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NEWS: New Policy Requires Students in Dorms to Preregister Guests

OCTOBER

Paul Alivisatos Discusses Free Speech, Budget, and 2030 Climate Plan

By KAYLA RUBENSTEIN | Co-Editor-In-Chief

EVA MCCORD | Co-Editor-In-Chief and TIFFANY LI | Head News Editor

In an exclusive interview on October 2, co-Editors-in-Chief Kayla Rubenstein and Eva McCord and News Editor Tiffany Li spoke with University of Chicago President Paul Alivisatos. In his autumn quarter welcome email to the community, Alivisatos reiterated the University’s stance on free speech expressed in the Chicago Principles. The University announced on September 26, a few days before classes started, that it had received a $100 million donation dedicated towards free speech which it intended to use for the Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, and that it was launching a new climate and energy

institute on October 30. The University also continues to face the financial challenges that came to light last year.

The Maroon spoke with Alivisatos about the donation, the boundaries of the Chicago Principles, the University’s approach towards reducing its budget deficit, and its progress on the emissions reduction goals in the 2030 climate plan.

The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Chicago Maroon: What, concretely, is the recent $100 million donation towards free speech going to do to make

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University Updates Protest Policies Ahead of Autumn Quarter

By NATHANIEL RODWELL-SIMON | Senior News Reporter

In an email sent to students on September 24, Interim Dean of Students in the University Michael Hayes informed the University community that, heading into the 2024–25 academic year, the University has updated several of its policies regulating protests on campus.

“The University regularly evaluates and revises policies and regulations to address the evolving needs of our community. This year’s changes include updates that clarify existing policies and help foster a diversity of voices across our student body, in alignment with our free expres-

NEWS: Former UChicago Student Charged by the FBI

sion principles,” Hayes wrote in the email.

The changes include an explicit ban on “staying overnight in outdoor structures on campus or in non-residential campus buildings,” a clarification that “the erection or construction of any structure on campus” requires advance approval from the Director of Student Centers, and that amplified sounds are only permitted on campus at certain times and “not inside campus buildings.”

Versions of the student manual captured by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine show that, as of July 14, the

manual did not explicitly prohibit overnight occupation of approved structures on campus.

The revised policies also include guidance for counterprotesters, changes to how and where signs and flyers can be posted on campus, and new locations for tabling, hanging banners, and temporary quad reservations.

Counterprotesters are instructed to not engage in actions that deprive others from participating in an activity or event, “impinge on space reserved by others,” or “interfere with signs, installations, or other materials associated with an activity.”

The posting of signs on “windows,

doors, building columns, structural supports, woodwork, flag poles, light poles, or fencing” is now prohibited, as is the use of “glue, packing/shipping tape, and stickers” to post signs. Earlier versions of the policy only referred to unspecified “designated areas” as being approved for posting signs, and stickers were not prohibited. The new policy also includes an update to how “out-of-policy” postings can be reported.

“The University policies and regulations on these subjects are intended to support free expression while restricting individuals from using violence, threats, or harassment while expressing their

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ARTS: First Evanston Folk Festival Appreciates the Old and Attracts the New

University President Paul Alivisatos speaks at the MLK Commemoration Celebration in January 2024. nathaniel rodwell-simon

“ The changes include an explicit ban on ‘staying overnight in outdoor structures on campus or in non-residential campus buildings.’”

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opinions. University policies do not allow interfering with or obstructing the freedom of others to express different or opposing views. Disruptive conduct that is incompatible with the functioning of the University, and as described in University Statute 21, could result in disciplinary action,” Hayes continued.

A September 23 email from University President Paul Alivisatos welcoming the University community back for autumn quarter shared a similar message.

“While constructive dialogue is the gold standard to strive toward, speech should never be chilled. Actions that chill the speech or learning of others are out of bounds, and the University’s academic and

administrative leadership is obliged to act to protect the community from such actions,” Alivisatos wrote. “Such chilling actions can include disrupting the speech or expression of others, disrupting the ability of classes and events to proceed, and other efforts intended to impose rather than propose a viewpoint for others. Acts of discrimination and harassment are inimical to our values and purposes, and we will defend our community against such actions.”

The full list of revised policies can be found on the new Free Expression Resources page or in the Student Manual.

According to a report from Mother Jones, a San Francisco–based newsroom produced by The Center for Investigative Reporting, revisions of protest policies on

college campuses across the United States are becoming more common. The report found that since May, “over 30 colleges and university systems—representing nearly one hundred campuses” have revised their protest policies.

In a statement to the Maroon, the University expanded on its rationale for updating protest policies and how it sees them fitting within the University’s commitment to free expression.

“The University regularly evaluates and revises policies and regulations to address the evolving needs of our community. This year’s changes are intended to encourage a diversity of voices across our student body while clarifying our policies on disruptive conduct that is incompati-

ble with the functioning of the University,” the statement read. “The University’s commitment to free expression and the right to protest are unchanged. The policy changes are designed to clarify policies that were already in place, such as the conditions under which amplified sound is permitted.”

“To provide more streamlined reporting options, the University has developed forms for reporting disruptive conduct concerns and concerns about postings, in addition to the form to report harassment, discrimination, or sexual misconduct. Deans-on Call will continue to be the primary resource and point of contact for students participating in protests,” the statement concluded.

New Policy Requires Students in Dorms to Preregister Guests

By GABRIEL KRAEMER | Deputy News Editor

Students living in dorms are now required to register their visitors online, according to a revised guest policy announced by Housing and Residence Life (HRL) in an email to students on September 25.

Starting after O-Week, residents must register guests—including UChicago students visiting from other dorms—in the housing portal before signing them into residence halls. Hosts must provide each guest’s first and last name, phone number, and email address, as well as estimated arrival and departure times.

After a student completes the registration form, both the host and the guest will receive a guest pass by email, which must be shown to HRL staff upon request. Hosts must check guests in and out at residence

hall entrances. Dorm residents will remain limited to two guests at a time, consistent with the previous guest policy.

A template email urging HRL to reverse the change circulated among students following the announcement of the new policy. It is unclear how many students have sent the letter.

HRL said in the original email that the registration process would ask for each guest’s gender and birth date, as well as a photograph of the guest. Those requirements were later removed in an effort to simplify the registration process and prioritize “flexibility and privacy” in response to students’ concerns, HRL said in a September 28 email to students prior to the new policy going into effect.

A University spokesperson declined to provide a statement, instead directing the Maroon to the second email from HRL.

“While the previous ‘tap-in’ process seemed simple, it lacked the technology to fully manage guest entries,” HRL wrote in the second email. “Desk clerks were required to manually log information into a spreadsheet, which was time-consuming and diverted their attention from providing service and monitoring building access. The updated process leverages improved technology that automates the guest entry process, enhancing efficiency while allowing desk staff to focus on their primary responsibilities of supporting residents and maintaining a secure environment.”

The September 28 email also said that a “Guest Summary” feature in the housing portal would allow students to reregister

guests whom they had previously hosted without entering their information again.

Undergraduate Student Government (USG) president third-year Elijah Jenkins said that he opposed the change.

“Over the past year, we’ve been actively advocating for reduced restrictions in housing, so this development came as a surprise,” he wrote in an email to the Maroon. “We are currently in the process of coordinating a meeting with Housing to understand the reasons behind these policy changes made over the summer. Once we have more information, we will update the student body through our official Instagram page. In the meantime, we encourage students to continue voicing their concerns by reaching out directly to the administration.”

Former UChicago Student Charged by the FBI

By TIFFANY LI | Head News Editor

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has shared evidence indicating that former UChicago student Aram Brunson was making a bomb in his Woodlawn dorm

room when he caused a fire on January 2, 2023.

Brunson wanted to take militant action for Armenian extremist purposes and was

in the process of constructing a black powder explosive device when he accidentally set the device off in his dorm, causing an explosion and leading to an evacuation.

The FBI filed a criminal complaint against Brunson on August 27, 2024, charging him with making false statements to federal officials and trying to conceal “by trick, scheme, or device” the “material fact” that he was engaged in bomb-making activity. The complaint alleges he originally told

“ In addition to the explosion he set off in Woodlawn, Brunson is also charged with making false statements to officials at Boston’s Logan Airport [....]”

tiffany li .

CONTINUED FROM PG. 2

UCPD the fire was from a hot plate in his room, then told the FBI he had been trying to make a flare to imitate an internet prank.

In addition to the explosion he set off in Woodlawn, Brunson is also charged with making false statements to officials at Boston’s Logan Airport on August 20, 2023, after his luggage set off an alarm indicating the presence of the substance HMTD, a highly explosive organic compound used in bomb-making. Brunson had returned home to Newton, Massachusetts after setting off the January explosion in Woodlawn and was at Logan Airport traveling to Ye-

revan, Armenia.

According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Massachusetts, “each of the charges provide for a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000.” The press release states that Brunson is now believed to be attending the American University of Armenia in Yerevan.

At the time Brunson caused the January 2023 fire in Woodlawn, students had been trailing back from winter break, lugging suitcases to their dorm rooms. Classes were due to start the next day.

Police Forcibly Evict

Third-Generation Woodlawn Homeowner and Tenants

By EVGENIA ANASTASAKOS | News Reporter

Christiana Powell’s family has lived in Woodlawn for three generations. When her grandfather bought their three-story home at 61st Street and Greenwood Avenue in the 1950s, the neighborhood was still predominantly white. Powell says that her family were some of the first to

integrate the neighborhood.

In the early morning on Friday, August 16, law enforcement evicted Powell and the three other families living in the building. She had received a final eviction notice last month. Supporters rallied around Pow-

CONTINUED

Third-year Owen Sussman, then a Yovovich resident—the same house in which Brunson set off the explosion—was sleeping at the time of the incident.

“There was this pounding at my door. I woke up and there were these firemen in full outfits, gas masks on, like, you need to get out right now,” Sussman said. “It was very weird, very intense.”

Sussman and his housemates residing on the sixth floor of Yovovich House, which is located within Woodlawn’s East Commons, were asked to evacuate their room and not return until several hours later.

The Chicago Fire Department advised all other Woodlawn residents to “stay in place” before determining there was no building-wide threat.

The next day, Associate Vice President for Safety & Security Eric Heath and former Dean of Students in the University Michele Rasmussen sent an email to Wood-

lawn residents. The email read that “a University of Chicago student was arrested by the Chicago Police Department in relation to this incident” and that “the fire remains under active investigation.” The email did not share additional information.

“We take the safety of our students extremely seriously. The individual has not been enrolled at the University or permitted in a residence hall since the incident [in January 2023],” a University spokesperson wrote in a statement to the Maroon after the FBI complaint was made. “The University worked closely with law enforcement to ensure a thorough investigation…. We could not share additional details [at the time] as it was an active investigation being led by the Chicago Police Department and Federal authorities.”

The University spokesperson failed to confirm whether Brunson was expelled after the incident.

Eva McCord & Kayla Rubenstein, Co-Editors-in-Chief

Anushree Vashist, Managing Editor

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Allison Ho, Chief Production Officer

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The Maroon Editorial Board consists of the editors-in-chief and select staff of the Maroon

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“ Powell said she believes the University should take responsibility for Woodlawn residents getting pushed out of the neighborhood.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 3

ell, moving her and the other residents’ belongings from the sidewalk into trucks.

In 2016, Powell had noticed her mortgage costs surging from $800 to $3,500 a month. She alleges that US Bank, without her knowledge or consent, changed her mortgage from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), a government-backed loan with more flexible income requirements and lower down payments, to a conventional mortgage that is not insured by the government. Powell’s property was foreclosed upon in 2021.

UChicago United for Palestine (UCUP) alleged in its press release that US Bank’s actions were “illegal,” and that “Powell’s title was handed over to developer GA Roslyn in 28 days, a violation of Cook County law which specifies that a judicial sale cannot occur within 90 days.”

When reached for comment, a US Bank spokesperson told the Maroon that the bank is just the trustee for the mortgage-backed security that contains Powell’s mortgage, while a separate servicer of the loan controls loan modifications and foreclosure proceedings. Powell’s loan servicer could not be reached for comment.

In 2022, the property was bought by developer GA Roslyn, LLC, which has also received construction permits for multiple other Woodlawn properties. Powell alleges that the developer has harassed and attempted to intimidate her and the three other families living in the building, causing her to file three police reports. The

most recent report was on July 1.

Powell says she has filed a motion for reconsideration in the appellate court and has a case on appeal in the seventh circuit court of appeals.

After Powell’s final eviction notice last month, community members and advocacy organizations launched an encampment on the property beginning July 18. Supporters kept her company until the eviction.

“People don’t leave me alone during the day,” she said in an interview with the Maroon on August 12. “They come by, we sit, we talk. We spend time here together.”

Local organizations including Southside Together Organizing for Power, NotMeWe, and UChicago Against Displacement also stood by Powell at protests outside of Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s and Chief Judge Tim Evans’s offices on August 8.

Powell says that her eviction is just another part of a “massive land grab taking place in Woodlawn,” spurred on by the construction of the Obama Center in Jackson Park.

Since Jackson Park was announced as the location of the center in 2016, fears of gentrification have mounted among many Southside residents. A 2017 study from the Institute for Housing Studies (IHS) at DePaul University identified Woodlawn as a neighborhood with an increasing vulnerability to displacement due to its proximity to the Green Line train and to the Obama Center’s construction site. Data shared

courtesy

of dominic surya

by real estate company Redfin also shows housing prices increasing; the median sale price of homes in the neighborhood grew from less than 200k in 2020 to 300k in 2024.

Homeowners on fixed incomes, like Powell, worry about being priced out of their neighborhoods.

“You have developers like this that are coming in, buying up the property, raising the rent so high that the longtime residents can’t even afford it. So they’re being pushed out,” Powell said.

Another factor which Powell says contributes to gentrification in the neighborhood is the University’s growing presence south of the Midway.

“The University of Chicago has wanted property over here for years. They tried to get it back in the late sixties. And when they couldn’t get it, they basically sat back and waited,” she said. Powell says things

changed once the University crossed 61st Street.

The University’s landholdings in Woodlawn extend beyond just campus buildings. In 2014, they spent more than $18 million to purchase property near Washington Park, including what would become the Arts Block along Garfield Boulevard. And in 2020, UChicago bought the neighborhood’s only Jewel-Osco store.

Powell said she believes the University should take responsibility for Woodlawn residents getting pushed out of the neighborhood. “There needs to be reparations coming from the University of Chicago in the form of grants to help longtime residents remain in Woodlawn,” she said.

According to the South Side Housing Data Initiative, 20% of the parcels of land comprising Woodlawn now contain vacant lots. Powell says she remembers Woodlawn as a “vibrant, alive community” before economic conditions in the neighborhood declined.

“We had grocery stores, two movie theaters, a bakery, a Chinese restaurant, shoe stores. Everybody knew everybody. There were always plenty of people walking up and down 63rd,” she said.

Powell says she first began noticing the neighborhood changing in small ways, like grocery stores closing and buildings being rebuilt.

“It’s the way little things would happen,” she said. “It was a slow murder, that’s how I look at it.”

“[T] he deficit arose because of a series of decisions to make investments, and I think those decisions were wise ones.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 1

the atmosphere on campus or elsewhere more conducive to free speech?

Paul Alivisatos: It is an exciting opportunity for us, and certainly the intent is to have these funds available to promote the culture and understanding of free expression and its practice in our community, and also to share with

other places that are working on how they’re thinking about how they promote cultures of free expression at their institution. So it’s both an internal- and external-facing gift.

I think some of the internal work, most of it, will be happening at the Chicago Forum for Free Expression, and this will allow us, for a very long time,

to have the ability to have events, for example, where we can discuss how the culture is working or talk about aspects of how free expression is actually in practice and so on.

I think what is really important is, we have a long history. We’ve made very clear what our principles are, but the actual practice of free expression is some -

thing that comes as a part of culture.

The Forum has many ways in which it can allow us to reflect and improve or debate the culture that we have and whether it works well or not.

CM: How much will the donor be involved in implementing the donation?

PA : Not at all. There are no strings

“[W]e did make some reductions in our expenses, and by far, most of that was actually in the central administration.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 4

attached. It is a gift to the institution, just for us to make our judgements about how to cultivate and curate our own culture for expression.

CM: As we were coming back to school, you sent out an email about the new quarter in which you reiterated UChicago’s position on free speech. In that email, you cited the Chicago Principles and said that we must allow for speech “we find ‘unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.’” Does this mean hate speech is protected by the Chicago Principles? Is there a line for UChicago?

PA: I think what we have practiced for the longest time is that speech itself is just broadly protected. Even the First Amendment keeps cognizant to the fact that there can be, for example, harassment or things of that kind that are very personally directed—there’s certain circumstances like that where there are some limitations. But basically, what I’ve said is that you can say very offensive things on this campus. That doesn’t mean that we’re saying, “please go out and say offensive things.” It just means that speech, broadly speaking, is protected. Actions, on the other hand, have different situations that would govern them. For example, if you’re acting to prevent another person from speaking in some way, then that’s out of bounds.

I do want to share this, though. I think there are people with extremely different points of view here, all over the campus. And the best thing is if we have some measure of wanting to hear from others that we may not agree with, with the thought in mind that that’s part of a reasoned dialogue, that we can approach that in a way with some kindness and some humility, trying to just be in dialogue with each other. That’s something that we can strive towards, but we don’t impose that people create a sense of harmony or something like that. There are real topics on which people disagree very strongly, and we allow that to happen. That’s our environment.

CM: Would you say the University broadly follows the lines of the First

Amendment?

PA: By and large, our approaches are derived from it. Obviously the University itself does have, for example, our own time, place, and manner restrictions that relate to allowing the functioning of the University to take place and so on. So the campus environment isn’t identical to the environment that’s at large in the world, everywhere in the public square outside the University. But by and large, I think we acknowledge that there’s a great deal of wisdom in the First Amendment, and certainly the ideas behind it have animated the policies here for a long time.

One of the motivations to have a Forum [for Free Inquiry and Expression is so that contentious] issues can be brought to light more directly. I think it really matters enormously. Obviously, it matters for this university, what kind of university it will be that the students carry that part of the culture. And for me, I think it’s also important for things that we care about in free societies and in democracies, that there be universities where free expression is practiced quite deeply.

CM: To what extent does the University’s protection of free speech extend to community members who may not be affiliated with the University, perhaps while they are protesting on campus alongside students?

PA: I think people come onto the campus, they express their views— that’s all fine. If the question is, should we be restricting people from sharing— or community members from coming onto—the campus and speaking, again, I’ll say words and actions are very different things, and we should be allowing the dialogues to take place as they do naturally, especially out and about on the quads or something.

CM: Has there been any progress regarding the deficit, whether that’s in dollar terms or cost percentage terms, since last year?

PA: There has. Our provost, Provost Baicker, and our Chief Financial Officer, Ivan Samstein, carried out that series of town halls. In one of them, they ex-

plained that we have a four-year plan for dealing with it, and we’re on track [with] that plan. They will be hosting another town hall this quarter, so it’s not like we did that and just stopped doing it.

What I do want to say to your readers is that the deficit arose because of a series of decisions to make investments, and I think those decisions were wise ones. They created a lot of strength in the University that, over many years, will help us to thrive, and our ability to address it requires a rather small percentage decrease in the increase in our expenses and some modest increase in our incomes and revenue. I’m confident that we’ll both be able to address that issue and be able to continue to make investments in some new areas that the University needs to go into, or ways in which we can better support students on their journeys here.

CM: Regarding new investments, we’ve seen the University make a couple of investments in STEM areas. Is there a plan or desire to do similar things in the social sciences or humanities?

PA: Oh, absolutely, there’s lots of things happening in those spaces. It was beautiful news yesterday that Ling Ma [A.B. ’05] received a MacArthur [Fellowship]. Wasn’t that nice? I love that one, because it shows the intersection of the arts and the humanities with some of the very best of what the University does. I would say that I see that as a kind of exemplar. There’ll be many more opportunities for arts and humanities activities to be supported, and it’s very important for all of these disciplines to be strongly supported.

Maybe you recall from last year, for example, that we had another very nice gift. Richard and Amy Wallman made a gift last year to support faculty, and that was a gift that is allowing us to create many new faculty positions, and many of those are now going to be in the arts, humanities, and the social sciences. So we’re going to continue to invest in those areas. They’re very much on my mind.

CM: In addition to Ling Ma receiving the fellowship and the Wallmans’ gift towards the University, are there any

internal University investments being made towards the humanities and social sciences?

PA: We do all the time. For example, I was just getting an update on what’s happening at the Neubauer Collegium. That’s a place where lots of humanists are getting support from inside the University to be able to go and collaborate with others and so on. Dean [of the Division of the Humanities Deborah] Nelson is just starting her second year, and we’re really excited to hear what kind of thinking is coming forward there about what types of new activities or initiatives they’ll be doing. So I expect this to be a year where there’s a lot of thinking about what kinds of things might really advance the humanities further here. I personally think we’re really very fortunate to have such an excellent humanities faculty.

CM: How do you decide which programs to invest less resources in or which to sunset, and which areas you want to keep at the same level of funding or grow?

PA: First of all, let me say that, as we’ve managed through this first part of this budget challenge, we did make some reductions in our expenses, and by far, most of that was actually in the central administration. That’s not easy either. My experience is that the staff here really love this place and that they are as important in our functioning and future as any other part. But we did do that more than others.

When it gets closer to the academic programs, we really are much more deferential to the areas themselves to try to sort what they should be doing, to the deans and the faculties in those areas to think through how they’re going to manage their local budgets, rather than from on high in the center, saying this and that. We obviously have some responsibility, particularly for helping to form plans around topics like climate and energy—that’s an area where the University, over some years now, has made a decision to have some growth in programs there. That’s an CONTINUED ON PG. 6

“[W]e still have a ways to go to do real reductions, and I think the 2030 plan is still moving along.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 5

example where the University makes decisions to go into something because it’s important for the future, it’s important for society, it’s important for many scholars here, and that’s an area where we should be trying to grow. There’ll be a discussion this year, continuing from last year, around computing and AI, trying to understand what’s the best way for the University as a whole to be approaching those issues as well. On the growth side, those are the ways those kinds of dialogues take place—bottom up, lots of faculty involved, administration gets involved trying to think about how to support that, and, over time, we develop a plan.

On the dialing-back front, it’s certainly a lot easier to do that in more administrator/support areas than it is in academic ones, because there’s just a lot of broad excellence across the University, and we’re not trying to prevent areas from being able to continue to thrive.

CM: Regarding the University’s new plan for distributing undergraduate tuition to academic units based on the number of students enrolled in a unit’s classes, is the University concerned about whether that will incentivize departments to use more adjuncts and non-tenure track instructors to increase the number of students who are taking

their classes and thus be allocated more funds?

PA: Well, I could ask you as students. Don’t you pick your classes based on what you’re really interested in, mostly? Or, I suppose, what’s required for a major? I think student populations can flow some. There’s a lot more students studying computer science today than 20 years ago. Those kinds of flows are kind of natural when they follow where the students go.

Again, I think most units give careful thought, and for the undergraduates, they work closely with the College, trying to think about what the right balance is of instructors and the faculty and tenure-line positions. They give a lot of care to that question, and I think they do that predominantly on what they think will allow them to both honor student demand and offer the kinds of experiences that students want to be getting. I do think there’s a certain logic to having some of the support—not all of it—but some support flow where students are going, because it helps those units to be able to make sure that students are going to get a good experience. You don’t want to carry it to an extreme where that’s precluding us being able to have certain important academic subjects at the University, so we try to keep a balance.

The Maroon’s Spring 2024 Staff Survey

By NIKHIL PATEL | Lead Developer

In spring 2024, the Maroon conducted its second annual internal survey to gather insights about the backgrounds of our members, aiming to highlight the range of experiences and interests among our staff. By sharing these insights, we hope that our readers can learn more about the staffers who make the Maroon the organization it

is. All survey questions were reviewed by the Maroon ’s DEI Board and were completely anonymous. Many questions also provided the option to opt out of answering. For space, an abbreviated version is produced here; the full results, along with the 2023 Staff Survey, can be found at chicagomaroon.com.

CM: Coming off the announcement of the new Climate and Energy Institute to be launched October 30, what are some of the things that have been implemented so far to reach the goal in the University’s 2030 climate plan of reducing emissions by 50 percent by 2030?

PA: We have a lot of work to do there, to be honest. I think the number that kind of sticks out in my head is that, during a period when the University has grown by almost 20 percent in terms of its size, our carbon emissions have been relatively flattish, but we still have a ways to go to do real reductions, and I think the 2030 plan is still moving along. We just had Mike DeLorenzo join us as our new Vice President for Operations, and that’s going to be one of the top topics for him to come in and try to really think hard again about.

We did adopt the Via program. The considerations around carbon emissions were part of several factors that led us to doing that. That’s an example where, whenever we’re trying to figure out how to do things at the University, that’s one of the considerations. And I do think the new institute will have a broad set of programs, some of which will help us think more clearly about these problems.

CM: Are there any initiatives or plans to be implemented in the near fu-

ture aiming to reduce the University’s emissions?

PA: What we’ve been doing is essentially what amounts to power purchase agreements, or things that allow us to bring in more renewably sourced electrons, and that’s one of the several strategies that can be deployed. But the bigger issues of how to actually replace entire sources—those are much more complicated issues that are infrastructural, that we’re going to have to really take a deeper look at.

CM: How is the new institute going to help on that front?

PA: We’ll see. That’s going to depend a little bit on how the faculty go down that road, but there’s a significant portion of it that will relate to energy technologies, and a significant portion that will relate to policies and how various other local governments or institutions are reducing their carbon, so we’ll learn a lot about what others are doing.

CM: Is there anything else you’d like to share?

PA: I’m just really excited that there’s a new quarter here. I felt a lot of very good energy on the campus the past few days, and I love that. So I hope everybody has a good quarter and has a lot of learning opportunity, and that that spirit carries through the whole quarter.

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Academics

The Maroon is comprised of undergraduates from all four years of study and all four divisions in the College. Undergraduate Maroon staffers study a variety of topics, not exclusively those traditionally adjacent to journalism.

High School Background

Maroon staffers attended high school in many parts of the country and the world.

The Hidden Costs of U-SHIP

U-SHIP provides generous insurance coverage for its relatively low annual premium. But some UChicago students have recently reported significant errors from U-SHIP, such as denials of coverage or billing errors, with enduring and complex consequences.

By AGATHE DEMAROLLE | Grey City Reporter

In April 2023, A.S, a graduate student at UChicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine who asked to remain anonymous, discovered that her fetus had a significant health issue after 20 weeks of pregnancy. She then decided to terminate her pregnancy. Having University Student Health Insurance Plan (U-SHIP) coverage, she chose to undergo the abortion procedure at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, an in-network provider. After scheduling the procedure for her, the hospital called back: her insurance had refused to cover the procedure because it was deemed an elective surgery. However, the U-SHIP Certificate of Coverage asserts that abortion care is covered. It would cost $18,000 minimum out of pocket to get an abortion there, she recalled being told by the Northwestern medical staff.

Upset and confused, A.S. tried to find another in-network provider, but everywhere else the wait time was too significant. “I can’t wait. I don’t want to wait,” she recalled thinking. “It’s horrible to be pregnant and know that you’re not going to continue the pregnancy.” Finally, she got a spot at Family Planning Associates, an out-of-network provider where she could afford the $3,000 required for the abortion.

At the time of the procedure, she remembered not understanding why UnitedHealthcare, the company that administers U-SHIP, refused to cover her abortion when it was supposedly part of U-SHIP’s benefits. (UnitedHealthcare has since “reprocessed A.S’s claim as in-network,” a UnitedHealthcare spokes-

person wrote in an email). Now, after a year, she is finally able to piece together what happened.

Choosing a health insurance provider is one of the many decisions admitted students face as they prepare for college. The University of Chicago, like most American universities, requires its students to have health insurance covering hospitalization, outpatient diagnostic, testing, and surgical procedures costs. However, it leaves them the choice of enrolling in U-SHIP or waiving it by demonstrating that they have comparable coverage. According to a 2023 survey by the American College Health Association, 54 percent of American undergraduate students stay on their parents’ plan until they turn 26 years old because of the Affordable Care Act, while only 20 percent enroll in university-sponsored health insurance plans.

UChicago has offered a student health insurance plan since at least 1975, but U-SHIP first became an option in 2008 when the University contracted with UnitedHealthcare Student Resources (UHCSR). According to a University spokesperson, “[the University] conducts competitive Request for Proposals for the student insurance program approximately every 3–4 years.” This process means that the University solicits proposals from health insurance providers for a student plan and chooses among the different offers that result from the bidding. This undertaking is managed by the Student Health Insurance Policy Oversight Committee (SHIPOC), a board

composed of various UChicago officials and supervised by Student Wellness. During the last Request for Proposals in autumn 2022, four insurance providers competed, but “SHIPOC recommended to renew with UHCSR for multiple reasons, including plan pricing and UHCSR’s behavioral health benefits which include access to local area providers,” the University spokesperson wrote.

While U-SHIP costs $4,917 a year, it covers most of the costs of medical care and doctor visits, leaving the students responsible for a deductible of $400 worth of care for in-network providers before partially contributing to the costs of the eligible services. This means that if a specialist visit costs $420 and is covered by U-SHIP, the student will pay $400 and the plan $20. The out-of-pocket maximum, the total a student might have to pay for in-network medical care per year, is $2,000, after which all further expenses are fully covered by U-SHIP.

“On paper, U-SHIP is better than other insurances,” said Grace Hansen, a graduate student at the Pritzker School of Medicine, citing that most medical care is free for students under U-SHIP and that the out-of-pocket maximum is lower than other insurances. “If it worked the way it was supposed to, it would be wonderful,” she added.

A Year of Issues

In April 2023, Hansen was hit by a car when she was 16 weeks pregnant. Except for a large lasting bruise on her upper thigh and hip, she was mostly unhurt and her pregnancy was still viable. She obtained the driver’s car insurance

information and got a settlement from them to pay for the medical bills related to the accident. “That’s where I thought that was going to end,” she said. But Hansen explained that starting in July, Optum, a healthcare company that collects debt on behalf of UnitedHealthcare, started sending her bills because they claimed that the costs of the medical care she had received as a result of the accident exceeded the amount she received from the settlement.

“It was very confusing because it was numbers that didn’t make sense,” Hansen explained. Optum was charging her $4,800 while her medical bills related to the accident amounted to about $250 and the settlement to $1,500. After extensive research, she discovered that her prenatal care had been billed as related to the accident. (UnitedHealthcare confirmed this detail to the Maroon in an email.) Since she was pregnant when the car accident happened, the costs of her prenatal and accident-related care had been considered linked. She deemed this billing “ridiculous” because charges such as a routine OB-GYN appointment and first-trimester ultrasound were not care resulting from the car accident. She speculated that UnitedHealthcare had not looked or checked the charges before sending Optum to collect her supposed debts.

Hansen has also had other issues with U-SHIP. Coverage for her other routine prenatal care appointments were denied on the basis that her physician had not replied to mailed requests for the medical records needed to approve the claims,

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“It is a lot of bureaucratic blunders, but it is a system in which United profits from every one of their bureaucratic blunders.”

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according to Hansen. But these requests were never received by her doctor. She said that she learned by calling UnitedHealthcare Customer Services that they had been mailing the records requests to her doctor’s outdated address.

Hansen has had over four different billing issues related to U-SHIP in the past year. “It is a lot of bureaucratic blunders, but it is a system in which United profits from every one of their bureaucratic blunders,” she said.

Hansen categorically refuses to pay any unjustified charges and, while she has been able to solve some issues like with Optum, some are still pending. One of them is United’s denial of her newborn’s well-child appointment in October (Well-child appointments are routine visits to monitor growth in newborns and children). Hansen explained that UnitedHealthcare had rejected coverage due to the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code, which indicates the type of care being provided. The original CPT code did not describe the appointment as preventative care, its normal categorization, which would allow for coverage to be met (UnitedHealthcare confirmed this in an email). However, Hansen said that this CPT code had been regularly and successfully used by her provider in the past for well-child appointments. Hansen’s doctor then tried to resubmit the CPT code,

but it was again denied. A UnitedHealthcare spokesperson stated that they “are working with Ms. Hansen’s provider to ensure the visit was appropriately coded so we can accurately process the claim.” While UChicago’s billings office is appealing this denial, Hansen gets constant text reminders about her unpaid bill.

The Student Insurance Advocate, an Imperfect Support System

When they first encountered difficulties with U-SHIP billing, both A.S. and Hansen turned to student insurance advocates to investigate what had happened. Student insurance advocates, who are employed by UnitedHealthcare Student Resources, act as liaisons between the insurance company and the University to help students navigate issues concerning U-SHIP. The University spokesperson defined their role as the following: “to answer students’ insurance questions, provide assistance navigating the insurance process, and assist students who have had insurance claims denied.” The University presents them as the main resource for helping students resolve their U-SHIP issues, writing: “If a student believes that UnitedHealthcare incorrectly denied a claim for a service that appears to be covered by the policy, the student should work with a campus advocate to investigate the problem.”

A.S. and Hansen did exactly that; how-

ever, they soon realized the difficulties of working with the student insurance advocates. Hansen first reached out to the then-student insurance advocates last year to solve her issue with Optum but found them “unresponsive” to her difficulties and had to involve student health representatives and other University medical staff members to get help. (The current student insurance advocates did not respond to our request for an interview.) Every time Hansen had a billing issue, she tried to work through it with them. But she explained that the student insurance advocates would reiterate the relevant benefits and details of the plan highlighted in the Certificate of Coverage, which she already knew because it was stated on her bills and letters from UnitedHealthcare. However, they would not call her doctor or UChicago’s billing office, which manages medical bills for patients at UChicago Medicine, where Hansen received all her care.

“Honestly, the most stressful part about this is not the problems themselves, it’s how difficult it is to resolve anything between the student advocates and the billing office,” she said.

For A.S, the then-student insurance advocates were not only unhelpful but “very gaslighting.” She first met with them in May 2023, and she recalls that their initial reaction to her story was that it was impossible since U-SHIP covers

abortion. “Instead of being like, ‘Hey, you may have fallen into an error in the system so we’ll help you navigate it,’ they’re like, ‘This thing should never happen so it must not have happened to you,’” she said.

A.S. then had to prove that her incident with U-SHIP happened, a difficult process as she soon discovered that there was no paper trail. On the phone, both UnitedHealthcare and Northwestern Memorial Hospital would give confirmation, but they would not send records to her because there was no standard bill nor prior authorization form. This latter document, which informs the insurance before the procedure so it can verify whether it is covered, signifies a lot of paperwork for the hospital. As Northwestern Memorial Hospital had conducted a pre-prior authorization by calling UnitedHealthcare and learnt that the abortion would not be covered, they chose to save time and did not fill it, she said she learned by calling the hospital. The only record she had access to was the bill that Family Planning Associates sent to UnitedHealthcare after she insisted. However, she said that the student insurance advocates repeatedly blamed the denial of abortion care on the fact that she went to an out-of-network medical provider. After multiple exchanges with the student advocates and resolving her bill, she stopped enquiring about what happened.

“Instead of paying in money, I pay in time”: Hours of Calls to Uncover the Truth

Hansen estimated that she has spent roughly 60 hours since July 2023 solving her billing issues. “I feel like I’m trapped with this plan and essentially instead of paying in money, I pay in time,” she said. Despite her numerous calls with UnitedHealthcare Customer Services, the billing office, and her doctors, among others, the two billing issues she had while pregnant, including the one with Optum, were not resolved until September 2023. Concerning Optum, she remembered that “It was just so difficult to unsnarl.” The denials of her newborn’s well-child

“There are many holes to fall through, and people act like I’m making stuff up all the time.”

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appointment and her postpartum depression screening questionnaire, which both happened in October 2023, are still unresolved.

A.S. also spent hours calling UnitedHealthcare Customer Services to understand why her abortion coverage had been denied. She explained that UnitedHealthcare used the fact that they do not cover elective surgeries, which is stated in the Certificate of Coverage, as justification. However, this same document mentions that abortion is covered.

In the process of calling UnitedHealthcare and Northwestern Memorial Hospital, she finally discovered that the staff member at UnitedHealthcare who answered Northwestern’s call had made a mistake in saying that her abortion was not covered.

“It was just this crazy bureaucratic failure that there were no double checks on,” she said.

After the incident, A.S. also received a bill from Northwestern Memorial Hospital for the medical diagnosis of her fetus’s health issues. She then called UnitedHealthcare Customer Services and they told her that they had not received the bill. After spending a full day calling back and forth between the insurance and the hospital, she realized that Northwestern had not sent the bill to UnitedHealthcare, which they then did.

A.S. initially started enquiring in May 2023 as she visited the student insurance advocates but stopped after a few months.

“This has been on my list of things that I still haven’t let go of, but I also have enough time and emotional space finally to figure out what happened,” she said, to explain her recent decision to pursue the truth.

I’m a UChicago Student Dealing with U-SHIP Issues. What Should I Do?

The 2022–2023 Report from UChicago’s Student Ombuds Office noted that the number of cases related to billing surprises and errors from health services or UChicago Medicine that year was “concerning.”

The Student Ombuds Office, creat-

ed in 1968, aims to “help students when they’re running into issues on campus,” said Max Willner-Giwerc, a second-year student at the Law School and one of the two student ombuds. He mentioned that during the 2022–23 academic year, the office handled about 10 cases related to medical and insurance billing issues. The issues were often surprise billings, which means that a student was either told that a procedure was fully covered but then received its bill or was not in control and discovered that they were financially responsible for more than expected. This academic year, he noted that the number of these cases decreased to about three.

“The issues seem to be a little broader than just U-SHIP for us,” Willner-Giwerc explained, as some cases involve other insurance plans that are not U-SHIP. Beyond UChicago, health insurance in the United States is hard to navigate and can be complex to obtain. In 2023, health insurance was tied to employment for about 153 million Americans, leaving those unemployed and ineligible for Medicaid or whose employer does not sponsor coverage with additional financial burdens to enroll in a plan. Health insurance access was the third-ranking response in a Harris Poll about the biggest obstacles Americans face regarding healthcare, followed by the opacity of insurance coverage, as 28 percent of respondents stated that they had difficulty understanding what was covered or not.

While medical and insurance situations are outside the Student Ombuds Office’s purview, Willner-Giwerc states for students running into those issues: “Being proactive is very important, and the sooner you come to us, the more options we can give you.” In those cases, one recurring solution has been the Emergency Grant Program, which is funded by the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) and covers emergency medical care which the student cannot afford and which is not covered by their insurance.

Hansen and A.S are aware that their background in medicine helped them navigate the healthcare system and find answers to their issues. Both encourage students to cautiously verify their bills

for any errors.

“Don’t assume that if you have a bill, it’s real,” Hansen said. She explained that she now compares the charges (after insurance) on her bills from UChicago Medicine to the explanation of benefits, which states the charges and what her plan covers, sent via email by UnitedHealthcare. She said that she notices an error more often than not.

A.S added that “if anyone ever gets a bill, they should first check that their insurance even got it.” When there is a billing inconsistency, Hansen advises to “prepare yourself for a rat’s nest of calling.” That is what it takes for a student to avoid paying a bill that they should not be responsible for, she explained.

Students can also file an appeal if they disagree with UnitedHealthcare’s denial of coverage for a procedure within 180 days of having been notified that it would not be covered. The steps, which are outlined in the Certificate of Coverage, include sending personal information, records of the procedure, and statements about why UnitedHealthcare’s decision should be reconsidered. A University spokesperson specified in an email that the student insurance advocates can help students with this process.

The University’s Role in Preparing Students to Navigate Healthcare

The 2022–2023 Report from the Student Ombuds Office states that even though most students were able to resolve their medical and billing issues, they “still voiced concern that this process lacked transparency.” Willner-Giwerc elaborated on this observation by explaining that “people are often unsure where their bill is coming from or what the charges are for.” However, he considers this lack of information not to be unique to UChicago but representative of the American healthcare system as a whole. Concerning potential steps the University might take to improve student’s knowledge of the healthcare system, he believes that “the University is willing to listen to students and their concerns and potentially make changes. But it is difficult to change the entire healthcare system.”

It is fair to say that the American healthcare system is difficult to navigate and the multiple cases of unjustified denials of coverage and inconsistent billing at UChicago, especially in the last year, might reflect a nationwide trend. However, college students are often managing their health insurance and seeking care on their own for the first time. Students say that facing an inconsistent or surprise bill when they have neither the time nor the financial means to resolve it independently can be overwhelming.

“There are many holes to fall through, and people act like I’m making stuff up all the time,” A.S. said.

The Lasting Consequences of U-SHIP Denials of Coverage

As a graduate student with healthcare knowledge and the University’s insurance plan, A.S. never expected to have such problems with U-SHIP and abortion coverage. “It was this whole set of issues which I thought would never affect someone like me, but it totally does,” she said. She looks back on her experience as “very humbling,” now knowing that, despite her expertise and her student health insurance at a secular university in a state where abortion is legal, such incidents can happen.

“I’m pissed about it, but I’m also worried for other people. I want to make it so that maybe someone else doesn’t have to go through this,” she said.

Hansen still bears the burden of her unresolved issues and their psychological consequences. These experiences “have honestly made me apprehensive to seek care,” she said, explaining that what worries her the most is “the uncertainty of whether they will deny care that they are supposed to cover.” She has changed her health insurance plan and is no longer covered by U-SHIP.

While UChicago prides itself on the rigorous vita mentis or “life of the mind,” a student’s health is also important and necessary to their critical thinking: mens sana in corpore sano (“a healthy mind in a healthy body”). Can there then be a life of the mind if staying physically and mentally healthy is a challenge?

Crustsaders: A Scav Story

A gut-wrenching tale of an underdog who, regrettably, stays under in UChicago’s Annual Scavenger Hunt.

By ANIKA KRISHNASWAMY | Grey City Reporter

Scav had begun.

As I sprinted across the road separating Ida Noyes from the quad, the words of my soon-to-be-battle-worn comrades were drowned out by an ominous chant: “Max Pussy! Max Pussy! Max Pussy!” cried the voices, blending together with undeniable weight in a haze of matching purple t-shirts to represent Max Palevsky in this year’s hunt. I didn’t know it at the time, but this encounter would haunt the rest of my UChicago Scavenger Hunt (Scav) experience, foreshadowing our extremely close loss to the cat-based team. Extremely close. A minuscule difference. (They placed first and my team, the venerable Crustsaders, took home twelfth!) In any case, we had but one objective: to emerge victorious.

History

Scav is one of UChicago’s most vaunted traditions, even if my roommate had never heard of it until day three of the four-day annual event—this year held from May 2 to May 5, 2024. Created in 1987, Scav is one of the largest scavenger hunts in the world, second only to Google’s virtual one. Referencing the 2007 Scav article from the Maroon, this year’s Head Judge David Hall described it as a period of “collective effervescence.”

Beginning Thursday, students in Scav work on collecting items and competing in various events to collect points, culminating in Judgement on Sunday, when items are evaluated, points tallied, and placements revealed. Each judge is in charge of evaluating the validity of their own requested items, comprising a single page on The List, the official collection of items and tasks to be completed by participants for points.

In the past, UChicago students have been known to go all out for the competition, with Snell-Hitchcock’s team even hosting an auction to raise funds for item completions, though they did not compete this year. And, as anyone who has attended a campus tour can attest, this

willingness to go above and beyond for the hunt is also the source of every tour guide’s favorite anecdote: students Fred Niell (A.B. ’99) and Justin Kasper (A.B. ’99) making a nuclear reactor in their dorm room to complete an item, a debacle that some students even allege ended with FBI involvement (it didn’t!) despite the machine creating only trace amounts of plutonium. Niell himself notes that the plutonium concentration was “well below the threshold of what might be considered detectable.”

The specifics of judging, and much of Scav in general, “operates behind a veil, and we like to keep it that way,” Judge Isha Mehta, a second-year, said. The creation of The List, too, is shrouded in mystery.

“All year, we [the judges] do nothing, and then the night before, we shovel down eight Red Bulls and write whatever we want to our heart’s content,” Hall said. “[During the rest of the year], we do rituals. A lot of it is getting to know judges

Judges gather around the competing pet rocks at the Pet Rock Show (item 332), preparing to declare a winner for each category: Igneous, Sedimentary, and Metamorphic. Contestants scoured campus and personal collections to select only the most talented rocks for submission. anika krishnaswa my.

and their vibes… so that when we do end up making The List the night before, it synergizes very well.”

Hall described one of his most memorable requests from last year’s hunt. “One of the items that I asked for was a cake made from Taco Bell’s Baja Blast with Diablo Sauce for frosting,” Hall said. “In my mind, this was going to be a really interesting flavor combination of spicy and sweet, but I failed to consider the garlic in the Diablo Sauce, so every time I ate it was so horrible… this just happened to be the item on my page that every team did, which meant I had to sit there and taste each Baja Blast cake.”

My personal favorite item this year was reciting a selection from Beowulf at a frat party, my team’s chosen scene of the crime being Alpha Delta Pi’s concert-themed party, Aloha Delt. I felt that our delivery perfectly toed the line between heartbreaking and comedic, especially set against a crowd screaming the lyrics to “Party in the USA.”

Wednesday—Release of The List

Chanting filled the hallowed halls of Ida Noyes, as if to summon some eldritch being—“We want The List! We want The List! We want The List!”—crescendoing as the judges appeared, clad in white captain’s hats. A friend of mine, to whom I showed a video of this pre-hunt ritual, told me we sounded like a cult.

The List was to be released at 11:59, but not without a little pre-competition competition, the judges explained. Thus, equipped with hastily procured brooms and Red Vines, each team was to send a brave jockey onto the racecourse to compete in the first ever annual Scav Darby— set in space?

As our jockey valiantly made her way across the hall with her trusty steed (a broom), answering trivia questions with incredible skill to ensure her progression forward, the judges announced their grave error. “We didn’t send those horses to space,” the judge said, referring to our brave contestants’ steeds. “We sent them to horse hell.” The route was blocked. Our

racers would have to search for another way out.

With this new discovery, racers were forced to adapt, and sidelined teammates were given the opportunity to search for clues as an alternative route to The List. My team split off, but we unfortunately misheard the instructions and ended up looking into a suspicious—but unrelated and decidedly used—red solo cup in the far reaches of the basement.

Luckily, our racer made her way across the finish line shortly after, compensating for our brief blunder, and we soon had The List in hand. After sending our most intimidating glares to the competition—we were never ones to slack on psychological warfare—we found a spot to strategize on the quad. With a little help from Adobe Scan, we were assigning items left and right—a sand-filled condom, an earthworm to be dropped off at a discreet location at 7 a.m., and so on and so forth.

The worm, in particular, was decidedly difficult to capture. With the help of two of my teammates, I stood, hunched over my phone’s flashlight, in front of Rockefeller Chapel, squinting for signs of squishy life. To our surprise, there were a variety of worms to choose from, but still more surprising was how quickly they could retreat into their holes. A single brush against a nearby grass blade sent them underground, which is why, at 1:45 a.m., after half an hour of fruitless worm collecting, we decided on a tactical retreat.

Thursday

The next morning, the hunt began in earnest. Allegedly, there was a Captain’s Breakfast at 8 a.m. that Thursday, but I don’t believe in anything that requires me to leave my dorm before 9 a.m. Later that day, we entered the Pet Rock Show (item 332), our entrant being Dwayne “The Meteor” Johnson, a rock from “space” on whom we had lovingly drawn a face. Devastatingly, Dwayne, who had been so flustered in front of the audience that his cheeks had tinged pink, was cruelly robbed of victory by a high-jumping, sor-

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As the proverb goes, do as I say, not as I do. I was very stressed heading into my midterm the following Monday. Please study.

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ry excuse for a sedimentary rock. (Please note that this statement is purely for dramatic effect, and I hold no ill will toward I-Home’s pet rock. Not really, anyway.)

At 7 p.m., it was time for that night’s special event: Beat the Judge, in which teams would send representatives to compete against the judges in such tests of skill and wit as Game Pigeon Word Hunt and extreme dice rolling. Regrettably, the only category we emerged victorious from was Hellenist/Latinist vibe checking, that is, determining which language a Classics professor studied based on their photo. With four years of dubious high school Latin under my belt, this was trivially easy, and my victory secured our team third place overall for the event.

Afterward, we retreated to the Woodlawn kitchens, attempting to make some of the food-based items—victory rollshaped challah bread (ours was made with no yeast), deep dish pizza (more points for every additional inch of depth), and edible light bulbs. Of course, the Woodlawn ovens being shut down that week hindered our culinary range, but we persevered, cooking many of our items—only somewhat dubiously—in the microwave.

Friday

My fellow captains and I awoke on Friday morning with every intent of competing in the evening’s Scav x Harper Finkle Fashion Show. Our model would be dressed as a cockroach and covered in various pieces of “garbage,” inspired by a Scav List from 1987, and it would be a pivotal moment in the fashion industry. Unfortunately, we were unable to secure a model and therefore unable to participate, but the bun&jammies—our official fashion brand—Instagram page remained active throughout Scav, instead becoming an archive for our attendance of various events.

We gathered at our headquarters to craft some items, having collected various art supplies earlier that day. Among our expertly crafted pieces were a hamster graveyard, an evil skull, and a Paw Patrol guillotine.

“I really enjoyed making the little clay

items and just crafting,” Crustsaders Captain Claire Gary, a second-year, said. “I think my favorite item was actually the evil skull. [The item description was] ‘I put my hands up, they’re playing my song, the evil skull’s flying away.’ Definitely a cinematic masterpiece.”

Interlude

I’m sure you’re wondering when I could possibly have had time to study or work on homework in between all of these exciting events and crafting sessions. The answer to this question is: I didn’t!

As the proverb goes, do as I say, not as I do. I was very stressed heading into my midterm the following Monday. Please study.

Saturday—Scav Olympics

Twenty-one teams gathered outside Ida Noyes under the hot sun of Chicago spring, peering, cheering, and jeering, as representatives decanted various substances before our very eyes, measuring out the perfect amounts of blueberries, Cool Whip, rice, and cornstarch. The Scav Olympics had begun, and my team intended to take home first.

As each event progressed, our confi-

Scav Olympics Event 3 – The “Foreign Airlines Impose a Weight Limit on Carry-Ons??!?” Competitors race to put on as many articles of clothing as possible within 90 seconds. anika krishnaswa my.

dence skyrocketed to new heights, earning us hard-fought victories in clothing-wearing and sword painting. Our performance in other events, that is, speed painting, did leave something to be desired. I blame my complete lack of physical prowess and running ability and the fact that I didn’t bring a helmet; I’m sure those improved the other teams’ aerodynamics.

If nothing else, our headquarters was blessed with a very lovely painting of a rat on a skateboard holding a flower.

Saturday—Scavvenfeast

After a day well spent in the Reg, my team reconvened at our secondary headquarters at 6 p.m. to prepare for Scavenfeast, where we would serve the Judges and other teams our bird-inspired culinary creations at 7 p.m. The menu consisted of “toucansu ramen,” “flamcaccia,” black forest cake, and an edible bird’s nest.

As we would soon discover, however, waiting so long to begin cooking was a grave error.

“Access to kitchens tends to be sketchy,” Crustsaders Captain Claire Gary said. “Get to the kitchens early because you might be competing with other Scavvers. We were rejected from the kitchen the first time we showed up to put something in the oven… so we had to use the microwave for things we weren’t expecting to, such as the bread.”

Previous participants and judges alike had assured me that sabotage was nonexistent in Scav, but if this wasn’t a betrayal of the highest order, then I don’t know what would be. We stepped into the kitchen.

“I’m going to be real with you,” the rival cook leveled us with a confident look, gesturing to the space around him. “Occupied.”

And so, we were forced to do almost all our cooking in the microwave in a captain’s dorm, which proved both inefficient and stressful. We started with the bird nest, opting for a variety of caramel shards in a formation resembling a nest, topped with strawberry tanghulu for the eggs. For our “toucansu” ramen, I had selected only the finest instant ramen from Midway Market, which we topped with a

dried seaweed beak and two beady little eyes, emulating the spirit of a toucan as best as possible. The black forest cake was a strange amalgamation of a protein shake, chocolate chips, and flour, coming together to create an artistic looking mug cake. Last, and almost certainly least, our “flamcaccia” was cooked mainly in the microwave, made out of leftover challah dough from Thursday night, with a little extra browning in the oven once we convinced the kitchen user to allow us access.

In a flurry of sticky caramel, forgotten quesadillas, and spilled ramen broth, we

Judges gather around an opposing team’s table at Scavvenfeast, listening to a brief presentation before tasting each dish. anika krishnaswa my

rushed out the door to Ida Noyes, ready to serve our dishes to the judges.

However, when we arrived, we realized that we had made yet another mistake, expecting the culinary abilities of our competitors to be of a similar level to our own microwave-based madness. In fact, we were amongst prodigal chefs. Teams served up passion fruit chocolate cake, freshly baked focaccia, squid ink pasta, fried noodle nests, and many other astoundingly edible-sounding items.

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“[A winning Scav] team is one that puts a little bit of heart into their items and sees the spirit and joy of Scav.”

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intact. Mostly.

Sunday—Judgment

Now, I would love to regale you with my personal Judgment experience, but the truth is: our entire team overslept and ended up being too lazy to attend. As a result, I now live with Lori Lightroot, a drawing of Former Mayor of Chicago Lori Lightfoot on a sweet potato in my dorm—another unsubmitted item in the extensive graveyard of peculiar Scav-related things in my possession. So, I will instead provide you with all the tips for a winning Scav experience, directly from team captains and judges to you!

Reflecting on the essence of Scav, Arianne Nguyen (A.B. ’24), who was originally captain of the Snitchcock team before it disbanded, remarked: “I think it’s way

more about the process of playing the game than it is about playing strategically… Personally, my goal as a captain is to make sure that people have fun, and a lot of that is making sure that people find things they’re interested in.”

Mehta, too, emphasized the importance of finding what “interests” each competitor in having the best possible Scav experience, addressing common concerns about the practicality of Scav. “There is a big misconception that Scav is a huge commitment because you have to do all these items, that it’s a strange community, and there won’t be anything you’re interested in,” Mehta said. “But at the end of the day, there are hundreds of items written by a very diverse group of judges, so there will be something on there that you want to do—that you just enjoy doing for the sake of it.”

Although it’s easy to get lost in the competitive aspects of Scav, as I myself am guilty of, Hall reminds participants that the soul of Scav is in creativity.

“We don’t want completions that are as fast as possible…. [A winning Scav] team is one that puts a little bit of heart into their items and sees the spirit and joy of Scav,” Hall said.

And so, the sun set on the final day of Scav, Max Pussy of Max Palevsky Residential Commons was announced the victor, Crustsaders was among the nine teams tied for twelfth, and I placed Lori Lightroot and Dwayne “The Meteor” Johnson in a shoebox atop my closet—just in case I need them again next year. We all lived happily ever after.

Until next year, that is. Anticipate my comeback in next year’s hunt, in which I will surely be victorious.

ARTS

First Evanston Folk Festival Appreciates the Old and Attracts the New

At the new Evanston Folk Festival, honest love for folk traditions peeks out from underneath an Instagrammable veneer.

By LENA BIRKHOLZ | Arts Reporter

During the first weekend of September, folk music fans from around Chicagoland and beyond dusted off their flannels, dug up merchandise from their local breweries, and donned their Carhartt overalls to head to the first ever Evanston Folk Festival in Dawes Park on the lakeshore.

The Evanston Folk Festival consisted of two days of performances on three stages across Evanston’s gorgeous Dawes Park as well as aftershows at the local venue and festival organizer SPACE. The

IPAs were flowing, and the mood was jovial. The festival was headlined by Sierra Ferrell on Saturday and Patty Griffin on Sunday, two contemporary indie folk artists combining traditional instruments and styles with modern sensibilities. As Ferrell explained from the stage, “We all know what it’s like to feel lonesome… and if you’re an old-time or bluegrass band you can put it into a really happy sounding song.”

For many attendees, Ferrell and Griffin may have been the only two artists they

had heard of: audiences at most of the other performances were almost comically laid back. Many attendees knitted in the background. Near the Lagoon Stage, set against Dawes Park’s picturesque pond, children fed the down-coated ducks. Performers came down off the stage to dance among the audience, yelling for anyone with a “G-Harp” to join them on the next song. During the mainstage performance of singer-songwriter Sarah Jarosz from Wimberley, Texas, families sat and ate picnics on the grass and read books. A few enterprising attendees even hung hammocks between convenient trees and

dozed happily to the murmur of banjo on the wind.

In terms of fashion, the attendees were less relaxed: every outfit sought to outdo the next on who could seem the most folkloric, or, at least, folkloric in the Evanston sense of the word. At least eight different breweries were represented from around the Chicagoland area, as were Divvy bikes, the CTA, and “White Guys for Kamala.” Several attendees sported homemade knitwear (perhaps finished just that day?) and “visibly mended” clothing. The attire spoke to the twee

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So, too, did some of the acts reference an older era of folk music.

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aesthetic espoused by the festival, a kind of Instagram hipsterness evoked by the hay bales surrounding the Dawes stage, the specialty bike parking area, and the “1850s style” tintype photobooth. Unlike the UChicago Folk Festival and perhaps the standard image of old-time music, the Evanston Folk Festival was dominated less by old salts than by millennials, a testament to the changing face of folk music. These attendees were the sort of people that romanticize dive bars and buy expensive coffee equipment and whose kids wandered around the Dawes stage reverently carrying a lighted blunt through the crowd like a bundle of sage. Much of the festival, and even many of the performances, were geared towards this kind of aestheticized experience.

However, underneath the Instagrammable faux-authenticity, the Evanston Folk Festival’s organizers strove to celebrate the community around them, paying homage not only to the town of Evanston but also to the long history of Chicago folk music that made the hip indie-folk-rock hybrid possible.

The festival was run by the local folk music venue SPACE, which most summers hosts an event called “Out of Space” at a local golf course. As the golf course went under renovation, the venue began

casting about for a different summer event and settled on the idea of an Evanston Folk Festival. However, unlike the previous event, the organizers kept the connection with the venue surprisingly low-key; although SPACE did host the more high-profile artists who performed in the aftershow, including Gillian Welch, Steve Earle, and Rufus Wainwright, none of the posters or official branding explicitly connected the festival to the venue, instead marketing the event as a community event for all of Evanston. The organizers seemed to promote folk music not as the purview of a single venue in Evanston, but of the whole town.

And, indeed, the festival does celebrate the town of Evanston as much as it celebrates folk music. Alongside music and food, one section of the Dawes Park was set aside for a small maker’s market run by Evanston Made, a group promoting local Evanston artists. Most if not all of the food vendors came from the area. Among other small pop-up stands, the Evanston Historical Society provided information on the nearby Dawes House, former home of Charles Dawes, vice president under Calvin Coolidge and namesake of the park. Festival organizers brought in local bookstore Bookends and Beginnings to provide a selection of books to accompany the folk-themed talks in the

nearby WBEZ conversation tent. In one of these talks, writer Mark Guarino spoke at length about Evanston’s own Americana music connection in the person of Jethro Burns, a well-known country musician who retired to Evanston and began teaching lessons to local children, including mandolinist Don Stiernberg, who Guarino brought on the conversation stage.

Guarino’s book talk was indicative of the festival’s focus on paying homage to a long history of folk music, especially in the Chicagoland area. Aside from Guarino’s talk on the history of folk and country music in Chicago (including our very own UChicago Folk Festival), other lectures focused on the legacy of Joni Mitchell, Mavis Staples, Black country music, and Evanston’s historic Amazingrace Coffeehouse. In a certain sense, these lectures seemed like the festival organizers doing their homework, hearkening back to a previous era of folk festivals, even as the current iteration saw more electric guitar than fiddle.

So, too, did some of the acts reference an older era of folk music. Corky Siegel is an award winning, internationally famous blues harmonica player who trained with the greats of the Chicago blues scene. Despite drawing a smaller and older crowd than some of the younger artists, Siegel was also honored with a speaking

SPORTS

slot in the conversation tent. Appreciating Chicago’s long history of blues music was a common theme in the tent and on the stage: multi-instrumentalist, Grammy award winner, historian, and “American Songster” Dom Flemons brought audiences back to simpler times and instilled an appreciation for traditional music among a new generation. Doing the same was blues musician Jontavious Willis, a younger performer no less devoted to appreciating the classics of the form. As the sun set above the trees of the Dawes stage, Willis combined music with storytelling, using his harmonica to punctuate folk tales and gossip in his lilting hypnotic voice, the way his ancestors may have once shared songs around a campfire. Longtime Chicago folk music fans in the audience, like Cheryl Joyal, one of the organizers of the recent Fox Valley Folk Festival in Geneva, IL, could also point out several less well known artists on the line up as Chicagoland classics. On top of Siegel, Flemons, and Willis, Joyal also identified bluegrass inspired singer-songwriter Robbie Fulks, quirky trio Sons of the Never Wrong, and, of course, Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy presenting in the conversation tent. Even as the headliners drew standing crowds and beanie garbed yuppies, the Evanston festival honored local folk history and its long legacy.

The Relationship Between Exercise and Wellbeing for Students at UChicago

Does exercise relate to college students’ well-being, and what do UChicago’s students have to say about it?

By BLAIR PENN | Senior Sports Reporter

Recent data shows that students who regularly work out or engage in physical activity report having significantly more confidence, lower rates of anxiety and depression, increased rates of happiness, and even higher GPAs than those who don’t frequent the gym. How does the average UChicago student feel about this statistic, and how do their perspectives stack up against data from other colleges? At the Maroon, we endeavored to find out.

For many students, college is the first time they are living without their parents and have complete freedom to set their own health and wellness habits.

In response to such a huge transition, some will cling to junk food and procrastinate until 4 a.m. every night, while others will take college by the horns, getting

involved with social groups, eating and sleeping well, excelling in the classroom, and hitting the gym. Yet the UChicago academic environment can complicate just how much time is left over for the gym.

It is no question that students at UChicago experience intense academic rigor

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“Luckily, UChicago students have adopted [the] effective practice of routine exercise to provide a relief for [their] stress.”

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within the pressure-cooker environment of the quarter system. In fact, UChicago was ranked second on Business Insider’s list of “the top 50 colleges where students work the hardest.” All of this work means that UChicago students likely have less free time than those studying at other colleges for health, wellness, and working out.

For instance, Fareen Dhuka, a rising fourth-year neuroscience major and visual arts minor, expressed this concern when reflecting on her freshman year in which she became too consumed with school. “I remember freshman year I was so focused on grades and the pre-med grind that I barely made time for anything else, and that made me completely burned out by spring quarter.”

In truth, the demanding atmosphere makes UChicago the perfect breeding ground for a student to be bogged down and have limited time for self-care, exercise, or wellness. “I do know many students here with a terrible work-life balance who, if possible, could stand to benefit from the grounding power of exercise,” David Spitz (S.B. ’24) said. “A lot of common health problems come from something off in sleep, diet, or exercise.”

Spitz’s comments are also backed by recent data. For instance, the American

College Health Association’s (ACHA) Spring 2023 national survey of over 55,000 undergraduate students found that approximately 76 percent of students are experiencing moderate to serious psychological distress.

Yet, there is considerable evidence that physical activity for college students can lower stress and increase feel-good hormones. Harvard Health Publishing released a study reporting that one in ten adults in the US suffer from depression and that exercise is an effective treatment.

Luckily, UChicago students have adopted this effective practice of routine exercise to provide a relief for this stress.

Arlie Jackson, a rising fourth-year computer science major, came in knowing that working out was a non-negotiable for her, leading her to join the club crew team. “I know what works for me,” she told the Maroon. “An important part of that is being outside and active.”

Further, Jackson remarked, “Rowing is a very social sport and it gets me outside on the water nearly every day. It’s exercise, being outdoors, and good friends all in one—it’s done a lot for my wellbeing the past few years.”

Similarly, Dhuka chose to prioritize healthier lifestyle habits after a stressful first year at UChicago. “It has been really

important to me to make time for active activities I enjoy, like lifting, dancing, and studio art. I’ve been much more relaxed as a person since making that change.”

Fortunately, this trend towards exercise appears to extend to the greater UChicago student body as well.

Eitan Fischer, a rising second-year business economics major and avid gym-goer, claimed that “a surprising amount of people work out at UChicago.”

Spitz, who works out five to six times per week, agreed, explaining, “In my eyes, Ratner and Crown are always full of people, and it looks like a ton of the students are taking advantage of the facilities.”

For Spitz, exercise in his daily routine is now habitual and he sees many positive effects. “Working out is such a habit at this point that I feel worse when I don’t do it. In regards to mental health, I can attest to the fact that weightlifting is a fantastic way to maintain a good mental balance.”

Additionally, Spitz, who suffers from chronic migraines that have made it hard for him to do certain types of exercises, has benefited from the controlled nature of weightlifting. “It is possible that weightlifting helped reduce the frequency and intensity of my migraines as well.”

Dhuka found her solution to staying active through dance and lifting. “I still do both dancing and lifting at UChicago. I do the kathak style of dance with Apsara, the classical Indian dance group. We put on shows twice a year and practice very consistently during the weeks leading up to them.”

Even though the types of activities students at UChicago are engaging in to stay active vary from kathak dance to intramural soccer and everything in between, the value of exercise to the well-being of students is indisputable.

One example backing the relationship of mental wellbeing and exercise was captured by a study at Purdue University that tracked the impact of a physical education class as opposed to a regular academic class on students. Christopher Slaten, an assistant professor in Purdue’s College of Education, compared 100 students enrolled in semester-long yoga or kickbox-

ing classes with 100 students similar in gender, class year, and race who made no visits to the rec center.

Upon completion of the semester, Slaten found that the fitness-class students displayed lower stress levels, significantly higher confidence, increased levels of happiness, and even improvements in their grades. “Even previously strong students made gains,” he said.

Given the clear importance of exercise, some students feel that UChicago’s Core Curriculum, which does not integrate health and wellness into its syllabus, could benefit from incorporating more physical activity.

For instance, Fischer favored the idea of swapping out a movement class for one of the existing Core requirements. “People might not have gotten the opportunity to explore physical activity enough and, just like humanities or language is important, our physical well-being is just as, if not more, important.”

However, the support for these changes was not unanimous. “I can only imagine how goofy a group of UChicago students from a Sosc class would look when forced into a gymnasium to play field hockey or something. My gut says that this would not be a good idea,’’ Spitz said.

Jackson was also against this addition but for a different reason. “I don’t think that physical activity should be a part of the Core. A personal commitment is much more compelling than a requirement.”

“However, I would love to have electives that focus on physical activity, for example swimming or martial arts,” she added. “I recently took a modern dance class and really enjoyed it because all of class time was spent moving. I think students should have the opportunity to take classes where they aren’t just sitting all the time and learn skills that will be useful for the rest of their lives.”

Is it up to UChicago to facilitate and encourage exercise as something for students to explore more, like they do within the Core through the mandated bio, Civ, and Sosc sequences? Or is exercise a personal commitment, something that each person has to make time for on their own?

CROSSWORDS

79. Curse you, Perry the Platypus!

By HENRY JOSEPHSON | Head Crossword Editor

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