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HISTORY DEPT TO ADD 3 FACULTY MEMBERS

MAY 19, 2021 EIGHTH WEEK VOL. 133, ISSUE 26

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New Student Activism Coalition Protests University’s Treatment of Students, South Side, and International Community The UChicago Student Activist Network demanded a “people’s university,” a vision that ties the University’s relationship with its students and the South Side to its impact in international affairs.

By AVI WALDMAN Senior News Reporter Close to 100 people gathered Friday outside Levi Hall for a rally to support the demands made by a new coalition of student organizing groups, dubbed the UChicago Student Activist Network (USAN).

USAN members include UChicago United, UChicago Student Action, UChicago’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), UChicago Against Displacement, and Students for Disability Justice.

Rally organizers structured their speeches around the idea of a “people’s university,” a vision of UChicago that would replace the Board of Trustees and University administration with a council of students, staff, and community members. Organizers envision that such a body would divest University funds from policing and invest in institutions like community centers and a department of ethnic studies.

The rally highlighted USAN member organizations that haven’t previously had as much public visibility on campus as UChicago United’s #CareNotCops, #EthnicStudiesNow, and #CommunityCentersNow campaigns. Speakers emphasized the connections between campaigns targeting harmful policies on UChicago’s campus and the South Side and campaigns that

VIEWPOINTS: The Office of the Ombudsperson needs more power to support students PAGE 7

take aim at the University’s global impact, saying that they share a common root in the struggle against exploitation and the hierarchical structures of University governance.

Student organizer Gabby Kinlock from UChicago Dissenters, an anti-militarism organizing group, criticized the UChicago Crime Lab’s work with the Chicago Police Department, raising concerns about the Crime Lab’s lack of public accountability.

Kinlock also denounced UChicago’s investments in defense contractors and weapons manufacturers.

“Our money allows UChicago to invest in the largest defense contractor, Lockheed Martin…the largest guided missile manufacturer, Raytheon; Boeing; General Dynamics; and two American conglomerates whose subsidiaries manufacture components for nuclear weapons,” Kinlock said.

“You can bet that these Forbes-listed CEOs [on the Board of Trustees] and other millionaires and billionaires are always, always going to be invested in maximizing profit at the expense of the well-being of students and communities at home and abroad.”

Speaking as well on the University’s international influence, student organizers from SJP condemned the University’s ties to Israel and lack of response to the harassCONTINUED ON PG. 3

GREY CITY: How organizations serving dementia patients adapted during the pandemic PAGE 5

Rally organizers stood with banners outside Levi Hall. COURTESY OF AVI WALDMAN

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

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Chicago Public Health Commissioner Expresses Optimism, Urges Vaccinations in Student Press Conference

By MATTHEW LEE Editor-in-Chief At a press conference held for student journalists on May 12, Allison Arwady, Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) commissioner, expressed optimism about Chicago’s vaccination progress.

“At the moment, we’re at a point where we are broadly moving towards some pretty significant reopening. We’re at a point right now, different from earlier in the pandemic, where we don’t have a concern right now where the healthcare system will be overwhelmed,” Arwady said. “With this most recent increase, it’s been much more tempered because of the increase of vaccines out there.”

The city’s vaccine progress will allow for ongoing COVID restrictions to be loosened, Arwady said. “We don’t have current concern for the healthcare system being overwhelmed—you always have to put a little asterisk, if we saw variants or other things emerge, that could be a concern— and also, finally, just in the last few weeks, we’ve been able to say that anybody 16 or over in Chicago who wants a vaccine can

get one,” Arwady said. “With those two things in place, there becomes less and less need for the very large societal restrictions in terms of keeping COVID in control….

We’re really positioning a lot of our work around increasing access to that vaccine and increasing confidence in the vaccine so that people make that decision to protect themselves, their families, their communities,” she continued.

Nevertheless, low vaccine uptake among young people is still a cause for concern for CDPH officials.

“We are concerned that the youngest Chicagoans and, really, the youngest Americans that have been eligible for the vaccine are the least likely to have taken the vaccine,” Arwady said. Nationwide, disinformation, a low sense of urgency, and the fact that coronavirus cases are typically milder among younger people are driving low youth vaccination rates.

Citing data collected by the CDPH last week, Arwady said that while 45 percent of all Chicagoans have received at least a single dose of a vaccine, rates of vaccination for adults aged 18–29 are the lowest among all Chicagoans, and rates of vacci-

nation among the elderly are the highest.

This is a cause for concern, Arwady said, especially among students who are living on campus or in close settings in colleges and universities.

Arwady also discussed the ongoing inequity in access to the vaccine, especially among individuals in the 18–29 age group.

Per Arwady, although the pandemic has hit Black communities in Chicago the hardest and COVID-19 cases are most numerous among Latinx Chicagoans, Black and Latinx youth are underrepresented in vaccine uptake.

According to Arwady, more than half of both white and Asian Chicagoans 18–29 years old have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, as compared with only 39 percent of Latinx Chicagoans and 15 percent of Black Chicagoans in the same age group. The CDPH is working to reach out to younger Black and Latinx Chicagoans to improve vaccination rates through initiatives such as certifying vaccine ambassadors—individuals who will be trained as trusted messengers for vaccine advocacy.

At the moment, many schools, including the University of Chicago, are planning to

resume in-person instruction and activities come fall. The CDPH will continue to provide guidance to colleges and universities on navigating the pandemic, as it has been doing since the pandemic began, Arwady said. “We’ll see where we are from our local outbreak perspective here in Chicago and be in communication with all of your schools and the health centers and the providers so they know where we are from a risk perspective and what decisions they should make.”

Per Arwady, if infection rates remain low, prospects for a safe reopening will be bolstered by new techniques such as intensive contact tracing.

“Assuming things are under reasonably good control in the fall, if cases are not as frequent, every case will have even more investigation and attention to it,” Arwady said. “In countries where COVID is under very good control, [for] every individual case, there’s a team of people looking into how they were infected and how they can control it. We’ll have an opportunity to do some of that more in-depth epidemiology.

And I expect we’ll be able to do that at college campuses.”

Three New Faculty Members to Join History Department in Fall

By BASIL EGLI Senior News Reporter This fall, the University’s Department of History will be adding three new faculty members, all tenured or tenure-track, to its ranks: Mary Hicks, Kenneth Moss, and Emily Kern. Each new professor spoke with The Maroon their current work, their visions for their respective concentrations, and what they will bring to the University.

Hicks is currently an assistant professor of Black studies and history at Amherst College, specializing in the history of the South Atlantic slave trade. As an undergraduate at the University of Iowa, Hicks realized she preferred engaging in historical research to legal work and decided to pursue a career as an academic.

As a graduate student at the Univer-

sity of Virginia, Hicks traveled to Latin America several times to study enslaved mariners and African women in colonial Brazil during the early modern and modern eras. While she had to abandon her initial plan to write a dissertation about Black women in the South Atlantic, she has recently returned to the topic in a forthcoming manuscript entitled Ritual Bodies: Gender, Race and Power in the Early Modern South Atlantic.

“I am really interested in how capitalism changes societies, changes cultures,” Hicks said. “The next step is going back to that original project about Black women in the South Atlantic world between Brazil and West Africa and looking at […]

‘How did they experience capitalism?’”

At the moment, Hicks is finishing up her latest book manuscript, entitled Captive Cosmopolitans: Black Mariners

and the World of South Atlantic Slavery 1721–1835. It concerns the maritime labor of African-born enslaved seamen during the transition from the early modern world to the modern world.

“I myself like to jump around intellectually, to think trans-regionally. I like to think across time periods that people might think of as distinct, like across medieval and early modern and modern,” Hicks said.

Moss is currently the Felix Posen Professor of Modern Jewish History at Johns Hopkins University, specializing in modern Jewish history, specifically in Israel and Eastern Europe. He recently finished a book on Jewish political thought in Poland during the tumult of the 1920s and 1930s and has begun to shift his focus to the post–World War II Jewish world. He will be teaching a course in the Jewish

Civilization sequence next winter quarter.

Moss has never felt pigeonholed by his job as an academic historian, drawing on a wide variety of texts. “With my own work, sometimes I turn to literary theory, and sometimes to classics of social thought, and sometimes […] to contemporary sociology,” he said. “Those things to me have all been essential for what I want to do, and only incidentally, at some points, have I felt myself being a historian. I’ve never found my best work to be driven by some notion of what it is [that] a historian is supposed to do as distinct from [what] other sorts of folks [do].”

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“Science is about making sense of the physical and natural universe, but it’s also a social activity, performed by people.”

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a B.A. in history. He went on to earn his Ph.D. in Jewish history at Stanford University in 2003 and then left for Johns Hopkins, where he served as the director of the Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Jewish Studies Program and as a professor of Jewish history. He has studied and written about many subjects related to Jewish history, including Zionism, Yiddish and Hebrew literary culture, and Eastern European Jewish thought and society.

Kern, currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, stud-

ies the history of science with a current specialization in the history of Earth sciences and paleoanthropology. Kern earned a Ph.D. in the history of science from Princeton University in 2018, and she is currently working on a book about the history of the “out of Asia” theory concerning the origins of humankind.

When asked what she wanted people to know about her field and what misconceptions were common about it, Kern had much to say about the nature of scientific progress itself.

“Science is about making sense of the physical and natural universe, but it’s also a social activity, performed by peo-

ple, freighted with different kinds of cultural meanings, funded and supported by universities, charities, and governments, and used to make policy, shape national narratives, build international or global communities or personal identities, and create literature and art.”

Kern continued to talk about her field, saying, “[The] history of science lets us ask questions about how scientific knowledge has come to have the status and authority it has in the world today, but also about how to make sense of these frictions and tensions between power, culture, and observed reality.”

At UChicago, she is excited to design

her own courses about various topics related to the history of earth sciences.

One course she wants to teach would be about the history of nuclear physics and research—a history, she noted, in which UChicago has played a key role. Starting in fall quarter, Kern will be teaching graduate and undergraduate classes in the history of science as well as the Self, Culture, and Society sequence in the social sciences Core.

These three incoming faculty members will be teaching in the coming fall quarter, which the University currently plans to conduct in person.

“We demand that the University of Chicago commit to divesting from Israeli apartheid.”

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ment of Palestinian students on campus.

“Neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah are destroyed, and this university doesn’t bat an eye. Meanwhile, they have business treks to Tel Aviv and study abroad trips to Jerusalem, and they invite Israeli teaching fellows each year,” one organizer said. “We demand that the University of Chicago commit to divesting from Israeli apartheid.”

Other speakers focused on policy changes closer to home. Sadie Morriss from Students for Disability Justice called for updating campus buildings to be physically accessible for disabled students, making accommodations from Student Disability Services easier to access, and implementing mandatory training on ableism for professors, among other priorities.

“Every institution struggles to accommodate disabled students, but UChicago is particularly bad,” Morriss said. “Behind closed doors, administration admits that our deeply rooted cultural commitment to rigor leaves very little room for accommodation. This culture is so toxic to the point that a lot of my disabled friends have told prospective students with disabilities not to come here because you will not be supported.”

The Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) Coalition, an activist group that has spent years fighting for a CBA to preempt displacement due to rising property values resulting from the construction of the Obama Presidential Center, was also represented at the rally. Clinton Davis from the Poor People’s Campaign, a CBA Coalition member organization, listed a set of demands for the University as construction on the center goes forward.

“We are demanding 20 million dollars a year for rent and local schools. We might be repeating ourselves, but again, like in 1960, we are demanding that they limit the campus expansion into Woodlawn and Washington Park,” Davis said. “We are demanding housing loans for middleand working-class University of Chicago workers. We are demanding $50 million a year for true affordable housing. We’re asking for accountability around University of Chicago–owned land in all Black communities. Last but not least, we are demanding support for STEM programs in our local schools.”

After the rally concluded, organizers papered illustrated flyers over the sign outside Levi Hall and spray-painted the sign’s lettering red.

Signs outside Levi Hall after the rally’s conclusion. COURTESY OF ALINA KIM

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Off-Campus Students Receive Local Produce Through SG Partnership with Local Farm

By SOLANA ADEDOKUN Senior News Reporter More than 270 off-campus apartments received free organic produce through a partnership between Student Government (SG) and nonprofit Star Farm Chicago, which practices community-supported agriculture (CSA). The effort was led by fourth-year Alex Levi, SG’s outgoing vice president for administration.

Star Farm is a community-based urban farm located in the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago. Its mission is to make sure low-income people and people that live in food deserts have access to fresh produce.

CSA is a practice in which a community of individuals pledges to support a certain farm by buying their crops directly from that farm (in this case Star Farm).

Instead of getting produce from a grocery store that has produce from all over the

country, the produce is grown and distributed locally, so community members receive deliveries of fresh, local produce.

This means that the farmland is directly serving the local community that buys its produce.

The founder and executive director of Star Farm Stephanie Dunn believes CSA gives producers the flexibility to provide fresh, in-season produce for the community. Meanwhile, the consumers have developed a more personal connection with the farm.

“It’s great to have that connection to our clients. They know they can email me or our CSA manager, Rocio [Vargas], with a question about how to cook something and also come and visit the farm,” she wrote in a comment to The Maroon.

The project was part of Star Farm’s CSA program and was funded by SG’s executive budget. On Wednesday, April 21, the first 65 apartments that signed up for the delivery received their prod-

ucts, including produce such as sweet potatoes and spinach, with more deliveries completed on April 28 for 140 more apartments. While the original SG budget only allowed for 130 complementary orders, all students who signed up for the program were able to receive produce through SG’s rollover fund from Center for Leadership and Involvement.

“We know our operation can’t solve all the health and food disparities, which is why our partnerships are so important to us in uncovering access needs,” Dunn wrote. “When Alex reached out to me about offering CSAs to students during finals, he shared access needs with me that fit our mission. Providing a bag of fresh, local, organic produce with a value-added item seemed like a boost to the health and morale of the student body during the intensity of finals.”

Levi first learned of Star Farm last summer after purchasing its produce at the Hyde Park Farmers’ Market, a neigh-

borhood marketplace where local vendors sell produce and other goods. After using Star Farm’s no-contact home delivery services, he got the idea for his project and started to put it in motion by late October.

“I would get biweekly deliveries of fresh veggies and it was always a pickme-up. I thought…that it would be a great way to use some of our executive budget and give people some fresh produce,” Levi said.

After SG approved his plan, Levi circulated an interest form on social media.

The form received responses from 272 off-campus apartments—more than double what they had originally planned for.

Levi hopes that if SG continues this partnership in the future, students on campus will be able to receive produce as well.

“I hope [that] the participants felt connected and supported during finals and that they made some delicious, healthy meals!” Dunn wrote about her hopes of the collaboration.

University Reports Six New Cases of COVID-19 in Seventh Week, Keeps Masking and Distancing Requirements Unchanged

By HAMZA JILANI Senior News Reporter The University reported six new cases of COVID-19 this week, according to an email sent to the University community on Friday, May 14. One of the surveillance tests conducted this week was positive, and the University’s positivity rate overall was 0.21 percent.

There are 23 close contacts associated with this week’s reported cases.

Currently, there are no students in on-campus isolation housing, and there are three students isolating off campus.

Both the City of Chicago’s and Illinois’s seven-day positivity rate decreased from 4.5 percent last week to 3.8 percent this week.

The University’s masking and distancing requirements remain in place

despite the updated mask guidance for fully vaccinated people issued by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on May 13. The updated guidance recommends that fully vaccinated people do not need to wear a mask or physically distance unless required by “federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules, and regulations, including local business and workplace guidance” and that fully vaccinated people do not need to test after a known exposure “unless they are residents or employees of a correctional or detention facility or a homeless shelter.”

The University announced that it would not be changing its requirements despite the updated guidance in both the UChicago Forward message and an email sent to students and families in the College on Friday, May 14. Both messages cited the lack of information

about current vaccination levels on UChicago campuses as well as other factors as reasons for why masking requirements at the University will not change for now. The UChicago Health Pact requires all individuals to wear a mask and practice social distancing while on campus grounds, regardless of whether they have been vaccinated.

The University is in the process of gathering more information on vaccination levels and will communicate more about policies related to vaccination in the coming weeks. Currently, participants in the Mandatory Surveillance Testing Program at the University may opt out of the program once they are fully vaccinated but must self-isolate and arrange for prompt testing if they develop symptoms of COVID-19 even if they are fully vaccinated. An individual is fully vaccinated two weeks

after receiving the second dose of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine or two weeks after receiving the single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

The UChicago Forward email encouraged all members of the University community to be vaccinated at the earliest opportunity. It also encouraged parents and guardians of vaccine-eligible children to schedule appointments for their children, as the vaccine was recommended by the CDC for children aged 12 to 15. Children of University faculty, other academic appointees, postdoctoral researchers, staff, and students are eligible for a vaccination appointment at UChicago Medicine.

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The UChicago Forward email encouraged all members of the University community to be vaccinated at the earliest opportunity.

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into UChicago Medicine’s vaccine effort. However, the process for scheduling vaccine appointments through

MyChart remains the same.

The University has also changed testing operating hours at Rosenwald Hall and the Woodlawn Social Services

Center to 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. for the remainder of spring quarter. All test sites will be closed for Memorial Day on Sunday, May 30, and Monday, May 31, and

participants scheduled for tests on May 31 can be tested on Tuesday, June 1, for their weekly test at Rosenwald Hall or the Social Services Center.

COVID-19 Posed a Challenge to Memory Loss Care, but Organizations Have Adapted In Hyde Park, Chicago’s first neighborhood to be designated “dementia-friendly,” the organizations serving seniors with memory loss had to be creative in the face of a pandemic that changed lives and disrupted routines.

By JAMIE ZHAO Grey City Reporter In October 2020, Hyde Park was named Chicago’s first dementia-friendly neighborhood. The designation was thanks to the work of 12 partner organizations––led by Chicago Hyde Park Village, UChicago’s Memory Center, and the Supporting Healthy Aging Resources and Education (SHARE) Network. These organizations have provided dementia-focused health care and community-oriented programming throughout Hyde Park and Chicago under the Dementia Friendly America initiative. Though the COVID-19 pandemic created myriad challenges for people suffering from memory loss and for their loved ones, the health-care professionals who serve them have done their best to adapt.

Tessa Garcia McEwen is a social worker at the University of Chicago Memory Center, a branch of the medical center that researches and offers comprehensive care for memory-loss

patients. For her, the designation represents the recognition of years of hard work. “We were very excited,” she told The Maroon. “It puts a face to the efforts already in the community.”

Dementia-Focused Programming Before the Pandemic McEwen prompted the initiative to make Hyde Park dementia friendly by introducing Chicago Hyde Park Village to the Dementia Friendly America initiative. She sees the initiative as an opportunity for Hyde Park to be involved with a common standard of available care for memory-loss patients.

“A lot of places in Illinois got the designation already,” said McEwen. “Upon [arriving] as a neurology social worker at UChicago Medicine and starting to help people with dementia, [I realized] so many of them want a greater quality of life. There is no concrete cure for Alzheimer’s, so when you are diagnosed, it’s about ‘What’s next?’ We make the most of our experience living with this condition.”

The initiative had programs available in Hyde Park before the pandemic, including an art program and a dementia-friendly river cruise. The initiative has plans to collaborate with local banks and restaurants to adjust services, such as by shortening menus to make ordering easier for people with memory loss.

McEwen said that the broader goal of Dementia Friendly America is “to educate our community members, our neighbors, to show them about what it means to be passionate and kind and attentive to dementia when we see it because it is such a lonely experience.”

People experiencing memory loss, she said, are disadvantaged both by their condition and by a lack of public understanding.

“The general public might not see it easily. They might not know that a person might be genuinely lost walking around outside and not finding their way home,” McEwen said. “They might not know that someone could be super confused navigating the grocery store with the lack of signage or help available to

them. They may not know that someone with memory loss is super vulnerable at the bank, where they can be easily taken advantage of. Therefore, so much of this work is a dual effort to bring this enhanced quality-of-life programming and raise awareness in the community because there is another layer to dementia, which is behavior reaction, that is stigmatized.”

For McEwen, spreading awareness about the needs of people with memory loss is not only about comfort but also about safety.

“One thing I have been thinking about is law enforcement and first responders,” she said. “A lot of these patients are cognitively impaired. When they are interacting with something, it is challenging. For example, if they are wandering in the streets, with the climate of this country, it is especially vulnerable for a man of color with dementia walking alone outside and confused…. And with the general pattern that we see…African Americans are CONTINUED ON PG. 6

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“They might not know that a person might be genuinely lost walking around outside and not finding their way home.”

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more vulnerable to get harmed in a snap judgement. I find it very concerning that because of this pattern, we don’t have a real systemic way to [disarm] and de-escalate safely. I worry about these folks who have dementia because they may appear out of sorts, but…they are probably lost and need a way home.”

One accommodation currently in place for Chicagoans with dementia is the Chicago Police Department’s Emergency Identification Bracelet Program, which assigns each enrollee a code number and a bracelet with emergency contacts. The authorities will be able to reach the emergency contact and access the bracelet holder’s files when necessary.

According to McEwen, medical facilities and long-term care communities need to be more compassionate and understanding of patients with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. She cited the case of one dementia patient who was denied long-term care because the nurses and doctor in charge of his care wrote a report that misunderstood his confusion as “uncooperative” behavior. McEwen emphasized the need for medical professionals to be careful with labels and judgments as well as the importance of proper education and training with memory-loss patients.

Chicago Hyde Park Village (CHPV) is a mutual aid organization that provides social activities and daily assistance to the seniors of Hyde Park. The primary goal of CHPV, according to its special projects coordinator Dorothy Pytel, is to allow its members to “age in place,” or to feel supported by their local community as they age. Before the pandemic, CHPV operated on a membership model. Some programs included “drop-ins,” which involve having lunch and listening to a speaker who discusses cultural and health issues; affinity and support groups that meet regularly; and rides to medical appointments. As a part of the Dementia Friendly America initiative, CHPV raises awareness about dementia by training “dementia friends.”

Pytel noted that there are 177 dementia friends in Chicago. According to CHPV’s website, dementia friends attend an hour-long training session to learn about dementia and “turn that understanding into action.”

Not all people with memory loss have had their lives affected to a great extent by the pandemic.

Scott Wezalis, 69, lives with his wife Joyce, 67, in Arlington Heights. Prior to the pandemic, Scott was Joyce’s primary caretaker, but on several days during the week, a professional caretaker came and assisted for a few hours. Joyce was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease last year, right before the onset of the pandemic.

Scott recalled that, before the pandemic, “It took a couple years of seeing different specialists to find what she was experiencing. It took a visit to the [emergency room] to get a neurologist referral. Doctor [James] Mastrianni from The Memory Center diagnosed her.” After the diagnosis, it was clear that the condition had isolated them even before the pandemic.

Joyce had difficulty interacting with new environments, so Scott and Joyce opted to stay in their home instead. When Scott spoke to The Maroon in February, the pandemic had indeed made activities and doctor’s visits more accessible for memory-loss patients.

Adjustments During the Pandemic According to McEwen, for people with memory loss, the solitude brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic was similar to their lives before the pandemic. But in the midst of the crisis, interest in improving their lives only grew. The number of Dementia Friendly America Initiative program participants rose during the pandemic.

“In the pandemic, all those places of daytime entertainment closed. It was very tough for these people. But virtual events are [occurring] in lieu of the day programs,” McEwen said.

Additionally, patients with limited mobility could now participate in virtual events. However, for those without

access to Zoom, McEwen added that there are also programs such as Mather’s Telephone Topics that can be accessed through a phone. People can call in and participate in events and discussions with a speaker. Another technology-free program is “Art Is…In,” which mails art kits to participants and has volunteers who periodically check up on them.

McEwen said that the initiative will keep many of the new programs, even after the pandemic is over.

“So many individuals are remote and confined, but the virtual programs are able to expand our reach,” she said.

“For example, support groups have an increased virtual presence. Caregivers can call in on a whim.”

The same is true of new programs at CHPV. “The pandemic is particularly troubling for our seniors, who were already oftentimes isolated,” Pytel said. “Because of their lack of access [to] and knowledge of technology, we [at CHPV] were really worried. But because we invested a lot in making sure people felt comfortable and confident of how to use it, we really were able to expand the programming that we did and opened it up to the general public.”

Fortunately, CHPV has programs with UChicago registered student organization Tech Savvy Friends, which began hosting a tech café every two weeks prior to the pandemic to build technological literacy among the elders of Hyde Park, priming many of its residents for a transition to remote programming.

Technology literacy and access has been a challenge for elders and patients with dementia who require periodic medical check-ups. During the early stages of the pandemic, the only way patients could see doctors was through video calls; however, some patients lack the knowledge or devices to attend virtual appointments.

“Zoom links are sent by email, and these people are falling through the cracks,” McEwan said. “For patients with dementia and Alzheimer’s, all five of their senses are diminished. It is dif-

ficult for them to hear on Zoom, see the doctor through masks, and so on.”

As for Scott and Joyce, not much has changed about their social situation. In the initial outbreak of the pandemic, Joyce was transitioning to her new routine and program per the recommendations of neurologists.

“Alzheimer’s patients know people, know responses to certain questions, but they have difficulty recognizing new things [in an unfamiliar setting] such as turning the faucet on [and] finding the toilet paper and soap,” Scott said.

Scott and Joyce used to enjoy attending plays, but the hobby had to change given Joyce’s symptoms. For example, Joyce could have difficulties using the public restroom.

Scott recounted a typical day during the pandemic: “After a healthy breakfast, we do homework and mental exercises such as word memorization, coloring, [and] writing names and numbers.

Then Joyce does physical exercises such as stretching. Weather permitting, the caregiver and Joyce would walk on a nearby track. Then we would have lunch.

After lunch, we go on walks or Joyce would ride horses. She is very physically active.”

Scott and Joyce have been able to see some of their friends, though not nearly as frequently as they used to.

“It was restrictive,” Scott said. “But Joyce understands.”

To protect himself and his wife, Scott was vigilant about avoiding exposure to COVID-19.

“I go shopping alone once or twice during the [week]. I avoid going during the weekends because there [are] more people,” he said. “I make a list, buy it, and get out quickly. I wipe everything down. [We] wash our hands. We always sanitize everything.”

Now that Scott and Joyce have both received the COVID-19 vaccine, and as cases of the virus in Illinois continue to fall, the couple will soon be able to return to some semblance of normality.

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VIEWPOINTS Offset The Upset: The New Calendar Requires New Policies The University must implement the ancillary changes suggested by the Committee to Review the Academic Calendar.

By EDITORIAL BOARD More than a year ago, Provost Ka Yee Lee announced several changes to the academic calendar, including shortened instructional periods from nine-and-a-half weeks to nine weeks, a week-long Thanksgiving break, three-day reading periods, a three-week September term, and an earlier end to spring quarter. These adjustments went into effect last autumn, in the middle of remote learning during the pandemic.

Last March, the Maroon Editorial Board criticized the University’s failure to meaningfully involve undergraduates in deciding to make these changes.

As predicted, the decision to omit undergraduate voices resulted in a calendar largely disliked by students—a calendar that does not work for students. The shortened instructional time worsens an already breakneck schedule. The shortened reading period—once a chance for students to prepare themselves before finals, now a

Matthew Lee, Co-Editor-in-Chief Ruby Rorty, Co-Editor-in-Chief Adyant Kanakamedala, Managing Editor Suha Chang, Chief Production Officer Charlie Blampied, Chief Financial Officer The MAROON Editorial Board consists of the editors-in-chief and editors of THE MAROON.

NEWS

Peyton Jefferson, editor Pranathi Posa, editor Yiwen Lu, editor Kate Mabus, editor Laura Gersony, editor Nick Tarr, editor GREY CITY

Alex Dalton, editor Avi Waldman, editor Laura Gersony, editor VIEWPOINTS

Gage Gramlick, head editor Elizabeth Winkler, associate editor Kelly Hui, associate editor ARTS

Gabi Garcia, editor Veronica Chang, editor Wahid Al Mamun, editor SPORTS

Alison Gill, editor Thomas Gordon, editor Ali Sheehy, editor COPY

Rachel Davies-Van Voorhis, copy chief James Hu, copy chief Cynthia Huang, copy chief Gabby Meyers, copy chief Charlotte Susser, copy chief

DESIGN

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glorified weekend—exacerbates the whiplash from the quarter and is indicative of how detached from students’ lives the new calendar is.

While we maintain our position that the University should revise the academic calendar after considering more undergraduate students’ input, it shows no signs of reversing course. As such, we urge the University to, at minimum, implement the ancillary suggestions made by the Committee to Review the Academic Calendar, including the reinstatement of part-time status and a strengthened Office of the Ombudsperson.

Tasked by Dean John Boyer in 2019 to assess the “rhythm, flow, and particular features of our [then-] present academic calendar,” the Committee produced a 55-page report containing an analysis of the shortcoming of the old calendar, suggested modifications informed by said analysis, and a crucial list of changes and policy recommendations the University should consider adopting in order to offset the drawbacks of the suggested shortened quarter.

The University enacted the schedule suggestions faithfully.

Yet, as we approach the middle of spring quarter, the University has given no indication that it will make these ancillary changes or that they have even considered them. As the committee noted at the very beginning of the report, “No unit in the University operates in a vacuum,” but administration still treated the report like an à la carte policy menu, picking the recommendations that work best for them while ignoring the more inconvenient ones. Changing the

academic calendar massively disrupted the University ecosystem.

The committee designed its ancillary suggestions to account for this disruption by strengthening support systems that ease the burdens brought with shortened quarters.

If the University truly cares about the well-being of its students, these measures should not be taken as optional.

Admin can start by listening to the committee’s prescription to revisit the discussion around part-time status. In 2015, Dean Jay Ellison announced that there was no longer a need for part-time status. Since then, students have had to either enroll in at least three classes or go on leave. Without an intermediate option, struggling students who want to ease their academic workloads and maintain academic progress often find themselves choosing between stress and stagnation. The new calendar only makes this choice even harder. Resurrecting parttime status would give students the flexibility needed to weather storms, thus offsetting some of the stress brought by the new calendar.

Furthermore, the University must make taking leaves of absence (LOA) more feasible, especially if it does not reinstate parttime status. Students on LOAs are not guaranteed on-campus housing when they return and face unclear expectations and poor communication from the University.

The intensity of the new calendar will only worsen students’ mental health and increase the number of LOAs in turn. Guaranteeing housing for students upon return from their LOA, as well as setting up a

more formal path for LOAs will make clear to students that the University will not punish them for taking a quarter off.

In its report, the committee recognized that its suggestion to shorten exam periods could “aggravate” students’ stress. The committee also found that many professors “disregard” policies that define when professors can and cannot assign papers and exams, policies already in place to help make workloads more manageable. These professors often ignore reading period policies and assign papers “erratic[ally].”

To combat this inconsistency and offset some of the additional stress brought with the shortened exam periods, the committee called for “stronger and renewed emphasis on compliance.”

The solution, luckily, is clear: Give the Office of the Ombudsperson the power and the resources needed to protect students and ensure compliance. As noted in the report, the Office of the Ombudsperson is the place where issues regarding compliance should be brought. Charged with “listening” to student complaints and calling “attention to any injustices and abuses of power or discretion,” ombudspeople have lots of responsibilities and no teeth. The Office of the Ombudsperson—composed of two part-time ombudspeople and an associate, part-time ombudsperson—creates an illusion of institutional checks and balances where there is none.

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Changing the academic calendar massively disrupted the University ecosystem.

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brought with the new calendar by holding professors who violate policy to account. Furthermore, the ombudspeople are currently

graduate students who couldn’t possibly be expected to stand their ground against tenured transgressors. But if the office employed staff who are tenured, it would have the

cultural authority and institutional influence to actually hold professors accountable and ensure that final papers and exams are only administered when permitted.

Without strengthened ombudspeople, better LOA policies, and the reinstatement of part-time status, this new calendar will continue to be an abject failure, making

students’ and professors’ lives that much more stressful. The University, therefore, must listen to the committee to review the academic calendar’s report indiscriminately.

From the Office of the People: Campus Update Following the Need for Student Organizing

By NOAH TESFAYE A little over one month ago, a Chicago Police Department (CPD) officer murdered a 13-year-old boy.

Adam Toledo was a joyful child living in a community that cared for and loved him. He deserved the chance, like all of us, to grow as a teen and take on all of life’s turns.

Justice for him would mean that he is here with his family today.

On April 15, Provost Ka Yee Lee sent out a generic email to the student body following the horrific footage of Toledo’s murder in ironic contrast to the University’s position on policing. In the email, she directed students who may be going through mental health struggles to reach the dean-oncall, not through a specific number or special resource, but through the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD)—through the police. Further social isolation for students on-and off-campus due to the early April stay-at-home orders has left the student body in limbo. Additionally, the University has continued to refuse to offer any universal or opt-in pass-fail policies while we are still online.

How can they reasonably expect students to perform at the same level as we grieve and continue to be overwhelmed by unforgiving academic demands? The answer: They can’t.

The Maroon editorial board, of which I am a part, has written in the past about how the abolition of the UCPD is necessary to build safer accountability sys-

tems centered around care. I have personally written about how the University has no system of accountability because it is not accountable to students. What Provost Lee’s hollow email reinforces is that student demands that the University act morally righteous have time and time again failed.

It is not that organizing should be abandoned; in fact, in these pandemic conditions, our campus is ripe for the change that comes with successful student organizing. Strained mental health due to the pandemic and endless police murders are propelling students to take direct initiative over their well-being and success in spite of University policies that have substantial negative impacts on their lives and the lives of community members.

What remains unsurprising about Provost Lee’s email is that it stands in direct opposition to the reasons that Black and brown students in particular are feeling emotionally distressed following the recent police murders of Toledo, Ma’Khia Bryant, and Daunte Wright. Wright, a young Black man who was the same age as me, was killed by police, and now I am being asked to go through the police to reach mental health resources. As student and community abolitionist organizers have been telling us for years, and as historians and researchers have been supporting with data: police officers should never be involved in any mental health situations, much less any other circumstance,

for that matter. UCPD shot UChicago student Charles Soji Thomas when he was going through a mental crisis in 2018. Given both the recent climate and the disturbing recent history with UCPD, it is irresponsible to ask students who are already statistically more likely to get stopped by UCPD to then go through the police to find help.

But the police murders are just one of many different reasons students are feeling mentally drained.

Following a cluster of COVID-19 cases that stemmed from out-ofstate travel and fraternity parties, the University extended its on-campus stay-at-home order an additional five days after it discovered more clusters beyond the first collection of cases. For two weeks, students were required to stay in their dorms, save for going on walks, picking up food, and getting tested. There was no library access, no house lounge space, and while the University has cleared the way for some mental health resources, classes continued to push on. Even prior to the recent stayat-home mandate, the COVIDsafe social opportunities provided by the University were sparse.

Frankly, I feel like I’m becoming a broken record. I feel as though I’m making the same claims and observations about how this University functions across different areas. When I wrote about the University’s inability to center student well-being, it was after experiencing one quarter in the year. Now that we’re approaching the middle of the final quarter, I

not only stand by those observations but also feel as if my concerns have only increased in light of how the University has handled the pandemic since November. In a similar vein, for years, abolitionist organizers have written through several angles in this very paper about the University’s resistance to meeting their demands. How many different ways can I explain how horrible University urban renewal and policing practices are?

How many different ways can I explain how the University’s racist past and present actions have material consequences for students, but more importantly, community members?

Following the verdict in the Derek Chauvin case on April 20, Provost Lee wrote another email to the school community with the subject heading “Our Commitment to an Inclusive Community.”

Beyond the politics of the verdict itself, in which the state execution of George Floyd was laid bare and this policing system sacrificed one of its own to proclaim it could ever grant “justice,” the University response to the recent events was to once again to plug its student wellness resources without any substantive policy changes. There continues to be no schoolwide academic relief and no willingness to have a truly open, public forum with radical community and student organizers. Given the despicable handling of Adam Toledo’s point-blank killing at the hands of CPD, along with the recent deaths of Ma’Khia Bryant and too many

others at the hands of the police, the University’s position on policing and continued reliance on the UCPD is indicative of its complicity in the same deadly, anti-Black U.S. institution of violence.

We must continue to center our energies through student organizing. We’ve all seen the many different Instagram pages that have sprung up over the past year.

By reaching students directly through social media amidst campus closures and remote learning, organizing has evolved to meet the pandemic. However nuanced student demands may be, what remains clear is that students have shown more urgency and desire to change the conditions of their educational experience.

But organizing online is nowhere near enough, and the organizers planning Abolition May, along with other actions as things open up, are indicative of that. Student organizing must also continue to recognize the extractive and exploitative relationship that this institution has with residents in Hyde Park, Woodlawn, and the greater South Side. Materially, student organizing should be just as, if not more, focused on forging community relationships to help continue further divestment from the University. We as students must mobilize to meet our needs and to center community organizing. This is the only path forward.

Noah Tesfaye is a second-year in the College.

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ARTS A Chaotic, Historic Oscars

By NEEL LAHIRI

Arts Contributor

Every awards season junkie remembers it. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, Bonnie and Clyde themselves, amble on stage, make the usual remarks about the power and importance of the medium, and announce the unsurprising winner of the 2016 Academy Award for Best Picture: La La Land. Throughout the awards season it had been the odds-on favorite, taking top prize at every precursor and building even more momentum on the night itself with wins for Best Director and Best Actress.

And then, midway through the speeches, chaos. Someone runs on stage and tells something to the large La La Land crowd as the producers give their speeches. Something is afoot. All of a sudden, Fred Berger, one of the ostensible winners, says offhandedly: “We lost, by the way.”

What!?

In runs another ostensible winner, Jordan Horowitz, who clarifies further: “No, guys, I’m sorry, no. There’s a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won Best Picture. This is not a joke, Moonlight has won Best Picture.” He snatches the correct card out of the hands of a truly miserable-looking Warren Beatty and displays it for the world to see. Sure enough: Moonlight, Best Picture.

Now imagine that chaos, but instead of being an inadvertent mistake, make it the result of a decision made by the producers. That, in a nutshell, is what this year’s Oscars ceremony was.

Awards shows of late have a relevance problem. How do you get people to watch when they could care less who wins a bunch of, at the end of the day, made-up awards? How do you get people outside of the small sliver of psychos who follow this stuff religiously (myself a proud part of that herd) to care? Well, one way to make people care is to deliver total anarchy, more or less along the lines of what happened on that fateful day in 2017. Everyone, and I mean everyone, knew the next day that Moonlight

had won Best Picture. Publicity is publicity, after all!

It is thus unsurprising that in a year where few people had even seen a single nominee for the Academy Awards, and fewer even knew it was going on, the organizers decided to stir up the pot. One of the most sacred Oscars traditions is to present the biggest award of the night, Best Picture, last. So it was, to put it lightly, quite surprising to see the award for Best Picture given before the two main acting awards of the evening, Best Actor and Best Actress. It went unsurprisingly—this time, with no hitches—to the big favorite, the breathtaking Nomadland. The speeches went normally, culminating with Frances McDormand, the star and producer, howling like a wolf in tribute to Michael Wolf Snyder, one of the film’s sound mixers who tragically took his own life earlier this year.

The reason for this decision seemed somewhat clear. The producers, acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh among them, wanted to cap off the show with Chadwick Boseman winning his posthumous Oscar for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, as every precursor award had indicated and every awards season prognosticator had predicted. It would be a poignant end to a night that existed in the shadow of the pandemic that had upended all of our lives over the course of the last year and, among many other far more serious effects, had imperiled the very future of cinema—the medium that the night was supposed to celebrate.

On came last year’s Best Actress winner, Renée Zellweger, the person who typically gives out Best Actor. Another plot twist: She was giving out Best Actress! It went to Frances McDormand, her third Best Actress trophy, making her the only person besides Katharine friggin’ Hepburn to win the award more than twice.

And then onto the other side of the stage came last year’s Best Actor winner, Joaquin Phoenix, to present the award to the late Boseman. Right?

Nope. The winner of Best Actor was Anthony Hopkins, for his portrayal of an Alzheimer’s-afflicted elderly man gradually losing his grip on reality in The Father.

To make matters worse, Hopkins was nowhere to be seen. He was peacefully asleep at home in Wales without the faintest clue about the havoc he wreaked on the plans of Soderbergh and the rest of the producers. There would be no cathartic remembrance of Boseman and, by extension, all those who have been lost in this devastating year, only a quick smile from Phoenix and an announcement that the Academy is proud to accept the award on Hopkins’ behalf. Cut to black.

It is somewhat unfortunate that this last-minute chaos is all but certain to overshadow what was an otherwise well-put-together ceremony, especially considering the tremendously difficult circumstances under which it had to be planned. Logistical issues prevented the use of the usual Dolby Theatre venue, so the awards show took place primarily at Los Angeles’s Union Station. After the catastrophic technological mishaps at other awards shows this season, most notably the disastrous Golden Globes, the producers declared that there would be no Zooming permitted at this year’s ceremony. Instead, a set of satellite venues would be set up at locations around the globe for those who would not be able to make it to Los Angeles in time. Then the producers declared their intentions to make this year’s ceremony more than a mere awards show; it would instead have the feel of—get this—a movie. Moreover, just like on a set, masks would only be worn when the cameras were not rolling and would strictly be off whenever the show was live.

They largely delivered on their promise. I personally did not realize how much I missed the opportunity to see celebrities gabbing amongst themselves, no masks in sight, wearing a scintillating assortment of tuxes and dresses. It felt normal—something I

needed desperately after a year of life and movies that were anything but that.

It is also unfortunate that this grievous error in judgment on the producers’ part would overshadow many of the historic and thoroughly entertaining moments of the night. Chloé Zhao won Best Director for her extraordinary work in Nomadland, becoming the first Asian woman and the second woman in the entire history of the Academy Awards to take home the prize. Hopkins’s win made him the oldest person to ever win an acting award, while Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom costume designer Ann Roth’s win tied the record for oldest person to win an Oscar. Daniel Kaluuya, after winning Best Supporting Actor for his incredible turn as Fred Hampton in Judas and the Black Messiah, thanked his parents for conceiving him.

Yuh-jung Youn became the first Asian woman to ever win an acting Oscar, taking home Best Supporting Actress for Minari and, in almost the first words of her acceptance speech, shooting her shot with (single) presenter Brad Pitt.

Finally, in truly the greatest moment of the night that I didn’t know I needed: Glenn Close did Da Butt!

Despite the chaos, however, the Academy absolutely nailed the awards this year. All of the acting, writing, and directing awards were, in my opinion, given to precisely the right people—yes, including Best Actor. On merit alone, divorced from the larger narratives surrounding the posthumous nature of the award, I really do think that Hopkins’s performance was of a higher quality than Boseman’s. Hopkins is able to transcend the staged origins of his film, a feat that Boseman does not mirror in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Boseman, in other words, put together a marvelous stage performance; Hopkins put together a masterful cinematic one, a performance that has not left, and indeed may never leave, my mind. (If people really want to relitigate Best Actor, the place to do it is in the nominees, in particular the scandalous omission of the true best CONTINUED ON PG. 10

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“...the Academy absolutely nailed the awards this year.”

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performance of the year, Delroy Lindo in Da 5 Bloods.)

It is a shame that Hopkins’s well-de-

served recognition will forever be partially marred by the fact that it was perceived to be depriving a departed actor of a final memorial, just as Moonlight’s

Best Picture win will forever be partially marred by the chaotic process by which it received the award. But what would the Oscars be without a bit of

drama? That’s what the movies are for, after all.

“Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” (“The Maroon”’s Interpretation)

By ISABELLA CISNEROS Arts Editor

2008 is calling. More than a decade after its original release, Taylor Swift has re-recorded one of her most successful albums to date: Fearless. The record marks the start of the singer’s ongoing campaign to re-record her first six albums, from Taylor Swift to Reputation.

For those wondering why Swift is re-recording her old albums, the issue stems from the singer’s contract with Big Machine Records, her first label. Swift was signed to Big Machine at 15, and at the time of signing, she agreed to a contract to produce six albums that would remain under the ownership of the label.

Once this contract ended, the label failed to negotiate a new contract with Swift, supposedly due to the fact that she had the intention of reacquiring her existing records. The singer eventually signed with Republic Records, and she now owns every album she has produced with them.

The issue wasn’t over, however. In 2019, Big Machine was sold to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings. This created several issues, in that Swift was allegedly not informed of the sale, was prevented from attempting to buy her masters in the first place, and saw her life’s work placed in the hands of a person who, along with his client Kanye West, had harmed her on multiple occasions. Swift publicly condemned this turn of events in her promotions for her 2019 album Lover and soon after announced her intention to re-record her masters in order to regain her ownership of these records. Of course, these re-recordings were preceded by the surprises that were Folklore and Evermore’s releases last year, but now, at last, we have been graced with the first of the re-recordings: Fearless (Taylor’s Version).

Fearless occupies a unique position in the singer’s repertoire. While only

her sophomore album, it garnered critical acclaim and widespread popularity.

In fact, it’s the most awarded country album ever, having won Album of the Year at the Grammys, the Country Music Association Awards, and the Academy of Country Music Awards. It’s also one of the best-selling albums of the century, having sold more than 12 million copies worldwide. Yet who better to speak of this album’s influence than those of us who fawned over the “You Belong with Me” music video or sung along to “Love Story” when it played on our radios? These days, Swiftie or not, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone unfamiliar with these tracks. Fearless is an album that captures the nature of being a teenager in love so vividly that it’s no surprise that these tracks have taken on a life of their own.

On first listen, I was surprised at how similar Swift’s voice sounded compared to that of her younger self. That may not seem surprising to some, but given how her voice has matured, I wasn’t sure how she would approach the higher registers that characterize some of Fearless’s tracks. In some cases, there is a noticeable difference: “Forever and Always (Taylor’s Version)” is in the same register as its predecessor, but Swift’s signature country lilt isn’t as prominent as it used to be. Other tracks are so similar, however, that I wasn’t sure if I was listening to the newer recording or the original; this was especially the case with “The Way I Loved You (Taylor’s Version)” and “Tell Me Why (Taylor’s Version).” Overall, the production is sharper too—the instrumentation is clear and not as cacophonous as the original. As a longtime fan, I found it fun to pick up on the subtle differences between the two versions and see the ways in which Swift has finetuned her work and made it anew.

Fearless (Taylor’s Version) isn’t just a re-recording, however; the album also

features “vault songs,” tracks that Swift wrote at the time but never released.

Leading up to the release of the record, Swift teased fans by releasing a cryptic video on social media (that, as per usual, was decoded in record time) hinting at the vault songs that would be featured on the album. This was soon followed by the release of “You All Over Me (Taylor’s Version)” featuring Maren Morris and “Mr. Perfectly Fine (Taylor’s Version),” the latter of which was a pretty eviscerating callback to what appears to be Swift’s break-up with Joe Jonas. Its release led Sophie Turner, Jonas’s wife, to post a story on Instagram saying, “It’s not NOT a bop.” The track, and Turner’s reaction to it, led fans to make memes about the singer’s ex-boyfriends and their would-be reactions to vault songs. While made in good fun, the release of new songs about exes from the singer’s past does raise the question of whether we may see a resurgence in sexist media criticism of Swift’s dating life. About two months ago, Netflix show Ginny & Georgia made a sexist joke at Swift’s expense; clearly, those days aren’t as far behind us as we might have thought. The rhetoric surrounding these re-recordings will be one to be wary of as more albums come our way.

Despite initial mixed feelings from Swift’s fan base about re-records, Fearless (Taylor’s Version) has been accepted with open arms. In its first week, Fearless (Taylor’s Version) marked 291,000 equivalent album units, which takes both album sales and streams into account. The record marks Swift’s ninth Billboard 200 No. 1, tying her with Madonna and putting her second only to the current record holder, Barbra Streisand.

The singer also shattered records in the U.K. charts, overcoming The Beatles to set a new record for the fastest accumulation of three albums that went to Number 1. Considering that Swift is just getting

started on her re-recording campaign, one can only imagine just how much more the singer is going to accomplish in the coming months.

All in all, listening to this album is bittersweet. I only really began listening to Taylor Swift when she released Red, so I never had the opportunity to experience the earlier albums the way I did the later ones. It’s exciting to be able to relive this era alongside fans old and new and revisit quirks of Swift’s previous album releases; for example, while no longer a feature of her latest releases, Swift used to capitalize random letters in the album booklet inside of the CD to reveal secret messages to fans. In her initial announcement of Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Swift used this method to reveal the date of the release. It’s the little details like these that make being a fan of the singer so wonderful. Despite the opportunity to experience this record in a new way, however, I think I’ll always remain a little nostalgic for the original.

For those wondering what record is up next, Swift’s odd interview with Stephen Colbert seems to indicate 1989 will be the next album to get the re-record treatment. Fans are also hypothesizing that Haim will feature on the record after seeing a pizza on Swift’s mood board for the interview, which seems to reference an Instagram post made about the singer’s feature on Haim’s “Gasoline.” Given the number of features on this album, ranging from Colbie Caillat to Keith Urban, fans have taken to social media to talk about who they would like to see feature on 1989 (Taylor’s Version). Will we get a “Style (Taylor’s Version) featuring Harry Styles”? One can only hope, but rest assured, Swift will continue to find inventive ways to subvert our expectations as she revisits her work.