlight of my celebration—and so food has emerged as an integral part of my cultural identity.

This year, there was no incredible spread of food. Instead, I spent the new year on my dorm room floor with a few friends, learning to play mahjong with a friend’s mini tile set before heading down to the communal kitchen to cook an unconventional assortment of Chinese food from H Mart— frozen dumplings with vinegar and Indomie ramen with an egg, sunny side up—complete with my roommate’s Indian food from home. It was nothing like the Chinese New Years I’ve grown up with, but I can confidently say that it was just as delicious. Part of growing up, it seems, is figuring out how to ease into the new while keeping a little of the old—so while this year’s celebration was strikingly different, I wouldn’t have

it any other way. It’s comforting to know that regardless of where I am, I’ll manage to find small tastes of home.

Among the busy rush of midterms, Sosc readings, and late nights out, I’m grateful I set aside some time to make this Chinese New Year feel special. Even miles away, the simple taste of sesame mochi or the scent of black vinegar will tether me to my family and cultural identity. If I ever get lost, a steaming plate of Chinese food will take me right back home.

Jessica Zang is a first-year in the College.

On spending my first Chinese New Year away from my family and preserving my roots through good food and good company

Love and the Library: A Post–Valentine’s Day Retrospective

By RACHEL ONG

Valentine’s Day at the University of Chicago is, more often than not, a bleak affair. It’s cold, gray, and probably snowing. This year, though–a month or two out from February–it’s more apparent to me than ever that there’s one true commitment that UChicago students never fail to return to: the library.

The library is the sacred microcosm of UChicago. Despite the drone of artificial lighting and relentlessly bureaucratic atmosphere characteristic of nearly every library on campus, they’re vibrant spaces where we study, sleep, and (occasionally) eat. While some swear by studying in the comfort of their dorm room or apartment, working at the library is central to the UChicago experience.

Library culture is the beating heart of this university. For those unfamiliar with the libraries at UChicago, I’ll provide a quick rundown: We have the Reg, the beloved brutalist building tucked in the middle of campus. We have its contact-lensegg sister, Mansueto, the place you go to if you want to study while experiencing the burning rush of feeling perceived (or, alternatively, if you just want a bit of Vitamin D to make your study session a tad less miserable). We have Harper and all of its Oxford-esque glory. It has the comfiest chairs for taking a brief—or not so brief—mid-day nap. And finally, we have Crerar, a surprisingly under-visited (and highly underrated) library where you can pretend to be a STEM major for a day. Each library has its niche, and sampling different

library cultures can make your monotonous study routine more interesting.

Besides, where else will you bump into the various characters of UChicago? Your class acquaintances, your ex-O-week friends, that one person you went to high school with, your P-set partners, frat bros, econ bros, and all the other bros—in the penumbras of social life, we convene at the library. It’s a place where history is washed away—a place where we’re not just a cog in some unfathomably large machine, but a unit of collective belonging. If you’re craving love, look no further: the library is the place for you.

During exam season, the library becomes more than just a place for studying. By the time your fifth hour at the Reg rolls around, the frayed nerves and

empty Ex Lib cups feel commonplace. If you stay long enough, a despondent calm falls over the rows of the Mansueto masses and the sprawled A-level tables. You either leave the library sanguine and unflinching, or you leave it a shell of yourself.

But no matter! Regardless of what state you are in when you leave the library—disheveled, vainglorious, or strangely tranquil—the library reaffirms something that we all seek: the capacity for love and for belonging. It is a visible space for students to come together.

We enter this place as firstyears still struck by the novelty of university life, where the library really just is a library. But if you’re a jaded third-year like me, the library may have a different meaning to you.

Perhaps the gloss of aca -

One Day, One Room

By ANNIE DHAL

In the Art of the Americas wing of the Art Institute, Gallery 262, hangs one of the museum’s most instantly recognizable pieces: Edward Hopper’s famous Nighthawks. This rendition of a fictional diner, deep in the heart of a faceless city, is composed of four disparate figures—each personally preoccupied, distant, and yet, bound by their singular frame.

Hopper has suggested the

painting is a portrayal of American urban loneliness—that long, aching subway ride, tunnels of silver buildings and sidewalks, solitude in the midst of a crowd—a theme that crops up in several of his pieces, defined by a domineering, pensive sadness.

It is this specific thesis that has always drawn me to his work, with the same ribbon of loneliness being drawn taut over my own approach to life. Strangely, however, the longer I look at the painting, the more

I see not isolation, but instead the unique, fortifying bond of strangers in a room; of the vital importance of these passing glances, smiles, and conversations in our day to day life.

I have written, previously, about loneliness. Of course I have, because in many ways, any writer who has ever written anything has that thread of wonder in their piece. We are all always asking one another, “Do you know what this feeling is like? Have you felt it too? Am

I alone? Tell me I’m not alone.” But more specifically, I mean that my first ever piece for The Chicago Maroon was about the loneliness inherent in college: the isolation from self, and the need to find it. I finished that short article with a refrain stolen from a poem by Derek Wallcot, urging anyone who read to eat a meal by themselves, to rediscover who they really are in the absence of others. I do still believe that we find out who we are in our reactions to our own

demia may have lost its luster. Or, perhaps the copious, unrelenting schoolwork that is so characteristic of this school has grown on you over time. For me, the library is a place to reconvene at the end of the day. I still walk through the doors knowing there is a never-ending to-do list to complete. But no matter which stage of your UChicago experience you find yourself in, library culture always lends open arms, warmth, and even an overpriced latte a hop and a skip away. This year, and every year hereafter, the library—and other beloved spots on campus— can serve as a Valentine of your own. It’s a place to remember, to transcend, and to love.

Rachel Ong is a third-year in the College.

thoughts, but I have an addendum—an auxiliary proposal, if you will. When you live your everyday life, when you eat that meal alone, look around you and observe how fully and truly surrounded you are by the human condition. In a world, on a college campus, that is driven by independence, it becomes ever more important to relish our minute interactions with one another, to understand the joy that comes from the realization

Whether you’re a love skeptic, lovesick, or a die-hard romantic, consider the library another source for you to reconnect with yourself and others.

At UChicago, celebrating small connections with others is just as vital as cultivating long term-relationships.

CONTINUED FROM PG. 9

that we are never truly alone. I experience this emotion, let’s call it recognition, in the simplest and strangest of places. More and more this quarter I find myself sleeping early and waking up before dawn breaks, making it to the library just as the doors sigh open. I sit in my corner of Mansueto (three rows up, all the way down, in a

patch of sunlight), I work, and I watch the seats fill up around me. There are patterns of regular characters, people who have the same routines as me, but mostly, it is a turnstile of UChicago students incurring the trials and tribulations of whatever week we are mired in. These trials and tribulations are likely not identical, but sometimes when I think about this sacred

nature of ritual, of studying together, of the quiet reassurance of common cause, I am moved near to tears.

Maybe you think I’m melodramatic, and maybe I am, but I would posit that any sense of ordered belonging in a world that is often isolating and random demands emotion. And often, when we are open to feeling it, we receive great reminders of the joy that surrounds us. On Valentine’s Day, I walk up past my old dorm bearing the stings of a bad class, and a girl hands me a flower. In Bart Mart, I’m paying for chips and poptarts, and the cashier slips me a candy bar. I hold the door open and get a nod and thank you, but this is second nature. We are all always passing through each other’s lives. We are all always together.

My point in noticing, digesting, and holding these moments close is simple: it is hard to be alive and alone, even when it is

necessary and non-negotiable, and sometimes what you need is not the precise comfort of a loved one, but a general reassurance that somebody has lived through what you have, that you are tethered to this world by something deeper than your immediate circle.

Identity is forged by the relationships you have with friends, family, and significant othersc but also decided by your associations with the world surrounding you. If your truest belief is that this world is scary and foreign and cold, it will remain just that, and in your moments of aloneness, you will have nothing to turn to. If, however, you look at every passing moment as an opportunity, the world cracks open.

It is in these moments that we recognize that although life happens to all of us in eight billion different ways, briefly, we are bound by the same human emotion. A stranger on a bus be-

ARTS A Bright Blue Break From Studying

By EVY WYMAN | Arts Reporter

When I signed up to see the Blue Man Group’s performance at the Briar Street Theatre on February 16, I had no clue what to expect. I’d seen the famous images of blue men, of course, but knew nothing of what they would be performing. As I told more and more people that I was going, I was mostly met with similar half-knowledge or, in one instance, an ominous smile and the accompanying “Don’t be late.”

I’m incredibly glad I wasn’t late. The show began with two members of the Blue Man Group spectating their leader bang rhythmically on drums. Just before the audience’s attention could have shifted away from watching the

Blue Men observe their leader, the two Blue Men began pouring multicolored paint onto the drums, creating an unexpected spectacle. I was glad I wasn’t late not only because of the noisy, entertaining, and surprising beginning, but also because of what happened when one group did come in late. The music immediately cut off, and a brilliant spotlight shone onto the poor audience members shuffling awkwardly to their seats, with the three Blue Men adding to the ordeal through exaggerated stares.

That wasn’t the only time the awkwardness of human encounters was pushed to the max throughout the show. On top of impressive percussion,

wordless skits, and unmatched ability to catch marshmallows in their mouths, the Blue Man Group also worked hard to bring the audience into the show. They gave emphasized expressions to any unusual audience reaction, sometimes stopping and staring. They brought up individual audience members to play a variety of parts, either joining the Blue Men in drumming or being watched meticulously as they interacted self-consciously with each other. And in one instance, the Blue Man Group stepped into the crowd, balancing precariously on the armrests of taken seats to connect with the audience. While remaining silent, each Blue Man forced the audience to embrace the awkwardness and every feeling that came with it head-on

comes your confidant, your ally. You are traveling in the same direction, your worlds overlapping in this fleeting but vital manner, because you are experiencing the same 171 trip down 53rd. Maybe the smile you exchange will not be remembered the next year or the next hour, but it is proof that you are seen, that you can be seen by anyone. When relationships fail, when the people you love drop in and out of your life, there is beauty in realizing that you can go on despite, and as you do, there will be people to surround you. Perhaps not all, or indeed any, of the ones you meet tomorrow will remain in your life, but even a single gesture is attachment enough, recognition of the life we are all living.

through theatrical, alien-like eye contact made through the bright blue of their faces. Like in every other part of the show, you could only watch this and feel absurd delight and startled hilarity at the intensity of nonverbal communication. It was impossible to take any part of the show, including your own presence, too seriously.

While the show was enthralling, there were a few moments that snapped me out of the magical childlike delight. To ensure the show’s focus on human connection and the importance of experience, audience members were asked to keep phones off during the entirety of the performance. This message of living in the moment was underscored,

CONTINUED ON PG. 11

Annie Dhal is a third-year in the College.

kira davis

“We are all always together.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 10

a little oddly, by disconnected clips demonstrating the dangers of social media and technology. While the clips remained in line with the humor and play on expectation that guided the entire show, they didn’t quite manage to flow into the rest of the show and left me with a sense of bafflement rather than the deeper understanding they might have been going for. The clips focused on animated people walking around while typing, distracted from their environment, and ended with the animated phone addicts getting hit by traffic or stolen away by a giant bird. But it was still an experience felt to the max. Intrinsically musical, the performance of the Blue Man Group was highlighted by a brightly painted (though not blue) backing band. Whether the music was the most prominent feature of a skit or a simple background element, it served to match the vibe expressed by the Blue Men performers: apprehension, excitement, curiosity. The night passed in a blur of inspiration to move, to partic -

ipate, to wonder, or to laugh at what the heck was going on. Alongside every child and grandmother in the theater, I cracked up at the least-expected moments and jumped for a stray marshmallow—or the bouquet after an unlikely wedding. The experience of watching and becoming part of the show—even if it was dancing under the direct commands of a Blue Man holding a bright red baton—was absolutely freeing.

As the stage crew diligently washed away the multicolored neon paint (there was a lot of neon paint), my friend and I giddily walked out of the theater. It really was a wonderful experience and certainly one I encourage checking out with their student rush tickets!

Nav’s Knack for Collaboration and Connection

By SOFIA HRYCYSZYN | Arts Reporter

On February 15, the second night of Nav’s Never Sleep Tour, Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom echoed with hip-hop and rap beats from a range of artists that complemented the main act. Punjabi-Canadian rapper Nav is notable for the range of collaborations in his songs, which feature The Weeknd, Don Toliver, and Travis Scott, among others. With an interplay between DJs and rappers throughout the show, the different expressions of hip-hop evident in Nav’s recorded work played out on stage. As artists and DJs stepped in and out of the spotlight, the atmosphere at the Aragon shifted and evolved, steadily building throughout the course of the night.

To start, RealestK warmed up the audience with his mesmerizing voice and mellow rap ballads. The 18-year-old

from Toronto rose to fame with his 2021 single “WFM,” whose title references the repeated plea to “wait for me.” The song’s opening bass line samples the chorus of Bruno Mars’s “Talking to the Moon.” By overlaying the heavy bass with melodic howling, the song takes on a more unsettling expression of longing and love, which contrasts the upbeat pop associated with Bruno Mars. RealestK’s music features hypnotic beats overlaid with soothing vocals, which is markedly different from Nav’s high-energy rap but served to prepare the steadily growing crowd, who swayed gently to the beat, itching for more.

Up next was SoFaygo, another young rapper, whose stage presence riled up the audience. His breakthrough single “Knock Knock” went viral on TikTok

in 2020 and he has a distinct pull with younger fans, who made up most of the crowd. From the start of his performance, SoFaygo was high-energy, jumping back and forth while still taking moments to settle at the edge of the stage and lean over the audience. As he did, they pressed up against the barricades in a way that had the security guards on their toes; the energy in the Aragon was rising.

With SoFaygo’s energy still ringing through the crowd, Nav stepped onstage to cheers. He was dressed in loose-fitting black pants and a jacket, wearing his signature sunglasses despite the comically dim lighting. He opened strong with the namesake of his tour: “Never Sleep,” a high energy rap song that he recorded with Lil Baby and Travis Scott. The song features slightly different styles and sounds as the artists take turns rapping,

but it has a repeated underlying riff that offers a unifying element as the rappers build off each other. Nav rode the energy in the room, performing hits “To My Grave” and “Baby,” the concert’s light show complementing such high-energy beats and lyrics. He made strong use of the Aragon’s large stage, taking ownership of the stage and the room through his constant movement.

Nav’s lyrics reflect a lot of pride in his Punjabi heritage, and he took a moment to connect with part of his fan base by giving a “shoutout to all the brown boys in the room.” The crowd responded with cheers, the excitement in the room spiking in time for one of Nav’s biggest hits, “Wanted You.” The song is more lowkey than his previous tracks but still featured a catchy, easy-to-dance-to beat. Shifting the focus mostly to his 2022 album De -

CONTINUED ON PG. 12

courtesy of the blue man group

The night passed in a blur of inspiration to move, to participate, to wonder, or to laugh at what the heck was going on.

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mons Protected by Angels, Nav followed “Wanted You” with “One Time,” which features Don Toliver’s ethereal vocals and Future’s auto-tuned rap, giving the song a softer vibe than many of Nav’s individual works.

He performed another couple of hits from his new album—“Last of the Mohicans” and “Demons in My Cup”—before hyping up the crowd by asking for his “day one” fans to give a shout. Creating a more intimate connection with the audience, Nav knelt by the edge of the stage, responding to an audience member by saying “I heard y’all. I love you too.” Nav had repeatedly remarked that he hadn’t been on tour in over four years and that he particularly missed Chicago for the energy and support. As thanks, he exited the stage and reappearing in the pit, where he was engulfed by the audience and their cheers. A halo of cell phone flashlights surrounded him as everyone reached out to him. With the audience swarming around him, Nav performed “No Debate” and “Baguettes in the Face.”

By repeatedly talking directly to his fans and joining them in the crowd, Nav completely won over his audience.

After climbing back on stage, he brought out RealestK for their joint song “Lost Me.” Their voices overlapped as they passed each other on stage, each taking the emotions of the other and communicating it in a slightly different way, RealestK through his airy vocals and Nav through his sharp rap. After dapping up RealestK, Nav focused back on the audience, saying that Chicago was always there for him, and remarking that “through all the hard times, y’all always hold me down,” before smoothly transitioning into a fan favorite, “Held Me Down,” a heavily auto-tuned song with a slow, consistent beat produced by Metro Boomin.

As the end of the concert neared, Nav gave the audience what they had been looking forward to all night, hitting them with back-to-back favorites. The opening notes of “Champion,” featuring Travis Scott, initiated cheers from the audience. The song has a rhythmic beat and

catchy lyrics that the audience all knew by heart. Closing the night with “Lemonade,” a hypnotic collaboration between several artists, Nav left a hit ringing in the audience’s ears as he confidently stepped off stage. Shouts for an encore resounded through the Ballroom, and Nav

responded with one of his most popular songs, “Turks.” For the final piece, Nav resumed his dynamic movements and excited rapping. The audience mirrored his energy, dancing in time to the deep, resounding bass and clinging to the last moments of the show.

The Viagra Boys: Our Favorite Middle-Aged “Punk Rock Losers

By LAINEY GREGORY | Associate Arts Editor and SOFIA HRYCYSZYN | Arts Reporter

On February 24, the Viagra Boys strutted on stage at the Salt Shed one by one, each armed with their preferred alcoholic beverages. A can of beer in hand, Elias Jungqvist, keyboard cowboy, was the first to greet the crowd, wearing cut-off jean shorts and a cowboy hat. Next to saunter on stage were saxophonist Oskar Carls and vocalist Sebastian Murphy, carrying a bottle of wine and a Modelo respectively. Both were decked out in white tank tops, Adidas track pants, and retro shades. Following the duo was bassist Henrik Höckert in a navy Adidas tracksuit. Drummer Tor Sjödén snuck to his seat at the back of the stage.

Under flashing white lights, the Swedish punk rock group immediately jumped into their set, starting with “Ain’t No Thief,” a tune about not stealing your grandma’s

Shrimp City Beach jacket. “Ain’t No Thief” is a Viagra Boys staple and set the tone for the remainder of the show with its incoherent lyrics, heavy punk riffs, and unpredictable electronic beats. Halfway through the song, Murphy shed his top to reveal a beer belly and eccentric tattoos.

Now in their optimal performance state, the Boys smoothly transitioned into “Ain’t Nice,” another punk rock hit with cryptic lyrics about “vintage calculators” and electronic beats on top of heavy bass. Lead singer Murphy was the most dynamic, his drunken movements equal parts comical and thrilling. The crowd’s attention focused mostly on Murphy as he danced at the edge of the stage, leaning into the audience to accept many gifts from the crowd, including a self-portrait, a bong, and a disheveled blue

wig that all went flying through the air. To Murphy’s right, bassist Höckert was the picture of the stereotypical Swede, with his clean-shaved head and high-collared blue sweater. Höckert shredded the bass with a deadpan look that hilariously remained exactly the same throughout the entire show.

The crowd cheered as drums crashed in the opening to “Punk Rock Loser.” The song coubld be Viagra Boys’ anthem that references unique drug combinations and being “really cool.” Murphy’s gruff voice alternated with heavy yet intricate instrumentals that gave the listener a slight idea of what it might be like to have “promethazine and a little 7 Up” in one’s cup. Murphy sang about “keeping things loose.” The Swedish word for loose, “lös,” is tattooed on the singer’s forehead and is clearly his motto. Murphy, originally from California, described himself as the strange high schooler with tight pants. He remarked that he moved to

Sweden, where “everyone is weird,” in an attempt to fit in. He was “too normal” for Sweden.

Murphy grabbed the crowd’s attention by detailing the evolution of his writing process. He noted that in his youth, he wrote songs with ridiculous meanings: “Liquids,” a comically graphic song about a particular liquid kink, being one example. Now, he joked, his lyrics offer more commentary on society. Flippantly, then, he announced “anyways, here’s ‘Troglodyte,’” a song about how individuals with pent-up masculine rage are less than human. The next ridiculous track, “Sports,” was about activities such as “skiing down on the beach” and the sport of sleeping with sunglasses on. “Sports” ended with two minutes of Murphy desperately screeching over a heavy punk instrumental.

As “Sports” faded, the lights dimmed to

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By repeatedly talking directly to his fans and joining them in the crowd, Nav completely won over his audience.

To his fans’ delight, Nav fills up the stage and room at the Aragon. courtesy of sofia hrycyszyn

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a cool purple. Murphy melodically began to recite a poem about a dream that he had had about running in a field and his budding relationship with “your mom.” The slam poetry faded into the instrumental of the Viagra Boys’ next song, “Shrimp Shack,” which is very fittingly about how Murphy “met your mom down at the Shrimp Shack.” On the last note of the song, the lights clicked off; the Boys, to the crowd’s dismay, made their

He was “too normal” for Sweden.

way offstage. Anticipating an encore, not a single person made any move to leave; instead, they cheered for more.

The band returned to the stage and jumped into “Return to Monke,” an almost seven-minute-long ballad throughout which the audience chanted, “Leave society. Be a monkey.” It was getting late, but neither the band nor the audience wanted to leave. A crowd surfer (or rather, a “shrimp,” as Murphy called him) sailed over fans, his

feet more visible than his head. The energy shifted as the band began “Worms,” a fan favorite about rotting corpses, complete with deep bass undertones and a jazzy saxophone interlude. Starting slow and creepy, “Worms” gained intensity as it progressed, the energy and movement of the crowd picking up alongside the song.

Murphy spoke to the audience one last time: “I know it’s been a long fuckin’ concert, but it’s Friday night, so deal with it.”

He took a swig of his Modelo, staring down the crowd behind his sunglasses. “I wanna see you dance like a bunch of fools. But be respectful of each other.” The band dove into “Research Chemicals,” a six-minute hard-punk piece featuring Murphy’s gruff vocals, a heavy guitar riff, and intermittent keyboard noises. Heads bobbing to the steady drumbeat, beer cans stretched toward the ceiling, the audience danced like a bunch of respectful fools.

Macbeth in Space: A Striking and Unpredictable Reimagining of Shakespeare’s Classic Tragedy

By NICOLE STACHOWIAK | Arts Reporter

It all begins with the name, both attention-grabbing and self-explanatory: Macbeth in Space. From February 16–18, the Dean’s Men, UChicago’s student Shakespeare troupe, reimagined Macbeth, setting Shakespeare’s classic tragedy far from Earth. In this production, the team has denaturalized the well-known text, conflicting with audience expectations about Macbeth. The production incorporates elements of the digital and the transhuman into the storytelling to explore Shakespeare’s classic tale of murder, guilt, and grief.

The production eagerly integrates its creative locale into dialogue (for example, each instance of the word “castle” is replaced by “planet”), yet also embraces the inherent tension between the original text and its new, futuristic setting. Evoking both the past and future at once, Macbeth in Space effectively situates itself in a liminal, disorienting place. The bell referenced by the characters sounds more like a phaser, and the angular designs on the fabric that each character wears evoke computer chips; various exposed computer parts can be seen attached to panels behind the actors. The backgrounds (such as alien mountain regions and caves) were projected onto a screen behind the actors, the same method ultimately used to portray Macbeth’s prophetic visions from the witches. These changes provoke a sense of tension, alienating viewers from the environment and text they expected. Ultimately, according to the codirector, third-year Steele Citrone, it is

this feeling of tension that is at the heart of Macbeth’s success: “The greatness behind the play…is that Macbeth’s descent into wickedness is gradual; it is fueled by a constant ambition to raise himself above his status, and he must contemplate his morals while doing so.”

There is an inherent goofiness in setting Macbeth in Space, of course, and that was in part what made this production so compelling. Much of the set design leaned into a campy, colorful, and low-tech vision of science fiction, evoking classic Star Trek more than Dune with colorful makeup and scenery that glowed under blacklight. One might expect the two disparate tones to clash, but in this production, they created a compelling push-and-pull between the oppressively dark source material and the occasionally comedic original elements, helping to highlight important elements of the original work. Citrone’s favorite scene in the play comes in Act II, Scene 3, where, just after Macbeth’s fateful murder of King Duncan, a porter engages in a comedic exchange involving bawdy jokes and wordplay with Macduff. “The genius of this scene,” Citrone said, “is that it acts as the perfect catharsis for the audience to purge their feelings of Macbeth’s dramatic murder.” By placing the only comedic scene of the play right after its most tense moment, Citrone believes that the rest of the play can continue to build tension. In much the same way, the unique setting serves as both intensifier and comedic catharsis when necessary—the

audience responded to alterations equally with laughs and gasps, such as when the witches changed into shiny, Daft Punk–esque masks, or when Macbeth partook in the hookah that replaced the witches’ cauldron.

These changes created subtle shifts in the narrative as well, such as the replacement of letters read aloud with recorded transmissions played over speaker. With such a well-known text, this creative reinterpretation calls into question everything the audience knows and assumes about Macbeth, forcing them to encounter the text as though it were the first time. Citrone explained that these creative choices were made to emphasize the story’s themes about the innate nature of humanity: “ Setting Macbeth in the future instead of its usual 1000s setting demonstrates the longevity the play has to be a human story in any setting or condition. The world may change, but human nature never [does].”

Perhaps the production’s most striking creative decisions were the radical alterations made to Macbeth’s Act V warhand Seyton (a minor character). Citrone and co-directors Caroline Kaminsky and Nora Schultz replaced Seyton entirely with a reanimated Banquo—Citrone lists their inspirations as Frankenstein’s monster and the Terminator. “This decision was very intentional and even can be supported by the text,” Citrone explained. “First, in Act IV, Scene I, the witches bring back Banquo and his ancestors to show Macbeth; thus, we were able to have Macbeth retrieve his body there. Then, in Act V, Scene III, the doctor talks about a strange phenomenon of Mac-

beth being able to heal people and speed their recoveries. This spurred our decision to have Macbeth be a mechanic and mad scientist in this version to reanimate Banquo.”

The scenes with Banquo’s reanimated corpse were some of the production’s most striking, combining grotesque makeup with cyborg-esque costuming such as heavy goggles. The interpretation of Banquo emphasized the distorted and twisted tone this production favored as a whole (for instance, an intestine prop torn out and flung aside during Banquo’s murder or Macbeth’s head hoisted at the end of the play), but in a newly science-fictional way. The horror of witnessing a zombified Banquo comes equally from the classic fear of reanimation that Shakespeare invokes with ghosts and hallucinations, but also now with the new threat of technology facilitating a move away from humanity. This is a dynamic rooted in the original text—Citrone notes that the play “blends the fantastical with the human condition: both Macbeth himself and the Witches serve as antagonistic forces.” Technology then becomes a sort of magic or curse in this production by replacing the supernatural in newly horrific ways. At the end of the day, no matter the source of the fantastical (whether magic or technology), Macbeth is a tale of human folly. It is only fitting that in this production, Macbeth was the creator of his mechanical monster.

Macbeth in Space is a rich reimagining of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, rife with insightful commentary and fascinating implications about the roles of technology and human nature in ambition, guilt, and death.

Two New Assistant Coaches Join Football Team

By AUSTIN ZEGLIS | Senior Sports Reporter

On February 16, University of Chicago Head Football Coach Todd Gilchrist Jr. announced the hiring of Montell Allen and Max Andrews as assistant coaches for the Maroons’ football coaching staff. Andrews will become the Maroons’ offensive line coach, while Allen will be the team’s defensive coordinator and linebackers’ coach.

The two new coaches bring a wealth of experience along with an infectious positive attitude to the athletics department. The Maroon talked to both Andrews and Allen about their backgrounds and what their expectations are for the team next season.

Montell Allen comes to Chicago after four years as defensive line coach at Lehigh University. During his tenure, the Lehigh Mountain Hawks’ defense ranked second in the Patriot League in points allowed per game for two years straight. As a player, Allen was a linebacker for three years at the University of San Diego before switching to the offensive side of the ball and playing running back during his senior year.

“I’m really looking forward to instilling a family atmosphere here,” Allen said. “At the end of the day, you’ll always want to do more and go the extra mile for the people that you love. I’m really excited to have the opportunity to get to know these young men and help them grow along the way.”

Max Andrews joins the Maroons’ staff after serving as assistant offensive line coach and quality control coach at the University of Maine, his alma mater, last year. As a collegiate athlete, Andrews played five years for the Maine Black Bears as a tight end and offensive

lineman.

“One thing that we prided ourselves on at Maine was development,” Andrews said. “Maine has a history of taking players who were under-recruited or undervalued and developing them to be super successful guys.”

He mentioned Pat Ricard, a defensive lineman for the Black Bears from 2013 to 2016, as an example of an undervalued prospect that Maine took in and developed. Ricard now plays fullback for the Baltimore Ravens in the NFL.

“I want to contribute to that same philosophy of bringing guys in who may be overlooked or may not have the biggest measurables and developing them so that a couple years down the road, they’re getting playing time and even starting,” Andrews said.

UChicago’s most recent conference championship came in 2014, after the team went undefeated in University Athletic Association (UAA) play en route to an 8–1 overall record. It was their fifth championship since the conference’s inception in 1986.

In 2016, the football squad left the UAA and began competing in the Midwest Conference (MWC), which comprises eight schools in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois. Since the switch, the Maroons have yet to win a conference championship.

“It’s hard to look too far into the future,” Andrews said about his aims for this upcoming season. “For me, our goal from an offensive line standpoint is to go 1–0 every week, every day, and every practice. And I think once we get that mentality, those 1–0 days will lead to winning on Saturdays.”

“Winning is habitual,” Allen said, “and I want to make sure our guys understand that everything is important. The way they brush their teeth is important; the way their attitude is when they show up at practice is important. The big goal for me is to hammer in that culture and that mindset throughout the spring so that when we roll into the season next year, those things are embedded.”

Andrews and Allen encouraged the student body to come watch as many games as they can this fall.

“Football may not be your thing,” Allen said. “But you don’t know that you don’t like it if you don’t get exposed to it in that atmosphere around your peers and classmates. Our student athletes are just as important and just as driven as any other student on this campus, and I think there’s a lot of students on campus

who would surprisingly enjoy the atmosphere of a football game on a beautiful fall afternoon.”

“We definitely want to get the student population involved more,” Andrews said. “The crowd really gets you going. Having a home-field advantage is something that the players really pride themselves on, and they really appreciate it a lot, so any support that the students, faculty, and other fans give us is super awesome.”

The Maroons open their 2023 season with a home game on Saturday, September 2, against the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Stags of the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

The World Baseball Classic Is Exactly What the Sport Needs

By VICTOR ROBERTS | Sports Reporter

Last month, all eyes in the baseball world were on the 2023 World Baseball Classic (WBC), a quadrennial interna -

tional tournament that broke records, hearts, and bats. Many are saying that the WBC has changed the game for good,

and they aren’t lying.

This year’s classic saw Japan, led by Shohei Ohtani, win its third title, cementing the country as a global baseball powerhouse and exposing an interna -

tional audience to all baseball had to offer. This year’s WBC drew in some of the largest audiences in the tournament’s history. The WBC finals were watched

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Max Andrews (left) and Montell Allen (right). courtesy of uchicago athletics

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by an average of 5.2 million viewers in America and 42.4 percent of Japanese households. Despite the WBC’s global popularity, many have criticized the tournament, calling it “irrelevant.” For some reason, the WBC does not garner the respect of American viewers as it does with so many abroad.

The WBC was created by the MLB in 2006 and has since seen a steady increase in popularity abroad, but it has experienced staunch opposition from American baseball fans. Teams and fans alike despise the idea that their players are risking injury and fatigue outside of the MLB season. However, these opposing voices often fail to account for how great of an honor it is to represent your country at a tournament like this. Many athletes jump at the opportunity to play for their country, some even going as far as saying winning the WBC is more important than the World Series.

There is good reason for American fans to be supportive of the tournament, considering the impressive run that the U.S. went on, finishing second overall in a narrow 3–2 loss to Japan. The U.S. scratched and clawed their way to the finals, beating Colombia, Venezuela, and Cuba in the process. The U.S. team scored 51 runs throughout the tourna -

around the WBC

ment, boasting an explosive and entertaining offense. However, a big headline for the U.S. team was their lack of starting pitching; the U.S. roster fielded none of the top American pitchers in the league. Last season in the MLB, 13 American pitchers finished in the top 20 in earned run average (ERA), yet none of them played in the WBC.

Evidently, the U.S. has a problem motivating players to compete in the WBC, much of which relates to a fear of injury. Critics of the WBC were quick to cite Mets closer Edwin Díaz’s recent injury in a postgame celebration during the WBC as fuel to cancel the tournament. However, these same risks exist in spring training games, during which players are going through the same motions. Notably, first baseman Rhys Hoskins of the Philadelphia Phillies is out for the 2023 season after sustaining an ACL injury in a spring training game, showing that the risk is present no matter in what context one is playing the game. One consideration lies with insurance. Many players are unable to secure insurance that is willing to pay out their contracts should they face injury in a non–MLB setting, such as the WBC. Fear of missing out on their contracts should something happen has prevented many players from participating, but

Recent Results

Softball won twice on Sunday, April 2, 4–3 versus Alma College and 7–0 at North Park. The team is now an impressive 8–4 on the season.

Baseball won their first Midwest Conference series this season against Monmouth last weekend. The Maroons shut out the Scots 5–0 on Saturday, April 1, and won again on Sunday 9–5 before losing the final game 5–3.

No. 1 Women’s Tennis captured a 9–0 series win against No. 19 Washington University–St. Louis on Saturday. The Men’s Tennis series versus Wisconsin–Eau Claire was canceled the same day.

No. 16 Women’s Lacrosse stormed to victory against Albion College 27–7 on Saturday, breaking school records for goals (27) and points (40) in the process.

useless tournament

injuries are a part of the game. Although tragic, they should not be used as reasoning to cancel international baseball.

Although the U.S. did not have all its star power on the field, the ones who did play said the tournament was a great experience. Los Angeles Angels center fielder Mike Trout tweeted, “It’s hard to sum up into words what these last couple of weeks have meant to me. I had the time of my life representing that USA on my chest! The energy was electric and made the WBC a moment I’ll always cherish.” The sentiment around the WBC being a useless tournament could slowly be changing. Players urged their fellow countrymen to participate in the next go-around, promising that they would not be disappointed. Someone like Mike Trout, who is held in high regard around the league, could help others feel encouraged to participate in a tournament they watched from the sidelines.

Cubs and Sox diehards may wonder why they should care about the WBC. As a baseball fan, I believe having more games to watch is always fun, especially during the offseason when not much is happening. It is also exciting to root for your country and let the pride that comes out during the World Cup escape once again. Also, there are quite a few

Chicago ball players involved in the tournament, including Cubs outfielder Seiya Suzuki, with the possibility of even more participating in the 2026 WBC.

So why does the World Baseball Classic matter? For American fans, it offers an opportunity to watch some of their favorite players team up and take on the world. It also offers a spotlight to international players that the U.S. media may be unaware of, such as 21-year-old Japanese phenom Rōki Sasaki, nicknamed the “Monster of the Reiwa Era” and hailed as a once-in-a-lifetime pitching talent. The WBC is also introducing the sport of baseball to a wider international audience, giving it the potential to catapult into international dominance. So the next time someone tells you that the WBC is just a bunch of exhibition games, nod your head, roll your eyes, and keep watching those insane Trea Turner WBC highlights.

Upcoming Games

Softball

Chicago @ UW–Whitewater: Saturday, April 8, 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.

Baseball

Illinois College versus Chicago: Friday, April 7, 2:00 p.m.; Saturday, April 8, 12 p.m. and 3 p.m.

Women’s Lacrosse

Claremont-Mudd-Scripps versus Chicago, Friday, April 7, 5 p.m.

Men’s Tennis

University of Northwestern Ohio versus Chicago: Saturday, April 8, 11 a.m.

Men’s and Women’s Track and Field

Chicago @ North Central Invite (Outdoor): Friday, April 7, 3 p.m.

“The sentiment

being a

could slowly be changing.”

CROSSWORD 58. Learning Curve

By SILAS COLEMAN | Associate Crossword Editor

Crossword by s ilas Coleman

11 Potential newspaper headline about the race to discover infinitesimal sums

12 URL ending

13 Dollar dispenser

14 Code-breaking org.

21 Hooded snake

30 What Alex Honnold often does not climb with

32 Amazon Wi-Fi brand that shares a name with a famous architect

35 Fifth book of the Torah

48 Tennis player Stephens

50 Ice cream shop

51 Mystical bookstore section

52 Coin flips

59 Rainbow goddess

64 Prof. helpers