STUDENTS RELAUNCH FOSSIL FUEL DIVESTMENT
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At the Forefront of Medicine: My Summer Involuntary Hospitalization Content warning: The following article contains a personal narrative of involuntary hospitalization in a UChicago psychiatric facility, including detainment by campus police, detailed descriptions of medical procedures, and brief mention of previous sexual assault. Editor’s Note: This piece is a personal account of the author’s experience with UChicago Medicine. Maroon editors have verified key details of the account, including the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD)’s intervention at the author’s address, the author’s stays in various psychiatric facilities, and that the author communicated with friends and family while hospitalized about their experience and with the University following their hospitalization.
ARTS: Reflecting on the magic of 100 Gecs PAGE 10
Our culture conditions us to keep quiet about mental health interventions and the trauma that can co-occur with those experiences. Due to both the stigma about people who receive mental health interventions and misconceptions about us, there is very little conversation around how the mental healthcare system itself can be traumatizing even as it claims to be a system of care. When survivors do speak up, we take a risk. There seems to be a drastic mismatch between the narrative that people have about what psychiatric interventions are like and the reality. There is very little visibility for psychiatric survivors, and as such, people have a narrow conception of who we are. This allows a narrative of medical benevolence to be upheld because people who have survived
VIEWPOINTS: Why UChicago students need to embrace loneliness
traumatic psychiatric intervention are dismissed by virtue of the stigma around their experience. In June 2021, I was committed to UChicago Medicine’s psychiatric ward against my will. As I discussed this experience with others—including those who work in the
STELLA BEVACQUA mental health field—I was often met with surprise. My experiences did not fit with their expectations because they assumed that psychiatric facilities help patients rather than hurt them. From the moment the UCPD came to my door, I knew that CONTINUED ON PG. 6
Amid Promotion Prospect, SALC Professor Accused of Sexual Assault Sues Alum for Defamation PAGE 2
SPORTS Women’s soccer charges on in quest to qualify for NCAA playoffs PAGE 5
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“Majumdar’s complaint cites Fair’s ‘racist, sexist, and offensive posts’” By KATE MABUS | News Editor Rochona Majumdar, an associate professor in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations (SALC) and the Department of Cinema and Media Studies (CMS) who was accused of sexual assault in a Title IX case last year, is suing alum C. Christine Fair (Ph.D. ’04, A.M. ’97, S.B. ’91) for defamation. The lawsuit, which was filed in February, will proceed after Fair’s motion to dismiss the case on grounds that she did not fall within the court’s jurisdiction was denied by the Illinois Northern District Court. Over the last year, Fair has made a number of posts on social media about Majumdar in response to former Ph.D. candidate Zain Jamshaid’s sexual assault allegations
against her. Majumdar’s complaint cites Fair’s “racist, sexist, and offensive posts” and her intentions to “impugn Majumdar’s character, destroy her scholarly reputation, and effectuate the removal of Majumdar from her position at UChicago.” In a since-deleted blog post from March 2020 titled “The University of Chicago is a Predator Protection Racket,” Fair claimed that Majumdar had sexually assaulted a Ph.D. candidate, now known to be Zain Jamshaid, and made disparaging remarks about his sexuality, religion, caste, and national origin. She also questioned Majumdar’s career trajectory, claiming that she was hired because her husband, Dipesh Chakrabarty, is
a professor in the SALC department. In 2017, Fair accused Chakrabarty, of making sexually explicit comments towards her when she was a graduate student in the SALC department in the 1990s. According to both the lawsuit and Fair’s own Facebook post, Fair also wrote a letter in 2017 to UChicago’s Title IX office in which she accused Majumdar of making discriminatory remarks towards students and claimed Majumdar was hired because she “exploited [Chakrabarty’s] position” rather than on merit. Majumdar is currently being considered for promotion in the SALC department, according to an email sent to her former students and obtained by The Maroon. The email, sent on behalf of SALC department chair Gary Tubb, reads, “We would greatly
appreciate your frank and comprehensive evaluation of Dr. Majumdar’s abilities. Your input is a critical part of this process and we really need your feedback.” Tubb did not respond to The Maroon’s request for clarification as to whether this is standard procedure for SALC promotions. Fair has directed a number of her Facebook and Twitter posts at the University itself, writing that it is a “predator sanctuary.” Many of Fair’s posts criticize UChicago and its Title IX office for failing to take sexual misconduct complaints, including her own, seriously and for retaliating against survivors, such as Jamshaid. Majumdar declined to comment, citing the ongoing nature of the suit, and Fair did not respond to The Maroon’s request for comment.
UChicago Professor’s MIT Lecture Canceled After DEI Opinions Spark National Controversy By BASIL EGLI | Senior News Reporter UChicago geophysical sciences professor Dorian Abbot was disinvited from the annual John Carlson Lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in September following backlash from MIT’s student body over Abbot’s public opinions on affirmative action and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in higher education. Robert van der Hilst, the chair of MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS)—which hosts the Carlson Lecture—cited a controversial op-ed Abbot coauthored in Newsweek titled “The Diversity Problem on Campus” when explaining the reason for the lecture’s cancellation. Abbot has taught at UChicago since 2009 and became an associate professor in 2015. He researches climate change and the habitability of exoplanets and teaches a variety of courses, including the popular Global Warming course. Abbot has been a figure of national controversy since August, when he co-wrote the Newsweek article with Stanford University professor Iván Marinovic. The op-ed expressed concerns about the increasing emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion
(DEI) in many colleges and universities. Such initiatives, Abbot and Marinovic argued, are made at the expense of academic excellence and merit, thus actively harming the value of American institutions. The op-ed compared the implementation of DEI curriculums to the rise of Nazi Germany, where “an ideological regime obsessed with race came to power and drove many of the best scholars out.” Van der Hilst cited this comparison as one of his key reasons for canceling the lecture. The authors suggested that DEI should instead be replaced with another standard: Merit, Fairness, and Equality (MFE). The authors described MFE as a method “whereby university applicants are treated as individuals and evaluated through a rigorous and unbiased process based on their merit and qualifications alone.” “Professor Marinovic and I wanted to express our opinions on a controversial topic openly. We hoped that this would encourage others to speak freely,” Abbot wrote in an email to The Maroon. Abbot emphasized the values underpinning their proposed MFE system in an emailed response to The Maroon. “We
suggest that universities should stop giving preferences to legacies, athletes, and donor children. We also suggest that universities should invest money in researching and implementing optimal techniques to improve K-12 education, particularly for children who are not currently receiving a high-quality education.” Abbot was initially set to speak as a part of the Carlson Lecture Series in early 2020, but the event was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In September, MIT students and other people affiliated with EAPS pushed the university and the department over social media and in meetings to rescind Abbot’s invitation publicly. The protestors argued that the selection of Abbot as a lecturer reflected a lapse in MIT and EAPS’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. After the cancellation of his MIT lecture, Abbot was offered a lecture appearance by Robert George, the director of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, which he gave on October 21 to a virtual audience of around 3,000. George, a well-known conservative intellectual, announced on Twitter that “MIT’s caving in to a cancel mob’s demand to disinvite a distinguished scientist who had been
invited on the basis of his achievements to give an honorific lecture shows just how badly science today has been politicized. The integrity of science can’t survive politicization.” In response to MIT’s decision, Abbot penned another op-ed, published in the Wall Street Journal in late October. Abbot framed his personal beliefs as concerns for equality, the prioritization of academic merit in the admissions process, and the separation of the scientific process from politics. He wrote, “I believe that every human being should be treated as an individual worthy of dignity and respect. In an academic context, that means evaluating people for positions based on their individual qualities, not on membership in favored or disfavored groups. It also means allowing them to present their ideas and perspectives freely, even when we disagree with them.” In his Wall Street Journal op-ed, Abbot re-emphasized the key points from his op-ed with Marinovic on which he has elaborated in various Twitter posts. He made similar arguments about merit-based admissions, separating politics and science, and political sensitivity on campus to those he had previously voiced on Twitter. This is not the first time Abbot’s political CONTINUED ON PG. 3
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“I wanted to express our opinions on a controversial topic openly” CONTINUED FROM PG. 2
views have caused controversy. Last year, Abbot released a Google Doc on Twitter titled “My Perspective on the Controversial Events of 11/13/20-11/15/20.” The document addresses a since-deleted videotaped slideshow that Abbot had shared with geophysical sciences department faculty in November 2020, explaining his belief that academia
marginalizes people on the basis of political belief and exhibits bias toward women and non-Asian people of color. Abbot’s slideshow and follow-up document, which were circulated around the UChicago community, were met with criticism. Particularly controversial was a slideshow that compared the cultural trajectory of college campuses to the Holodomor, the
1932–33 genocide that killed millions of ethnic Ukrainians. When asked why he released the document, Abbot stated, “I wanted to present those slides internally in my department, but was refused. I posted them on YouTube as a way to share them with my department. I did not realize they would get shared widely, and people started writing mean things to
each other in the comments, which was not something I expected or was happy about. I’ve since learned that this is typical of discussions on the internet.” Abbot, along with Chancellor and former University president Robert Zimmer, is listed as being on the board of advisors for the newly announced University of Austin, which is set to launch its undergraduate college in 2024.
UC Students Relaunch Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign By LAURA GERSONY | Grey City Editor For years, UChicago has voiced its commitment to environmental sustainability. Now, a student-run campaign is calling on the University to take what they see as a necessary next step to fulfilling this goal: cutting its financial ties with planet-warming fossil fuels. Members of the student activist group Environmental Justice Task Force (EJTF), a branch of the umbrella organization UChicago Student Action, hope the University will join the ranks of Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, and other universities in divesting its $10 billion endowment from stocks that keep the oil, gas, and coal industries financially viable. “We are all actively threatened by the effects of climate change,” EJTF wrote in a campaign petition, which has amassed 40 signatures. “As students, faculty, and staff of the University of Chicago, we demand that our institution take this clear and concrete step to protect us and all of humanity.” Seeing a window of opportunity with the retirement of the University’s longtime chief investment officer, Mark Schmid,
EJTF’s student organizers are arguing that divestment is the logical next step in the University’s commitment to sustainability. Last year, UChicago announced its goal to halve its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, which would keep it on pace with the schedule laid out in the Paris Climate Accords. The group is demanding that the University divest from fossil fuels within five years, with the goal of eventually investing only in companies that have achieved carbon neutrality. This would be complementary to its existing sustainability goals, said EJTF co-organizer Felix de Simone. “It’s not an ideological issue. It’s just about [asking], ‘How can we improve our financial decisions as an institution to reflect the needs—both short- and long-term—of our university community?’ And the fact is that the University community, along with the rest of the human species, is going to be deleteriously affected by unmitigated climate change,” de Simone said. The specter of the unsuccessful “Stop Funding Climate Change” campaign from the early 2010s, when activists previous-
ly pushed for divestment, still hangs over the organizers. At the time, then-president Robert Zimmer said that the Board of Trustees, which oversees the endowment, was “unlikely” to divest. He said that such a decision was consistent with the 1967 Kalven Report, which recommended that the University maintain political neutrality on matters of the day in the interest of protecting free speech. Student organizers are optimistic that times have changed since then. The current campaign comes during a watershed moment for the global movement to divest from fossil fuels. Harvard University’s decision to divest in September of this year prompted a cascade of similar announcements from other institutions, including Boston University, the University of Minnesota, and the MacArthur Foundation. To date, global investment funds valued at a collective $40 trillion have committed to abstinence from coal, oil, and gas stocks— more than the gross domestic products of the U.S. and China, combined. “We’re reentering into a very exciting time. We’re riding the coattails of several major divestment announcements from
universities across the country. It’s a really different space from what it was in 2015 or 2016,” said Joe Geniesse, another ETJF organizer. Concerns about climate change are pushing the world economy toward decarbonization, meaning that investments in fossil fuels are likely to become stranded assets in the not-too-distant future. In light of this, Geniesse said, “part of our argument is a financial one: that the long term sustainability of the endowment itself would be benefited from divestment.” The group also frames its activism as part of a broader push for the University to be more transparent about its budget and endowment. Their other demands include regular disclosure of the University’s finances and holding a community “stakeholder referendum” including students, faculty, and staff to set “ethical and environmentally just” guidelines for the University’s future investment decisions. Currently, the student organizers’ plans include circulating the ongoing petition, holding a teach-in on the merits of divestment, and, they hope, engaging in dialogue with University administrators.
University Reports 38 New Cases, Launches Pediatric Vaccination Clinic By LAYNE FRIEDMAN | News Reporter In the UChicago Forward update sent on Friday, November 5, the University reported 38 new cases of COVID-19, down from 39 last week. This week’s new cases had 117 close contacts. The University’s surveillance testing program yielded five positive cases between October 28 and November 3 for a 0.52 per-
cent positivity rate. As of Friday, the overall campus positivity rate is 0.24 percent. Currently, no students are in on-campus isolation housing, while 19 students are isolating off campus. This update also includes a video with information on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recent endorsement of
the recommendation from an advisory panel that children 5 to 11 years old be vaccinated against COVID-19 with a reduced dosage of the Pfizer–BioNTech pediatric vaccine. The video addressed common questions regarding the pediatric vaccine and emphasized the continued importance of widespread COVID-19 vaccination. It featured UChicago Medicine doctors Allison Bartlett, Monica Peek, and Daniel Johnson.
Comer Children’s Hospital at UChicago Medicine is now offering a COVID-19 vaccine clinic for patients ages five and up. Appointments are required, and anyone can schedule one by calling 773-834-8221. The COVID-19 vaccine will also be available during regularly scheduled pediatrician visits at Comer Children’s and at the Duchossois Center for Advanced Medicine.
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Booth Alum Launches Environmentally Friendly Men’s Clothing Rental Company By ERIC FANG | News Reporter According to a new survey conducted jointly by the The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, about six in 10 Americans believe the pace of global warming is accelerating. However, carbon emissions from the fashion industry, which emits more than international flights and maritime shipping combined according to the United Nations Environment Programme, is often overlooked. Booth School of Business alum Anya Cheng hopes to address this challenge while simultaneously keeping men stylish through her new men’s clothing rental startup, Taelor. Taelor allows men to rent clothes for 15-day intervals instead of purchasing them. For a monthly fee of $59.99, customers receive an assortment of four shirts curated by artificial intelligence and an assigned stylist. The clothes are selected based on the customer’s expressed preferences and sizes. Taelor ships the clothes directly to the customer for 15 days. After this period, the customer will receive a new batch of clothes and can either purchase the previous clothes for 70 percent off retail price or return them. Since launching last May, Taelor has won the Alumni New Venture Challenge, a competition for UChicago alumni to present their early-stage startups. Taelor competed against start-ups from six other regions of the world and won the $100,000 award. The company has just sent out its first 100 pilot boxes of clothes to customers nationwide. After receiving feedback from the pilot boxes, Cheng hopes to improve her products and begin fundraising in earnest next year. Cheng credits her UChicago education as integral to establishing connections that have guided her company during its early stages. She graduated from Booth School of Business in 2014 as one of just nine women in a class of 90. She is now a Professor at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications.
“When we worked on our finances, we asked classmates who are now CFOs in other companies to look at Taelor’s financials,” Cheng said. “Our first round of investors were classmates who have now built a successful career. Also, I have been asked by other entrepreneur classmates to be a board member for their companies to help with marketing, and in turn, I see how they operate their startups, and I learn from those experiences as well.” Cheng met Taelor cofounder Phoebe Tan while studying at Booth. While Cheng specializes in marketing and technology, Tan handles the company’s finances and operations. Their respective skills and professional experiences allow them to manage their company effectively and tackle challenges that come their way. “Phoebe and I have totally different
save the environment,” Cheng told The Maroon in an interview. “People only wear 20 percent of what they buy. So even though you might love some outfits, most of the stuff in your closet that you never really wear ends up in landfills.” Cheng’s startup comes on the heels of the “fast fashion” explosion, the proliferation of cheap, trendy garments based on celebrity culture. According to the World Resources Institute, people bought 60 percent more clothing in 2014 than in 2000, but only kept the clothes for half as long. In response, clothing manufacturers, in an effort to satiate record demand, have more than doubled their output since 2000, and they generally do not design their clothes to last. Cheng believes that Taelor and other clothing rental companies have an edge over fast fashion due to the two-week turnaround for clothes and the associated consumer preference data.
“Circular fashion is the future of the clothing industry” expertise, but through our [Chicago] Booth education, we know enough to at least ask questions to help the other person avoid blind spots,” Cheng said. “This kind of communication allows us to support each other and become really great founders.” Cheng designed Taelor’s business model after learning that roughly 85 percent of all textiles end up in landfills or burned. As more than 60 percent of fabric textiles are made from fossil fuel – derived polyester, Greenpeace International, a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness for environmental issues through research, reports that these clothes in landfills can take hundreds of years to decompose and generate microplastics that pollute waterways. “Taelor helps busy men look good without the commitment of buying clothes and while also helping people
“So if you think of fast fashion, the reason these companies, which are not eco-friendly, are so successful is because they get really quick feedback in four months,” Cheng said. “But for our platform, people rent clothing and then in just two weeks we have real data come back and we know if people like their clothes. The customer can judge whether it is fair to wear and if the quality is good, and that all feeds into our rich data.” Cheng was first inspired to start Taelor by her own struggles finding affordable yet fashionable clothing with little hassle. Whereas most existing clothing rental companies target women, Cheng viewed adult men as a prime market for her business. “Before I started this company, I wasn’t a fashionable person, I was pretty lazy, I hated shopping, and I hated laundry,” Cheng said. “What I eventual-
ly found out was that many people have the same problem I do. And guess what? Most of those people are men. They are 25 to 40 years old, 60 percent are single, and they don’t care about fashion, but they do care about looking good in order to achieve certain goals that they have, and that’s [how] Taelor was born.” The shift away from fast fashion to clothing rental is reflected in the success of companies such as Rent the Runway. Rent the Runway debuted its IPO last Wednesday at a valuation of $1.7 billion, surprising analysts who expected a number close to $1.3 billion. “Circular fashion is the future of the clothing industry, and that includes both resale and rental business models,” Cheng said. “With a resale clothing company, users go on a website and can purchase clothes that have been worn before, or they can sell their own clothes to others. That’s great, but it can take hours to scroll through different products, and once you buy something, you usually can’t return it, which makes no sense for people who don’t have a lot of time.” Since graduating from Booth, Cheng has led digital innovation, marketing, and artificial intelligence teams at companies such as Facebook, eBay, Target, and Sears. This professional work experience has helped her hone her skills in marketing, innovation, and leadership and ultimately prepared her for being the CEO of Taelor. “I am actually a new entrepreneur,” she said. “In the last 15 years, I have always been working in the corporate sphere, and I specialize in building “zero-to-one” products. So on the one hand, I have a lot of zero-to-one product experience with building new businesses, new products, and new innovations. On the other hand, I have a lot of retail experience. So, at retail companies like Target, Sears, and eBay, I know how difficult it is for brands to really know what people want.” Taelor is currently offering a 30-day free trial for anyone who signs up for the monthly membership and who wears medium-sized shirts. Memberships may be cancelled at any time.
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VIEWPOINTS
A Pantheon of Loneliness Loneliness is a space of creation and self discovery UChicago students need to embrace. By ANNIE DHAL I was born and raised in my own solitude, which is to say that I was an only child with a flair for the dramatic. The combination of the two, as inevitably as winter turns to spring (as Zeus cheats on Hera), led to a years-long obsession with Greek mythology that swallowed up most of my early teens. I devoted myself to it, to Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson at first, then Stephen Fry’s Mythos, then Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, then Apollodarus’ The Library of Greek Mythology, each text a little
more academic, more precise, but largely containing the same amalgamation of stories, the same playing field of characters, who rapidly became familiar, friendly. This frenzy of learning seized me but has not returned since (much to the disappointment of my latest economics P-set). I can’t exactly pinpoint what set off my intense hunger for learning beyond a simultaneous intensification of the sense of isolation that had plagued me since childhood. It’s ironic then, or maybe fitting, that so much of Greek mythology speaks so powerfully
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of this same loneliness, the same aloneness that defines and erodes so much of life here at UChicago. In many ways, loneliness is the first feeling, the start of it all. As I have read it, from Chaos, which was everything and nothing, burst forth Gaea, the earth. She existed alone for a while in this primordial soup until she found in herself the desire to create a companion (a feeling perhaps not alien to that first conversation with a roommate), Ouranos, the sky. And so, it began, our whole world, our existence, carved out of reaching out, of longing, of needing someone. The seasons too, are explained by this need. You have Hades, languishing alone in the gloom of his underworld kingdom, spying Persephone, goddess of spring, of rebirth, of all things light and
good, and deciding that if he could be with her, the dread of his immortal life might lift. You have Persephone, for so long so sheltered, deciding to stay with the man who chose her, even if it meant sentencing the world to four months of frigid winter. Stockholm syndrome aside, here is a story of how we pick each other, identify our lonely hearts and piece ourselves together. Then there is Orpheus, the greatest musician of his time, a mortal among gods, who traipsed into hell for his wife, who would not settle for the early death of his greatest companion, who parted the gates of Hades for her, but found himself unable to deal with the uncertainty of her return. At the prospect of loneliness, he rose to the challenge, and he faltered by the same hand.
When I read these myths for the first time, for the hundredth, was I seeing the consequences of loneliness, how far we would go to explain it to ourselves, to solve it? I was 13 and stupid then, so I was unsure, but these past two years, in the isolation of quarantine, I found myself revisiting this old passion and looking a little deeper. For most of us, ending our loneliness by thinking someone up from the depths of creation itself is usually out of the question. Kidnapping is rightly frowned upon, and walking to hell and back has mostly transitioned into the realm of metaphor. So, what do we do, when we find ourselves alone, like so many of us did, attending college at the height of the pandemic? I’m not sure there is a definite CONTINUED ON PG. 6
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“For most of us, ending our loneliness by thinking someone up from the depths of creation itself is usually out of the question.” CONTINUED FROM PG. 5 answer, or a checklist that I missed during move-in, but my own first quarter was spent largely in the darkness of my dorm room watching Friends. The ancient Greeks created gods to convince themselves that they were not alone. I had a laugh track. It took me months to unscrew my shell, months more to step out of it, and another few months of conversation with new friends to realize that everyone around me was doing the exact same thing. Of course, some of us had an easier time of it than others, but the same
fear of being left behind grounded us; the same anxieties, the same worries consumed us. There is a lesson to be gleaned from this experience and from Greek mythology, and here’s what I think it is: We are all always a little lonely. We all stand a little way apart from everyone else, we all wonder if they’re having a better time, we wonder if we are being forgotten, written out of the story, erased. If we are able to accept this, accept loneliness as a condition of existence rather than a private exception, perhaps we will be kinder to ourselves. Perhaps we
will stop seeing loneliness as proof of our own unworthiness, that if we are unable to provide a list host of friends and acquaintances and points of contact, we are lessened by this denial of love, and others, sensing this rejection will reject us too. We fear that loneliness is a permanent affliction, a character trait that will define us unless we wrest control of it. But just as this loneliness can be immensely destructive, the space and time it gives us to ourselves, a rarity in this world, is crucial in self-discovery, and in turn, in combating another sort of debilitating isolation: a severance from the self.
How many of us can truthfully say that we know who we are, separate from the opinions and projections of our friends? How many of us can differentiate between what we truly love, where we want to be in 10 years, and what we’ve simply been reciting to people for convenience’s sake? What if, in the barrage of information and ideas that infiltrate our everyday life, we have forgotten to ask ourselves who it is we want to be? This is not to suggest that we don’t need other people, or that the pressures of isolation do not have devastating consequences
on college campuses and across America alike. Instead, perhaps we need to shift the lens with which we view being alone. Perhaps it is in being alone that we decide on who we truly wish to spend our time with, as Hades and Persephone did. Maybe being alone lets us develop and concentrate our passions, like Orpheus. And maybe being alone allows us to gain definition of ourselves, to find out who we really are, like mother earth herself. So, take a deep breath. Go to the dining hall, sit down, and eat a meal alone. Annie Dhal is a second-year in the College.
“It was my worst nightmare: After reaching out for help because of a re-traumatization, I was now on track to end up in the exact environment—a psychiatric ward—that I had cited as traumatic.” CONTINUED FROM PG. 1 what followed would not be care. I study neuroscience and human rights in the College, with a particular focus on psychiatric ethics and pedagogies of pathologi zation. I have read extensively on these topics, so I know that the psychiatric system too often harms the patients it purports to help. Even knowing the lengths to which these institutions go to protect themselves at a cost to patients, I still felt dehumanized by what occurred, and I left in a worse mental state than I arrived. Nothing that happened was illegal or against institutional rules. Even when everyone does their jobs in a psychiatric setting, these systems of socalled “care” are not designed to administer life-bettering interventions for patients be-
cause the need to protect practitioners and institutions from liability gets in the way. Here is my story. One Friday this past summer, an experience in a UChicago neuroscience lab where I was working prompted a flashback to some previous trauma from the psychiatric system. On Saturday morning, I was still feeling distressed, so I did as many people—including mental health professionals—had told me to do: I reached out for help because I felt I was in crisis. From bed in my off-campus apartment, I called the student counseling service and asked to speak to the counselor on call because of how I was feeling. Throughout the call, I emphasized that a previous traumatic experience with a psychiatric ward had triggered my cri-
sis and prompted me to reach out. I felt that we were making some progress when I heard an intense banging on my door. It sounded like they would break down the door, so I ran and opened it. Four male UCPD officers entered my apartment. I was not dressed. The only thing I was wearing was a shirt that I like to sleep in. I had been crying throughout the call and still was when the police came in. I expressed that I was upset but not in imminent danger. One officer told me to sit down in a folding chair that was in my bedroom. There was a pair of pajama pants on the floor, which I put on as I was uncomfortable being so exposed in just a shirt. Another officer took my phone, with the counselor on the other end, and walked away with it, eventually
ending the call with the counselor. I thought that they had observed enough to see that intervention was not needed, and I thought that they would leave, but another officer who had been walking around my apartment came up and told me to stand up and turn around. When I complied, they handcuffed me even though I had not been resisting and they had made no request for me to come with them. They guided me toward my door. I asked if I could get my keys and moved toward them, but they held me back while an officer took them. They took me downstairs. As they were putting me into the back of one of the four squad cars outside of my building, they suggested that I might be more comfortable riding with the female officer who had
been down at the street while they were in my apartment. (This concern for my gender had been absent moments before, when men had entered my apartment, searched the premises, and handled my body.) During the car ride, no one would really answer my questions about what was happening. The handcuffs were too tight, and I was losing feelings in my fingers. I told them this, but I don’t know if anyone heard. In the emergency room (ER), I was uncuffed and left in a room on a gurney. They took away my clothing and gave me a hospital gown. I asked for water and information at any opportunity I could, but I was given neither. It was my worst nightmare: After reaching out for help because of a re-traumatization, I was now CONTINUED ON PG. 7
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“I felt that who I was and how the experience affected me was lost among the policies, procedures, and algorithms of the system.” CONTINUED FROM PG. 6 on track to end up in the exact environment—a psychiatric ward—that I had cited as traumatic. After several hours, some medical students came in to talk to me. I explained that I have a long mental health history, that I am aware of my conditions, and that I work with counselors and psychiatrists. I told them that I am a psychiatric survivor, that I am a sexual assault survivor, and that I was in no active danger. While my distressed state was initially because I had a flashback, my distress now stemmed from the repeated disrespect of my bodily autonomy throughout the day and from living out my worst nightmare. Even at this point, I believed that I would be released. By showing that I was doing fine, saying the right things, and showing that I have a safety plan and extensive experience working on my mental health through therapy and psychiatry, I thought I would be guaranteed a safe discharge. None of that made a difference. One of the medical students finally brought me a small cup of water. After what I think was a few more hours, they came back with a psychiatrist who told me that they were going to hospitalize me. I cried, telling them that this was the worst possible thing they could do for my well-being. I explained again that the hospital was a traumatizing environment and that the intrusions on my bodily autonomy that came with hospitalization were harmful to my mental health. That did not change anything. The psychiatrist left. What I said seemed less important than their interpretation of the notes in my medical chart.
I lay down on the floor, finding comfort on the cold tile. Someone walked by and said, “You can’t be doing that. If you continue to act this way, we are going to sedate you.” I got up. I went to try to talk to someone who was at a desk area across from the rooms. I feel better when I know what is going on—getting information is something that I have been encouraged to do to help with anxiety—so I asked and tried to talk to him and asked for water again. I was told that I was “monopolizing the staff’s time.” I was then asked if I would take sedatives orally or if they would have to inject me. I said I would take them orally, and only then did they give me water. When the sedatives started to wear off, I would intermittently wake and ask to use the phone to connect with my support network. Sometimes, the staff would let me; sometimes, they wouldn’t. When they would allow it, I was able to reach friends or my mother to explain where I was and what was happening, but opportunities to contact the outside world were limited. On Sunday, the psychiatrist came in again and told me they were holding me for a bed to open up in a psychiatric ward. I tried to sleep as much as I could throughout the day because there was nothing to do and being awake in that environment was unpleasant. They talked about moving me upstairs to make room in the ER. In anticipation of doing so, they put an intravenous needle into my arm but never connected anything to it. There was a bathroom in the ER, but it did not have toilet paper. I was also not allowed to close the door if I used it. At around 1 a.m. on Mon-
day—after about 37 hours of being held in the ER room—I was transferred to a different room within the hospital. I now had a window, and there was a nurse’s assistant present as I had to be monitored all day. The nurse’s assistant changed shifts around 7 a.m. I was told I could brush
my teeth and was given a brush to use while monitored, which they had not let me do in the ER. They let me shower, but it was required that the nurse’s assistant watch me the entire time, and I was not allowed to hold the soap myself. I asked what they thought I would do if I was
allowed to hold my own soap while I showered. She answered that I could eat the pump and that when someone’s “in for what [I’m] in for, they have to take precautions.” I asked what I was in for. She said she didn’t know. CONTINUED ON PG. 8
SOFIA CAPUA MONTOTO
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“The handcuffs were too tight, and I was losing feelings in my fingers.” CONTINUED FROM PG. 7 At 5 p.m. on Monday, I was told that a bed had opened at a psychiatric unit and that I would be transferred in an ambulance. My concerns about the cost of an ambulance went unaddressed. I later received a bill for the ambulance that came to $792 out of pocket after insurance. It was about a 30-minute drive to UChicago Medicine Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey, IL. Mealtime had passed, so I wouldn’t be able to eat until morning. They told me that I couldn’t shower or wash my hands because the water was out that day. I eventually tried to sleep, without much success. The bed and blanket were uncomfortable, I did not have access to needed sleep medication, and people would come into the room every 15 minutes or so, sometimes turning on the lights when they entered. I woke up early on Tuesday morning and asked the behavioral health technician if the water was back on. He did not know. I wandered around until someone came up and talked to me about signing into the ward. I was confused at the implication that I wasn’t signed into the ward. She said I was “under certain petition.” I asked if this meant I could leave. She said I had to sign in. I asked if any of the prior three days counted for anything, and she said no. I asked if I had rights. She said yes and gave me a piece of paper. The first line said that when a patient signed in, they could request for discharge. I pointed this out, and she took the paper away, saying it was misleading. I could only request for discharge and sign myself out after five business days; weekends didn’t count. I asked again what the point of signing in was since I had to be there anyway. She replied that it would reflect well on me to do it. After five busi-
ness days, I could sign myself out. She encouraged me to sign, saying that it would show that I was willing to work with them and that I would be able to get out faster. She told me it would benefit me to sign in, so I signed it, but it didn’t feel like I actually had a choice: I didn’t really understand what doing so meant or to what I was “consenting” in the process. Now that I was officially signed into the psychiatric facility, this is where I would, in theory, get the treatment that would help me feel better. Nothing that followed made me feel better, and if anything, it made things worse. There was almost nothing to do on the ward. There were two 30-minute “therapy” groups a day, but sometimes they didn’t happen. The groups included one on healthy eating, where they described how some food—including what they were feeding us on the ward—was terrible for your physical and mental health, and one where they told us about neurotransmitters in a way that was not scientifically accurate. At one group, we all read through a printout of a WebMD article on nervous breakdowns. At another group time, we went out to a courtyard as we were otherwise not allowed to go outside. If you were lucky, you would meet with a psychiatrist or a social worker. I met with a psychiatrist on Tuesday. The reason they had given for why it had taken so long to transfer me to the ward was that they wanted me to be at a hospital with the same medical team that had worked with me in the ER. But so far, I hadn’t interacted with anyone from the ER, and my new practitioners didn’t seem to be in communication with the prior ones because I found myself explaining my circumstances anew in each conversation. When I met with the new psy-
chiatrist, it seemed I was back to square one. They only asked me about the call to the counselor on Saturday and didn’t seem to account for anything that had happened since then or what I had said to the other doctor. Whenever I had the chance to talk to anyone, I expressed that the worst thing for me is when I am alone with my thoughts and taken away from the things that give my life meaning. I talked to a social worker, and I told her that this was my tailor-made hell because I have sensory issues; because I was unable to have my own underwear for many days; because I had been taken away from everything that gives me any joy or comfort in life; and because I was being subjected to infinite small indignities, dehumanization, pathologization, and infantilization—the exact environment that I explained was traumatic in my initial call for help to UChicago’s student mental health services. The time in the hospital was not helping me, and I hoped to get discharged soon. On Wednesday, I saw the social worker and asked if we could talk about discharge. She said no, saying that she had talked to me yesterday and had other people to see today. Those few days were miserable. I was extremely bored, I was sleep-deprived, and I didn’t have any of my own clothes or underwear. Whenever I mentioned any of these factors, they were dismissed as a “comfort issue.” I had limited contact with the outside world. There were designated times for phone use, but the schedule was not always followed. When I saw that the phones were available, I would try to call my mom, but because the phone number was out of state, someone in the nurses’ station had to dial and transfer it, and they weren’t always willing to do so even during
phone time. If someone called for me outside of phone time, I wouldn’t necessarily be told about it. Later in the day on Wednesday, I talked to yet another psychiatrist—the third different one during my stay—who did not seem to know anything I had told the previous one. She asked me again about the call on Saturday and treated me as though it had just occurred. I did my best to summarize what I had previously said and to describe my time there thus far. I wanted to get out. I brought that up again, and they said they needed to “gather collateral” in order to discharge me. I asked what that meant, and they didn’t answer me. Only after discharge and looking into this further did I understand that “collateral” was information about me and my conditions that the institution was collecting to inform my treatment and release plan. They asked me to sign a release of information so that they could talk to the Dean of the College. When I asked what would happen if I didn’t sign it, they said it didn’t matter because the College already knew I was in the ward because I had come via Student Counseling’s report. Over the course of four days, I had talked to many people, but I felt that no one had a sense of me as a person and that there was a lot of inconsistency between what different people told me. At one point, a nurse came up to me and injected me with a shot without obtaining my approval after I was told in the ER that they would not give me medication without my explicit consent. It was only vitamin B, but it showed that the previous promise that I wouldn’t be given any medications without my full consent and understanding was hollow: I had just been injected with something without being
told what it was. Even with each person individually following policies and procedures, how they acted really had nothing to do with who I was as a patient or what would help me. It was about following procedure, even at the expense of care. People did the exact things others said they wouldn’t do. I was subjected to the exact things that were the worst for my mental health. Everyone on the ward went to the same therapy groups and resided in the same space regardless of how they got there. I spoke with patients who were awaiting trial for domestic battery, people in recovery for addiction, and one person who said he genuinely did not know why he had been placed there. Each of us was treated as an identical input in a bureaucracy that had little concern for our circumstances, our individuality—or even our humanity. On Thursday, I was optimistic that they would discharge me. It became increasingly clear that it wasn’t serving me to be there: I made repeated pleas about how this was the worst thing for me, how this wasn’t care work, how it made no sense and was actively damaging to keep me there, and how I was perfectly safe to be released. In their gathering of collateral, my mother recognized the impact of the situation on me and expressed similar sentiments. Additionally, I had now been held for more than 72 hours, a standard time for an emergency hold. When I saw the social worker, I asked if I was getting discharged, and she said I would be the following day. I was disappointed. The psychiatrist and medical students took me aside during group therapy that day to tell me they were going to discharge me later on. They called an Uber to arrive about four CONTINUED ON PG. 9
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“By showing that I was doing fine, saying the right things, and showing that I have a safety plan and extensive experience working on my mental health through therapy and psychiatry, I thought I would be guaranteed a safe discharge.” CONTINUED FROM PG. 8 hours after they met with me. I was told to strip my linens. Then I gathered my few possessions, consisting of a bottle of baby shampoo, a roll of toilet paper, and various papers I had accumulated over my time. I had asked for my shoes and other belongings that they were holding, but they did not give them to me until the Uber arrived. From Saturday morning to Thursday night while I was held, I did not speak to a therapist or counselor, or at least not anyone I could identify as either, out-
side of the initial call that was the cause of my hospitalization. From the time I was admitted to the time I was discharged, nothing about my treatment plan changed. All that had happened was the passage of time and the enforcement of their holding procedures. There was functionally nothing different about me or my circumstances that would have made me any “safer” than I was on Saturday. If anything, my mental health was much worse. I don’t know if they finally believed that I was not a danger to myself or if I just
passed an arbitrary amount of time in the institution determined sufficient for release. Although I was relieved to be discharged, I did not feel “better,” and I also had to deal with the aftershocks of the experience. I felt that who I was and how the experience affected me was lost among the policies, procedures, and algorithms of the system. To my understanding, nothing that happened to me was illegal, and no individual outrageously failed to perform their assigned role in the psychiatric system. I don’t think what hap-
pened to me was unusual in UChicago’s psychiatric institutions, and such failures are replicated across our country. Because of my prior personal experience with the psychiatric system, my interest in how it functions, and my perspective as a neuroscience student and researcher, I was somewhat able to brace myself for the trauma of being held against my will, but I know that to many people, my story will come as a surprise. My hope is that this account raises serious questions in our community about how we talk
about and treat survivors of psychiatric trauma—because nobody should be dehumanized in the very place they seek care, and no one should be dismissed because their experience does not match the public narrative. Editor’s Note: The Maroon plans to report further on this matter. If you have experienced involuntary hospitalization on campus or work within UChicago’s psychiatric system and would like to share your story, please email us at editor@chicagomaroon.com or submit an anonymous tip.
Going Off Mute Returning to in-person school can be daunting to introverted students, but embracing the discomfort can open us up to new experiences. By RACHEL ONG It started with a ringtone. As the staccato rhythms rang throughout the classroom, sleepy heads snapped from their screens to search for the culprit. The lecture immediately came to a halt. In one swift motion, the student stashed their phone into their coat pocket. The professor took a second to recalibrate before continuing the class. This is certainly a quintessential, if somewhat embarrassing, experience to have in college, but being in the moment made me realize how much I had missed out on while stuck on Zoom. Now that many of us are newly minted In-Person College Students, there is no more mute
button to save us from these f leeting moments of public scrutiny. When fall quarter began, I was ecstatic about the novel experiences of entering a busy student-run coffee shop, walking into a library without scheduling an appointment, or watching students out in droves on the quad. But there was, naturally, a lingering discomfort that came with this transition. Attending college online meant that I could lean into my introversion and avoid the potential calamities that came with speaking up and speaking out. There was something distinctly comforting about Zoom classes: You surrender yourself to the equalizing effect of being one out of
many small boxes on a screen. It was a safe space for the socially anxious and the quiet types of people with whom I identified. But recently, in between going to coffee chats, studying at the Reg, and feeling more perceived than I have ever felt in my life, I realized that being out in the entropic world of actual, in-person college has changed something in me fundamentally. It made me listen, finally, to the inner extrovert that had been there all along. Don’t get me wrong—I love a good moment of alone time. If I’m being completely honest, I tick most of the boxes of textbook introverts. Described in report cards as “reserved and quiet”? Check. Prefers lectures over small discussion groups?
Sure. A thoughtful listener? Of course. But this introvert identity has largely felt more imposed on me than something naturally understood. It’s shaped by the environments I’ve grown up in and how comfortable I’ve felt in them: The family dynamics with which I’m familiar, my steady friend groups, and my limited experience with public speaking. While I would love to be the person that naturally delivers fervent speeches—or even just basic opinions—in front of large groups of people, I often don’t out of fear that I will jumble all the words. Attending school online assuaged this fear of being launched into the spotlight against my will. For some reason, though, having to engage in
the real world and go outside of my dorm room isn’t making me shrink into myself. Instead, it’s allowing me to be more aware of how much I truly want to connect with people and how much I enjoy the little things about social life that simply weren’t satisfied by the virtual reality of online school, like witnessing groups of people on the quad, grabbing a spontaneous meal at Pret, or cramming last-minute assignments with strangers in the dorm study room. If you’re struggling to adjust to life post–Zoom University or if you find yourself wanting to expand your social life, I encourage you to venture out of the metaphorical screen and try something new. You could CONTINUED ON PG. 10
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“But life at UChicago is, to me, an inherently social life.” CONTINUED FROM PG. 9 sign up for a low-key RSO, sit in the first floor of the Reg, or attend a dorm event. Although it’s common advice to just “get out there,” not many people follow through with it. UChicago culture is known for being quite isolating, and not just in your first year. Trying something small—whether it’s sitting in a cafe for the first time or chatting with a neighbor—makes an enormous difference. You can stay within your personal boundaries while trying something new. Hopefully, this will nourish the part of you that thrives on connection, and at the very least, it’s a way for you to experience our campus in new ways. There’s a myth that introverts fall under the more studious types. I used to believe that staying inside meant that I would miraculously become more dedicated to the Life of the Mind. But life at UChicago is, to me, an inherently social life, and I don’t mean the kind of life that demands plans with friends every weekend or bestows the confidence of someone who speaks first in class. College life thrives in social spaces, fed by both
smaller and larger interactions with the real world around you. While much of the personal growth that happens here can be individually experienced, it’s also shared among peers and friends. Being at this school can make you feel like you can only be on opposite sides of the social spectrum, but that isn’t the case. Convincing yourself to commit to that extra step is a way to explore what you’re comfortable with. As someone who considers myself fairly non-opinionated in most social settings, content to form hot takes, crack jokes, and do deep dives on serious topics only when I’m clanging away at a keyboard, I’ve learned a lot by making the choice to leave my comfort zone. If your fears of reentering the arena of in-person school start to compound or if your phone suddenly rings during the middle of a class, try not to panic. It might be freeing to lean into the discomfort. Rachel Ong is a second-year in the College. JINNA LEE
ARTS gecs on gecs on gecs By SETH NGUYEN | Arts Reporter On October 21, about 15 minutes before opening time for 100 gecs’s 10,000 gecs tour, I found myself at a bar down the street from Concord Music Hall, where the duo was set to perform, downing shots with two women who had driven over from Milwaukee earlier that day. “We went to the early show, too,” one of them gushed. “It was just that good!” When we finally entered the venue, the sweat-soaked hype that my newfound friends exuded was palpable. Not even the gender-segregated frisk lines outside could dampen the crowd’s exuberance; nuns, leatherdykes, the rare drag queen, and bunny-eared goths chanted at the stage, waiting for the electronic noise duo to appear. Around 11:30 p.m., their calls were partly answered when the opener, Aaron Cartier,
appeared. Over heavy, bass-soaked tunes, Cartier delivered explosive litanies against capitalism, the music industry, and more; a mosh pit was in full swing by the time that his set ended. Cartier’s music was omnivorous in its genre-encompassing range, blending together samples from video games, highpitched synths, and guttural vocals. As he closed out his set, the jitters had dissipated from the throng of black-clad concertgoers, and anticipation filled the air. It would be past midnight when 100 gecs, Laura Les and Dylan Brady, finally took the stage. The ever-desperate chants of “Gecs! Gecs! Gecs!” from the audience grew into a frenzy and burst into screams as the venue dimmed to total darkness and the duo exploded into a song from their upcoming
album, 10000 gecs, titled “Hey Big Man.” The lyrics’ puffed-up bravado (“Redneck Billie tried to fight me on a bad night/ Cut his throat open, smoked an ounce out his windpipe”) is reminiscent of the duo’s breakout single, “money machine,” and its legendary opening gambit (“Hey little piss baby/ you think you’re so fucking cool?”), but louder, more abrasive, and somehow even more catchy. As Les and Brady headbanged along with the pulsating crowd in front of two comically large fake speakers, I was reminded of why their music (and hyperpop, more broadly) caught my attention in the first place—it was wickedly, devilishly fun. After this stunning introduction, they greeted the whole crowd, and Brady added, “Sing along if you know the words!” The next song, as luck would have it, was a fan-favorite from their debut album 1000 gecs, “stu-
pid horse.” To say that the crowd was singing along would be an understatement; everyone within a 10-foot radius of me was screaming every line to it while limbs, glasses, phones, and bodies went flying in the ska-addled madness blaring from the speakers. Hot on the heels of “stupid horse” was “757,” another unreleased song that spotlighted the gecs’s snarky humor and lyricism, as Les yelled, “Live in dog years and I feel 26/ Yeah, I’m an old bitch, but I learn new tricks” over buzzy synths. And then it was time for a xylophone interlude, which saw Les kneeling on the floor, hitting the ground with a mallet and tossing it high in the air before the 1000 gecs hit parade resumed with “ringtone,” sending the crowd into nigh-religious ecstasy yet again. “Gecgecgec” got an acoustic makeover; Les and CONTINUED ON PG. 11
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“The new material is notably different.” CONTINUED FROM PG. 10
Brady dispensed with the track’s signature Siri-esque vocals and leaned into its sentimental outro to deliver a sweet ballad underscored by thrumming guitars. The audience sang along, arms waving and flashlights held high, before dissolving into chaos as strobe lights flashed to the beat of “hand crushed by a mallet.” The aforementioned breakout single, “money machine,” was also brought out to resounding cheers from the audience. Into the sweat-slick air I plunged, as the mosh pit claimed another body. The crowd was less a collection of distinct individuals than it was a single entity that breathed, kicked, jostled, and yelled, as these familiar tunes ripped through every cell in our bodies. Between the classics, Les and Brady played even more unreleased songs. From this trove, two stood out in particular: “hollywood baby,” a snarky, grungy earworm
that was intended “as a sneering nod to [Les’s] move to L.A.,” and “what’s that smell,” which samples dialogue from the video game Bloodborne and is a comical decree against all which offends the olfactory sense. The new material is notably different. The manic urgency that has characterized their sound remains, but there is something new and exciting and grand in the works. The duo has already taken the music world by storm; could they stunt on us even harder next year? Their command of the crowd on Thursday night suggests a resounding yes. Les’s livewire presence ripped through the moshing crowd every time she screamed into the mic, and Brady and Les’s electrifying performance had every audience member completely hooked. These genre-bending, attention-seizing musical wizards delivered an exceptional live show, and I am incredibly excited for what 2022 can possibly bring in the name of 10000 gecs.
SPORTS Football Finishes Regular Season with 8–1 Record
Behind a fearsome offensive line, fourth-year running back Nick D’Ambrose set a new school record for rushing yards in a season with 1,636 yards. COURTESY OF EMMA-VICTORIA BANOS
Fourth-year quarterback Philip Martini II (No. 12) oversaw an offense that set a new modern-era record for total offense, after totaling 4,916 yeards over nine games. COURTESY OF EMMA-VICTORIA BANOS
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Women’s Soccer Charges Through Conference Play By SABRINA CHANG | Sports Reporter The UChicago women’s soccer team, led by a group of 12 experienced seniors, has not missed a beat in their return to the field after last year’s hiatus. The No. 12 Maroons currently hold an impressive 12-2-4 overall record and 2-2-3 conference record in the University Athletic Association (UAA) as they continue on their quest to reach the NCAA playoffs. Fall sports teams arrived on campus a full month before school was officially in session, allowing their preseason to quickly launch into full swing without the added stress of classes. For first-year students like Josie Majowka, this was a difficult but rewarding transition period. “We would literally eat, sleep, and go to practice, so it was a lot put on us very quickly,” Majowka said. “But everyone was so inclusive and encouraging, we were able to get through it together.” During the pre-season, the team was really able to focus on building a bond between themselves, something that coach Amy Reifert has always put an emphasis on throughout her storied career of 31 years as head of the program. “We worked really hard to create a culture that is all about the team,” Reifert said. “The women on our team do a tremendous job elevating each other, you know, it’s all about positivity.” This positivity can be seen during matches, where the play-
ers are constantly picking each other up— both literally and figuratively—on the field and from the sideline. In the locker room, the team enacts their pregame ritual of blasting music; as Josie remarks, “other teams always tell us they can hear us from outside.” Reifert also attributes much of the team’s success and sense of unity to the large group of seniors who serve as exemplary leaders. “When I talk about culture, I try to create the environment, but it only happens because of the kids and our leadership—they are the foundation of our success,” Reifert said. “These are 12 women who lost their season last year. For them, this is it.” The team even has two ‘super seniors,’ Miranda Malone and Maddie DeVoe, who could have graduated last year but chose to return and play another year. The players on the team this year are not only talented on the field but also share a unique source of motivation after the COVID-19 pandemic prohibited competition last year. When asked what is special about the team this year, fourth-year co-captain Nicole Willing said, “I would say, honestly, everyone’s attitude, because we all realize now just how lucky we are to play.” This season has not been without hiccups, though. As the school workload increased, there were moments where the
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team captains felt the team’s focus was being pulled away from soccer. They eventually decided to hold a team meeting where they talked for an hour and a half without any coaches present. When asked how they got back on the same page, Majowka said, “We talked about what it means to be a team and what it means to ‘buy in,’ a term we always use that means to put your whole self into the team emotionally and physically.” This reestablished focus was put on full display during the Maroons’ recent game against New York University on October 17, one of their best performances so far. The Maroons had just suffered their first loss two days earlier to Brandeis University, so this was a crucial game. The coaches put forth an all-senior starting lineup in honor of Senior Day, and the team was able to secure two quick goals before the younger players joined them on the field. The Maroons rode this wave of momentum to a pivotal 4–2 win. “During the game, people were saying that they haven’t had this much fun playing in a long time,” Willing said. “It was definitely really special for the seniors.” This game was also especially inspirational for the underclassmen; it showed them what UChicago women’s soccer is really all about. “They showed all of us what it means to put your heart and soul onto the field. It was incredible to watch,” Majowka said. Looking toward the future, the coaches will return to the chalkboard to refine their strategies, but they are confident that the team will continue to grow and improve. “We’re pretty good going from defense to of-
fense, but we need to be better in going from offense to defense and not give up goals in counter situations, and then it’s just a matter of continuing to create high percentage scoring opportunities,” Reifert said. “I’m really excited that we’re still getting sharper in a lot of different areas, and I don’t think we have reached our peak in any way, shape, or form.” Women’s soccer at the University of Chicago is a special program that has had a long history of success, and the players and coaches hope to carry on that legacy. “It’s all about building up this program, adding to the recognition and validating everything that the seniors and past players have done for our team,” Majowka said. Reifert also gives credit to the environment that the College has created. “These are remarkable young women, and it’s true across the board with any team. They’re UChicago kids, right?” Reifert remarked with a laugh. “These kids pursue excellence in every facet of their lives, and we celebrate that greatness.” The Maroons closed out conference play with three crucial games against Case Western Reserve University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Washington University in St. Louis—all of which were intense matchups. The team is ultimately hoping to make a run in the NCAA tournament, but they know they must maintain a strong, positive attitude and take things one game at a time. “We’re in a good spot and our team has the talent and the passion,” Willing said. “It’s more the question of: Are we going to put it all together? Are we going to show up and play?”
Malone had a career-high 10 saves against Wash U. COURTESY OF UCHICAGO ATHLETICS