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A REVIEW OF UCPD’S DISCIPLINARY PROCESS

APRIL 21, 2021 FOURTH WEEK VOL. 133, ISSUE 23

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Paul Alivisatos Wants To Begin His Presidency by Listening From attending UChicago as an undergraduate to serving as Provost of UC Berkeley, Alivsatos understands the importance of collaboration and open discussion.

By KATE MABUS News Editor In 1974, having just moved from Greece to attend the University of Chicago as an undergraduate, Paul Alivisatos (A.B. ’81) was placed in the residence halls at the Shoreland Hotel.

At the time, the building was mostly occupied by elderly Hyde Park residents, except for the two floors that served as student housing. Although it was not a traditional first-year experience, Alivisatos saw the best in it. “It was an amazing experience to get to know each other…to have very young people and much older people kind of together and trying to make our way through.”

The historic mixed-use building sits right off of Lake Shore Drive, across from Promontory Point, and about a mile from the quad. While making the long walk to the main campus, Alivisatos would experiment with different routes through Hyde Park; this gave him the opportunity to explore the neighborhood more than he would have had he lived closer to campus.

Today, the Shoreland is a luxury apartment building owned by Mac Properties and also houses the offices for UChicago’s Center for Research Informatics. Upon learning of the developments at his old stomping ground, Alivisatos mused, “Things evolve in all kinds of unexpected ways. We need to always be looking at how to have a good compass and look at where there might

KIRA DAVIS

GREY CITY: Profiling the COVID’s toll on mental health PAGE 8

VIEWPOINTS: The mind of a cicada PAGE 11

be an opportunity to do good and make discovery.”

At the beginning of April, The Maroon conducted its first interview with a UChicago president in years. While The Maroon was not permitted to inquire directly about policy issues, Alivisatos presented a vision for his presidency defined by an ethos of exploration and a willingness to listen. Before being named the 14th president of UChicago in February, Alivisatos served as executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of California, Berkeley. Now, returning to his alma mater almost 50 years later, Alivisatos is enthusiastic about returning to a community known for its intellectual inquiry, and he seems to hold a sense of nostalgia for his formative years here.

“My return now, it just fills me with a lot of happiness,” Alivisatos said. “The experience [at the College] really helped me in my whole life in really important ways. I really learned about the kind of deep way of academically thinking that the University of Chicago fosters.

It was a place of lots of debate, open kind of free expression, people really talking about everything, debating everything in a really big way.”

Undergraduate Exploration During his time in the College, Alivisatos embraced the multidisciplinary nature of the Core Curriculum and took advantage of the opportunity it offered CONTINUED ON PG. 2

ARTS: The mind of a “UChicago Man” ALVIN SHI

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

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“I was looking for something I found really captivating, that I would really enjoy doing.”

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for intellectual exploration.

Alivisatos spent much of his free time participating in Doc Films. Although he was roped into joining by his friends, Alivisatos quickly dedicated himself to the organization and eventually climbed the ranks to club president.

When he wasn’t contributing to Doc Film’s nightly series, like one featuring the Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi that he recalled putting together, he would indulge in binge-watching the club’s collections of rare film copies, fascinated by the different uses of light and direction.

This same curiosity led Alivisatos through many possible courses of study. He took political science electives where he learned about the philosophy of collective action and discussed European politics in the German classes he took for his minor. “At that stage,” he said, “I was really looking for something I found really captivating, that I really would enjoy doing.”

It wasn’t until his third year that Alivisatos found his niche in a physical chemistry course that mapped the way atoms move. According to Alivisatos, the course was unpopular among his peers, but he was hooked. Similar to his attention to detail in the projection room, Alivisatos was fascinated with understanding the invisible workings at the small-length scale of atoms.

It was only then that he committed to a chemistry major. “I think I took the absolute minimum number of classes that you could take and still get a chemistry degree,” Alivisatos laughed. “In fact, I don’t think so, I know.”

A Promising Young Scientist Despite this fact, Alivisatos has since excelled in his scientific career and is now one of the world’s most renowned chemists. A pioneer in the study of nanomaterials, Alivisatos has earned a long list of awards, including the National Medal of Science and the American Chemical Society’s Priestley Medal. In 2010, Thomas Reuters ranked

him fifth among the world’s 100 most influential chemists. Alivisatos has also appeared on the shortlist for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry numerous times.

After completing a doctorate in chemistry in five years, Alivisatos left Berkeley for Bell Labs in New Jersey.

According to Louis Brus, a chemistry professor at Columbia University who mentored Alivisatos at Bell in the ’80s, Alivisatos stood out from the other postdocs. “I think everyone recognized that he was a very strong scientist and he had the right personality to do things well. He was fearless to try to do new things, so we mentored him very closely,” Brus said in an interview with The Maroon.

Brus recalled a moment early in Alivisatos’s days at Bell that demonstrated his willingness to push boundaries. At the time, the lab was operating off an outdated, highly technical computer system. Brus said that Alivisatos took one look and didn’t want to use it, so he introduced and mastered the WordPerfect processing system, a modern technology at the time. “He was the first guy in the entire organization to do something like that, to step away from AT&T standards. He was just fearless like that to do new things,” Brus said.

Brus said that, although he provided input as an advisor, Alivisatos had independence as a postdoc to self-guide his research and took the opportunity to ambitiously pursue his interests.

When they did work on projects together or ran into a disagreement, Brus said their approach was nonconfrontational and compromising.

“In research you’re dealing with uncertainties all the time…so there’s always questions about what we should do next,” Brus said. “We had occasionally difference of opinion but the way scientists work that out is they sit and discuss it and not take it as a threat to you personally if someone disagrees with you.”

This practice set the tone for how Alivisatos would go on to work with his colleagues once returning to Berkeley

as faculty. “It was a very collaborative friendly internal environment where you could learn from other people and change fields very quickly,” Brus said. “[Alivisatos] appreciated that very much. He tried to create some of these aspects of Bell Labs when he was back in a leadership position at Berkeley.”

Indeed, to many of his colleagues, Alivisatos sets himself apart in his scientific research and leadership beyond with his ability to connect and collaborate. It’s one of the qualities which led Mark Yudof, former president of the University of California, to promote Alivisatos from deputy to director of the Berkeley Laboratory, his first administrative role. “He’s a brilliant scientist, but I liked the fact that he also seemed to have humanistic sort of values and had empathy and related well with people,” Yudof said.

It’s a skill Alivisatos says he learned at UChicago. “The Common Core really did have a big effect on me,” Alivisatos said. His humanities and social science classes gave him ways of thinking that he uses every day, especially in his scientific work.

Leading by Collaboration It was at Berkeley Labs, however, that Alivisatos found his appreciation for collaboration. In his research there he made a discovery that he said many scientists wanted to build on. In his own words, Alivisatos described it as knowing “how to grow a certain kind of material.” However, a cursory Wikipedia search shows that Alivisatos’s discovery that semiconductor nanocrystals can be grown in two-dimensional form completely transformed the field of nanoscience. The finding literally lifted the production of nanocrystals into a new dimension, allowing scientists to control for their size and shape, and opened the door to various biomedical and technological innovations.

Whenever Alivisatos met someone at a conference that was interested in replicating the technique, he’d invite them to visit the lab and work on it with

him. That is, until his postdoctoral students approached him and told him not to invite any more people. “They said we aren’t getting any work done,’” Alivisatos chuckled.

In order to keep hosting scientists and also give his lab space for research, Alivisatos helped to open the Molecular Foundry to facilitate collaborative research in nanoscience. “That was a moment when I learned that building things with a community is something I truly loved doing,” Alivisatos said. “I learned more by working with other people than I did if I was off in my own corner.”

Even after climbing the ranks of Berkeley’s administration to executive vice chancellor and provost, second in command only to the chancellor, Alivisatos continued to seek collective input. Sean Burns, director of Berkeley’s Center for Undergraduate Discovery, collaborated with Alivisatos while he was provost to create the Berkeley Discovery Initiative. It’s a curriculum meant to “support students on a journey of engaged creativity and self-actualization,” much like the path Alivisatos was able to follow at UChicago.

In an interview with The Maroon, Burns said, “It wasn’t historically common for vice chancellors of research to have a whole lot of concern for the undergraduate experience.” In the initial stages of planning, Alivisatos initiated eight to 10 hours of forums to solicit the input of campus. “These open forums were very popular and very productive, and I think the importance he placed on this open community process as a starting point for the initiative demonstrates his deep-seated commitment to generating good ideas through collective dialogue.”

When asked to describe Alivisatos’s leadership style, Burns became enthusiastic and waved his hands while rattling off a list of admirable qualities. “He’s visionary, he’s someone who’s looking at possibility for transformation, he’s looking at trends, and he’s an integrative thinker that’s trying to steer orgaCONTINUED ON PG. 3

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nizations and obviously higher-ed institutions into a vision that can include solutions to many of the things that need to get transformed,” Burns said.

The Student Perspective The Maroon talked with representatives from Berkeley’s student government, a body housed under the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC), to understand Alivisatos’s impression on the student body. Nicole Anyanwu, ASUC Academic Affairs Vice President, attested to Alivisatos’s down-to-earth, sympathetic, and collaborative leadership style and said that he is transparent and direct when the administration is unable to meet a student demand.

“We have a good working relationship with Paul—we call him Paul on our end,” Chief of Staff for the ASUC Office of Academic Affairs James Weichert said. “It’s a very fun experience being in meetings with him, especially because he has a long history on this campus,” Weichert said, referring to Alivisatos’s success as both a scientist and administrator at Berkeley.

Weichert and Anyanwu both remarked on the transparency that Alivisatos brings to his interactions with the student body, a highly desired though often-lost quality of university administrators. According to Anyanwu, Alivisatos “leads with a mutual respect for

student leaders, and is often very sympathetic to student issues.”

“Especially during this very difficult and extraordinary year, it’s been great to have those frank conversations and really think outside of the box. Provost Alivisatos is really willing to take that step outside of the box and have that conversation openly,” Weichert said.

He recalled a project that Alivisatos helped the Berkeley student government facilitate to connect students with professors on campus. “It’s something that hasn’t been tried out before and something that we were ideating collaboratively as opposed to it just being a student idea or it just being an administrative idea,” Weichert said.

However, Weichert shared that Alivisatos will stand his ground when it comes to an issue that the administration is firm on. One such instance was in response to a campaign by the ASUC Office on Academic Affairs to appoint another student representative to the search committee for Berkeley’s vice chancellor of equity and inclusion.

“The fact that it was dismissed so offhand was, I think, a little shocking to us because it’s not how we were accustomed to working with Dr. Alivisatos,” Weichert said. “In general there are some of those moments where in contrast to opening a dialogue and having a conversation he sort of shuts down and says, ‘No, I don’t think that’s feasible.’

He’ll try to put it in nice words… but the message is pretty clear that there’s no

appetite for that.”

Ultimately, Weichert accepts it as a consequence of university bureaucracy more than a reflection of Alivisatos’s character. He has also used it as a chance to grow as a student representative. “We’ve enjoyed working with him and being in the room with him and learning how he thinks as a proxy for learning how other administrators or how faculty might think. And that has only made our arguments stronger as advocates and as students leaders.

Even if we were first rebuffed then we would go back to the drawing board,” Weichert said.

Looking Forward to a Chicago Presidency Rejoining the UChicago community for the first time since his undergraduate days, Alivisatos is approaching the task like a student who’s conscious of the work he needs to catch up.

“In my first quarter for sure I’m just going to actively listen everywhere that I can. I want to hear student voices.… I want to hear from what students are experiencing, I want to hear how they’ve held up through COVID, I want to hear what their ambitions and dreams are.…

I want to visit with the faculty across the campus and I want to talk to the amazing staff…with our South Side neighbors and other partners.”

Alivisatos is entering the presidency at an extremely difficult time in University and world history. He is inheriting a

long list of existing demands on campus including those to recognize the Graduate Student Union, endow a department of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, and defund the University of Chicago Police Department. Meanwhile, the coronavirus pandemic has taken a disproportionate toll on the South Side at the same time as the community is grappling with the harm of systemic racism and police violence.

Alivisatos claims to have been doing his homework. “I’ve been looking from the outside and I could see what was happening between the University and the South Side today.… I saw a lot of beautiful things happening to address all the challenges that are there,” Alivisatos said. “I think the opportunity and the responsibility of the University to work with the South Side is profound and that the South Side will enrich the University in terms of helping make our community stronger.”

“I need to know what the community is ready and excited for, and of course, I’ll have my own thoughts and we’ll share them, but it’s going to be a joint process of discovery,” Alivisatos said.

“If there’s one thing I’ve really learned in my experiences is that for something to emerge as a successful endeavor in a university it is really important that it rise from within the community of the university. It’s not something that can just be parachuted in.”

Proposed Undergrad SG to Include Two-Person Slate, Expand College Council

By YIWEN LU News Editor In a unanimously passed resolution, College Council (CC) established the structure of its planned new Undergraduate Student Government (USG) following its initiative to split the Graduate

and College Councils in an upcoming referendum.

The new USG would be led by a slate consisting of the president, CC chair, and executive vice president. The first two positions would be directly elected by the undergraduate student body, and the last would be appointed by CC mem-

bers. The resolution also expands the CC from 16 to 20 members and changes the makeup of the cabinet to four vice presidents appointed by CC. The spring 2021 SG election will proceed as normal, with candidates running in a three-person slate while being inaugurated to different titles

in the 2021–22 USG if the referendum passes. The elected vice president for administration would become CC Chair, and the vice president for student affairs would become the executive vice president for external affairs, a temporary role for 2021–22.

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“...there’s a huge disconnect between what slates run on in the election and what they actually do...”

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Currently, the executive committee, committees, and CC, the designated undergraduate legislature by SG constitution, are separate bodies within SG. However, the role of each branch is not specified, leading to inefficient communication. “There’s very little incentive for communication between the legislative, the executive, and the committees,” said CC representative Allen Abbott, who sponsored the resolution.

As a result, the bodies often find themselves engaging in overlapping or redundant work. Abbott recalled that once, two different student government members approached the same administrator for different matters when two of those turned out to be the same thing.

“They don’t seem to know that they themselves are trying to get the same project done,” he said. Meanwhile, there is no formal requirement for CC to con-

sult committee members when passing resolutions on specific issues pertaining to those committees.

With the change in SG’s organization, the executive slate would lead the internal coordination among different bodies. The president would chair a cabinet composed of four vice presidents specializing in issue areas including communications, advocacy, student and campus services, and student organizations. The president also oversees respective committees that focus on those issue areas.

The CC chair would oversee the CC decision-making process. Under the new USG, CC does not initiate new projects on its own but rather ratifies USG projects and statements. Committees would design all projects and legislations relevant to their area of specialization, while CC members sit on these committees to provide input for the working groups.

The third member of the executive slate, the executive vice president, would be appointed to handle internal administrative policies, including managing the staff and providing resources for carrying out SG operations. Abbott believed that the creation of this internal-facing role, along with the expansion of the SG to include more members, would help reduce the administrative burden on the elected slate and allow them to more effectively pursue their platforms.

“What we see right now is that there’s a huge disconnect between what slates run on in the election and what they actually do when they are in office, and it’s because they are overburdened with administrative work,” he said. “The biggest changes in the new executive slate is that they become truly key representatives of the student government and that’s how we see them: as the people

who can best represent students to the highest levels of administration.”

Due to the transition between structures, candidates running for executive slate in the spring 2021 SG election will not form two-person slates. Instead, they would still run under the role of president, vice president for administration, and vice president for student affairs. Starting in spring 2022, executive slate candidates will run in pairs.

If the referendum that grounds USG passes and new structure becomes effective this summer, the vice president for administration will assume the role of CC chair, and the vice president for student affairs will serve as a temporary vice president for external affairs, who oversees external communications of SG to the University administration and event coordination. In addition, CC will appoint an executive vice president for internal affairs.

Extended Stay-at-Home Order Ends Two Days Early

By RYAN OWYANG Senior News Reporter After initially announcing an extension of the undergraduate stay-athome order through April 21, Dean Rasmussen announced an early lifting of restrictions to begin on April 20 in an email to the University community sent late April 19.

As of 7 a.m. on April 20, the stayat-home order currently affecting all students in the College will be lifted.

All in-person classes and laboratory research are also slated to resume on Thursday April 22. Ratner Athletic Center will be open 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Wednesday April 21 with regular hours to begin April 22. College students still may not attend indoor or unmasked outdoor gatherings, however.

The announcement comes after consultation with experts at UChicago Medicine and the Chicago Department of Public Health by the administration in light of a 0.07% test positivity rate

Sunday. One positive case was identified from 1,361 tests. The testing day for three dorms had been moved up so the University could assess the state of the spike in cases that began after Spring break.

Rasmussen’s email also warned students that non-compliance with COVID guidelines will continue to result in disciplinary action. “Some students already have faced serious consequences, including dismissal from on-campus housing and referral to area discipline, for clear violations of requirements before and during the recent stay-at-home period,” Rasmussen wrote.

The original stay-at-home order, since overturned, was annonuced on April 16th. The order increased the scope of the College’s original lockdown from only students who lived on-campus to students who lived off-campus as well.

At the time, University administrators explained that further precau-

tions were being set in place because cases can take up to 10–14 days after exposure to become symptomatic.

Fear of infection by the more contagious B.1.7.and P.1 variants as well as administrator’s determination that “there are multiple clusters, starting with individuals who were unknowingly infected over break” followed by “subsequent spread among students in smaller gatherings as well as larger parties” also drove fears of widespread contagion.

The restrictions, announced originally by Dean Rasmussen in an email to students on April 7, prohibited students living in residence halls from leaving their dorms except for food trips, medical appointments, and occasional walks for exercise. It also shifted all courses to a remote-only basis, closed seating in all campus dining halls, and canceled all non-curricular in-person programming for College students.

Friday’s overturned expanded re-

strictions also sought to suspend all undergraduate in-person research and student position. Athletics competitions and practices, such as those for the track and field team, were also suspended.

Rasmussen also announced that residence halls would open courtyard spaces to students to combat stress.

UChicago Student Wellness also held a special support session on Sunday, April 18th.

Per Rasmussen’s email on April 16th, more than 60 percent of the cases in the recent spike occurred among students who had traveled in the past two weeks. It also reported that while the University’s initial investigation into the spike began primarily at parties, contract tracing has revealed that there appear to have been multiple sources of outbreak, beginning with students who had traveled during spring break. Prior to break, the University had asked students not to leave Chicago.

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The Life of a UChicago COVID-19 Testing Coordinator

By ANUSHKA HARVE News Editor Carrol J. Banks, a Testing Coordinator for UChicago’s COVID-19 testing program, gives what she calls “the speech” to many students.

It starts when a student walks up to the check-in or the testing area, saying they’re nervous for midterms or finals. Then, Banks will pause and confirm a few facts with them: that they chose this school, knew the courses they could pick, had all the reading, and had hopefully studied. Once the student confirms these facts, she asks, “So what’s the problem?” She continues, saying that they have all the tools they need to succeed, and they can just do better and work harder next time if needed.

“I gave [one woman] the speech. I told her, ‘So you already know you passed [the test], right?’ She said, ‘I did? How did you know?’ And I said, ‘Because I know you.’ She said, ‘How do you know me?’ And I said, ‘I’m looking at your face, sweetie. You’re determined, you’re going to succeed in life, and it’s going to be okay.’ The tears started […] and [during] finals week she came back and she said, ‘I passed!’,” Banks recalled.

Banks has worked with UChicago’s surveillance testing program since it started last September. The Maroon was able to shadow her at the Woodlawn Social Services Center Depot Testing site, one of nine testing

sites in UChicago’s program.

Before the pandemic, Banks worked as a Medical Assistant in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Rush University for 15 years. After a wave of lay-offs at the start of the pandemic, she started working at UChicago in the fall.

“You don’t want to say ‘Thank god for COVID because it put me to work,’ […] because who wants to thank god for hundreds of thousands of deaths and illnesses? I’m just grateful to be working. It just so happens that I’m working in the COVID era,” she said.

According to Banks, the hardest part of her job is dealing with changing policies, not just across the weeks, but also among the various testing sites. She said that this problem could be improved with better communication across the program, from having more group meetings to getting supervisors on the same page.

“Even though the practice is the same, maybe [a] particular policy that was relevant last week is no longer relevant this week.

Several other co-workers know [how to do things] one way and you know it a totally different way […] Consistency should be the level of excellence that we’re trying to reach,” Banks said.

Banks alternates between doing checkin and doing the actual testing, but usually performs the latter. She goes to a different testing location every day from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., four days a week. Despite her shifting

Carrol J. Banks, a coordinator for UChicago’s COVID-19 testing program, sits at the check-in desk at the Woodlawn Social Services Center Depot.

ANUSHKA HARVE

schedule, Banks easily builds a rapport with almost every person she sees, from talking with them about current events to finding out the origin of their name.

Banks likes interacting with UChicago students. Although the work is repetitive, she said, the students keep it interesting. “I get a different student and I get a different life story […] a different culture in my seat,” she said.

When people come up for testing and she can tell that they’re not having a good day, Banks will call them over with a “How are you today, beautiful?” They usually say that

they needed to hear that, to which Banks will respond, “Because you are beautiful. So you take some of that positivity and throw it in the air.”

The most rewarding part of her job is hearing from students who took her advice and whose problems worked out.

“Because I’m a mom, I’m a sister, and I’m an aunty, even though I may not have raised you, you can steer somebody the right way with just the right phrase and a caring tone.

You can alter their perception on life,” Banks said.

College Council Report Recommends Immediate Return to 10-Week Quarters

By RYAN OWYANG Senior News Reporter

College Council (CC) recommends an immediate return to a 10-week quarter, in a report sent to the University administration last week that puts undergraduate student satisfaction with the 2020–21 academic calendar at 38 percent. The report also advocates for the formation of a designated committee of faculty, administrators, and students from both undergraduate and graduate divisions to reevaluate the Report of the 2019 Committee to Review the Academic Calendar—sometimes colloquially referred to as the “Roth report”—that recommended

the nine-week quarter. CC’s report also called for the formation of a Student Advocate Office that would review reported faculty violations of academic policy.

The 2019 Report was produced in response to a request from Dean of the College John Boyer and the Office of the Provost to review the rhythm and flow of the academic calendar, particularly its spring term end date, and suggest a set of changes. Besides the current nine-week quarter, the report also recommended a three-week September term, a week-long Thanksgiving break, and the conclusion of all coursework and exams by June 1 of each year. According to the report,

the primary impetus for the nine-week change was the desire for increased student access to summer opportunities that begin in June.

While the changes to the academic calendar were originally set to take effect in autumn 2021, some elements of the report were instead implemented just before spring 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to third-year Allen Abbott, a CC representative, the council brought up the academic calendar in meetings with administration as early as December 2020, when it was announced that College Break Day had been eliminated. CC

pushed for College Break Day to be reinstated, but were ultimately unsuccessful.

“It came to a head in a mid-February meeting with [Dean of Students Michele Rasmussen] and [Assistant Vice President for Student Life Michael Hayes] who told us that it would be helpful to have a concise report of undergraduate concerns with regard to the calendar,” Abbott said.

While the altered academic calendar affects both undergraduate and graduate students, Abbott feels that only graduate students received adequate representation on the committee that produced the 2019 Report.

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Results of survey indicated overwhelming dissatisfaction.

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“It’s my personal assessment that [undergraduate] student stakeholders were fairly left out of the original Roth report,” said Abbott. “The only undergraduates who were formally consulted were about a dozen students in the Maroon Key Society and the two graduating seniors who were on the [2019 Report] committee.”

The Maroon Key Society is the College’s honorary society. Its members are nom-

inated by faculty members and often advise the administration on matters pertaining to student life and welfare.

In March, CC surveyed 808 students about the academic calendar. The results indicated overwhelming dissatisfaction with the revised 2020–21 academic calendar. Only 11 percent of respondents felt that shorter quarters are an acceptable tradeoff for increased internship access, the original selling point of the 2019 Re-

port’s recommendations.

“I can’t think of a single aspect of the new academic calendar that more than 30 percent of students feel positively or strongly positively about, with the exception of the new weeklong Thanksgiving break,” said Abbott.

Despite the recommendation of the CC report for an immediate reversion to the 10-week quarters, administrators have shown no indication of changing

course. Rasmussen said in a CC meeting Tuesday that “all signs point to the [modified calendar] going fully into place in the coming academic year.” Regardless, Abbott said that over the coming months CC will meet with Provost Ka Yee Lee and incoming University President Paul Alivisatos to push for future reforms.

An Account of UCPD’s Disciplinary Actions, Amid their Re-Accreditation Pursuit

By AVI WALDMAN Grey City Editor Public accountability is a concept often centered in the discussions about the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD), which holds policing powers over an area that extends from 37th to 64th Streets, far beyond the limits of UChicago’s campus.

University officials tend to tout meetings with local stakeholders and public safety forums as evidence of their commitment to ensuring that UCPD is accountable to the community it polices.

However, organizers cite the fact that UCPD is a private police department, alongside examples of it racially profiling UChicago’s neighbors, as proof that the department is fundamentally unaccountable to that community.

Last Tuesday, in one of these safety forum meetings discussed above, assessors with the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) held a public hearing over Zoom, inviting members of the community to air their concerns about the issue at hand: reaccrediting the UCPD. Only one person chose to speak publicly about their experience with UCPD, while others requested to share their thoughts with the assessors in a more private setting.

CALEA recertification, while not necessary for UCPD to maintain the policing powers it holds through Illinois’s Private College Campus Police Act, is one instance in which people outside of the department or university administration can review the department’s policies and its officers’ behavior

towards the public. CALEA accreditation, according to the Association’s website, can help shield agencies from liability and bolster their professional image, in addition to bringing their policies in line with those of other law enforcement agencies, although membership is no guarantee that an agency won’t be charged with misconduct.

This is UCPD’s second time being evaluated for reaccreditation; it first achieved the designation in 2014, and renewed its certification in 2017. While most of the process involves internal review by CALEA’s assessors, Tuesday’s hearing was one of the few chances the community had to influence the reaccreditation decision.

UCPD’s complaint investigation and disciplinary procedures, the method by which members of the public can level complaints against the agency and theoretically see them rectified, are among the list of criteria CALEA uses to evaluate a department for reaccreditation. They’re also the most accessible way for community members to try and pursue accountability outside of the four-year recertification cycle and gain redress for any harm.

These procedures start internally, when a complainant files an electronic form or contacts UCPD’s Office of Professional Standards, initiating an internal review.

That review then goes through the Executive Director for Campus Safety and UCPD supervisors, before going to the associate vice president for safety and security for a final decision. However, when a complaint involves “issues of excessive force, violation of rights, abusive language, or dereliction of

duty,” according to the commission’s charge, the Independent Review Commission (IRC) reviews the complaint as well.

The IRC is composed of 11 members: three faculty, three students, two staff members, and three members from the Hyde Park community. All members are appointed by the provost’s office; students apply through the Office of the Dean of Students. The commission reviews UCPD’s own determination before recommending its own: However, it does not have the power to do more than recommend UCPD take certain disciplinary measures or make certain changes to its policies.

Out of 16 complaints in the 2019–20 academic year, the commission only sustained one, a situation in which a UCPD officer directing traffic called a driver a “fucking idiot.” The Commission recommended better traffic management protocols and a stress management class, alongside UCPD’s disciplinary action of a one-day suspension and remedial training. Several complaints were closed when the complainants didn’t sign sworn affidavits, a step required by Illinois’s Uniform Peace Officers’ Disciplinary Act. In previous years, a number of serious allegations, including use of excessive force or racist language, ended up falling under the “administratively closed” designation.

Since March 2005, there have been 183 complaints filed against UCPD, according to the IRC’s December 2020 report. Of those, the IRC has sustained roughly a quarter of the charges. Since 2008, The Maroon could find only six instances in which the IRC disagreed with UCPD’s determination

in sustaining a complaint. The IRC’s reports also track the numbers of complaints filed against particular officers: For the 2019–20 academic year, one officer, who has since left UCPD, had a record of seven complaints filed against them, while two others had six.

When Benjamin Boyd, the sole participant in the reaccreditation forum, brought his complaint against the UCPD officer who had arrested him to the IRC, he felt that the commission prioritized protecting UChicago from legal risks over dealing fairly with his complaint. Boyd, a student in the Divinity School at the time, was pulled over in August 2019 for rolling through a stop sign.

Boyd says he didn’t realize at the time that UCPD had legal police powers, and ended up arguing with the UCPD officer when the officer asked for his driver’s license. While Boyd said he made it clear to the officer that he was unarmed and not a threat, the officer tackled him when he got out of the car, which Boyd says aggravated a preexisting wrist injury.

Boyd was arrested and taken to jail for 15 hours, then, he said, given the wrong phone number to call for a ride home. He ended up walking back to Hyde Park from the Englewood precinct and was charged with obstruction of justice and resisting arrest.

When Boyd filed his complaint alleging that the officer used excessive force and was unprofessional with him, he said Executive Director of Campus Safety Michael Kwiatkowski was initially helpful, directing the complaint to the IRC. Boyd hoped that a finding of misconduct by the IRC would influence the outcome of his pending court CONTINUED ON PG. 7

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“The moment I saw that, I thought, This is such a farce.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 6

case; however, the IRC did not release its decision until November, after Boyd had already pled guilty to avoid a mark on his record. Boyd’s guilty plea meant that he forfeited the right to sue the University of Chicago over the incident later on, a fact he says he wasn’t told at the time by his public defender.

The IRC upheld the UCPD’s finding, exonerating the officer who arrested Boyd, although they noted that the officer in question could have tried to de-escalate the situation or shown his business card. In their analysis of Boyd’s complaint, the IRC wrote that he “was belligerent, insulting, and non-cooperative. He engaged in behaviors that were reckless in the context of being detained by an officer of the law, such as reaching into his pockets to retrieve a snack after the officer

asked him to put his hands on the car.” The commission concluded that the officer “appropriately used a wrist lock to take the actively resisting (arms flailing) complainant into custody,” dismissing Boyd’s complaint without further action.

“The woman who would go on to make sure that I was put on permanent academic probation was on the review board, a bunch of people who are trying to keep the University from being sued basically and trying to discipline me for my bad behavior, were the ones determining whether I had been abused or not,” Boyd said. “The moment I saw that, I thought, This is such a farce.”

While disciplinary bodies like the IRC are offered as a way to hold UCPD accountable to the public, the department is also accountable within the disciplinary pro-

cess to the Uniform Peace Officers’ Disciplinary Act and the collective bargaining agreement with UCPD’s union, Local 185 of Illinois’s Police Benevolent and Protective Association (PBPA). UCPD’s union contract, unlike contracts with other campus unions like the Service Employees Union International or the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, contains several detailed provisions describing protections for its members should they be investigated for misconduct.

For example, UCPD cannot investigate any complaints made anonymously against any of its officers.

Police unions have been widely criticized as barriers to structural criminal justice reform, through the protections they incorporate into their contracts and their political advocacy. UCPD’s parent union, the PBPA,

employs a lobbying arm in Springfield and is a member of the National Association of Police Organizations, which has an active presence in Washington lobbying for police interests such as legislation to protect police departments’ access to surplus military equipment.

Membership in CALEA, which runs conferences and develops programming in partnership with institutions such as the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs and the National Police Foundation, also allows UCPD to plug into a network of law enforcement agencies across (and even outside of) the United States. In Illinois, not only UCPD but also the Chicago Police Department and Illinois State Police are members of CALEA.

UChicago Professor and Team of Undergraduate Students Create a Virtual Campus Meeting Place for the University Community

By RYAN OWYANG Senior News Reporter University of Chicago Professor Ada Palmer and a team of undergraduates have created a virtual version of the University campus on Gather, a video calling platform that gives each participant a controllable avatar that can be moved around a virtual world. When virtual characters are within a certain proximity of one another, the audio and video feeds of their owners connect. In the case of Palmer’s project, the virtual world is composed of University of Chicago buildings.

The platform features small study spaces, private rooms reservable by student organizations, the entirety of the main quadrangle, every house’s common room (where some Resident Heads have taken to hosting casual coffee and tea chats), and a hidden network of tunnels exclusive to the virtual version of campus, with more locations to come. Palmer and her team have given virtual tours to those who have requested them.

Palmer originally conceived of the idea in order to run a simulation of the Papal conclave—a gathering of all the

cardinals of the Catholic church for the election of a new pope—for one of her classes. In a different year, the exercise would be carried out in-person, but given the ongoing pandemic, she needed to be creative. Gather would allow students to “walk around” and engage with each other spontaneously, as required by the simulation.

“Zoom breakout doesn’t let you do ‘spontaneous,’ it only lets you do ‘rigidly planned.’ The thing we haven’t been able to do in ages is go into a corner with somebody and chat and see our friend in another corner, wander over, and join their conversation. We, rather than whoever’s in control of the Zoom meeting, control our own movements. That’s really what’s precious in Gather Town,” said Palmer.

Though Palmer’s original plan was to re-create Rockefeller Chapel, she realized that the University might be interested in a larger project. After reaching out to College administrators, it was decided that a full virtual replication of campus would be part of the Winterfest activities offered. However, though Palmer and her team finished the project in time, Gather UChicago was ultimately

not rolled out as part of Winterfest over concerns about password-protecting it.

Palmer re-created Rockefeller Chapel, the building to be used for the simulation from memory, but realized making the rest of campus on her own would be untenable. As a result, she recruited around seven undergraduate students, including Benjamin Indeglia ’22, who worked to convert physical locations on campus into the digital art files that serve as backgrounds for the virtual locations.

Indeglia said he is spending multiple hours each week creating virtual rooms, but does not think that increased vaccination and a return to non-distanced life will render his work obsolete.

“After students have graduated and have moved apart from each other, it’s a way for them to stay in contact and remember their roots here at UChicago by being able to visit the virtual campus.

While there might not be a quarantine, they might be on opposite sides of the country or in different countries” Indeglia said.

Among the consistent users of UChicago Gather are College Core Tutors, who run small study sessions with whiteboards in the virtual version of Harper

Library; the platform’s equivalent of where they would normally be located.

Student organizations have also used the virtual Reynolds Club to hold meetings, though they aren’t the only ones.

“I caught the physics faculty playing poker in one of the RSO rooms at one point,” laughed Palmer.

Palmer has even received interest from alumni looking to experience the feeling of walking around campus again.

One couple who got engaged next to Botany Pond used the virtual Botany pond to host an anniversary celebration with some of their friends who have also since graduated.

Overall, what Palmer hoped to re-capture in the platform was some of the spontaneous interactions lost to the rigidity of seeing others primarily through Zoom.

“I was leading a [virtual] tour when a student wandered by and asked, ‘do you know a good place to meet a friend for coffee?’ And I said, ‘yeah, Ex Libris is open in the virtual Regenstein’ and they went over there. It was the most normal, forgettable experience you could possibly have, but none of us has had that experience in a year,” Palmer said.

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A “Second Pandemic”: The Enduring Impacts of COVID-19 on Mental Health and Well-Being

By ANGELIQUE ALEXOS & LUKIAN KLING Grey City Reporters

Third-year Joe Schwarcz noticed that he was waking up later than usual this past winter. When he did wake up, the motivation that carried him through the turbulent fall quarter just wasn’t there. “It’s so easy to slip into lethargy, not wanting to do things, so much easier than it was in fall quarter,” he said.

The dark thoughts he used to encounter once or twice a week now came daily, and even in classes he noticed that upsetting course material affected him now more than ever. “[Until now] I’ve never needed a trigger warning in my entire life about anything,” he said. “And I’m a political science student; we talk about everything.”

But without the ability to process the class’s content through conversations with classmates, he found the disturbing subject matter an increasingly burdensome weight, one that called for an occasional opt-out.

As the COVID-19 pandemic bears on, rates of mental illnesses, such as depression, have surged worldwide. Many people, left unable to travel or socialize with friends and family, have seen their mental well-being decline precipitously in what some doctors are calling a “second pandemic.”

For many people whose preexisting mental health issues have been exacerbated by their new circumstances, as well as for those who have experienced symptoms of mental health issues for the first time, virtual therapy has become a necessity. The transition to virtual therapy has seen mixed results, however. Christina Sprayberry, a clinical social worker and therapist working on Chicago’s South Side, noted that pre-

existing therapist-client relationships made the transition process easier, but a lack of technological awareness or access has been a large obstacle for some.

“If [clients] are not familiar with the technology, that can be a huge hindrance. I think some older clients really struggle with making that transition,” Sprayberry said. “There are people who are definitely not staying connected and have been severely impacted.”

Sprayberry has noticed a downward spiral among many of her clients who have not remained in contact with family and friends. The depression brought on by this isolation often leads to a lack of motivation, which leads to unhealthy habits, which in turn decrease motivation further, thus reinforcing a negative feedback loop that is difficult to escape without assistance. “[You] just find yourself not talking to people, shutting down,” she said.

“That’s the hardest thing with depression. You don’t feel like doing things that help you feel better.”

What she has found effective in beginning the journey towards feeling better is socializing, making that effort to reach out to loved ones, bundling up and taking walks, even in the grueling Chicago winter, and picking up a new, healthy habit, such as making art or learning to meditate.

“The accessibility of being online [is important]. More things have sprung up, different communities, online meditation or yoga, or whatever your interest is, have become accessible online. For some people, that’s even been more than just coping, like a bonus. I myself went to a retreat that I never would have gone to, but it was online, so I could do it,” she said.

The importance of social connection is also something that Ayelet Fishbach, a professor of Behavioral Science

and Marketing in the Booth School of Business, has been focused on. Fishbach studies all aspects of motivation, including how people gather social support. She has observed in her research that people have a natural tendency to want to be with one another—a need that the pandemic has frustrated for many people.

“The economy’s changing, we might be working from home much more, but we’ll want to hug our friends and we’ll want to have meals with our neighbors,” Fishbach said. “This is just so basic to our psychology as humans, that we touch each other, that we share food, and we share products that [those aspects of life] will come back.”

Fishbach told The Maroon that she is most concerned with those who have been unable to live with or spend time with others, especially with those they love and care about.

“For some people, [the pandemic] is easier because they are spending time with other people. The concern that [behavioral scientists] have is that for many people, there is a reduction in the number of people they see,” said Fishbach. “[As a behavioral scientist,] I am more concerned for the [people] who can’t be with their best friend or family or the people who are closest to them.”

Though researchers have yet to determine the full impact of the pandemic on mental health and wellness, it is possible to use previous studies about social interaction conducted before the pandemic to hypothesize how being separated from others affects people’s mental health. For example, one of the many areas of connection that can be observed through previous studies is the sharing of food and eating with others. In 2019, Fishbach, along with Kaitlin Woolley and Ronghan Michelle Wang, two business professors at Cornell University,

found a correlation between food restrictions (due to food allergies, health conditions, cultural/religious reasons, or ideological reasons) and loneliness.

The study found that both children and adults who ate restricted diets also experienced increased feelings of loneliness when eating with others who didn’t have food restrictions. This also increased what the study calls “food worries,” or an increased concern by the restricted individual over how they would be perceived by others since they couldn’t participate in the meal in the same way. These findings highlighted the importance of food as a means of connection to others in social situations. It also suggested the potential for lonelier individuals to be at a greater risk for negative health outcomes due to the sense of exclusion they felt. None of the restricted individuals in the study reported clinical levels of loneliness, but their propensity to be lonelier than the general population due to this exclusion has a greater possibility of leading to a worsened mental state.

Though this study was done before the pandemic, it illustrates how taking away what used to be daily activities for students, like eating together in the dining hall, can end up having lingering effects on their mental health.

“People seek connection, and as soon as they can, they will go back to their old, healthy habits,” said Fishbach, “As soon as we feel okay, we would not like to eat alone. We would like to have people over.

Technology is not going to replace human interaction.”

Research out of the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF)—a non-profit organization that provides information on national health issues—found that the pandemic has widely exacerbated mental health issues, such as depression CONTINUED ON PG. 9

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“Technology is not going to replace human interaction.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 8

and anxiety, specifically among young adults. More than half (56.2 percent) of adults ages 18–24 report experiencing symptoms of anxiety and/or depression during the COVID-19 pandemic as of December 2020. In addition, an earlier survey from June 2020 found that 25 percent of young adults reported using substances during the pandemic, while this was only true for 13 percent of all adults.

As mental health experts have long urged, people experiencing these conditions should seek professional interventions, such as therapy or medication.

But research shows that some behavioral changes can have a dramatic effect on individuals’ short-term well-being. In contrast to mental health, a term which refers to a person’s long-term emotion-

COURTESY OF KFF

al and psychological well-being, mental wellness is more simply maintaining short-term happiness levels.

Many of these daily functions have been greatly altered as many jobs and most school classes have moved to an online format. The spaces that we occupy in our day-to-day lives have become more limited. Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology Marc Berman has a solution to the dearth of spaces brought about by the pandemic: spending more time in green spaces.

While this is by no means a solution to more severe mental health issues, Berman’s research has found that even spending a small amount of time in nature, or even being around green spaces, has a remarkably profound effect on mental wellness. For example, according to Berman, a study done on

people recovering in the hospital found that those with windows that looked out on nature recovered faster than those whose windows faced a brick wall.

“Our research has found that nature is not an amenity—it’s a necessity,” said Berman in an article on why cities need green spaces, “We need to take it seriously.”

According to Berman, it could be something as simple as keeping plants in your room or listening to nature sounds.

Ironically, according to Berman, even if these sights and sounds aren’t pleasing to you, your brain will still feel the positive effects.

One way of measuring this is by gauging the brain’s “fractal” behavior. Berman said that fractal behavior, meaning that the brain’s patterns are the same no matter how close or far you zoom in, is

evidence that a person is not “working as hard” and is therefore showing signs of lower stress and an improved mental state.

Berman’s untested hypothesis is that people who spend more time in and around nature will be calmer, more focused, and will feel better both physically and mentally.

“What we think is that if nature is less effortful to process, the brain is going to be more fractal versus in an urban environment where it might be more effortful to process the stimulation,” said Berman.

“We’re like academic athletes, and we need to be good to ourselves, so we can have peak performance,” Berman summarized, “So what does that mean?

That means getting enough sleep, eating healthy, exercising, and, I would say, interacting with nature.”

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VIEWPOINTS This Earth Day, Commit To Saving the Planet As we approach April 22, it is essential that we, as members of the University community, learn about what we can do to maximize our efforts to slow climate change.

By YAIR ATLAS Our planet desperately needs us—needs us to make changes. As we approach Earth Day on April 22, we must reevaluate how we each play a role in our collective climate impact and how we allow our system as a whole to operate.

Most people contribute to climate change in a variety of ways, and this makes us responsible for mitigating our effects. Our responsibilities

cover not only our individual actions but also our role as members of a universit y community. This is not simple, but it isn’t as difficult as it may seem. Learning about the individual impact you have and educating others can inspire real and meaningful change.

Cl i m ate ch a nge w i l l, unfortunately, result in many deaths in the decades to come.

The World Health Organization estimates that between 2030 a nd 2050 approx imately

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250,000 additional deaths will occur per year due to climate change. And if you think climate change poses an existential risk to humanity, then you should also consider the future generations who may not get to experience the world. But we don’t need to look to the future to see the impact of our actions. For example, the frequency, intensity, and duration of heat waves have been steadily increa sing according to research published in Nature. These heat waves can cause hundreds of deaths from heat stroke. While this doesn’t compare to what we expect in the future, there are still hundreds of families grieving and suffering unnecessarily because of what our species has done to the planet.

These impacts are not solely the fault of large corporations and irresponsible governments.

The responsibility lies—in part—on people like us, who drive the demand for harmful product s. T he role ou r community plays is relevant as well. By influencing your community and leading by example, large-scale change becomes more tenable. A careless approach to our actions will lead our lives and communities to have net negative effects on the climate, and we must do what we can to mitigate this. The plus side is that it’s within our power to reduce our personal impact and our community’s impact on the planet. With that, one of the best ways you can curb

your impact on the climate is to reduce your consumption of animals and animal products and encouraging the University to do the same.

You may already know, to a certain extent, that today’s industrialized animal agriculture practices are not helping the environment. But understanding how dramatic the negative impacts of factory farming practices are on our planet can put the problem into perspective. Grasping the real problem at hand, one that’s been kept carefully hidden by the meat industry, can allow us to more accurately assess how our actions affect the world and the unfortunate effects our behaviors will have on generations to come.

According to resea rch conducted at the University of Chicago, switching from the average American diet to a plant-based diet can reduce your carbon footprint by around 1.5 tons of CO2 per year.

This would prevent the creation of about 1.5 times more tons of CO2 per year than switching from a Toyota Camry to a Prius would. In fact, a person who eats a Paleo diet and rides a bike only does slightly less harm to the environment than a Prius driver. The biker is powered by meat, the car is not.

There are countless ways t hat a n i ma l ag r icu lt u re n e g at i v e l y a f f e c t s ou r climate. Perhaps best known is that animal agriculture is responsible for 37 percent of methane gas emissions. While

that’s disastrous, many aren’t familiar with the relationship between animal agriculture and deforestation. All the protein and other nutrients in livestock come from plants.

According to the USDA, more than 70 percent of soybeans grown in the United States are fed to animals. As soy is a good source of protein, it serves as an effective feed for non-human animals. That being said, our intense use of soybeans has led to 25 million hectares of deforestation in the Amazon.

This is why, controlling for ca lor ies, purcha sing soy products leads to less soy dema nd tha n purchasing animal products. We are already growing enough food for 9.7 billion people; the only issue is that we feed much of it to non-human animals.

A s I’ve stressed, our impact can spread beyond our individual habits to the policies and behavior of the University.

Since the University feeds a large portion of the student population, adopting a program like meatless Mondays has the potential to significantly reduce the University’s climate impact. Such a program would represent the equivalent of one-seventh of the University’s on-campus students becoming veget a r i a n . T h i s wou ld advantage the student body, the University itself, and the future inhabitants of our planet. As members of the University community, we have a responsibility to make CONTINUED ON PG. 11

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“Our impact can spread beyond our individual habits to the policies and behavior of the University.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 10

our voices heard in an effort to reduce their harmful climate impacts and lead by example.

For this reason, I’d encourage r e ader s t o r esp e c t f u l ly email dining@uchicago.edu informing them of your support for such a program.

So where does this leave us? Some may argue that the good taste of animal products justifies the environmental impacts. Let’s see how this argument holds up when we consider it a different way. If a friend told you that they enjoyed the beauty of burning 1.5 tons of CO 2 , you would rightly discourage their behavior.

Imagine if the same friend told you that they enjoyed stealing calves from their mothers in order to listen to the mothers scream in distress. This would clearly be atrocious. However,

this is mainstream practice in the dairy industry, and most people don’t consider it cruel to buy milk. Perhaps we should step away from our selfish pleasures and consider the broader impact they have.

Lastly, many people are concerned about the health risks of reducing or removing animal products from our diet.

This would be unfounded.

According to the American Academies of Nutrition and Dietetics, the world's largest organization of food and nutrition professionals, a wel l-pla n ned pla nt-ba sed diet is suitable for all stages of life. Yes, this even includes pregnancy and infancy. They also contend that a plant-based diet is appropriate for athletes and may have a variety of health benefits. The internet is also filled with helpful resources to

help you change your diets in healthy ways.

So, if we’re serious about diminishing the climate crisis, then our actions should follow.

What then is your seriousness worth? W hen we live off electricity, gas, and animal products, our climate impact is sure to be bad and we have a responsibility to improve it.

Reducing or eliminating the demand for animal products— and encouraging our broader community to do so—is one of the best ways we can reduce our climate impact. We can improve the world, but it will be the work of devoted individuals and responsible communities who do so.

Yair Atlas is a third-year in the College.

DARYA FOROOHAR

Living the Life of the (Cicada’s) Mind UChicago students have a lot to learn from the ephemeral cicada.

By KETAN SENGUPTA This May—after slumbering for 17 years, like some kind of Lovecraftian horror—billions of cicada s w i l l descend upon the Midwest. (Think the eighth plague with less crop damage and more noise pollution. And less religious indoctrination.) They’ll live for a few weeks, and most will die shortly after mating, while the unluckier ones will die after not mating. For those of you unfamiliar with cicadas, they mate for many of the same reasons humans do: biological programming, social norms, and the occasional tax benefit.

I’m kidding, of course—cicadas actually only mate for the tax benefits. It’s true! Ask your local entomologist. That being said, here’s something for which I don’t need to consult an entomologist to say with tot a l con f idence: Cicada season seems like a personal hell. One of the unfortunate side effects of Brood X’s breeding frenzy is the fact that cicadas will, at least for five weeks, be everywhere. Trees, roofs, windows, public parks, private parks. Every where.

(They’re not even subject to “No Trespassing” signs.) For most sane people, this is not a good thing, and I anticipate

spending a lot of springtime indoors, doing my best to avoid them. Thanks, cicadas.

I only get three total weeks of sunlight in this place, and I’m ceding all of them to you.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about cicadas in recent weeks, as one does. And for all their f laws and inconveniences, I can’t help but empathize with them—just a little bit.

Cicadas emerge after 17 years of growth and explode into an unfamiliar world, fueled solely by their hormones; if you’ve seen UChicago Secrets lately, I think it’s fair to say that we aren’t all that different. Their entire existence is contained

within several weeks, not unlike the structure of our nine-week quarter system.

They’re social creatures that gather in groups and make the most of the spring and summer before spending the colder months tucked away; anyone who’s sur vived a Chicago winter can admit to doing the same. Cicadas are vocal; once they get started, they refuse to shut up, and their chirps are often simply unabashed cries for attention—and where they have needlessly loud males that never stop screaming, we have overzealous devil’s advocates in Sosc classes. (Don’t deny it; you’re thinking of someone

right now, and if you aren’t, I have bad news for you). If any of this sounds familiar, you’re not alone: The entire Wikipedia page on periodical cicadas feels, to me, like an extended personal attack. W hat I’m trying to get at here—and you’ve probably guessed this by now— is that, in a sense, we are all cicadas. Young, frenzied, naïve, and several other unprintable things that I’ll leave to the imagination, cicadas are little more than college students with wings and carapaces. Save your indignation; it’s not a bad thing to be compared to the humble cicada. I’d argue that, CONTINUE ON PG. 12

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“Cicadas should remind us that being young is fun, but—more importantly— that it won’t last forever.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 11

if anything, we should be more like them.

Cicadas, like many other species of insects, have extraordinarily short aboveground lifespans. They ’re tra nsient creat u res t hat appear every two decades or so to provide the soundtrack to a single summer, before promptly dying just as abruptly

as they’d appeared. A pessimist might see this as a reminder of our own mortality, but I think it’s far more beautiful than it is tragic. Despite being ephemera l, consig ned by nature to a swift death, cicadas make the most of their lives.

They fly and sing and mate— and that’s it. That’s literally it. Even the most committed hedonist would be jealous.

Have you ever seen a cicada fret about summer internships or transcripts? Have you? Of course not! They can’t speak!, you might say. Counterpoint: What if they just don’t give a damn? Cicadas are gloriously irreverent. Unlike their more attractive cousins, locusts, cicadas neither destroy nor pollinate crops. Their net env ironmenta l impact is

minimal. They exist only to have a good time, and I suggest we take a leaf out of their book because, above all, cicadas are emblematic of youth.

Cicadas should remind us that being young is fun, but—more importantly—that it won’t last forever.

Here’s something else t hat ’s fa sci nat i ng about our six-legged soon-to-be-

overlords: Cicadas don’t have a structural hierarchy, as opposed to, say, bees or ants.

Cicadas have no queens, no workers, no foragers. There’s a lesson buried somewhere in there, and here’s what I think it is: Everything a cicada does is motivated by its own desire and by what’s best for it. For insects, this means feeding on sap and CONTINUED ON PG. 13

ALVIN SHI

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“Like cicadas, we are the primary architects of the lives we live—and, like cicadas, we need to treat ourselves with care.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 12

procreating. For marginally more evolved creat u res, like students at UChicago, this means preserving our health and sanity rather than caving to arbitrary, external measures of success—material or otherwise.

For the record, I’m just as susceptible to this as everyone else is—I, too, frequently measure my worth in GPAs or Handsha ke application updates—yet I can’t help but

envy cicadas, which consider such trivial concerns beneath them. And while we can’t spontaneously transmogrify into cicadas (no matter what Kafka would have you believe), we can take steps to reduce the strain that being human takes on our mental health. I don’t just mean taking a single “wellness day” each quarter or occasionally allowing ourselves to submit a late assignment— though doing both of those things is a start—but quite

literally reclaiming our time here by shifting our collective focus. UCh icago cu lt u re has become devastatingly results-oriented, turning an educational institution into a breeding ground for feelings of inadequacy. Like cicadas, we are the primary architects of the lives we live—and, like cicadas, we need to treat ourselves with care. I might sound like I’m proselytizing here, but I can’t stress this enough: If insects can spend

their entire lives unburdened by expectations of success, we should be able to do the same without consequence, at least for a few more years. As I write this, it’s 80 degrees outside.

The sun’s lodged firmly in the sky, and it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere. Rather than worrying about which firm you’re working at this summer, get out there and enjoy the weather while you can, because you might not be able to for long. (It’s important

to mention that, while cicadas may be able to fraternize with each other without masks, they can also f ly. And they don’t have lungs. Point is, wear your masks and stay socially distanced.) Come May, it’ll be the cicadas’ world—we’ll all just be living in it, so we might as well get prepared.

Ketan Sengupta is a firstyear in the College.

ARTS UChicago Man Who Unironically Reads The Maroon Weird. Wacky. Wholesome. Woeful. Worrying. These are some words that may apply to roughly half of this article’s readership.

By KAYLA MARTINEZ Arts Reporter

If you or a loved one has ever come into contact with a UChicago ManTM , you may be entitled to compensation. Okay, not quite—but at the very least, you’re entitled to reading some exclusive, god-tier tweets from the Twitter account @makeupauchiman. Run by third-years and real-life UChicago Man experts Parul Kumar, Liana Massey, and Teddy Sandler, the account ranges from comedic to concerning to completely absurd. It’s often hard to tell the made-up from the factual, though I would argue that’s part of its appeal.

The three self-proclaimed I-House girlies never set out to be the voice of a generation, but when they saw the success of the original Make Up a Guy account (@makeupaguy), along with a number of spinoffs earlier this year, CONTINUED ON PG. 14

Screenshot of an unfortunate event. COURTESY OF @MAKEUPAUCHIMAN

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“What is UChicago Man if not a gallery of our past mistakes?”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 13

If you or a loved one has ever come into contact with a UChicago ManTM , you may be entitled to compensation.

Okay, not quite—but at the very least, you’re entitled to reading some exclusive, god-tier tweets from the Twitter account @makeupauchiman. Run by third-years and real-life UChicago Man experts Parul Kumar, Liana Massey, and Teddy Sandler, the account ranges from comedic to concerning to completely absurd. It’s often hard to tell the made-up from the factual, though I would argue that’s part of its appeal.

The three self-proclaimed I-House girlies never set out to be the voice of a generation, but when they saw the success of the original Make Up a Guy account (@makeupaguy), along with a number of spinoffs earlier this year, they knew they had to make their voices heard. You might be wondering, why a UChicago Man? What makes them different from all other college men or from UChicago non-Men? According to the moderators, UChicago Men are all a little bit funky, from the awkwardly

endearing to the full-blown incel. Sure, they’ve heard “not all men” a million times and maybe that’s true. But all UChicago Men? That’s a different story.

If you’re a UChicago Man reading this and getting worried, don’t. You might be in the clear! A number of the tweets are endearing or funny or just plain wholesome (see: “uchicago man who i went on a date w :)” or “uchicago man who thinks physics is the study of fizz”). My personal favorite is “uchicago man who plucks icicles from outside and keeps them in his freezer.” Yes, that is because this particular UChicago man is my roommate, who actually did this and then one fell and shattered on our floor like a thousand little stars, but it was kind of funny in an “I hate winter” sort of way. If you scroll long enough through the UChicago Man Twitter, you’ll even find photographic evidence of an enthusiastic UChicago Man from Texas holding up his icicle with the pride of Leo DiCaprio holding his first Oscar after years of painful, hopeful waiting. But I digress.

Of course, not all UChicago Man tweets are borne from icicles and dates that went well, as there’s quite a bit of content that laments the realities of being a person who deals with UChicago Men. Some of it’s fake, but a lot of it isn’t (the mods told me it’s about 60 percent real, 30 percent made-up, and 10 percent embellished truth). In that way, the page does a good job of building community on Twitter. I’ll read a tweet of something atrocious that happened to a fellow @makeupauchiman follower and think, “huge yikes,” followed immediately by “me too, though.” And this experience seems to be a common one: People tag friends who have been in relatable experiences, DM each other, or even message the mods. In fact, the trio says that oftentimes in the process of workshopping a tweet with the person who submitted it, they end up finding out more about the situation while swapping stories of their own. Sometimes, this happens because they’re trying to make the tweet funnier or less immediately attachable to a certain UChicago Man, but other

times, it’s just a conversation. Understandably, sharing these tales can feel liberating: There is something so freeing about commiserating over men who say creepy things, don’t get the hint, or are committed to getting you to agree not to use a condom.

In a weird way, the moderators have insight into the behavior of UChicago Men, and oftentimes, the ways in which it affects the larger community. The account isn’t meant to shame UChicago Men, but instead to empower everybody else (but maybe with, like, a sprinkling of shame). At the same time, it is nice to know that perhaps an account like this will help people (specifically UChicago Men) realize how their actions come off to others. And while reception has been largely positive, it’s clear that, at least for some Men, the account struck a chord. The mods say that one guy joked that he ought to be receiving royalties because all the tweets were based on him (which honestly is not something to be proud of ). For Liana, she’s just glad to have a platform like this to see that “these

Godzilla vs. Kong Is Absurd and We Know Exactly Why Godzilla vs. Kong scrambled to be any thing and everything all at once and ended up being exactly what we expected it to be: nothing more than two monsters beating each other up.

By ALINA KIM Arts Reporter

Mild spoilers ahead. (Also, I watched this movie right after Minari. So, fair warning.)

All I wanted to witness was a walking, living nuclear power plant topping a humongous ape, and Godzilla vs. Kong delivered. That’s all it delivered, really.

The fourth film of the barely afloat MonsterVerse franchise, Godzilla vs.

Kong is essentially a buildup to a final showdown between the two titans.

For unknown reasons, Godzilla turns against humankind and attacks a Pensacola, Florida facility belonging to

shady corporation Apex Cybernetics.

Meanwhile, an agitated King Kong, held in captivity under Monarch scientists led by Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall), is enlisted to stop Godzilla with the help of deaf indigenous child Jia (Kaylee Hottle) of Skull Island’s Iwi people and hardly competent geologist Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgård).

This setup, should I offer the benefit of the doubt, could be promising: After all, kaiju/monster cinema exposes the darkest crevices of humanity through these apocalyptic, rampaging beasts.

Shin Gojira, for one, metaphorically criticizes the Japanese government’s slow response to the Fukushima nu-

clear accident.

Worry not—Godzilla vs. Kong relieves you from any need for that level of brainpower. Rather, in a desperate attempt to engage the audience in its half-assed narrative, it f lings at us mere shells of every signature trope of contemporary cinema blockbusters and hopes something sticks. It forces itself to bear semblance to something— anything—we signify as “likeable” or “deep” and in that process mutates into a spineless monster unworthy of the $300 million of attention it has earned so far.

Let’s put it another way. The film opens with a close-up of Kong, and

we see every strand of CGI hair as he scratches his ass and bumbles around a jungle-like simulacrum he cannot escape—his personal Westview (WandaVision). The Hollow Earth Aerial Vehicle (HEAV) helicopters, or aerial shuttles capable of withstanding Earth’s “reverse gravitational effect,” transport Kong and his accompanying human crew into the Hollow Earth, the birthplace of titans near the planet’s core (don’t question it, please), through a journey not unlike the trek in Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. Not to mention, a wide shot of light bending around the HEAVs is CONTINUED ON PG. 15

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“...a hideous, confused, and hybridized beast of its own accord” CONTINUED FROM PG. 14

reminiscent of Star Wars’s hyperspace jumps. As if this totally f leshed-out, coherent premise hadn’t already pulverized any last shreds of logic, Kong embodies King Arthur pulling out the Excalibur when he discovers a wirelessly chargeable magic axe (again, don’t question it) he can use to slay Godzilla. From then on, the film’s lack of creative vision just gets worse, as the final showdown between the two titans features Pacific Rim’s neon and chrome visual effects—cool, but unoriginal. In fact, take the homoerotic tinges of Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman, substitute Doomsday with another Big Bad Guy, rush the pacing, and you have Godzilla vs. Kong.

Not that the shameless splicing stops there—Godzilla vs. Kong also attempted to replicate A Quiet Place’s deaf heroine through Jia, who communicates with Kong through sign language (and inexplicably “feels his

heartbeat” later). Personally, this is the prime example of how Godzilla vs.

Kong borrows well-liked (and well-executed) aspects of other franchises for the sake of audience appeal, then poorly backfires on itself. At face value, Godzilla vs. Kong tries to champion disability as humanity’s strength, as the post-apocalyptic premise of A Quiet Place successfully does. However, it massively fails in favor of endorsing colonial sentiments instead. Through sign language, Jia serves as the sole contact and translator between a primal, prehistoric ape and the modern scientists who have enslaved him. Jia’s attempt to warn her adoptive mother, Andrews, that Kong fears Godzilla’s viciousness falls flat, reducing Jia to nothing more than a postcolonial fantasy. And when Jia does succeed (like when she tells Kong that Godzilla is not his true enemy), Kong must serve once more as humanity’s soldier. Shoving in empty disability activism to ultimate-

Monke hit chimkin. COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. PICTURES/USA TODAY

ly bolster a celebration of imperialism was easily avoidable in a film on this tier of stupid—Warner Bros.’s disappointing decision to slot it in only enforces the sloppiness of its execution.

There is another subplot, of course, following the ragtag team of Madison Russell (Millie Bobby Brown), Josh Valentine (Julian Dennison), and conspiracy theorist–turned-podcaster Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry), who together investigate Apex Cybernetics’s sinister scientific experiments and eventually uncover a secret weapon. But who cares about the human characters? Certainly not the movie itself—the cookie-cutter, dimensionless depictions of people living in an apocalyptic scenario fall horribly flat, even with the formidable talent like Brown and Skarsgård behind each character.

Even the diegetic destruction of Hong Kong architecture left the death of its residents unaddressed. I couldn’t help but feel disappointed, albeit un-

surprised, at the negligent attitude toward human characters that plagues the MonsterVerse. Sure, we watch these films expecting most attention to veer toward the beasts smacking each other, but Godzilla vs. Kong had the chance to break that mold, to paint the doomsday context of colossal battling monsters through the anxiety of humans stuck in the crossfire. The refusal to nuance Western kaiju franchises with human resilience is by no means the responsibility of solely Godzilla vs. Kong, but it may have been the very message that we currently need but never received.

I’d recommend simply watching this movie with your brain turned off. That way, partial redemption in the CGI spectacle comes when director Adam Wingard makes abundantly clear that Godzilla curb-stomps Kong.

Like, curb-stomps. Godzilla easily destroys Monarch sea fleets with his tail before launching himself at the gorilla and hitting him square in the jaw. I could sense real panic at the sight of a chained Kong, a sitting duck, unable to fight Godzilla toe to toe and forcing the observing humans to play dead, praying Godzilla leaves them alone. There’s a rematch, of course, with that magic axe. Kong lands a satisfying punch or two on the King of the Monsters, but the audience spectates the one-sided duel from a distance, giddily gulping down the image of Godzilla pinning Kong to the f loor. But all that CGI awesomeness didn’t matter to my fried, reeling mind. Apparently, you can prevent the AI takeover through a conspiracy theory podcast; some booze; and Kong, God of Thunder.

If you simply seek escapism, I by no means will stop you from wasting just under two hours of your life watching this Bowser x Donkey Kong fanfiction.

In fact, I salute you for selecting the stupidest film of 2021 as your weapon of choice, because that’s exactly what I did. That’s what thousands of audience members did. But it’s not even good escapism. In its endeavor to make the MonsterVerse relevant again in the cinemascape, Godzilla vs. Kong transformed into a hideous, confused, and hybridized beast of its own accord and ended up being dismissible garbage.

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SPORTS Madness Prevails in 2021 Men’s NCAA Tourney

By DHEERAJ DEVARAJAN Sports Contributor

March Madness is an American tradition unlike any other. For decades, families and friend groups across the country have engaged in friendly (and occasionally notso-friendly) competition based around the performances of 64 teams in the premier college basketball tournament. Everybody knows the magic of “The Dance”: If you win, you’re in; if you don’t, your season comes to an abrupt end. The single elimination format of the NCAA Division I Basketball Tournament has contributed in a major way to the excitement that surrounds the tournament, as well as the expectation of giant-killing (or upsets) being impossible to rule out in any game. It’s the ultimate equalizer. Whether you play for a blue-blood program such as Duke, Kansas, or North Carolina, or for a hitherto obscure program, you have a chance to make history. This year’s tournament was no different, littered with massive upsets, teams that wrote themselves into the history books, legendary game-winners, and at the end of it all, a deserving champion.

Ever heard of Cameron Krutwig before the tournament? How about Max Abmas?

I’m guessing your answer’s a resounding no. Well, you know them now, and as they led their teams on the most memorable tournament runs in 2021, they became America’s sweethearts. Point guard Abmas for the Oral Roberts, a small evangelical school in Oklahoma, starred for the Golden Eagles as they reached the Sweet Sixteen after taking down second-seed Ohio State and tournament dark horse Florida, before narrowly losing to Arkansas on a missed buzzer-beater.

Krutwig led the Loyola Ramblers on another magical run, and although they couldn’t quite conjure up the magic of the 2018 tournament, when they reached the Final Four, the Ramblers did shock the nation when they upset top-seeded Illinois in the second round of the tournament.

Although both players were outstanding throughout the tournament, neither of them, or possibly any other player in the tournament, captured the fanstasies of the fans quite like Johnny Juzang, star guard and leader for UCLA. UCLA, one of the most

recognizable names in college athletics, was relegated to a First Four appearance in this year’s tournament. Led by Juzang, head coach Mick Cronin, and a supporting cast including wing Jaime Jacquez and point guard Tyger Campbell, the Bruins defeated all the odds, taking down two seed Alabama and one seed Michigan on their way to becoming only the second team ever to go from a First Four game to a Final Four appearance. In that Final Four game, they faced tournament favorites Gonzaga, who had not dropped a game the entire season. No one expected the game to be close. The Zags had Drew Timme, Corey Kispert, and prospective Top 5 NBA draft pick Jalen Suggs. It was a mismatch. What followed is undoubtedly one of the greatest games in March Madness history, ended by one of its greatest moments.

The game was back and forth throughout, as both teams hit close to 58 percent of their shots from the field, and it came right down to the wire. Toward the end of regulation, Suggs, who had been average for the rest of the game, made an outstanding block, grabbed the rebound, and launched a full court bounce pass for a Gonzaga score. That play could have changed the flow of the game, but UCLA answered, hitting their own shots, and eventually the Bruins held the ball with 10 seconds left on the clock, and as Juzang drove into the lane for a contested layup with less than five seconds on the clock, who else but Drew Timme, who had been superb not only in that game but throughout the tournament, stepped in front of Juzang and took a charge with less than a second left in the game, sending it to overtime. Even overtime was close, and when Juzang grabbed a rebound of his own missed shot and put the ball back up and in with three seconds left on the clock to tie the game, it seemed like we were heading to double overtime. But then, it happened.

Suggs grabbed the inbound and ran just in front of half court, from where he pulled up and shot a *deep* three. The ball seemed to be in the air for an eternity, but when it finally landed, it hit the backboard and went in. From that point onwards, delirium broke out. The limited capacity stands were in awe of what they had just seen and the Zags lost their minds as they crowded around Suggs, who celebrated in classic D-Wade and Kobe

The March Madness logo adorns each basketball. COURTESY OF TODD GREENE fashion by jumping on the scorer’s table. On the other end of the spectrum, UCLA was heartbroken, having left everything they could have possibly left out on the court. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention simply how special their run and that game was; the Zags won the game, but UCLA became one of the most beloved and memorable teams in recent tournament history.

The championship game was a bit of an anticlimax. Billed as a fight between two of the best teams in tournament history, the Baylor–Gonzaga matchup was one predicted by most to go down to the wire. Gonzaga was seen as the team of destiny, as they entered the game undefeated, but Baylor were simply the superior team right from the start.

Led by guards Jared Butler, Davion Mitchell, and MaCio Teague, the Bears’ physicality, defensive tenacity, and ability to hit shots from

the perimeter was simply too much for Gonzaga to handle, and they ended up blowing out Gonzaga and winning the first National Championship in tournament history. While the outcome of the National Championship game was very one-sided, the same can’t be said for the majority of the rest of the tournament. Gonzaga-UCLA was the tip of the iceberg, the tournament was always engulfed in an aura of nervous excitement and anticipation. Even though the fans couldn’t pack the stands and create the atmosphere within the arena that March Madness is so well known for, the tournament lived up to its expectations, providing America with a welcome distraction in this period of wild uncertainty and (no pun intended) madness.