STUDENT GOVERNMENT RECOGNIZES GRADUATE STUDENTS UNITED
MAY 1, 2019 FIFTH WEEK VOL. 131, ISSUE 37
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On One-Year Anniversary of Trauma Center’s Opening, Director Selwyn Rogers Looks to Future
PAGE 2 University of Chicago Medicine Trauma Center. jeremy lindenfeld
The Obama Paintings: A Presidency in 2,922 Moments
EDITORIAL: Making Metcalfs Less Finance Focused
From Ex Lib Yogurts to Attacking Harvard Admissions Practices: Adam Mortara
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One Year After Opening, Trauma Center Director Looks to Future By DIMITRIY LEKSANOV Senior News Reporter The Alumni Club of Chicago held a Harper Lecture last Thursday at Palmer House Hilton to discuss the first year of operation of the University of Chicago Medicine Trauma Center. The Trauma Center, which opened on May 1, 2018, is the first Level I adult trauma hospital on Chicago’s South Side since the trauma center at Michael Reese Hospital was closed in 1991. Akila Ally (A.B. ’16), a member of the Alumni Club’s Board of Directors, introduced the two guest speakers, Brenda Battle and Selwyn Rogers. Battle is the vice president of the Urban Health Initiative and Rogers is a professor of surgery and the founding director of the trauma center.
Rogers and Battle began the event by discussing this year’s statistics on the trauma center’s intake and the kinds of medical issues it treats. Rogers noted that the trauma center sees an unusual number of gunshot wound patients. Traumas are classified as being either “blunt” or “penetrating,” and, in 2018, 36.8 percent of the trauma center’s cases were penetrating traumas. About 75 percent of those were gunshot wounds. Rogers expressed concern over this rate, saying, “One of the alarming things is the large number of penetrating traumas. Most trauma centers see around 10 percent.” Battle and Rogers also discussed the need for a comprehensive violence recovery program (VRP), which helps trauma victims recover immediately following their injuries and in the short term after-
Interior of the trauma center. courtesy of university of chicago medicine
ward. Battle said that on average, up to 45 percent of trauma patients are reinjured within five years, and around 20 percent die in a homicide. As an example, Rogers told the story of a patient who was admitted to the trauma center in late December with severe injuries after being assaulted. After making a full recovery and being released later that month, the patient was murdered in a shooting outside his home on January 2. “Is there anything different we could have done?” Rogers asked the crowd. Battle also said that a VRP could help halt cycles of retaliatory violence. She noted that “being a victim of violence significantly increases the likelihood of becoming a perpetrator,” and said there’s a need to decrease the probability of retaliation crimes through “street outreach efforts,” saying, “We’ve been successful in mitigating some of those retaliations.” She went on to discuss how UChicago Medicine has been working to develop a VRP by holding forums and summits with community members, stakeholders, and University faculty members. “What I want you to recognize is how complex it is to develop a hospital-based violence intervention [system],” Battle said, adding, “We knew that we had to do this—that this was a public health issue.” Toward the end of the event, Battle and Rogers touched on ways that the trauma center can improve in the future. Battle said that the center had partnered
with psychologists, psychiatrists, and faculty at the School of Social Service Administration to gauge the effectiveness of treatment at the center and to identify areas for change. “Research is incredibly important to understanding the effectiveness of our work,” Battle said. Rogers added that the trauma center might pursue a future partnership with the University’s Crime Lab, which studies crime and violence prevention. “They’re an important source of data given the work they’re doing across the city,” he said. Another audience member asked whether there are trauma recovery and rehabilitation services available to first responders who frequently handle victims of violence, saying, “I can tell you from experience, this can be overwhelming, doing it over and over.” In response, Rogers said the hospital does not have those services, but noted that there is a need for them. “[First-responder work] has a tremendous psychological effect on the individual.” Rogers also said that the trauma center has been working to integrate personnel with military combat experience into its staff in order to further equip the facility to handle trauma patients. “We are in talks with the United States Army right now,” he said. “We are actually having active negotiations about how to embed [the] military into our service.”
Student Government Recognizes Graduate Students United By JUSTIN SMITH Senior News Reporter Student Government (SG) Assembly passed a resolution on Monday calling for the University administration to immediately recognize Graduate Students United (GSU). Class of 2022 representative Zebeeb Nuguse and graduate Division of the Humanities representative Jo Brill sponsored the resolution. The bill has four cosponsors, including Class of 2022 representative and Reform Slate candidate David Liang, and has the support of both
GSU and Students Organizing United with Labor (SOUL). This resolution follows the walkout in autumn quarter, which—according to the resolution’s sponsors—had over 600 participants and was the largest walkout at the University since the Vietnam War. Graduate student workers walked out of classes at 11:03 a.m. to symbolize the 1,103 votes in favor of unionization during the vote in October 2017. The resolution cites multiple reasons for SG’s decision to publicly support GSU. The resolution notes that while more than two-thirds of UChicago graduate
student workers voted to support unionization and the formation of GSU, the UChicago administration has continued its refusal to recognize any graduate student workers’ union. Graduate student workers, according to the resolution, remain concerned about lack of adequate healthcare and wages that do not cover the cost of living, among other issues. The sponsors of the bill believe that GSU will help graduate students obtain living wages appropriate for residing in Hyde Park, improved healthcare, and better grievance-reporting procedures. Healthcare
offered to graduate student workers, according to the sponsors, is currently identical to U-SHIP, which is below the Obamacare-mandated level (GSU has previously addressed U-SHIP on its website). Some SG representatives expressed concerns about taking a position on GSU, citing concerns that a decision might spark a strike during finals, which could interfere with graduation for outgoing fourth-years. According to Class of 2019 representative Brett Barbin, “It seems especially important that [SG] [A]ssembly CONTINUED ON PG. 3
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remain neutral, because undergraduates and graduates may have different vested interests in this. Supporting this resolution could lead to a strike during finals.” Nuguse responded, “Even if that did happen, we would still get our grades eventually, and isn’t it more important that our teachers are able to live above
the poverty line?” Prior to this resolution, Graduate Council (GC) had adopted a neutral position on GSU, which the sponsors claimed had previously been necessary only so that SG could facilitate the 2017 graduate student worker vote on unionization. The sponsors argued in favor of reversing the earlier decision, citing GSU’s contin-
ued membership gains and arguing that neutrality had previously been necessary only to allow SG to facilitate the 2017 graduate student worker vote on unionization. The sponsors argued that GC’s neutral stance on unionization was unnecessary and outdated, stating, “If our constituents want unbiased information, they will go to resources such as The Ma-
roon.” Nuguse argued that although this resolution focuses on graduate students, it also pertains to undergraduates. “It’s unethical to be taught by exploited labor, and improving the standard of living of our educators will improve the quality of education we receive by graduate students,” she said.
Dinesh Das Gupta, Candidate for Liaison to Board of Trustees, Hopes to Prioritize Mental Health
Dinesh Das Gupta. courtesy of trust coalition
By ALEX DALTON News Reporter First-year Dinesh Das Gupta is running for College Council representative and Undergraduate Liaison to the Board of Trustees on a platform of “sustainability, health and student unity.” Gupta is one of three members of the Trust Coalition running for student government positions, along with first-years Natalie Wang and Aazer Siddiqui. The student elected as undergraduate liaison represents the student body to the trustees and works to build connections between students and individual board members. The liaison attends quarterly meetings with the board’s subcommittee on campus and student life, at which he or she can raise issues of importance to the undergraduate pop-
ulation. If elected, Gupta will make increasing sustainability initiatives at the University one of his major goals. The Trust Coalition’s platform includes plans for a fossil fuel divestment campaign, initiatives to reduce single-use plastics, promotion of composting, and a Student Government–sponsored thrift shop. Though the University requires LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver certification for all new campus construction projects with over $5 million in construction costs, Gupta has doubts about whether the University’s planned Woodlawn Residential Commons will meet the requirements. Gupta said he would advocate for sustainable energy initiatives that will benefit both the University’s environmental impact and its bottom line. “Why are there leaky windows in the middle of winter?” he said. “These are changes that can really save a lot of energy but also save the University money.” Gupta also believes the University’s student health services are in need of radical improvement. “It’s absurd that student healthcare services should be so lacking on this campus, where the wait time for getting an appointment is six weeks,” he said. Waits for specialized services, he added, are even longer. Gupta also said he will push for data collected by the University on students’ wait times for medical services to be
made public. “This is a level of absurdity that a school like the University of Chicago should be ashamed of,” he said, but he believes that he will be able to work through the board to win substantive improvements. “I know that the Board of Trustees, if they were aware of what was happening...would also be ashamed of it,” he said. “It’s a simple fix of providing more resources to something that should already be in place for students as a support system.” The University’s new wellness center, Gupta said, should help to address problems with student healthcare, “but it’s unclear how much it will.” He believes that demand for services will increase as students previously deterred by poor-quality service and long wait times come forward. Gupta supports Graduate Students United (GSU), citing the prevalence of University courses taught by graduate students. “I intend to raise the issue that graduate student workers are, in my opinion, being undervalued,” he told The Maroon, adding that graduate students are “not recognized for the full extent of what they are doing, which is work.” If elected, Gupta hopes to use his position to promote solidarity between the graduate and undergraduate populations. In his eyes, an effective relationship between the two groups would show
that broad undergraduate support can help graduate students gain the leverage they need to make their voices heard by the University while also minimizing lost class time due to work stoppages. Gupta currently has no position on issues relating to the conduct of the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD). “It’s something worth discussing,” Gupta said, but he is “not necessarily taking a stance” because he lacks “a firm-enough grounding” to assess the UCPD’s current role on campus. If elected, Gupta will likely face some pressure from the student body to address concerns about the Board of Trustees chairman, Joseph Neubauer. In the fall, Neubauer became the target of an activist campaign critical of his actions as a member of the board of Mondelēz, a snacks company based in Deerfield, IL. This campaign has garnered significant support among undergraduates and has included calls for his removal as chairman. When asked whether he planned to address this if elected, Gupta acknowledged that he would need to “look into the issues a little bit more to fairly address them.” He did not address the specifics of the controversy. “There may be issues with Neubauer’s leadership,” he said, but added that he doesn’t “see a way for undergraduates” to remove him. Gupta said that it would be “more productive” to work with Neubauer on “other issues.”
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Community Liaison Candidate Emphasizes Sustainability
Natalie Wang. courtesy of trust coalition By JUSTIN SMITH Senior News Reporter Natalie Wang is running for both Community and Government Liaison and Class of 2022 Representative. She joins Dinesh Das Gupta and Aazer Siddiqui as part of the Trust Coalition, a group of students running for various Student Government (SG) positions that supports improving student health, student unity, and campus sustainability. If elected, Wang hopes to “form a more positive relationship between the University and the Hyde Park community.” On Interactions Between Students and the Hyde Park Community: Wang plans to accomplish her goal of a better University–neighborhood relationship with a three-pronged approach.
“I want to support local artists, support local businesses, and promote community-wide events for socialization between the community and the University,” she said. Wang intends to visit local businesses in Hyde Park and secure student discounts to encourage students to visit local businesses and spend more time in the neighborhood. She also wants to increase awareness among the student body of arts events, such as the South Side Pie Challenge, that feature community-based artists. According to Wang, these events are not well-attended by students due to a lack of advertising on campus. Finally, Wang wants to plan more University events open to both students and local residents. “Having more events at UChicago open to the [Hyde Park] community… will make a low-pressure environment for students and community members to bond over local interests,” she said. On Transparency: According to Wang, many students have come to her with issues about transparency across the University’s administration. “The issue goes beyond transparency.… Student Government should communicate more clearly with students,” she said. Wang hopes to improve transparency by increasing the number of posts SG makes on class Facebook pages informing students about its actions and the administration, and hopes to start a monthly newsletter de-
tailing the actions of SG. Wang was hesitant to give an opinion on College Council Secrets, a platform where students can post anonymous comments directed towards SG. “On one hand, I agree with having more student input, but I also agree with criticisms about [the platform] being monitored by Student Government and being inaccessible to students without Facebook,” she said. On Student Health: The Trust Coalition is focused on improving student health on campus, and has paid particular attention to long wait times and quality of service at Student Health Services. Wang believes that, while she cannot affect this issue directly as Community and Government Liaison, Dinesh Das Gupta (candidate for Liaison to the Board of Trustees) has the greatest opportunity to improve student health on campus. “Student Government should communicate student unrest about health to the administration and the University’s trustees,” Wang said. On Sustainability: Wang’s primary concern regarding campus sustainability is the construction of the new Woodlawn Residential Commons, opening in 2020. According to Wang, “[W]ord is that the new dorm is not going to be LEED–certified,” which, according to the LEED website, means it will not be constructed to maximize occupant health and productivity, re-
duce waste and negative environmental impacts, and decrease building life cycle costs. The University requires that all buildings that will cost over $5 million attain LEED certification. While the cost of Woodlawn Residential Commons has not been disclosed, it is part of a $450 million housing plan. On Greek Life: Wang believes that SG should do more to make Greek life accountable to the student body and the administration. She supports CARE’s platform for SG reform regarding Greek life. Regarding whether the administration should recognize fraternities or sororities, she said, “I can’t make a decision on Greek life recognition [by the administration] because I don’t know all of the pros and cons of that decision.” On Payment of SG Slates: Wang believes that paying members of the executive slate would alleviate an economic barrier for low-income students. Wang said she “supports Student Government [payment] in principle, because Student Government is inaccessible to low-income students who need a job to support themselves.” To this end, Wang said she would support a bill that would pay members of the executive slate who demonstrate financial need, but would consult the student body again prior to approving any bill on the issue.
Candidate for 2022 Rep Sees SG as Lever for Change By CHARLIE KOLODZIEJ Senior News Reporter
Aazer Siddiqui. courtesy of trust coalition
First-year Aazer Siddiqui is running for Class of 2022 Representative on a platform of environmental sustainability and support for Graduate Students United (GSU). Siddiqui said that he believes environmental issues are very important to his peers. “Me and my friends, and I think a lot of other people, really care about the
environment,” he said. “I think we’re a generation which, in many ways, has been tasked with keeping the Earth alive.” To make the campus more environmentally friendly, Siddiqui plans to tackle issues related to recycling, energy usage, and composting. Siddiqui alleged that many dorms do not actually recycle properly. “They put the recycling in trash bags—they don’t sort it—to go to the landfill, which I think is just a huge violation of trust,”
he said. “I mean, people can do their individual parts—I’ll sort my recycling, I’ll try and recycle everything that I can, I’ll bring my metal straw [as opposed to a plastic one], all that stuff. But at the end of the day, there [are] a lot of ways in which the University can do things and stop putting the burden on us as students so much.” Siddiqui also mentioned that while initiatives such as composting aren’t CONTINUED ON PG. 5
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feasible on a University-wide level due to city regulations, some RSOs and student groups still implement smaller-scale composting. Siddiqui pointed to UChicago Hillel as one institution that could serve as an example for further student involvement in environmental issues. Siddiqui also believes that certain reforms, including changes to dorm
heating, are best carried out by the administration. “The heating budget here is actually massive compared to other schools of similar size,” Siddiqui said. “We’re… above other comparable schools, and I think that we need to get to a level where UChicago is at least operating at a similar level of environmental consciousness as other schools.” In addition to his environmental re-
form ideas, Siddiqui stressed his commitment to supporting GSU in their efforts to unionize. “Some people are upset about classes [getting] cancelled because of efforts to unionize, but the classes are cancelled because people aren’t getting paid for what they’re doing. I think if we can get the University to recognize...GSU, eventually that would just be a huge win-win for everyone,” he said.
When asked why students should elect him, Siddiqui said, “I’m not here to pad my résumé. I was actually kinda convinced to run last-minute. I had initially thought about running because I realized that many people don’t see [College Council] as something that really has any effect on students, but it actually does; it controls a really big budget and I think it’s an important way to make change.”
RAUC Hosts Reparations Summit with Activists, Academics By CHARLIE KOLODZIEJ, DARCY KUANG Senior News Reporter, News Reporter This past Friday, the Reparations at UChicago Working Group (RAUC) hosted students, community activists, professors, and organizers at the Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge for the (U)Chicago Reparations Summit. The forum was an all-day public gathering to discuss reparations and UChicago’s place in the history of enslaved peoples and today’s victims of police violence. The forum began with a panel moderated by Professor Emerita of History Julie Saville and featured a panel of local activists and visiting professors. Todd St. Hill, a writer, activist, and organizer for We Charge Genocide’s “Cop Watch” program elaborated, “I would argue that reparations are a means to achieving the aspirations of people whose American experiences have been undermined at best and utterly demolished at the very worst.” Reparations are often thought of as a compensatory measure (financial or otherwise) paid to victims of an atrocity and, in the U.S. and U.K. specifically, to descendants of enslaved peoples. St. Hill opened the forum by expressing excitement over the recent political interest in reparations, calling presidential hopefuls Kamala Harris and Cory Booker’s discussions of reparations “unprecedented.” St. Hill then went on to call Senator Bernie Sanders’s (A.B. ’64) lack of support for HR40, a bill introduced to the House that would form a commission
to explore reparation options for African Americans, “baffling.” “Reparations fit right into [Sanders’s] central argument that we need a political revolution against the billionaire class,” said St. Hill, referencing the fact that many reparations proposals call for funding to be collected from a tax on the super wealthy. St. Hill then countered concerns about a lack of public support for reparations, stating that in recent polls, the majority of Black Americans support some form of reparations. “Millennials seem far more open to the idea of reparations than previous generations,” St. Hill said. Aislinn Pulley, an activist with Black Lives Matter Chicago and co-executive director of the Chicago Torture Justice Center, described the shift in American policing starting in the late ’60s and early ’70s. “There was a push towards militarization of the police force and the creation of a different kind of police force. We didn’t used to be militarized—policing did not look like it does today,” Pulley explained. One example of this, Pulley said, was the persecution of Black and Latino communities in Chicago by former police detective Jon Burge. Burge was fired from the police force in 1993 after it was alleged that he had tortured confessions out of over 200 suspects in the Chicago area using tactics he learned during his time serving in Vietnam. Burge ultimately served time for perjury from 2011 to October of 2014 in relation to a 1989 civil suit; however, the statute of limitations on claims of torture had
Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge. courtesy of university of chicago since expired. Pulley highlighted a 2015 Chicago City Council vote that unanimously approved a reparations ordinance, the first of its kind in the nation, for survivors of Chicago police torture. The ordinance called for financial compensation, mandated that the history of CPD torture be taught in Chicago Public Schools, and created the Chicago Torture Justice Center. The next speaker was Michael Ralph (A.M. ’02, Ph.D. ’07), an author and associate professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Ralph said that reparations for descendants of enslaved people should be a straightforward policy. “I also want to talk about how mundane it is to think about all the different ways we place monetary value on human
life. I could rattle off a list of atrocities: the Boston Marathon bombing, Agent Orange, Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Holocaust compensation. And most of those events, with the exception of the slave trade, have had some form of redress attached to them.” In addressing concern over funding reparations, Ralph quipped, “Some people are very skeptical about throwing money at the problem. In my experience, people of color very much appreciate it when you throw money at the problem. Very few of us are offended by that.” The final panelist, Guy Emerson Mount (A.M. ’18, Ph.D. ’18), author and assistant professor of African American history at Auburn University, described reparations as not only a “short term project” but as a form of “revolutionary CONTINUED ON PG. 6
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praxis,” stating that the “revolution of reparations must be made permanent.” Mount, a co-founder of RAUC, was instrumental in the uncovering of UChicago’s historic ties to slavery in 2017. Mount ended his time by stating, “Without slavery, there is no University of Chicago.” Mount referred to the slave-owning past of Stephen Douglas, a U.S. Senator and donor to the University. In 1856, Douglas donated 10 acres of land to found the first University of Chicago. He purchased the land with money made from the 150 slaves in his family’s plantation in Mississippi. In the afternoon, the forum continued with a panel on local reparations struggles. Speakers from six activist groups discussed the complicity of the City and the University in exploiting the
South Side community. Kofi Ademola, an activist from Black Lives Matter, pointed out that the University has a long history of exploiting Black labor. “There was a long legacy of money invested from slavery to make this institution come into fruition.” “Also, you have the Rockefeller money,” Ademola continued, “and that too has to be taken into account because robber barons garnered their wealth by exploiting many groups, but especially Black and Brown people.” Jawanza Malone, a member from the Obama Library Community Benefits Agreement Coalition, said that he pushes the University to redress its past wrongs because it continues to exploit South Side residents. “The harm continues; it isn’t something that just happened in the past,” Malone said. “Consistently, we see the
University acting on the Black community in a way that harms us.” Malone sees the University’s involvement in the construction of the Obama Presidential Center as an instance of harmful intervention for the Black community by displacing low-income residents. “In the bid document, the University said that if the Presidential Center were to be in Jackson Park, it would be an opportunity to bring new residents in the area,” Malone said. “However, anyone who has sense knows that if you bring new residents into the area, you will displace low-income families unless you have protections in place.” Malone also questioned the University’s intention in bidding for the Obama Presidential Center. “[The University’s bid] wasn’t out of altruism…they did it because they could leverage the legacy
of the first Black president for their benefit.” Malone cited the University’s plan to build the Obama Presidential Center on public parkland in Jackson Park, which sparked a federal lawsuit. “Why did the University need the parkland when they got $90 million in subsidies off the bat…. Why didn’t they use the land they already own?” Several panelists also called for South Side residents to join the reparations movement. Kamm Howard, a member of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, said, “We need people to lend their resources and talents to this unique moment in this country in regards to reparations.” Malone added, “[Reparations] is not a radical idea.... If we don’t protect ourselves, it is clear and obvious that no one else will.”
Hairston Meets with Constituents After Winning Runoff By JACK CRUZ-ALVAREZ Deputy News Editor Fifth Ward Alderman Leslie Hairston held her first meeting with constituents since being declared the winner of a runoff election for the position on Tuesday night. The meeting was held at O’Keeffe School of Excellence in South Shore, where Hairston discussed a range of
topics including the issue of the Obama Presidential Center (OPC). Although Hairston was declared the winner on April 18, her challenger, activist William Calloway, petitioned for a discovery recount the next day. The Board of Elections will hold a status hearing on May 2 after the recount process is over. Despite this, Hairston, who has held the office since 1999, said she “expects to be
Leslie Hairston on the night of February elections. sophia corning
sworn in on May 20.” The alderman did, however, acknowledge complaints that constituents brought against her which brought her close to losing her seat. “It is a humbling experience to be in the runoff after 20 years of service. And I want you all to know that your concerns have been heard. Transparency, accessibility, and city services have always been on my priority list. Now, I see that we have more work to be done.” One of the issues Calloway pushed in his campaign against Hairston was a lack of constituency services for many residents of the southern neighborhoods in the wards, like South Shore and Greater Grand Crossing. Some attendees of Tuesday’s meeting expressed similar sentiments, asking the alderman how she would improve communication with her constituents. In response, Hairston said she would bring back a previously circulated newsletter about her office’s projects and increase her social media presence. Hairston’s stance on a community benefits agreement (CBA) was also a point of tension during the race, and discussion about the proposed ordinance took up a large amount of the meeting’s
time. For years, activists have been proposing a CBA that would protect residents living near the incoming OPC in Jackson Park from displacement, but Hairston’s stance on the issue has been unclear. In 2017, she wrote an open letter to the Obama Foundation demanding the organization ensure that community members reap the economic and educational benefits from the OPC and its construction. Since the Obama Foundation does not support a CBA, Hairston has proposed a neighborhood stabilization plan for the South Shore neighborhood, which would include bonds issued by the City of Chicago and Cook County funding business and other economic developments in the area. At Tuesday’s meeting, Hairston brought in Eli Williamson, who has assisted in the plan’s development, to explain its details. However, Williamson and Hairston said they did not know what the timetable for the plan would be or how many bonds would need to be issued. Hairston did say she would support a CBA after voters in the fifth precinct CONTINUED ON PG. 7
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of the Fifth Ward, the only precinct in the ward that had the question on their ballot, showed strong support for this type of ordinance during the February 26 general elections. While many perceived this as a shift in policy, Hairston maintained it was not. “I will clarify, as I’ve said in my first letter, that I support it. But I support that the people, the stakeholders, [be] at the table, and right now all of the stakehold-
ers are not at the table,” Hairston said in an interview with WGN on election night. Hairston committed to supporting a CBA in response to a constituent’s question on Tuesday night and said she would need to meet with newly-elected 20th Ward Alderman Jeanette Taylor, who represents the majority of Woodlawn, to coordinate how to best protect the affected neighborhoods. Members of the CBA Coalition, an or-
ganization of activist groups in the area that supports the ordinance, as well as other attendees, asked for a more structured process for collaboration between the alderman’s office, the Coalition, and other interested groups, including a request for groups to present their agendas to constituents. Hairston reiterated her insistence on having all affected parties represented in such a process, calling attention to the fact that the CBA Coalition does not include any South Shore groups.
“[I would] need time to put one together,” she said. Hairston also emphasized how the ordinance would affect her and that she shared in attendees’ frustrations. “I don’t want to be put out of my house either…. I too have to worry about not having enough money to pay my taxes. I am not immune from all of this—I am directly impacted,” Hairston said. “I’m not sitting in a high tower looking down saying, ‘What’s gonna happen?’ I live here, I have lived here, I intend to stay here.”
What Does an Elected School Board Mean for Chicago? By PRANATHI POSA Deputy News Editor Chicagoans have been calling for an elected school board for decades, and it may soon become a reality as the state legislature is pushing for it now, more so than ever before. The Chicago Board of Education oversees an $8 million budget. Members of the board, who are currently appointed by the mayor, have a say in district-wide school policies, employee actions, charter school openings, and spending decisions. Under outgoing mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration, the school board has enacted numerous unpopular education policies, including a wave of 50 school closures in 2013 that disproportionately affected minority students. These actions have sparked renewed calls for an elected school board. In 2015, Chicagoans overwhelmingly voted in favor of a nonbinding referendum for elected school boards. A previous bill that would have created an elected school board in Chicago passed in the House and Senate in 2017 but was vetoed by former governor Bruce Rauner and subsequently failed to progress in the legislature. Hyde Park politicians are among many advocating for a new bill that is expected to pass with the support of Governor J.B. Pritzker. HB 2267, or the Elected Chicago School Board Bill, recently passed the Illinois House 110–2 and is currently being debated in the Senate. If the bill passes,
the Chicago School Board, which consists of seven members appointed by the mayor, would expand to 20 members, each elected by residents of separate city districts. All three Illinois House and Senate officials from the Hyde Park area have signed on to the bill as sponsors: Representative Curtis Tarver II of the 25th District, Representative Kambium Buckner of the 26th District, and Senator Robert Peters of the 13th District. To date, the bill has been sponsored by a total of 40 members of the Illinois House of Representatives and six Senators. The Complicated History of the Chicago School Board The Chicago Board of Education was established in 1872 and was the only municipal school board in the state to be appointed by the mayor at the time. This remained the case for almost a century until, amid financial troubles, the state legislature established the Chicago School Finance Authority in 1980. The authority oversaw the financial situation of Chicago Public Schools (CPS), resulting in a loss of authority for the board. However, as CPS’s troubles continued, a reform act passed in 1988 decentralized the way the Board of Education and CPS functioned. This decentralization act established local school councils that were given the power to approve school budgets, annual school improvement plans, and the selection of principals. At this time, 10 of the 15 members of the Board of
Education were nominated by a commission of 23 parents and community members selected from local school councils, and five members were appointed by the mayor. In 1995, however, this decentralization was reversed with the passage of the Chicago School Reform Amendatory Act in the Illinois legislature, pushed by then-mayor Richard M. Daley. The act preserved local school councils but eliminated the School Finance Authority and transferred almost all power over the Board of Education to the mayor of the city, who once again appointed all school board members. The act also shrunk the size of the board to seven members and replaced the superintendent of schools with a chief executive officer that could oversee the financial situation of CPS and make unilateral reform decisions. Other school districts that have partial or fully mayor-appointed school boards include New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. However, none vest unilateral authority in the mayor’s office as Chicago does. Elected school boards have been proposed in several cities nationwide, but experts disagree on the merits of such a plan. According to a paper by the Pew Trust that looked at Philadelphia, “There is no consensus among researchers about whether any particular form of school governance—including state takeovers, mayoral control, or elected local boards— leads to better student performance or fiscal management.”
At an event at the Institute of Politics, CPS CEO Janice Jackson seemed cautious about the efficacy of an elected school board. “It’s not a silver bullet; it has to be done in a thoughtful way, and we have to get at what the ultimate goal is, which is more transparency and involvement from the community,” she said. Jackson also said that a push toward expensive campaigns would also undermine the benefits of an elected board. Expensive campaigns would increase bureaucracy and the influence of private interests. The Recent Push for an Elected Board Mayor Emanuel’s decision not to run for reelection indicated to residents and candidates a potential opportunity for change on Chicago’s school board. Emanuel made many changes to the school board and the school system at large during his tenure. When he first assumed office in 2011, he replaced all seven members of the school board. Booth professor Austan Goolsbee is one of the most recently appointed members of the board. Candidates in the mayoral election largely agreed that at least some members of the school board needed to be elected, although some advocated for hybrid school boards with both elected and appointed members. The two runoff candidates, Toni Preckwinkle and Lori Lightfoot, both supported fully elected school boards. CONTINUED ON PG. 8
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Hyde Park State Officials All Support an Elected School Board CONTINUED FROM PG. 7
However, Mayor-Elect Lightfoot has expressed concern over the size of the board that would be created under HB 2267. She said in an interview with WBEZ that “having a school board of 21 people is completely unwieldy. That will be a recipe for disaster
and chaos. It’s way too large.” If the bill is passed, it will go into effect in 2023, meaning that regardless of the bill’s fate, Lightfoot will be appointing board members for her own term. However, Lightfoot’s support will be critical if the bill is to become law.
Hyde Park Politicians Fully Support the Bill Proponents argue that electing school board members will force them to be more accountable to city residents and less beholden to outside interests. In a statement to the maroon, Representative Tarver
said he hoped “that elected individuals who are accountable to their constituencies will fight for the best interests of their constituents,” and that he “anticipate[d] that the school board members will also have a better understanding of the challenges faced by CPS and the difficulty in
running a district of its size and magnitude.” HB 2267 is currently being debated in the Senate and is expected to pass. Tarver said, “If I were a betting person, I would bet that [the bill] will pass.”
Activist Virgie Tovar Discusses Fatphobia and Diet Culture By CAROLINE KUBZANSKY News Editor The Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality hosted author and activist Virgie Tovar for a seminar on fatphobia and diet culture on Monday afternoon. She discussed her own experiences with size discrimination and the origins of western culture’s attitude toward food, body size, sexuality, and gender. Tovar is the author of the manifesto You Have the Right to Remain Fat and was one of Bitch Magazine’s 50 most influential feminists of 2018. Her talk covered her experiences with dieting and her eventual rejection of diet culture, before she defined and deconstructed those terms in order to elucidate their history and evolution in the contemporary era. Tovar used the term “diet culture” to refer to a culture that sees losing weight through manipulation of food or movement as an individual solution to the “problem” of fatness, which carries a negative moral valence. “We understand fatness as a product of immorality, of excess, of an uncontrolled relationship to hunger, to appetite, and that thin people represent the opposite of that—that thin people represent control and moral enlightenment,” Tovar said. In discussing her childhood realization that being fat was a social impediment and her subse-
quent efforts to become thin, Tovar emphasized the relationship between her dieting projects, her femininity, and her race. “I felt more feminine when I was so hungry that I felt faint or when I couldn’t think straight,” she said. “My understanding of my bad body was deeply, deeply informed by my utility to men.” She summarized the messaging that led to this association as, “You are fat and fat is bad, because boys don’t like that. I don’t want to marry you, and so I deserve to be mean to you. I don’t want to have sex with you, and therefore you deserve to have cruelty thrown at you. Not being fuckable is a punishable offense.” Tovar also referenced Sander Gilman’s theory, which states that dieting “is a process by which the individual claims control over his or her body and thus shows their ability to fulfill their role in society.” She said dieting has a more profound symbolism. “It is showcasing that you understand it is your expectation [as a woman] to control your weight, which is part of the gendered contract with society.” Tovar highlighted how she learned that weight loss was a way to “assimilate” into the more powerful parts of social hierarchies, such as whiteness. She mentioned how, after eating only lettuce and toast for a summer in which she also performed step aerobics every day, her doctor told her that if she lost more weight, she might be
able to date one of his sons. “My doctor is this white man.... Even though I didn’t understand [back then] what whiteness was, I understood his whiteness as a manifestation of his superiority. And the possibility of being invited into his family was huge,” Tovar said. Later in her talk, Tovar circled back to this theme, saying that people of color can be particularly prone to diet culture as a way of being a “less threatening” person of color to white people. She said that diet culture is partly a product of white men’s efforts to create a narrative of hegemony over colonized peoples. She claimed that Sylvester Graham and John Harvey Kellogg, the inventors of Graham crackers and cornflakes, were two figures whose products came out of their desires to promote self-control and to create a contrast between European attitudes toward food and those of colonized people. “I was introduced to both of them when I was studying the history of sexuality, because they were both very intense anti-masturbation advocates…. And all of [a] sudden, when I was working [on] fat studies, they came up again, around the history and construction of food and diet,” she said. Kellogg and Graham thought that eating bland foods would repress strong sexual desires among Europeans and incline people toward hyperrationality and lessen
“animalistic” inclinations toward food, sex, and other sensual experiences. “Cornflakes were part of a bland diet…meant to be low flavor,” Tovar explained, “because [Kellogg] felt there was a connection between eating delicious things and having sexy feelings. [Graham] founded the dietary reform movement in the 1830s. The Graham cracker, which was even more flavorless than it is today, was part of his proselytizing that unleavened bread led to suppressed sexuality. He thought that a low-flavor, low-calorie, unleavened diet was a way to control sexual urges. His followers believed that, through food, you could control morality.” Tovar claimed that Europeans used these differences in diet as a justification for colonization. “I began to sort of ask myself, why are these men so preoccupied with control…and why do they see food as such a big part of this? And I began to think about the eras in which they existed. These were men who were in the midst of this colonial period, and these were white men of influence, who were part of the intellectual zeitgeist that encouraged the belief that it was totally fine to enslave or kill or steal from people of color or any people who had less self-control than they did. They created control as the moral basis for rationalized violence to rationalize colonialism. And the argument was we…can control when we
have sex, how much we eat, how we dress—we are civilized. These people from whom we are stealing and whom we are exploiting… have this animal relationship to sex, an animal relationship to food. We are enlightened; we get to do whatever we want. And I see their fear and anxiety in the way we talk about food, and sex, and body size today,” she said. The quantification of food into caloric values, macronutrients, or other metrics is also “a very kind of colonial tool, creating a myth of control over things,” Tovar said. As a result, she continued, food in a diet culture is not just food, but a moral positive or negative. She reinforced the idea of food as a moral object by pointing out the biblical language that often surrounds foods, including “sinful” and the frequent addition of haloes to low-calorie food. Resulting from this moralized language, she said, is a cultural association between high weight and low moral value, which justifies treating fat people as second-class citizens. “We as a culture understand success and failure as individual pursuits. If you’re fat, you deserve to be treated poorly because you didn’t try hard enough. If you’re thin, it’s because you did it on your own,” she said. Tovar will release her next book, FLAWLESS: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color, in March 2020.
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ARTS
The Obama Paintings: A Presidency in 2,922 Moments By SYLVIA EBENBACH Arts Reporter
There are thousands of artworks featuring former President Barack Obama in the world, and at the Stony Island Arts Bank, you can find 2,922 of them. Rob Pruitt, a New York–based visual artist, painted one of these portraits each day of Obama’s two-term presidency. The result is a cohesive body of work representing a multitude of historic and personal moments with Obama and his family. In some, he is signing important documents, and in others, he is spending time with his family, laughing and walking with his daughter Malia or cuddling with Michelle. These paintings do not only represent his political legacy, but also encapsulate his character as a father, husband, and role model. In the Arts Bank, there is no more wall space. Red and blue portraits with drippy white paint line the walls from floor to ceiling, and the paintings that don’t fit are stacked on shelves. The images start to blur together the farther away the viewer is, cementing the idea of a “single body” of work. Pruitt wanted the walls to resemble the marble that constitutes the monuments in the nation’s capital. Each image is based on
a photograph of President Obama on a different day in which he was in office. While each painting is unique up close, the full display creates an unchronological story starting with Obama’s inauguration on January 20, 2009 and ending with his retirement from office in 2017. The paintings are not displayed in any particular order, emphasizing that they are not meant to be a factual retelling. Many of the paintings are based on iconic photographs, such as Barack and Michelle hugging in the Oval Office, or the President awarding Vice President Joe Biden the Medal of Honor. By transforming these photos into paintings, Pruitt does not alter the image itself, but rather highlights different features of it. According to Pruitt, “Paint is willful in a way that it is open to interpretation which creates a path for viewers to access the work…. I felt that by exaggerating its own mode of production, this legacy of presidential portraiture would burst into something less austere and more human.” On his decision to include both historical and personal moments, the artist said, “I found that by including all types of moments, from eating shaved ice to meeting the Pope, a more multidimensional portrait emerges. By treating all
Viewers consider Kira Leadholm’s large canvases at the B.A. thesis show. logan center exhibitions. photos taken by mike grittani.
courtesy of
The paintings become an emotional tribute to a loved and well-respected leader, reflecting on his character and the impact of his presidency. courtesy of ebenbach. the moments the same, by democratizing them, the work becomes like a library or record store, allowing viewers to peruse the paintings and curate their own relationship to Obama and his legacy.” Standing amongst all these paintings felt like stepping back in time, simultaneously experiencing all eight years at once. The paintings become an emotional reminder and tribute to a loved and well-respected leader, reflecting on his character and the impact of his presidency. Having the exhibit at the Stony Island Arts Bank is important in itself. It is located on the South Side, near where Obama first began his career in public service, as well as the proposed location for the Obama Presidential Center. Even though many of the depicted scenes take place in Washington, D.C., the community where Obama developed his voice and goals played a large part in shaping his presidency. When Pruitt began the project, he could not predict the nature of Obama’s presidency, or even whether he would be elected for a second term. He noted, “Of course you never know if you’re going to stick with a project like this [one], but I realized that my commitment to the project and its entire scope is what would activate the viewers’ feelings. In a way,
I felt that my eight-year commitment to Obama echoed his eight-year commitment to the country.” The experience became a meditative and positive ritual for him. The process itself required active thinking about politics and current events. For Pruitt, this work made him less passive. “This project helped me reacquaint myself with American politics on a daily basis and I began to approach politics with a renewed vigilance.” When Pruitt finished his last portrait at the end of Obama’s presidency, he said that rather than dwell on the work he had completed, he was motivated to remain politically engaged in protest against the incoming administration. “This might come as a surprise but there was no great flood of emotion upon finishing the last painting…. In a way, making the Obama Paintings equipped me with the tools to police the incoming administration and inspired me to be proactive instead of on defense.” Pruitt’s statement perfectly captures one of the themes of his work, which is that through highs and lows, through important events and seemingly unimportant ones, it is absolutely essential to be aware of politics, and to even be vocal about how you feel about them. And as demonstrated by Pruitt, art is an excelCONTINUED ON PG. 10
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“Standing amongst all these paintings felt like stepping back in time, simultaneously experiencing all eight years at once.” CONTINUED FROM PG. 9
lent vehicle for that expression. When I asked Pruitt if he had a favor-
ite among the thousands of paintings, he admitted that he did not: “I wish I had a better answer, but no, I really don’t have
a favorite. For me, it’s hard to find meaning in one when the meaning belongs to all of them.” The Obama Paintings are a
testament to the fact that their meaning and the country’s political narrative should be accessible to everyone.
Endgame: Cinematic Lessons Hitherto Undreamt Of (Spoiler-Free) By ALINA KIM Arts Reporter
And so Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) introduced The Avengers in 2012, a crossover that smashed the box office, had audience members camping outside the theater to guarantee good seats, and transformed the way in which the film industry measures its success and strategy in cinematic world-building. Spanning just over a decade, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has introduced iconic comic book superheroes such as Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor to the silver screen, while peppering in much-needed diversity with Black Panther and Captain Marvel, among many others. Filled with witty comebacks, beautiful scenic shots (as of recently), and epic special effects, films in the MCU have emerged as pop-culture spectacles that fans eagerly await every year. Following an agonizing wait after last year’s Infinity War’s cliffhanger ending, audience members hushed one another as the lights dimmed, cheered at climactic highs, and sat in stunned silence at the end credits. Lingering after the screen turned black, I couldn’t help but think of what we can learn about the film industry, pop culture, and ourselves from the smashing success of Endgame and the MCU. Superheroes don’t just kick ass and smile for the camera. They symbolize the best of humanity, our loyalty to the public, and our hopes of fighting for good and triumphing over evil. But the MCU puts a twist on this notion, instead asking, “But what if superheroes aren’t as good as we envision them to be?” “Avengers, assemble” is Captain America’s (Chris Evans) famous call to action, calling forth Earth’s mightiest heroes to
battle against the greatest threats humanity has known. And yet, the Avengers chose sides, allowed personal feelings to manipulate their stance on the Sokovia Accords, and questioned each other’s worth. Because of this strain on their leadership and friendship, they faced failure through Thanos’s (Josh Brolin) snap, losing friends and family, and jeopardizing their trust in one another. Our heroes were utterly crushed and defeated, not only by a villain, but also by their flaws as individuals. The last time we saw him before Endgame, Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) was mourning the death of his mentee, Peter Parker (Tom Holland). His morale had been weakened by his fear of loss. On the other hand, Captain America was more adamant about facing Thanos again, his persistence spurred on by his refusal to surrender and his undying optimism. Even in the aftermath of universal devastation, the two wielded polarizing perspectives—a lasting shadow reminding us of their fractured relationship. Now, they must swallow their pride and meet each other halfway. The Avengers saga also discusses the struggle to discover one’s identity and place in the world. A consequentialist, Thanos wrestles with his philosophy, realizing he possesses the strength to wear the Infinity Gauntlet and, in his view, become the savior of the universe. With great power comes great responsibility. Thanos succumbs to this absurdly godlike power, allowing it to corrupt him into believing that salvation comes through endless slaughter. He is somewhat morally ambiguous—there is perhaps good intention underlying his evil murderous crimes. So, what does responsible power look like? Is fighting injustice with inhumane action ever just? What makes us push against
Thanos’s logic? We don’t have it entirely figured out, and that’s the legacy of the cinematic experience that the MCU has given us, which Endgame continues to achieve and develop.
The Avengers saga, along with all the smash hits Marvel Studios has produced, has redefined our perceptions of the movie-going experience. Endgame CONTINUED ON PG. 11
courtesy of marvel studios
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is continuously breaking records in terms of gross and profit, with superhero movies dominating the popularity charts nationwide. The concept of a “universe” has inspired other franchises to do the same: a Godzilla-led MonsterVerse, the failed Dark Universe, the DC Extended Universe, and the Unbreakable Universe, to name a few. Comedic superheroes have risen to prominence with Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor: Ragnarok, and Deadpool,
becoming breakout hits. And, of course, the MCU is only one of several franchises in which diversity is gradually being done right. But, certainly, the good comes with the bad in pop culture—important lessons can be noted from this. Leading up to Endgame, fans have scoffed at other enthusiastic fans, downplaying their value as “real fans” based on knowledge of the comics. Those who did not enjoy Endgame received major backlash, receiving personal insults on the basis
of that opinion. MCU fan culture has inflated, but parts of it have become exclusive, a brand of entitlement belonging only to the “fans who have been there since the beginning.” The truth is, Endgame is for everyone. Sure, there is a lot of catching up to do for newer fans, but its cultural importance is too vast for it to be so limited to a select few. All in all, Endgame met my high expectations. It kissed goodbye to the end of an era, but cherished it with bittersweet conclusions. It made me cheer on
the old team, respect the new generation, and anticipate what’s to come. It made me question my values, feel pangs of sympathy, and still laugh through it all. However, nothing I say will resonate unless the movie is seen in all of its glory. Perhaps not perfect, it has many lessons to teach, accumulated from the past decade and beyond. And for that reason, this movie will leave a legacy.
O’Shea Jackson, Jr. Looks Far Ahead with Long Shot By PATRICK EGAN Arts Reporter
On April 19, Doc Films hosted an advance screening of *Long Shot*, the upcoming romantic comedy starring Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron in what could be her comedy breakout. The plot is driven by the relationship between Fred Flarsky (Rogen), a gonzo journalist, and Charlotte Field (Theron), the United States secretary of state. The film derives much of its comedy from commentary on our current political climate, but remains funny, lighthearted, and never preachy. The latest from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg rivals their past work. After the screening, I sat down with O’Shea Jackson, Jr. (*Straight Outta Compton*) who plays Fred’s best friend Lance, one of the funniest characters in the movie, and discussed *Long Shot* as well as plans for Jackson’s future. Patrick Egan: I noticed the movie incorporated politics a lot, especially contemporary politics. Do you think there’s a natural relationship between comedy and politics? O’Shea Jackson, Jr.: Yeah. The beauty about doing a smart comedy is we take heavy topics that are serious business and we present it in a lighthearted manner. Through a smart comedy you plant the seed, you at least get people thinking about it without being too aggressive on one side. It’s not meant to offend anybody. You don’t want to make a movie for half the country—it
just wouldn’t make sense. We make sure we balance it out with Lance’s character and his big twist. It’s just about finding the balance of not offending either side, letting them both get their tiny victories, and realizing the common goal is just making a funny movie. PE: Do you think you have any personal ties or affinities with your character? OJ: My whole thing is if I think it’s good, I can make somebody think it’s great. Some of what I based Lance off of is a mix of me and my friend Pasha. I say that my friend Pasha can sell water to a drowning man. Somebody who doesn’t need it at all and thinks, “Alright, yeah, maybe I’ll take some.” And that’s Pasha. Pasha can just make you believe. And so I wanted that. I wanted to be just the super enthusiastic homie, you know? Just the ultimate wingman: *We gotta do this! We gotta climb this mountain whether you like it or not.* And that’s who Lance is. PE: Who do you think should go see *Long Shot*? What kind of audiences would like it the most? OJ: It’s definitely something that you want to experience in theaters just because of the soundtrack. You know, it’s got some jams in it. It’s funny! It’s just funny all the way through. You could see it with friends or family, sober or wasted! PE: Do you think you’ll go on and do more comedy in the future? OJ: I will take on all checks that they try to give me! But it is for sure some-
courtesy of doc films
thing that I want to do. I wanted to establish myself as a dramatic actor first before I ventured into comedy because I feel that it’s easier to do that transition from drama to comedy than it is from comedy to drama. If you see somebody who makes you laugh all the time, and then they want you to take them serious in a serious role, it’s just harder to do. I made sure I strategized each role after *Straight Outta Compton* to let them know that, yes, I take my acting seriously. I try to be the best thespian I can be. PE: Do you see yourself continuing to pursue your rap career, or are you just mostly focused on acting now? OJ: Right now it’s mostly on acting. To stay in music, I started pro-
ducing. You know, when you do lyrics sometimes they can typecast you into one type of role. There’s certain roles my dad just won’t get, because he’s Ice Cube. They won’t consider him for it, and I didn’t want that. Producing is a way to stay within music and stay behind the scenes while still being able to create a song and work with artists, but, like I said, *all checks!* I’m open to all checks, and the dream is to somehow get involved into video games. I’m a video game nerd, dude. My whole goal is to be the guy who gets video game movies right. Even if I gotta write them myself, direct them myself. That’s the goal. Long Shot comes out in theaters on Friday, May 3.
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I Tried Every Item on the Menu at Gorée Cuisine and Everything Was Spectacular By ADAM CHAN Arts Reporter
Lucky diners will find Gorée Cuisine at 1126 E. 47th Street. Passersby may not take notice of the unassuming storefront, and most UChicago students may have never heard of it, but those fortunate enough to venture inside will be in for a treat. The responses of the numerous friends I have brought to Gorée range from expressions of pleasant surprise to those of sheer ecstasy, and everyone has become a returning customer. Owner Adama Ba modeled Gorée Cuisine after a similar restaurant owned by his family on Gorée Island in Dakar, Senegal. The Senegalese staff are gracious and accommodating. The restaurant proudly displays Senegalese culture, with Senegalese paintings decorating the walls and
TVs showing West African music videos and clips of Senegalese wrestling. There is even a clothing store, Gorée Shop, that sells Senegalese clothing next door. Though originally unfamiliar with Senegalese food, I have tried every item on the menu by now, and can vouch that every dish is tremendous. My personal favorite is the maffe, a peanut-butter-and-tomato stew that comes with lamb (though there is also a vegetarian option). While initially skeptical about the combination, I was won over by the creamy, savory mixture that complements the white rice nicely. Although everything is delicious, some highlights are the Dibi chicken—a simple but delicious dish of grilled chicken with peppers and onions, spiced to perfection—and the Méchoui (leg of lamb). Two of my friends who ordered this dish
described it as “the best leg of lamb I ever had,” and “possibly the best meal I ever had.” Additionally, I highly recommend the whole grilled tilapia—even though I hate tilapia and dislike eating whole fish, this was one of the best pieces of fish I’ve ever eaten. The Thiou curry, which is similar to Indian curry and which comes with chicken or lamb, or as a vegetarian dish, is also a strong option. Sides are a must, and, luckily, every entrée comes with a free side. You can’t go wrong with any of the choices. The fully caramelized plantains are possibly the best plantains I’ve ever had. The sautéed cabbage may sound bland, but is actually very tasty. The djolof rice, a Senegalese staple, and the scrumptious attiéké (cassava couscous) are also terrific. Portions are large and very filling, and all the dishes are reasonably priced, rang-
ing from $12.50 to $20 for main courses. Gorée Cuisine is a highlight of the Hyde Park dining scene and should not be missed. I encourage everyone to try it. You won’t regret it.
The dibi chicken.
adam chan
SPORTS Homecoming: Former Assistant Named Soccer’s Head Coach By THOMAS GORDON Sports Reporter
Last month, the UChicago athletic department hired former UChicago assistant coach Pat Flinn as the new head coach of the men’s soccer team. Erin McDermott, University of Chicago director of athletics and recreation, said, “We had the opportunity in hiring Pat to bring an instrumental part of our team’s recent rise and consistent success back to UChicago as the leader of this program.” Could this homecoming be what the team needs to continue to grow and reach the goal of winning the national championship? Many past players have come out in support of Flinn from his previous time at UChicago between 2014–2016. One of them was the leader of last year’s team, Nicco Capotosto, a fourth-year midfielder graduating in a few weeks. When asked about what difference Flinn made during his time at the school, Capotosto respond-
ed, “I think there are a handful of guys who have helped get the program to where it is, and Pat was one of the most important. Before he left, he helped morph us into a team that could press at the right moments, win the ball high up the field, and counter quickly. In his last year at Chicago, we had one of the best defensive records in the program’s history, and the tactical concepts and ideas he implemented played a huge role.” The transformation of the team into a pressing team that limited the attacking possession of the other team was vitally important in the Maroons’ best ever defensive season in 2016. In addition to his tactical insight, Capotosto depicts Flinn as a coach that people want to play for: “As a coach, he’s one of those leaders that players absolutely love fighting for. He’s as passionate as anyone out there and has the desire to not just maintain the program’s status but to take it to the next level and win a national championship.” Players are excited
to start off spring practice with their new head coach and put in the foundation for a successful season. In a recent interview with Flinn, it was evident how excited he was about this program and the future that he envisions. When asked about coming back to Chicago, Flinn stated, “I had an unbelievably positive experience as an assistant at UChicago from ’14 to ’16. I was ready to lead a program, so it was a no-brainer when this position opened to go all-in trying to get it. I am just thankful that Erin McDermott gave me the opportunity to come back as head coach.” Additionally, Flinn felt that the experience away from UChicago was extremely beneficial: “Babst and I have known each other for a long time, so going to Loyola was an opportunity for me to re-establish myself in a much less comfortable setting. This was great for my development; I feel like I have become much more efficient and organized as I re-established myself with a
boss that I did not have a prior established relationship with. Recruiting at Loyola is a little harder too; there are more options similar to Loyola for good players, so building a strong team has more challenges in that way. Whereas UChicago is a little more unique and has less competition from very similar universities. In that regard, I think my ability to recruit has improved.” When asked about the championship aspirations that the program has, Flinn didn’t think of it as a burden. Instead, it is “an amazing opportunity,” and he is “confident that as the current team gains experience throughout the season that we can again reach the NCAA tournament with a team good enough to beat anyone. If we keep giving ourselves a chance, we will eventually reach the finish line.” Overall, it is an exciting time for the program and its bright future. Flinn says it best: “Come out and support us! The team will play very hard and will proudly represent the University every time we compete.”
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Maroons Rally to Beat Carroll, Secure Conference No. 2 Seed By SHANYU HOU Sports Reporter
Down a point in the last three minutes of their conference game against Carroll University, the UChicago lacrosse team bounced back and scored twice. They ended the game with a score of 13–12, taking the win. This was a close game. Despite the terrible weather, first-year midfielder Karina Schulze displayed an impressive performance, scoring four goals and making four assists. First-year midfielder Ali Sheehy came through and scored three times, including the winning goal. Third-year goalkeeper Honor Crandell made three saves. The Maroons showed tremendous teamwork as they picked up yet another victory. The first shot was made by firstyear attacker Lally Johnson less than a
minute after the game started, but went wide. Not long after, Schulze scored the first goal for the Maroons with an unassisted strike 77 seconds into the game, putting pressure on the other team. She then assisted another successful goal made by Sheehy. Carroll did not back down as they quickly tied the score. The teams went back and forth, but Carroll took the lead with 10 minutes left in the first half. The Maroons fought back as Sheehy made a shot and first-year Audrey Kaus followed with two consecutive goals, putting the Maroons back in the lead and ending the first half with 7–5. In the second half, the Maroons once again took control as Johnson scored the first goal unassisted, maintaining the lead. Carroll quickly responded, catching up to the Maroons and reducing the deficit. Crandell was able to
make two saves, slowing down Carroll. The match bounced back and forth as one team scored one after another, tying the game at 11–11 with less than seven minutes left. In the last four minutes of the game, Carroll kept its momentum rolling and recaptured the lead at 12–11. The Maroons were left with three minutes to take back their win. Kaus was able to bring back the momentum by scoring a goal assisted by Schulze, tying the game once again at 12–12. With only two minutes left in the game, both teams fought hard for the win, strengthening both their offense and defense. With one minute and 45 seconds left, Sheehy came through with the winning goal assisted by Schulze. Carroll attempted to attack again and gained possession in the last few seconds, but they did not have a chance to take a shot. The Maroons secured their win.
The Maroons had the statistical advantage: 31–19 in shots, 18–10 in draw controls, 31–28 in ground balls, and 23–24 in turnovers. Schulze recounts, “The game was tough because of the snow and rain, but we were able to finish on our shots and win the 50/50 battles. Playing in that type of weather always makes the game more intense, and our team was able to rise up to the challenge.” The Maroons gained their victory with a close call, ending the game with 13–12 and improving their record to 14–2 after winning another game against Carthage on Saturday, April 27. They hope to maintain the winning streak as they play North Central at home on Wednesday, May 1, in the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin tournament.
Men Suffer Upset, No. 1 Emory Edge Women in UAA Action By MATTHEW LEE Sports Reporter
Men’s and women’s tennis finished off their seasons excellently with each taking podium finishes at the UAA championships over the weekend. Men’s tennis placed third in the University Athletic Association while women’s tennis finished second. For the number one Maroon men, the weekend began on Friday, April 26, against number eight Rochester. Chicago breezed through their quarterfinal opponents five wins to zero losses in their quest to defend last year’s championship before facing off with the 10th-ranked Brandeis Judges. In a disappointing surprise, the Maroons fell in a close 5–3 loss, ending the hope of a repeat first-place title. Strong performances by second-year Alejandro Rodriguez—who won in two sets, 6–1 and 6–2—and first-year Alex Guzvha— two sets of 6–4—proved unable to stem Brandeis’s advance. Still, the Maroons’ weekend was not over just yet, and they were able to redeem themselves at Sunday’s third-place match against hated rivals Wash U. The Maroons trapped the
seventh-ranked Washington Bears 5–1, led by an incredible sweep by all three doubles teams: third-years Erik Kerrigan and Ninan Kumar; fourth-year Charlie Pei and first-year Joshua Xu; and third-year Tyler Raclin and second-year Jeremy Yuan. The Maroon men also had success in singles, with Guzvha winning his match 6–2 and 6–3 and Kerrigan triumphing in a drawn out 2–6, 7–6 (7–4), 6–4 contest. The future of Maroon men’s tennis will be revealed next Monday, when the NCAA tournament field will be revealed. Meanwhile, women’s tennis got off to a flying start Thursday, April 25, with a 5–0 triumph against a hapless Wash U team. Though every Maroon performed admirably, first-year Eugenia Lee stood out with a flawless 6–0, 6–0 victory over her Wash U opponent. Women’s tennis’s success continued in Friday’s quarterfinal match, where they seized a 5–0 victory over Brandeis in the semifinal match. Top performers include first-year Annika Pandey, who won two straight to finish the match at 6–1, 6–1; and first-year Lauren Park, who paired a 6–0 and a 6–2 to vanquish
her opponent. Despite being undefeated in earlier rounds, the Maroons found first-seeded Emory University a much more difficult opponent. After nine laborious matches, the Maroons fell in a heart-breaking 5–4 nail-biter on Saturday; first-year Eugenia Lee narrowly fell to her Emory Eagle opponent in a 6–7 (4–7), 6–2, 6–4 bout. This makes the 2019 season the third straight to end
with women’s tennis taking the second step on the podium at the UAA championships. Like the Maroon men, women’s tennis awaits a possible at-large bid to the NCAA Division III championships on May 10.
UPCOMING GAMES SPORT
Lacrosse Track and Field Baseball
OPPONENT North Central Loras Beloit
DAY May 1 May 3 May 4
TIME 7 p.m. TBD 1 p.m.
SCOREBOARD SPORT
Baseball Men’s Tennis Women’s Lacrosse Women’s Tennis
W/L L W W L
OPPONENT St. Norbert WashU Carthage Emory (UAA s)
SCORE 5–7 5–1 20–5 4–5
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Buoyed by Standouts, Track and Field Finishes at UAA By DANIEL ZEA Sports Reporter
Escaping Saturday’s unexpected spring snowfall, the Maroon Track and Field teams traveled to Atlanta this past weekend to compete in the two-day University Athletic Association (UAA) Outdoor Championships. Unlike the rest of campus, the teams encountered temperatures that reached as high as 81°F, presenting the Maroons with one of their warmest competition environments this season. However, the heat did not seem to affect the teams’ performances, as both the men and women enjoyed top-five finishes. A number of strong individual performances for both squads led the women to
take second overall, while the men captured fourth place. Propelled by several topthree finishes, the women put forth a solid effort in their quest for the UAA title. In short distance events, thirdyear Mary Martin enjoyed two third-place finishes in both the 100– and 200–meter races. Meanwhile, fourth-year Nicole VacaGuzman made it two competitions in a row that she has come out on top in the 800–meter, winning the event again this weekend. However, the women truly dominated in long-distance events, with first-year distance runner Henry Myers remarking, “I thought the best performance of the weekend came from the women’s long-distance runners, who scored a total of 33
points in the [5,000–meter] and [10,000–meter].” Thirdyears Claire Brockway and Maggie Boudreau took third and fourth respectively in both events, while second-year Abigail Shoemaker enjoyed a second-place finish in the 10,000– meter. The women also found success in both relays and field events with third-year Laura Darcey winning the high jump and taking second in the long jump, bested only by first-year teammate Isabel Maletich who won the event. As for the men, a number of excellent individual performances helped the team place in the top five. First-year Cameron Edgington took fourth in the 400–meter hurdles, while also adding to the team total with his effort in the 110–me-
ter hurdles. Meanwhile, thirdyear Tyson Miller collected two top-five finishes in the 100– and 200–meters. In distance events, Henry Myers built off his previous success at the Wheaton Don Church Twilight Meet with a third-place finish in the 5,000–meter. Finally, in field events, third-year Alex Scott may have had the most influential performance of the weekend as he took home three top-three finishes, singlehandedly scoring 24 points with his third-place finish in discus, second-place finish in shot put, and first-place victory in the hammer throw. While both the men and women hoped to return to Hyde Park with UAA titles, both teams still competed valiantly, prevailing in several
events. With nearly a month left in the outdoor season and the NCAA Division III Outdoor Championships on the horizon, both the men and women will look to improve upon this past weekend’s successes as the season continues. Reflecting on the UAA Championships and looking forward to the rest of the season, Henry Myers stated that he felt the heat in Atlanta “offered a good mental challenge for the distance team as we prepare to run fast and qualify for Nationals in the next couple weeks.” With the weather continuing to warm up, the Maroons will get their next chance to compete on Friday, May 3, when the team travels to Loras College for the Dr. Tucker Open.
From Hyde Park to the Pros: Former Maroon Athletes Pursue Careers in Athletics By DIESTEFANO LOMA Sports Editor
At the University of Chicago, aside from being recognized as one of the most prestigious institutions for higher education, its student-athletes also bring the intensity to their sports teams in order to compete at a high level. After their time in UChicago has to come to an end, these athletes have gone on to follow their passion and become involved in their respective sports, whether it’s as a professional athlete, as a coach, or on the business end. From the inception of sports programs on campus like baseball, UChicago athletes have worked hard to play professionally. Henry Clarke was the first player in the baseball program to make it to the
Major League level. He debuted on June 26, 1897, at the age of 21, for the Cleveland Spiders. He was followed throughout the 20th century by the likes of Speed Kelly, Charlie Blackburn, Jack Boyle, and Art Lopatka. These alums would have short lived stints in Major League Baseball, but the most notable one came to be Roy Henshaw. Aside from playing professionally for close to a decade, Henshaw was also inducted into the UChicago Athletics Hall of Fame in 2003. More recently, Mark Mosier was an alum that was drafted by the San Francisco Giants in 1997 and spent two years playing in the minor leagues. As the University of Chicago Athletics Hall of Fame stated, “Roy Henshaw was a standout pitcher for the Chicago baseball
team from 1930-32. Following his playing career, during which he gained All-America recognition, Henshaw spent eight years in Major League Baseball, including a three-year stint with the Chicago Cubs (193336). He posted a 13-5 mark for the Cubs in 1935.” In professional football, there were UChicago alums playing dating back to 1922 up until 1941. This was during the Big Ten era. On record, there are 20 alums that played professional football after college. Alums like Milt Romney, Saul Sherman, Ralph King, Fred Hobscheid, and Lewis Hamity played for the Chicago Bears. While alums haven’t followed the path of being professional athletes as often, they remain involved in professional sports in other capacities, and
excel in it. Italo Zanzi (AB’96), a sports business executive, became the CEO of AS Roma, a professional soccer team in the Italian League, Serie A. He was a soccer player throughout his time at UChicago and combined the love of the sport he played with what he’s skilled in academically. Kim Ng (AB’90) played softball throughout her time at UChicago, and is currently the Senior Vice-President for Baseball Operations with Major League Baseball. Prior to that, she worked with the Chicago White Sox as the Assistant Director of Baseball Operations. Adam Cushing (AB’02) went from representing the UChicago football team at Stagg field to becoming the head football coach at Eastern Illinois University. Previously, he spent
14 seasons as the offensive line coach for Northwestern University’s football team. His offensive line blocked for the most productive running back and quarterback in program history. Similarly, Matt Limegrover (AB’91) played football and coached at various universities like Northwestern University, Northern Illinois University, and the University of Minnesota. Ultimately, he became the offensive line coach at Penn State University. What can be seen is how UChicago alums have transitioned well from playing sports in college to being involved in professional sports in different capacities. It requires what they learn on the field and off it in order to gain success, and the network of players in the sports only continues to grow.
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VIEWPOINTS
Selectivity Doesn’t Equal Quality University Admission Metrics Do Not Reflect Quality of Life and Education at Any Gven School
NATALIE DENBY
If you had told me a few months ago that the entire nation would spend its spring debating the ethics of the Full House and Desperate Housewives casts, I would’ve thought you were insane. But in the wake of the college admissions scandal, Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman’s faces have become utterly inescapable. As much as you can’t help but
be entertained by the salacious details, it’s just as difficult to wrap your mind around the underlying point: the extraordinary measures folks will take to get their kid admitted into USC. But if the sophistication of the scheme is stunning, and the amount paid in bribes mind-boggling, the fact that higher education has shady or
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outright criminal backdoors is not surprising at all. Top tier colleges have always been “selective,” but in recent years that selectivity has morphed into something that looks like Powerball odds. UChicago’s recently announced admissions rate, in the 5 percent range, isn’t unique—Harvard’s, for instance, is lower still—and colleges in the top echelon have driven their admission rates down tremendously. Current students tend to view those numbers with a kick of pride. Nothing quite says exclusivity like knowing there are 19 rejected candidates for each admission. But the admissions process isn’t healthy, and neither is the ranking system that motivates it. An excellent Maroon column by Ruby Rorty recently explored economic injustice and U.S. News and World Report’s rankings. Those are extraordinarily weighty issues. On top of our failure to account for economic fairness in college rankings, I’d add that as long as we think of a college’s prestige in terms of selectivity, we’re not going to have the tools to adequately measure quality. The race to become the most selective institution is driven by a deeply rooted sense that “selective” means “really, really good”: a school that’s an especially picky eater must be excellent. You can spot this in how the most popular college rankings site (U.S. News) uses selectivity, in the form of average test scores and high school class standing, to drive 10 percent of its rankings, even after recently announcing that it would drop admissions rates from its methodology. Our per-
sonal experiences reflect an inclination to treasure selectivity, too. We use the phrase “highly selective” interchangeably with “top tier.” If you were awake even momentarily for your own application process, you might have found yourself deep down some rabbit hole, comparison-shopping schools’ average SAT scores on subject tests you didn’t even take. Our inclination to tie up prestige with selectivity is understandable, in the sense that selective schools are highly coveted, and coveted by highly successful students (and their Ivy League–minded parents). That market demand certainly reflects something valuable. But as quality indicators, it’s just a proxy for other traits, a preliminary sign that there’s something about a school worth pursuing, like a robust alumni network or excellent teachers. The issue is that many of those fundamental, desirable traits are either missing or only partially reflected in our rankings, whether formal (think U.S. News again) or casual (that distant cousin who can’t stop reminding you of all the Ivy League schools he thinks are better than yours). Granted, ranking systems build in information about graduation rates, retention, faculty compensation, and class size, and they have peer assessment surveys to suss out academic reputation. But these aren’t the best ways to evaluate a school. They don’t tell you how good the teachers are, what sort of doors a degree will open, or what an alumni network can do to help a graduate. More discrete out-
come measurements (better salary and career information, for instance, or a more concentrated effort to measure teacher quality) are also missing from these collegiate rankings systems—and more generally, missing from the public view altogether. U.S. News, and others, would probably argue that peer assessment surveys are intended to compensate for this gap. But you can’t simply rely on reputation-based surveys to give you information that respondents don’t have. What you’re left with is a sense of prestige that doesn’t speak to quality directly. It does, however, give every college in the country an incentive to become all the more selective, even if U.S. News has dropped the admissions rate. That’s reflected in colleges’ mass migration to the Common Application, aggressive targeting of applicants they won’t actually let in, and other moves intended to dramatically increase the applicant pool. This process may not ease too much simply because U.S. News no longer directly uses admissions rates—selectivity is still 10 percent of rankings, and admissions rates are likely factored into rankings indirectly through academic reputation. More generally, admissions rates are deeply tied to prestige in the public imagination. Admissions-related gamesmanship doesn’t improve school quality, but it certainly makes life worse for applicants. Students have to apply to more and more schools, which only drives admissions rates down further. As those of us with CONTINUED ON PG. 16
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“Admissions-related gamesmanship doesn’t improve school quality, but it certainly makes life worse for applicants.” CONTINUED FROM PG. 15
younger siblings can attest, if the term du jour for the admissions cycle was “pressure cooker” a few years ago, it’s something closer to “pressure cooker chucked into a trash compactor” today. It’s hard to make the case that this helps anyone. On top of making the application process more stressful, it doesn’t align institutional incentives with stu-
dent interests. The things schools have done to increase their standing are often unrelated to how valuable they actually are. By over-relying on selectivity as a proxy for quality, we encourage these unhealthy gambits. And we forfeit the chance to pressure colleges at all tiers to make changes that would actually help students, and better inform applicants. That might easily be achieved if colleges
were explicitly compared to each other on the basis of more informative traits: how students rank teachers on a uniform survey, how career services vary from school to school, or how satisfied students were with postgraduate placement. U.S. News was right to drop the admission rate from its methodology. It’s also right to get antsy about a reliance
on “inputs” over “outputs.” But colleges might be materially improved if these ranking systems began to incorporate more informative measures of student outcomes and college resources. It’s high time we began to demand better information. Natalie Denby is a fourth-year in the College.
Making Metcalfs Less Finance-Focused The University Needs to Offer Metcalf Internships in a Broader Range of Fields to Better Expose Students to the Many Career Options Available By MAROON EDITORIAL BOARD On the heels of widespread conversation about colleges and equity, it’s time to evaluate how UChicago funnels students into internships for the summer. On a campus where students obsess over which coveted 10-week stint will prove the most “marketable”—and in an economy where college internships do meaningfully impact students’ careers—the workings of UChicago’s career advancement office have a profound influence on undergraduate outcomes. The University’s Jeff Metcalf internship program, which places students in 10-week funded summer internships slated specifically for College students, is billed as a way for students to gain “hands-on experience in their field of interest” by working “with leading organizations in a diverse range of fields.” As it currently stands, however, these sponsored internships do not put students’ interests on a level playing field. Finance and business–related internships are vastly overrepresented, while opportunities in other areas—including STEM research, nonprofit work, media, and the arts, for example—are harder to come by. It’s worth noting, too, that this overrepresentation of finance in the Metcalf program comes even though there is a large non-Metcalf pathway for students seeking finance internships,
via the career advancement office’s recruiting partnerships with many prestigious financial firms. This bias toward certain fields undermines the Metcalf program’s goal of matching students to opportunities within their chosen area. Moreover, this underrepresentation of certain fields can create the perception that finance and business are the only fields worth pursuing, as undergraduates across majors and interests use Handshake postings to help envision potential careers. A sweeping proportion of designated Metcalf internships are in the finance and business industry. According to lists of Metcalf internships posted in the first week of each quarter during the current academic year (2018–19), internships in finance and business represented 48 percent of the total 128 internships available as of October; 44 percent of the 279 internships available as of January 4; and 42 percent of the 209 internships available as of April 5. (To give some context about how this breaks down: The 42 percent calculation from April 5 refers to 54 internships in investment and portfolio management, 12 in investment banking, 12 in advertising, public relations, and marketing, four in commercial banking and credit, four in insurance, and one in accounting.) Does this distribution of internships mean that Handshake is simply
meeting students’ demands? Actually, that doesn’t seem to be the case. It’s not clear that students are clamoring for this hefty proportion of finance-related Metcalf offerings. Taking college major as one metric of job aspirations (even though, of course, not all economics majors go into finance, and some students who enter the finance industry study subjects other than economics), 26 percent of the 3,886 College students who have declared a major are economics majors. (This figure, pulled from winter 2019 enrollment figures, includes double majors.) Yes, 26 percent is a high number— but it’s nowhere near 42 percent. It’s worth noting, too, that this 26 percent is likely informed by Handshake’s overrepresentation of finance internships. As students see that there are so many opportunities available in finance, they may be more likely to study economics and pursue a business career. This is not to say that it’s reasonable to expect the Metcalf program to have a perfect representation of all fields UChicago undergraduates are interested in. It makes sense that some industries would be underrepresented; technology, for instance, stands out as a field where students may be able to obtain higher-paid positions outside of the UChicago pipeline. But this reasoning should apply to finance, too. Financial firms can afford
to pay their college interns at a significantly higher rate than the typical stipend for a Metcalf internship. They also have the resources to advertise their own paid internship programs, unlike the more cash-strapped university laboratories, government agencies, and nonprofits. Additionally, many prestigious finance and consulting firms, such as Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, have long-established relationships with Career Advancement—and therefore long-time exposure to students— through recruiting partnerships and other non-Metcalf programming such as treks, specialty advising tracks, and more. One potential counterargument to this is that students in industries that are underrepresented in the Metcalf program can simply find unpaid opportunities on their own and then apply for University funding, through grants earmarked for internships generally or specifically for research or public-sector work. We argue, however, that this misses the point. For one, University funding for unpaid jobs is scarce and highly competitive. Many grants are also much smaller amounts than the $4,000 stipend associated with a designated Metcalf internship. Furthermore, the very purpose of the Metcalf program is for students to CONTINUED ON PG. 17
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“These sponsored internships do not put students’ interests on a level playing field.” CONTINUED FROM PG. 16
learn about the wide variety of career paths available to them, and to be able to draw from a list of employers who have already cultivated relationships with Career Advancement. Instead of opening students’ eyes to the variety of career options possible, the limited
industries reflected in the Metcalf postings prevent students from seeing all the postgraduate opportunities available to them. The Metcalf program has tremendous potential as a way for students who need to earn money over the summer to do meaningful work and refine their
postgraduate goals. It’s imperative, therefore, that the program reflects the vast breadth of industries that students might consider entering after earning a UChicago degree. The Maroon Editorial Board thus argues that Career Advancement should reconsider how it allocates positions within its sponsored
internship program, specifically between the finance industry and seemingly less lucrative industries including research and politics, and seek more feedback from students in the process.
Students Must Boycott U.S. Gov’t Agencies That Grossly Violate Human Rights The Ethical Area Studies Coalition Encouraged Students to Boycott Governmental Agencies Like the CIA That Engage in Human Rights Violations By THE ETHICAL AREA STUDIES COALITION On Tuesday, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) hosted an informational session on campus about internships and careers at the CIA. We, the Ethical Area Studies Coalition (EASC), rallied outside their event at Ida Noyes Hall in order to draw attention to the agency’s abysmal human rights record. As students with a conscience who study regions of the world that have suffered at the hands of U.S. imperialism, we stand against the weaponization of area studies (fields of scholarship focused on geographical or cultural regions) by the U.S. government. We call upon our fellow students to pledge not to cooperate with U.S. government agencies and departments implicated in gross human rights violations—in particular, the CIA, Department of Homeland Security, as well as the Department of Defense (DOD) and U.S. Armed Forces. Universities have played an instrumental role in the consolidation and expansion of the U.S. military-industrial complex in the post–World War II era. Since the promulgation of the National Defense Education Act in 1958, the U.S. government has actively funded area studies centers around the country as “national resources for teaching any modern foreign language,” with a specific focus on “critical languages” seen as vital to U.S. foreign policy interests. This benign facade conceals the position of U.S. academia as recruiting grounds for the repressive programs of the U.S.
government and foreign governments. Harvard, the staging-ground for this paradigm, has furnished war-planning luminaries such as Henry Kissinger and Samuel Huntington to serve the ends of American Cold War foreign policy. More recently, Bernard Lewis, a renowned scholar of Islamic history, served as an adviser to the George W. Bush administration on the Iraq War. Here at the University of Chicago, professor Milton Friedman helped craft the neoliberal economic policy of Chilean General Augusto Pinochet’s authoritarian regime, which generated widespread poverty and crippling debt. The CIA boasts a long track record of human rights abuses around the world. Throughout its history, the CIA has orchestrated a litany of coups and assassinations that have crushed democratic movements across the Global South, making self-determination near impossible for millions of people. In 1953, the agency organized a coup that toppled Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran, returning the country to authoritarian rule for the sake of British and American oil interests. It even plotted the assassination of President Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. Throughout the 1980s, the agency trained right-wing death squads and counterrevolutionaries in Nicaragua. Moreover, in the 21st century, the CIA has run black sites around the world where it has illegally detained and tortured people. In fact, a former administrator of one of these black sites, Gina Haspel, currently heads the agency.
Similarly, students ought to be wary of DOD and the U.S. Armed Forces. Since the end of World War II, the U.S. military has distinguished itself as the single greatest threat to international peace and security. During the U.S. invasion and occupation of Vietnam, the U.S. military murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians, poisoning millions more via its extensive use of agent orange and other toxic defoliants. More recently, U.S. Special Operations forces have often disregarded international law in their engagements abroad. The wars in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan indicate that, for the American war machine in the new millennium, “business as usual” prevails. Last week Amnesty International released a report detailing the indiscriminate U.S.–led assault on the Syrian city of Raqqa, which saw entire families wiped out. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should be readily identifiable to the student body as a U.S. department non grata. DHS has administered the American “War on Terror” by profiling and entrapping Muslims through leveraging the legal cover of the Patriot Act. DHS today manages a string of migrant internment camps along the U.S.–Mexico border in coordination with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Health and Human Services. Judging from the pronouncements of the president and his officials, the intention behind this physical and emotional violence on migrants was to deter other refugees and asylum seekers from coming to the United States.
Assuming the definition of terrorism is violence inflicted upon a civilian population for a political purpose, especially for the sake of intimidating or terrorizing a specific group of onlookers, then the DHS policy of child separation definitely constitutes terrorism. The EASC opposes the perversion of area studies knowledge and language proficiency to serve the CIA, DOD, and DHS’s chauvinistic foreign and domestic agendas. Instead, we pledge to commit our time and resources to the promotion of human rights in our regions of study via community engagement, consciousness-raising, and solidarity with those who are demanding and defending their freedom and dignity. EASC draws together individuals and organizations across campus, united in a vision for peace and justice for all. This Tuesday, April 30, at 1:30 pm, we rallied in front of Ida Noyes Hall to protest the CIA information session. We hope that you join us in standing against the weaponization of knowledge and for the responsible use of academic expertise. Editor’s Note: Verb tenses in this article were updated from the version published online to reflect that the protest had already occurred at the time of print publication.
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From Ex Lib Yogurts to Attacking Admissions Practices lawyer leading affirmative action suit against harvard reflects on his time at uchicago By ALICE CHENG Grey City Reporter
Adam Mortara, the lead trial counsel for Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) in their lawsuit against Harvard University, was a high school slacker. While his young clients’ whole lives have revolved around school and getting into college, Mortara would refuse to turn in homework assignments and either skipped or slept in class. Mortara felt his spare time was better spent playing Dungeons and Dragons and working on his underground newspaper. Cs and Ds decorated his report card. He took his AP Physics examination in crayon. In his senior year of high school, Mortara accrued approximately fifty detentions, the vast majority of which he ultimately never served. “Succeeding in high school was not particularly interesting [to me],” Mortara said. “I was smart enough to get by without doing anything, and so I did nothing.” In contrast with Mortara, SFFA appellants are high-achieving Asian Americans who have done everything right—and who feel cheated by the college application system on the basis of their race and wish to correct the flaw of race-conscious admission practices. Given Mortara’s subpar high school record and his brother’s enrollment at the University of Chicago, his college application process raises questions as to whether Mortara possibly benefited from legacy preferences. “It is possible, but I have no way of knowing whether that’s true,” Mortara said. “But I don’t have any doubt that I belonged at the University of Chicago.” He further pointed out that acceptance rates for the University of Chicago were close to 50 percent and admitted that, had
he applied today, he would never have received an offer of admission. While Mortara was a high school slacker, he was anything but lazy in college. Mortara estimates that he closed out the Regenstein Library at least half the nights he spent on campus. He left Hyde Park fewer than 12 times throughout all four years of college. “My idea of a date was studying at the Regenstein and maybe meeting…a woman that maybe I already knew and then say[ing], ‘Would you like to go for a yogurt at Ex Libris?’” he said. When he wasn’t studying or working in the lab, Mortara worked as the business co-chair for Doc Films. He graduated with a B.S. in chemistry and an offer of membership to the graduate research fellowship of the National Science Foundation (NSF), then went to the University of Cambridge to study astrophysics on a Marshall Scholarship. Mortara attributes much of his transformation to his older brother, Justin Mortara (A.B. ’92), who, upon entering the University, adopted a new work ethic and sent home grades that Mortara distinctly remembered being proudly displayed on the fridge. “Human Being and Citizen—A. Self, Culture, and Society—A. Honors Freshman Physics—A,” Mortara said. Mortara also wanted to make his father, whom he did not have a relationship with at the time, proud. Mortara speculated this was due to his father viewing him as a disappointment. “Constantly getting into trouble, not doing well in school will do that to you,” Mortara said. “But he was paying for college, and in that sense, I felt very obligated.” Every quarter, Mortara would call home to remind his father that he was paying for more than a straight-A
chemistry student. “It clearly made him happy, and it made me happy to make him happy,” Mortara said. Mortara didn’t seriously consider studying law until one night during his final year at the University of Cambridge, when he received a phone call from an old lab colleague informing him that one of his closest mentors at the time, the chairman of the chemistry department, Jeremy Burdett, had suddenly passed away. This left Mortara’s chemistry ambitions hamstrung. “I think the first thing I said was something to the effect of, ‘This is a joke in really poor taste,’” Mortara said. Burdett had gone to Cambridge’s Magdalene College, which Mortara attended under his Marshall Scholarship. Upon finishing his scholarship, Mortara intended on tendering his fellowship offer and completing his Ph.D. under Burdett’s mentorship. “I realized that I had defined myself so narrowly [with] what I wanted to do in chemistry that…Jeremy’s death took away from me what I wanted to do next.” Law school was an opportunity to start his life over. His college friends told him he would love it. He decided to go back to Hyde Park to attend the University of Chicago Law School, realizing how much he wanted to be in the neighborhood again. After graduation, Mortara worked as a law clerk under Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas from 2002 to 2003. At the time, the affirmative action case Grutter v. Bollinger was on trial, in which rejected white applicant Barbara Grutter accused the University of Michigan Law School for using race as a “predominant” factor in their
admissions process. Through this first real exposure to the legal landscape of affirmative action, Mortara came to be skeptical about those who claimed to value racial diversity. “It was quite clear to me…that the diversity for the University of Michigan and its law school was really only skindeep,” Mortara said. “They didn’t really care that there had been an incredibly lopsided female-to-male ratio within the African-American students at Michigan Law School, [and] it didn’t seem to concern them in any way, shape, or form. They just wanted black faces.” Mortara claims that he could write a whole book on the things he learned from Thomas, but settled for a piece of advice instead. “Never, ever back down on a matter of principle,” Mortara said. “And never be afraid to say what you think, because the instant you do either one of those two things, you’ve lost an essential part of yourself.” Mortara became involved in SFFA v. Harvard on the basis of one of those principles, along with another maxim: “I think one thing in life is you do have to kind of trust your friends,” Mortara said. “Trust people that have never given you a reason not to.” Last spring, a close friend of Mortara’s, William Consovoy, reached out to him for help. Consovoy’s firm, Consovoy McCarthy Park, has represented the SFFA since 2014. The firm, which has fewer than ten attorneys, was about to go head-to-head with WilmerHale, a “BigLaw” firm hired by Harvard. When Consovoy told him that the case was likely to head to trial, Mortara suggested a few names to call. Two weeks later, Consovoy called again. “I’ve decided that the person CONTINUED ON PG. 19
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that should really try this case with me is you,” he said. Initially, Mortara was extremely hesitant to join the case. “My first reaction was, ‘Oh boy, I really can’t do this…. I do not want to go down in history as the lawyer who led the crusade to end affirmative action,’” Mortara said. Though Mortara opposed affirmative action, it was never a stance that he felt passionate about. However, Consovoy told Mortara that once he joined the legal team and obtained access to the confidential evidence for the lawsuit, Mortara would realize that the Harvard lawsuit would be the most important thing he would ever do in his life. After some deliberation, Mortara agreed to help Consovoy out. Later, looking back to that phone call, Mortara realized that Consovoy was right. “I remember being moved to tears by…internal PowerPoints shared with the admissions office at Harvard acknowledging they had a bias against Asians in their system,” he said. “Back in 2014. And they did nothing.” The lawsuit, which began in 2014 and had its first federal trial this past October, charges Harvard with systemically discriminating against Asian Americans as well as implementing racial balancing and a restrictive quota in their admissions process. Part of Harvard’s admission process includes rating the applicant in five main categories, according to The New York Times: academic, extracurricular, athletic, personal, and an overall score (The Crimson listed fourteen, adding recommendations and alumni ratings, among other things). Applicants receive a score on a scale of one to six for each category, with one being the best. As evidence of discriminatory admission practices, the SFFA submitted filings demonstrating that admission officers consistently scored Asian-American applicants worse in the personal category, which accounts for things like likability, courage, and community respect, than other races. This is despite Asian-American applicants being the highest-performing racial group in the academic and extracurricular categories and receiving higher personal ratings from alumni
interviewers. The SFFA also argued that a confidential study done by Harvard’s Office of Institutional Research in 2013 proved there were discriminatory admission practices. The study stated that the college’s admission policies produced “negative effects” for Asian Americans, but the study never elicited action from Harvard. According to an article published by The Harvard Crimson, the university dismissed the results for being “inconclusive and incomplete.” The SFFA v. Harvard lawsuit has the potential to upend decades of affirmative action policies for colleges and universities across the United States, leading to its heavy scrutiny. The verdict from the first trial is expected to be released this summer, and both sides are ready to appeal to the Supreme Court. Mortara, who is Caucasian, has faced harsh criticism for his role in the SFFA v. Harvard lawsuit, due both to his race and the fact that he is effectively advocating for the end of race-conscious admission practices. When the Federalist Society invited Mortara to speak at Stanford Law School about his work on the lawsuit this past April, an e-mail sent to the Asian Pacific Islander Law Students Association (APILSA) by a concerned student mentioned him: “I am seriously horrified that Mortara is using our community to further his anti-blackness/white supremacy and feel like it’s important that we as Asian Americans at SLS rebuke him/clarify that this is not happening in our name.” About a month after the lawsuit’s first trial concluded, the U of C PanAsia Solidarity Coalition released a letter in the Chicago Maroon denouncing Mortara and his claim to allyship with Asian Americans. As far as Mortara is concerned, he could do with having more people pay attention to his work and is disappointed nobody has protested in person at his talks. “Did either of you sign the [letter] denouncing me?” he asked two other university students at our interview. Neither did, and Mortara appeared disappointed. “I think [many] younger people [today]…derive a lot of value from having
spoken on something,” Mortara said. “And not so much value from having listened.” He invited the Stanford student who sent the e-mail to talk to him about her gripes with his work after his talk. She never responded. I first met Mortara at his office near the Loop, at a firm specializing in trial practice and corporate transactions called Bartlit Beck. The firm’s building, Courthouse Place, is also steeped in legal history and has a UChicago connection: it served as the site for the Leopold and Loeb murder trial, in which two wealthy UChicago students were sentenced to life imprisonment for kidnapping and murdering a 14-yearold boy. Mortara is 45 years old and bald, putting the focus on a pair of full-frame gray glasses. His hands sometimes jab the table he’s talking over so hard that the countertop shakes a little. Mortara lectures part-time at the University of Chicago Law School, but his full-time job is at Bartlit Beck, where he works as a patent trial lawyer, with a specialty in the pharmaceuticals industry. Not everyone in court found his work for SFFA well-intentioned. “Pretty much the first time I can remember being called out in a negative way for my skin color was at the Harvard trial, where, effectively, my teammates [and I] were called out for being white,” he said. “So…over the trial I kind of made an effort to communicate to the courtroom, not just [to] the judge, but to everybody there, that I had a personal stake in this.”
Mortara’s own college application process was nothing like that of his clients’. The University of Chicago was one of only two schools to which he wanted to apply, and his interest in the college was mostly derived from his desire to follow in his brother’s footsteps, who had enrolled at the University of Chicago three years prior. Had he not been admitted to the University, Mortara would have most likely gone to the University of Minnesota, even though most of his classmates went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, just to go against the crowd. At a time when many people typed up their college applications, Mortara submitted his application to the University of Chicago in ballpoint pen. In high school, Mortara was heavily invested in learning about Chinese culture. Spanish class was the status quo and “Spanish teachers kind of hated me,” he said. Initially drawn to the unfamiliarity of Mandarin, he came to love the non-phonetic nature of the language, the challenge of memorizing Chinese characters, and the beauty of Chinese poetry. Mortara begged his parents to let him enroll in a language immersion camp called Concordia Language Villages in Becker County, Minnesota. For two summers, he spent four to five hours a day learning new characters with camp counselors who attended the Tiananmen Square protests and/or were high-ranking members of the Communist Party. CONTINUED ON PG. 20
Adam Mortara, center, stands with other SFFA lawyers. Courtesy of the Harvard Crimson.
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During the summer of his junior year, Mortara traveled extensively to cities in China, an experience he found extremely moving because of the kindness he was shown. “It was the way I was treated by the Chinese adults,” Mortara said. “The instant connection that you could build by showing that you were interested enough in their culture…I got led into people’s homes or was allowed to sleep on the floor.” Mortara’s interest in Chinese culture followed him to the University of Chicago, but when his second-year Chinese class and freshman honors chemistry class had conflicting time slots, he ultimately had to decide between furthering his studies in Chinese or chemistry, the only other subject he felt passionate about in high school. Mortara chose chemistry. At Chicago, Mortara’s closest friends were Asian-American. Mortara met his first close friend, Saleem Zafar (A.B. ’96), a Pakistani Muslim premed student and fellow chemistry major, during Mortara’s first year of college. They both ended up joining Sigma Phi Epsilon, a fraternity in which about half of its members were Asian-American. Through the fraternity, Mortara then befriended Kalpesh Patel (A.B. ’97), a Gujarati Indian Hindu, and Mike Gomez (A.B. ’97), a Catholic Filipino. Over the three weeks of the trial, Mortara attempted to leverage these experiences to communicate his personal stake in this case, including speaking Mandarin in court. “I’m here
because of my three best friends in college: Mike Gomez, Kalpesh Patel, and Saleem Zafar,” Mortara said in his closing statement. “They have children my daughter’s age. Asian children. Asian children who deserve the same chance to go to Harvard that my white daughter has.” A common concern that opponents of the lawsuit have is that Asian Americans are being used as pawns for anti-affirmative action policies. Many people against the lawsuit particularly take issue with Edward Blum, the president of the SFFA and a conservative activist commonly villainized for his history of overturning race-conscious laws. Blum is famous for his involvement in Fisher v. University of Texas, in which he helped white student Abigail Fisher sue the University of Texas on the charges that the university’s consideration of race in their admission process was unconstitutional. The university guarantees the top ten percent of each in-state graduating high school class a seat and considers race in their admissions for the remaining spots. Blum lost the lawsuit. From his personal experience, Mortara finds it hard to equate Blum with the nefarious profile online media frequently assigns to him, saying that Blum’s excitement about helping Asian-Americans is genuine. “There’s absolutely no way that Edward Blum does not feel extremely [passionately about] working to help Asian-American students get justice. That is not inconsistent with him feeling extremely
passionately that affirmative action is wrong and that it needs to be ended here.” Mortara’s attack on Harvard is also not intended to promote a whiter campus. “I would not be part of this case if I thought…that a win for Students for Fair Admissions on every claim we’re bringing would result in there being significantly lower racial diversity,” he said. According to a Supreme Court case ruling made by a previous affirmative action lawsuit, Grutter v. Bollinger, universities are not to employ racial preferences in their admission processes unless they have first had “serious, good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives.” However, Mortara does not believe that Harvard has seriously considered these alternatives. According to a study done by Richard Kahlenberg, boosting socioeconomic preferences while
reducing those for legacies and donors would enable Harvard to maintain about the same level of racial diversity. Nevertheless, Harvard claims that the analysis is flawed, stating that such an emphasis on socioeconomic preferences would drastically reduce the academic caliber and overall quality of its incoming classes. Looking forward, Mortara is optimistic that 20 to 30 years down the line, there will be books written about Harvard’s discrimination towards Asian Americans. “Those books might say that Harvard let the wolf of racial bias in through the front door,” Mortara said in his closing statement at the trial. “[Harvard’s attorneys] point out that this summer, Harvard took a small step to start to close the door.” He concluded: “We hope those books will say that this Court slammed that door shut.”