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DECEMBER 1, 2021 NINTH WEEK VOL. 134, ISSUE 9

Hundreds Attend Rally Following Murder of Shaoxiong Zheng; Speakers Raise Differing Approaches to Reduce Violence

PAGE 2 Over 300 students, faculty, and community members participated in a rally held on Tuesday, November 16, one week after the shooting death of Shaoxiong “Dennis” Zheng. COURTESY OF ANDRES YANG

A UCPD car parked on 57th Street, temporarily blocking the traffic and leaving space for rally participants. COURTESY OF YIWEN LU

ARTS: Unlike the original television show, The Office Experience disappoints.

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VIEWPOINTS: Hyde Park’s Lululemon pop-up is an emblem of gentrification.

Rally goers held signs made by the event’s organizers.

COURTESY OF BASIL EGLI

SPORTS Men’s soccer advances to the final.

PAGE 8

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

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““We are aware that policing is a complicated issue in the U.S.”

By YIWEN LU | News Editor Over 300 University of Chicago students, alumni, faculty, and community members gathered on the main quad on Tuesday for a rally with the slogan, “we are here to learn, not to die.” The rally, organized by over 40 students, demanded the University implement certain measures to increase safety and security following the shooting death of Shaoxiong “Dennis” Zheng a week ago.

Zheng, a 24-year-old from Sichuan, China, graduated from the University with a master’s degree in statistics last summer. He was shot and killed near 54th Place and Ellis Avenue on November 9 during an armed robbery.

Prior to the rally, one organizer met with the Dean-on-Call, who waived the permit requirement generally applicable to student activities on the main quad because of time constraints. During the rally, several University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) officers were on call on the main quad to facilitate the flow of traffic. When the group marched toward Regenstein Library on 57th Street, UCPD temporarily blocked the street and traffic.

The organizers raised seven demands at the rally following a series of speeches by volunteers. The demands were also distributed to participants on flyers.

These demands included more Lyft passes and shuttle routes, real-time security alerts and training, life insurance for all university members, and “off-campus protections.” One organizer who attended the MA Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS) said that “off-campus protections” referred to a “holistic plan of action” that takes into account input from the student body and local community, and that enhances the “transparency, fairness, and practicality of the University’s existing security asset.”

They also advocated regular updates from UCPD regarding investigations of security incidents. The organizers did not officially demand enlarging police borders, increasing UCPD presence, or installing additional surveillance cameras in the neighborhood, though these actions were called for by some signs and speakers at the rally.

The MAPSS student explained the reason that they opted against demands

related to policing. “We are aware that policing is a complicated issue in the U.S. and reflecting on the University’s security policy on a more practical ground is necessary instead of just proposing more surveillance cameras,” he said. In the planning process, the student said that the organizers received many comments about issues of systemic racism within the police system and ultimately decided to avoid demanding increased policing out of deference to these concerns.

Organizers distributed signs to participants bearing slogans like “third student,” “one block off campus,” and “arms for hugs.” Some signs, such as “no justice, no peace,” echoed popular messages in nationwide Black Lives Matter protests.

Participants also brought their own signs with different slogans; for example, history student Henry Cheng made signs saying that the safety of the university community must also take movements such as #BanAllGuns, #BlackLivesMatter, and #WeNeedCareNotCops into account.

The demands were finalized after discussing over 30 suggestions received through a form that was initially distributed within a group on WeChat formed after the news of Zheng’s murder came out and consisted of international students who were concerned about campus safety. The group then shared the form with their networks.

The MAPSS student emphasized that the discussion was not only open to international students, although international students helmed the rally effort.

The “here to learn, not to die” theme was established based on submissions and conversations beyond the organizers themselves. “It reflects the fact that we are here to study and research, instead of risking our lives,” he said.

Volunteer speakers expressed fear and concern about their safety while studying and living on- and off-campus.

“Every time when I walk past a car…I am afraid that someone would get out of the car and stab me and shoot me in my head, and I run,” second-year Katherine Zhao said about her mindset after the fatal shooting of Zheng last Tuesday. “I believe that the unsafety on campus is breaking the trust between people. It’s

Henry Cheng, a graduate student studying history, made a sign calling for community engagement. COURTESY OF NIKHIL JAISWAL depriving me of the ability to believe in the people.” At the end of her speech, Zhao urged the University to take action so that students at UChicago would not be “living in nightmares” anymore.

Many other students at the rally emphasized that they came to UChicago for its academic prestige but questioned those decisions amid recent incidents.

Junjie Xia, a first-year graduate student in the chemistry department, told The Maroon that some of his friends decided against attending UChicago because of the safety incidents. Iris Xiao, a master’s student in public policy and one of the rally organizers, said that her mother suggested she transfer schools, saying, “a diploma is not as important as your life.”

Longer-term residents in attendance recounted how they had become increasingly concerned over safety. Qun Ba, a senior research technician in the Universi-

ty’s biological sciences department, told The Maroon that she had lived in Hyde Park for 30 years with her family and had observed the safety conditions in Hyde Park getting worse. Retired lab technical director Ling-Jia Wang, who has lived in the neighborhood for 25 years, said she believes there isn’t much the University or residents can do because gun violence is a major issue in Chicago.

“I just want to express my feeling and support to the community,” she said. “But I feel hopeless.”

However, the crowd had differing opinions on how UChicago should confront violence.

Some individual speakers who volunteered to address the crowd called for an increase in security guards and police presence. “They need to stop being afraid of increased police protection. SupportCONTINUED ON PG. 3

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“We have to stand with other ethnic groups and all the people who are suffering from this feeling of fear and unsafety.”

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ing UCPD will save lives in the future,” said one speaker whose identity The Maroon could not confirm.

The demands for enhanced security and surveillance cameras align with a public letter signed by over 300 faculty members, which was distributed on social media on Monday. The letter called for the expansion of UCPD’s jurisdiction and increased surveillance and security guards in Hyde Park, among other recommendations.

Siqi, a student at the University who did not give her last name to The Maroon, said that she was not satisfied with the University’s response to Zheng’s death. After the shooting of Yiran Fan in January and Max Solomon Lewis in July, she said the University should have increased the security presence on campus and had more police patrolling Hyde Park. In addition, she said that it was “irresponsible” of the University to describe the location of the incident as “off-campus” in their email informing community

members of the incident.

Many others at the rally noted that more long-term solutions were needed and that increased surveillance would not address the root cause of an “economically-motivated” crime. “A lot of [these incidents] result from the glaring inequalities between the Hyde Park community and the surrounding communities that have been exacerbated and perpetuated by the University and its practices of displacement,” one speaker said.

Hang Wu, a 30-year-old Ph.D. student in the joint program in Cinema and Media Studies and East Asian Languages and Civilizations, urged University community members to empathize with others who live on the South Side. “We have to stand with other ethnic groups and all the people who are suffering from this feeling of fear and unsafety,” she said in her speech at the rally. On a sign she made, she wrote, “build a better —more inclusive—Chicago South Side.”

Other rally speakers said that both long-term and short-term measures are

Hang Wu, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, explained her signs to passersby. COURTESY OF YIWEN LU needed. “I heard many of you saying that, well, there are long-term measures that we should do, but our problem is imminent,” Da Teng, a 23-year-old Ph.D. student in Chemistry said. “The next one to

be shot could be anyone in this crowd.”

Basil Egli, Nikhil Jaiswal and Eric Fang contributed to reporting.

UChicago, CPD Detail Collaboration Plan for Increased Police Patrols and Surveillance Technology in Response to Violent Incidents

By PETER MAHERAS | News Reporter In a campus-wide safety webinar hosted Wednesday afternoon, the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) and Chicago Police Department (CPD) announced that they would collaborate to increase police patrols, install more surveillance technology, and improve intelligence sharing in response to a series of violent incidents in Hyde Park last week.

The webinar was a discussion between University President Paul Alivisatos, Associate Vice President for Safety and Security Eric Heath, and CPD Superintendent David Brown. The discussion was moderated by Vice President of Communications Paul Rand.

Alivisatos opened the discussion

by acknowledging that the University community is still grieving the murder of University alum Shaoxiong “Dennis” Zheng. He emphasized that although Wednesday’s discussion focused on policing, new police strategies are just one aspect of the University’s approach to curtailing violent crime in and around campus.

“In [the] coming days and weeks, we will also explore with you the other critical aspects to our approach,” Alivisatos said. “We recognize that we need to partner with our community in a consistent effort to reduce violence, improve health and education, and create economic opportunity.”

In the opening remarks, Brown said

that technology—such as surveillance cameras and license plate readers—is a significant part of how CPD brought “some sense of justice” to Zheng’s family. Brown noted that a suspect in Zheng’s murder was easily identifiable because of a nearby CPD Police Observation Device (POD camera). Last week, 18-year-old Alton Spann was charged with first-degree murder, armed robbery, and two counts of unlawful use of a weapon.

CPD will immediately begin installing additional POD cameras around Hyde Park, which will be active in the neighborhood temporarily. Brown acknowledged that some Hyde Park residents have expressed privacy concerns in the past but claimed that community resistance to surveillance cameras has decreased recently.

At night, CPD will increase “blue light missions” around campus, where police turn their cars’ blue lights on to make their presence known. Both UCPD and CPD will increase daytime patrols, while the city police will increase enforcement of traffic violations—such as speeding or failing to stop at red lights—in the Hyde Park area. Brown claimed that increased traffic enforcement by CPD would help prevent other crimes. “[The suspect in Zheng’s murder] was in a stolen car,” Brown said. “If we had traffic safety missions in and around the campus, could we have stopped him and arrested him for being in a stolen car before he committed a robbery?” Brown believed that more traffic safety missions would deter or capture offenders CONTINUED ON PG. 4

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“We will be strong partners with [our neighbors] to help create a vibrant healthy environment in our City and in our neighborhoods nearby.”

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in advance, since offenders are “always doing something to break the law.”

Heath announced that UCPD will formalize a new 24-hour strategic operations center to monitor surveillance equipment, improve emergency communications, and proactively adjust security resources. UCPD will also establish a new Victims Services unit to provide long-term advocacy and support to victims of serious crimes—including sexual assault, robbery, battery, and burglaries—reported to UCPD. In response to a question about student fears of racial profiling by police,

Brown said the CPD would hold officers accountable and not tolerate racial bias.

“We hold them to a higher standard and we will separate them from employment if there’s any bias in their police enforcement activity,” he said.

Brown later added, “I came here 18 months ago to ensure that we continue to build trust in the community, and that means holding officers accountable. And I’m, I’m dedicated to that. I’m here for that very purpose.”

In 2014, a CPD officer shot and killed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald as he attempted to walk away from the officer. A U.S. Department of Justice report draft-

ed after McDonald’s murder found that CPD officers frequently used excessive force against Black and Latino residents and rarely faced consequences.

The University will continue evaluating changes to Lyft services, but both Heath and Alivisatos mentioned that daytime Lyft services raise concerns about increased traffic around campus.

Students have taken more than 23,000 free Lyft rides this quarter. Heath said the University will explore other longterm changes to on and off-campus transportations, such as the University-run UGo bus service, but did not announce specifics.

When asked how students can stay safe, Brown told students to plan their route, travel in groups, share travel plans with friends, and cooperate if being robbed or accosted. Students are encouraged to download the UChicago Safe app and visit https://uchicago.edu/safety for safety tips and information.

“I want people to know that we will be strong partners with our neighbors, with our friends in the community,” Alivisatos said to conclude the discussion. “We will be strong partners with them to help create a vibrant healthy environment in our City and in our neighborhoods nearby.”

“We are Experiencing an Existential Crisis”: Faculty Letter Calls for Increased Safety and Security Actions in Hyde Park

By YIWEN LU | News Editor In a public letter sent to University president Paul Alivisatos and Provost Ka Yee Lee, over 300 faculty members called on the University administration to make anti-violence a top priority, urging a larger border of University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) jurisdiction and increased surveillance and security guards in Hyde Park, among other recommendations.

The letter cited the fatal shooting of recent graduate Shaoxiong “Dennis” Zheng last Tuesday, as well as the shooting-related deaths of University students Max Solomon Lewis in July and Yiran Fan in January, as “serious problems of violence” around campus that warrant immediate action from the administration.

“We are no longer certain if our campus allows students, staff, and faculty to study, work, and live safely. We are experiencing an existential crisis,” the authors wrote. They added that the recent incidents have negatively affected the University’s reputation and will hurt its ability to attract and retain students.

Specifically, the signatories called for the university to “enlarge the borders of

UCPD territory to Hyde Park neighborhood.” According to the University’s Department of Safety and Security, UCPD’s primary responsibility is patrolling the University of Chicago campus. UCPD already serves a “supportive role” to the Chicago Police Department (CPD) in the extended off-campus area, including south to 64th Street, north to 37th Street, east to Lake Shore Drive, and west to Cottage Grove Avenue. This area covers all of Hyde Park, Kenwood, and part of Woodlawn, among other South Side neighborhoods. On campus, University properties, and contiguous public property, UCPD held the power of municipal peace officers.

In a public safety webinar on Thursday, November 11, Alivisatos, Lee, and Vice President of Safety and Security Eric Heath pledged to install CPD Police Observation Devices (POD cameras) around Hyde Park starting this Tuesday.

They also said that both UCPD and CPD would temporarily increase the number of patrols in the areas surrounding campus.

In addition, the faculty demanded increased transparency and “accountable police policies,” calling on the Uni-

versity to release quantifiable goals for its new safety measures and establish a designated committee that oversees the implementation of such strategies and communicates with the public about the progress towards those goals. According to the authors, the University should produce a final report for each “gun robbery [and] other crimes that have occurred on campus.” They wrote that “criminals need to be identified, arrested, and sentenced,” arguing that it is “essential to rebuild public trust.”

A suspect in Zheng’s murder, 18-yearold Alton Spann, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder on Friday, three days after the fatal shooting. CPD said that he was located by POD cameras the day after the murder. The bail for Spann was denied on Saturday, the Sun-Times reported. Spann’s case will be heard on Friday, November 19.

In the letter, the faculty demanded justice for Zheng, emphasizing that the University should share the progress of the criminal case with the University community and support Zheng’s family during this time.

Zheng was from China’s Sichuan province and graduated from the University

of Hong Kong (HKU) before he started at UChicago, where he earned a master’s degree in statistics. His mother, who has never been to the U.S. before, will arrive in Chicago on Wednesday, November 17, according to a public letter she wrote. Her travel came after an expedited passport application process with the help of the Chinese American Association of Greater Chicago. According to the alumni association at HKU, which had been fundraising for Zheng’s family, the University of Chicago agreed to cover all expenses for the Zheng family during their stay in the United States.

The authors also stressed that the University should “engage with the South Side community” to come up with a “quantifiable” long-term plan to address violence in the area.

The Maroon has reached out to two faculty members who signed the letter, one of whom declined to comment.

The letter is not connected to the student-organized rally held the following Tuesday, with the slogan “We are here to learn, not to die.”

Alex Dalton and Ruby Rorty contributed to reporting.

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The Law School Unveils a Portrait of their First Black Graduate, Earl B. Dickerson

By NATALIE HOGE | News Reporter On Monday, September 27, the University of Chicago Law School unveiled an oil portrait of Earl B. Dickerson, the school’s first Black graduate and a colossus in law.

The painting of Dickerson joined a collection of portraits adorning the main hall of the law school, including those of former U.S. Attorney General Edward Levi and prosecutor Bernard Meltzer. These portraits have accumulated as law school graduates have petitioned for the school to commission paintings of beloved law school professors. According to Law School Dean Thomas J. Miles, the portraits serve to “recognize an outstanding individual.”

During his time at the Law School, Dickerson served as a lieutenant for the U.S. Army in WWI, delaying his graduation until 1920. As a civil rights attorney, Dickerson’s most famous case was the Supreme

Court case Hansberry v. Lee, which changed the landscape of Chicago by allowing Black residents to live in the formerly segregated Woodlawn and Hyde Park neighborhoods.

Lorraine Hansberry, a member of the Hansberry family, based her acclaimed play A Raisin in the Sun on her experiences in the case.

Dickerson also helped draft the articles of incorporation for the Chicago-based Liberty Life Insurance Company of Illinois (later known as the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company), which became one of the largest Black-owned life insurance companies in the country. Later in his career, he served as acting chairman on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first Fair Employment Practices Committee.

In 2020, a group of law school faculty members organized a conference to cele-

brate Dickerson’s legacy on the 100th anniversary of his graduation from the law school. The conference, which was scheduled to take place during spring 2020, was postponed to autumn 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Miles said that he was “delighted to have the opportunity to celebrate [Dickerson]” and to “inform today’s students and students of the future” of Mr. Dickerson’s achievements.

Shawn Michael Warren, a Chicago-based artist known for his much-acclaimed mural of Oprah Winfrey, painted Dickerson’s portrait. Warren is represented

by Gallery Guichard, a local art gallery that is headquartered in the same Bronzeville neighborhood that the Supreme Life Insurance Company was located in when Dickerson worked as general counsel for the company in 1921.

Several members of Dickerson’s fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi, attended the por-

trait’s unveiling. At the unveiling ceremony, Miles read part of a letter that Dickerson wrote in 1985 to the then Dean of the Law School, Gerhard Caspar, to accompany the establishment of the Earl B. Dickerson Endowment Fund—a scholarship for UChicago Law School students.

“I vowed that in every way I could I would battle to make the Declaration of Independence and the Civil War Amendments to the U.S. Constitution speak the truth: that all men are created equal,” he wrote in the letter. Dickerson also wrote about his time at the UChicago Law School: “It was my good fortune to be able to enroll in and be graduated from the University of Chicago Law School, and to be taught by such splendid students and teachers of the law as Dean James Parker Hall, Floyd Mechum, Harry Bigelow, Ernst Freund, Judge [Edward] Hinton, and Professor [Frederic Campbell] Woodward.”

New Student Advocate’s Office at USG Aims to Help Students with Administrative and Disciplinary Procedures

By PETER MAHERAS | News Reporter College Council (CC) passed a resolution to establish the Student Advocate’s Office (SAO), a new branch of Undergraduate Student Government, in early November. The purpose of SAO is to assist students in navigating administrative and disciplinary procedures within the College, including housing, academic, and financial aid proceedings.

CC approved the initiative in May and a framework for the office in July. The office is led by Class of 2024 students Ethan Ostrow and Niranjan Joshi, who started an informal support network for students going through academic and housing misconduct hearings during the 2020–21 academic year.

“It originated last year, when we were both in housing and we had a lot of friends who were being written up for disciplinary action,” Joshi said. “We noticed that people had a very hard time responding to those complaints.”

Ostrow and Joshi helped about a dozen

students work through administrative proceedings, with many of the incidents arising from violations of the UChicago Health Pact.

Most of those cases were found through social media posts Ostrow and Joshi created to advertise their services or friends of Ostrow’s or Joshi’s who knew students going through administrative proceedings.

They found that the students with whom they worked often lacked the knowledge and time to respond effectively to disciplinary proceedings and found navigating those proceedings to be an emotionally taxing experience.

“You’re getting threatened with being kicked out of housing or an academic infraction, or something like that, and oftentimes when you’re a freshman in college, or any year in college, and you get placed against something like that, it’s very stressful,” Joshi said. “We noticed that there was a need for someone like the Student Advocate’s Office

to step in and advise students on the best way to go about the process and be there emotionally for the students.”

Ostrow and Joshi cited the Student Advocate’s Office at the University of California, Berkeley, as a model for their work. Ostrow said that they had been in contact with Berkeley’s Student Advocate’s Office “several times” over the summer to learn about the services it provides students.

The SAO is divided into conduct, housing, and financial aid divisions. Training for its eight staff members is ongoing, and the conduct and housing divisions are currently accepting cases. Although the SAO will provide individualized support based on the specifics of each case, an SAO formation document outlines that the office will “counsel students on their rights within the process they are navigating, what the process will look like, and how to best articulate their claims to administrators.”

The date for the start of the financial aid division is not decided yet. However, the

office has been consulting University administrators, including Provost Ka Yee Lee and Dean Michele Rasmussen, and CC, to explore effective ways to assist students in financial aid processes.

“The reason that we’re starting [with] casework in [the] housing and conduct divisions is because we’ve had a good relationship with the administrators in those particular departments,” Joshi said.

“Financial aid might end up looking a little bit different [compared to the other divisions] just because that’s not a disciplinary process, but it’s more an administrative one,” Ostrow said. “So it might focus on giving students more resources [for] knowing more about how financial aid works or knowing how they should proceed in specific circumstances.”

The SAO is working to determine how cases will be referred to its office. The office says it will begin holding public office hours for students facing misconduct hearings to CONTINUED ON PG. 6

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“Our goal ... is to help students best advocate for themselves.”

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meet with a caseworker and seek assistance.

“Our goal, generally, is to help students best advocate for themselves,” Joshi said.

“We can never advocate for a student, but based on our experiences as people who have interacted with the disciplinary process many times, we can advise students on how

to best represent their claims to the University and best support the defenses that the students themselves want to make.”

For now, the SAO encourages any student

who receives a disciplinary notice and wants any assistance to contact sao@uchicago.edu.

Students can also apply to work as SAO caseworkers.

Endowment Valued at $11.6 Billion, Reports Highest Rate of Return in Two Decades

By ERIC FANG | News Reporter The University of Chicago’s consolidated endowment grew by 37.6 percent to $11.6 billion during the 2021 fiscal year (FY21), which ended June 30. This year’s return on investment, which is the University’s highest since the 1999–2000 fiscal year, raises the endowment to a record level.

Since the market low of 2009, the endowment has grown by more than $9 billion in net market value.

The University’s high return this year comes after a disappointing return of 3.2 percent during the 2020 fiscal year (FY20)

and exceeds the average annual return since 2009 by 26.6 percent.

Endowment funds support programs and initiatives at both the University and the Medical Center. These include academic and medical programs, research and instruction, faculty salaries, student aid, library acquisitions, and facility maintenance. During FY20, endowment funds comprised 16 percent of the University’s operating budget. The current fixed spending rate is 5.5 percent.

The University’s Office of Investments and the Investment Committee of the

Board of Trustees, which jointly manage the University’s investment assets, credit their strong performance to a shift in investment strategy over the past decade that emphasizes managing risk and longterm growth.

The shift in strategy is reflected in the majority of the University’s endowment being invested in the Total Return Investment Pool (TRIP). TRIP encompasses investments in assets including global stocks, U.S. Treasury bonds, real estate, natural resources, private equity, private debt, and hedge funds.

Similar institutions of higher education also witnessed explosive returns this

fiscal year, with Washington University in St. Louis seeing a 65 percent return, Duke University 56 percent, Stanford University 40 percent, Harvard University 34 percent, and the University of California system 29 percent.

The University’s 37.6 percent return comes just short of the S&P 500 average return of 38.62 percent for FY21.

The combined active endowment for the University of Illinois system and the University of Illinois Foundation, the system’s fundraising non-profit, saw a similar increase of 34 percent in FY21, bringing its total value to $3.82 billion.

VIEWPOINTS

Abolish Tenure Tenure is an outdated system that cheapens instruction quality and impedes diversity.

By CLARK KOVACS Tenure began in the 1600s to protect unorthodox thought at religious colleges and entered the mainstream in the 1900s to bolster general academic freedom. Once professors have been rigorously vetted—a seven-year process on average—they earn the status of tenure with all of the privileges it entails. In this way, universities and colleges can select and retain highly qualified faculty while simultaneously ensuring their intellectual protection, or so the traditional justifications go. However, it’s time to dismantle tenure, a system that in reality disincentivizes quality teaching and

stifles diversity.

The tenure system has been crumbling for decades. In 1969, 78 percent of instructional staff at U.S. institutions of higher education were either tenured or in tenure-track positions, whereas in 2016 a mere 27 percent held tenure-track positions. Tenure-track faculty members now represent a small class of academic nobility, with the rest of academia relegated to lower-paying jobs.

Even for the minority who do end up in tenured positions, there are fundamental flaws in the tenure-granting process that disincentivize quality teaching at research institutions. When a professor is hired for a

tenure-track position, they are expected to teach, conduct research, and do service (i.e., mentor students and serve on committees).

Yet professors are almost always expected to perform these duties under a clear hierarchy of prioritization. One tenured UChicago professor—who has taught at two other top research universities and wishes to remain anonymous due to fear of retribution in the internal promotion process—describes common advice from department heads and senior faculty members: “They will say that [research] should be your priority, not teaching, not doing additional mentoring....

You know, do enough to make it appear on paper, at least, that you’re doing your job in

terms of teaching, but don’t go crazy.”

And when teaching quality is taken into consideration during the tenure granting process, this is almost always accomplished entirely through student evaluations. While important to consider, student evaluations are a far better metric of student satisfaction than teaching quality, as, intuitively, stricter professors or those teaching challenging content generally fare worse on student evaluations regardless of how well they actually teach.

Once tenure is finally granted, professors face a massive structural shift in priorities.

Of course, the profession selects people who CONTINUED ON PG. 7

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“These professors may as well write, ‘I will do my job better’ a hundred times on a chalkboard.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 6 genuinely care about teaching students, performing research, and the other responsibilities that follow. But after tenure is granted, there’s essentially no accountability to ensure high levels of quality in teaching, research, or service. The same UChicago professor with whom I spoke recounts that at another top research university, professors who receive particularly negative student evaluations are required to write a one-page paper about how they will teach better in the future and face no other incentive to teach well or punishment for not doing so. These professors may as well write, “I will do my job better” a hundred times on a chalkboard.

Low-quality research, teaching, or service will certainly prevent further internal promotions or increases in pay or title, but short

of gross incompetence or highly immoral behavior, tenure makes the firing of faculty members effectively impossible.

An increase in diversity rates would likely follow the abolition of tenure. Aged faculty members, few of whom self-identify as minorities or women, predominantly occupy more senior positions with greater institutional influence.

Universities commonly cite the high diversity rates of their incoming faculty members, but these numbers are incredibly misleading when seen in their full context. Take Stanford, for example. In September 2020, an article published by the school boasted, “Stanford welcomes diverse group of faculty for 202021,” citing the 40 women and 51 men recently brought on board.

Yet the diversity report on total faculty members published in the

same year tells a vastly different story, with 30 percent of total faculty members identifying as female, 15 percent identifying as neither Caucasian nor Asian American, and just 2 percent (50 people) identifying as Black or African American. A great number of aging faculty members who have effectively no required standard of quality for their jobs occupy positions that could be used to bolster the position of minorities and women at institutions of higher education.

The severe limitations of the ability for tenure to protect the free speech of professors—one of the most cited reasons for why it is necessary—have come to light in recent years. The most blatant example of this is the case of Bret Weinstein. In 2017, professor Weinstein objected to a “Day of Absence” in which white members of Evergreen State College were “invited to leave the campus for the day’s activities.” After raising objections to this invitation in an email to all staff and faculty, Weinstein’s email was published in the Cooper Point Journal, the

Evergreen State College student newspaper, which resulted in a series of protests directed at him.

As a result of these protests, during which the president of the college allegedly instructed the chief of the campus police department not to protect Weinstein should violence break out, Weinstein and his wife were pressured to resign from the college. Because Weinstein was not fired, his speech was still nominally protected by tenure. Therefore, this is not a case of tenure being implemented poorly but a demonstration of the foundational limitations to which it can be used to defend the free speech of faculty.

Of course, there are other threats to the free speech and inquiry of academics. Most notably, there were multiple instances of efforts by the Bush administration to suppress research that demonstrated the full extent of climate change. Yet I believe that we may prevent such instances from occurring while still dismantling the failing tenure system and increasing faculty accountability.

Academia without tenure will need to be founded on the continuous and rigorous assessment of faculty: quality in research, teaching, and service.

Due to the vast differences in expectations for the amount and kind of work being done by faculty members across different disciplines, career stages, and institutions, such assessments will need to occur in a qualitative, peer-based manner. The way that research quality is currently evaluated at universities falls somewhere on the continuum of quantity versus quality. On one end, professors are encouraged to publish as frequently as possible regardless of the status of the publication. On the other hand, the prestige of the journal in which one’s work is published is far more important. According to the UChicago professor to whom I spoke, professors at the University are expected to publish a high number of articles in high-status journals. Given the specific context of a professor, a fair assessment of quality can be arrived at through CONTINUED ON PG. 8

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

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THE CHICAGO MAROON — DECEMBER 1, 2021

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“But if just a handful of bold and motivated professors decide to renounce their tenure voluntarily, we can start to change academia for the better.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 7 one’s peers.

Some likely view the prioritization of research over teaching quality as necessary to produce groundbreaking research.

And while this may be true to an extent, professors without the designation of “research professor” are hired to do more than just research. Universities may, and commonly do, decide to exempt professors who produce phenomenal research from large course loads or high requirements for teaching quality, according to the UChicago professor to whom I spoke. But this process would be made far more transparent through the thorough and homogenous evaluation of faculty members. Administrators might still decide to allow teaching exemptions for certain faculty members, but students could simply decide not to take courses taught by such professors.

Regarding teaching quality, many possible frameworks have been put forth as to how professors may be evaluated beyond student feedback. One includes measuring such varying indicators as “knowledge of and enthusiasm for subject matter,” “skill, experience, and creativity

with a range of appropriate pedagogies and technologies,” and “understanding of and skill in using appropriate testing practices.” These factors may already play a role in the evaluation of professors in an à la carte manner with varying frequencies of implementation across institutions and departments, but if tenure is to be abandoned, a robust and hegemonic framework to evaluate teaching quality, covering the examples above and more, will need to be developed and implemented. Regarding service, it’s easy for professors to halfheartedly serve on a committee or two and adorn their CVs with an extra line indicating their commitments. But true service to the academic community is more difficult to gauge, and peer review will also be necessary to determine how thorough one’s commitments truly are.

If it sounds like the obligations and expectations I’m setting forth for faculty members are exorbitantly high, then you may not be appreciating the work that goes into being a competent professor.

Each domain of their work could be a job in and of itself. But if we apply the same rigorous standards across the board, it will be easier

to set expectations, praise, and remediate appropriately. Many may find out that they’re not suited for the teaching profession, and after their thorough evaluation and justified termination, the academic community will be better off.

The way educational institutions evaluate students has many flaws, but almost everyone will agree that we need to approximate the highly subjective value of each student as accurately as possible. It’s time to turn this level of institutional evaluation inward to allow for a more meritocratic academia.

While the evaluation of professors described above can and should be completed by peers, there are limitations to the extent to which one’s colleagues can provide unbiased feedback.

And when censorship of crucial research is on the line, as was the case under the Bush-Cheney administration, all chances of bias must be removed. Thus, I propose that universities construct a structurally independent group of individuals with a low probability of external influence—that is, no current or former faculty members and no administrators—to serve as watchdogs for faculty suppression.

They could run ongoing audits of funding allocation and the hiring

and firing of faculty members as well as investigate when faculty members raise concerns related to free inquiry.

A natural response to these suggestions for increased faculty obligations, in the case of ongoing evaluations, and the creation of a watchdog group would be: Where will the money for all of this come from? It would take many more columns to get into the details of inflated tuition and the misuse of funding at institutions of higher education. For now, I’ll simply concede that to finance such efforts would require a serious overhaul of the way universities and colleges are budgeted.

Higher education institutions are cautious behemoths wary of making big changes—especially when money is on the line. The movement toward a tenure-free system will almost certainly need to originate elsewhere. But if professors voluntarily revoke their tenure status in support of this shift, they can signal their high evaluation of quality and diversity to encourage structural change.

UChicago professor Steven Levitt has already advocated for replacing tenure status with an increase in pay, effectively balancing out the job security tenure provides,

and offered to make this trade himself. This model could serve as an effective way to incentivize confidently competent professors to compensate for the downsides of sacrificing tenure before the tenure system is dismantled. This would also be an opportunity for UChicago to keep up the airs of its current ethos of innovation in higher education, signaled, for instance, through its early adoption of the test-optional policy.

I’m keenly aware of how idealistic these suggestions are, but if universities are going to keep purporting to aim at the lofty goal of advancing academic fields and educating “citizens and citizen-leaders for our society”— as Harvard College does—they must be willing to take wellinformed risks. We simply cannot expect universities to be bastions for the advancement of human knowledge when our standards for institutional quality are so limited. But if just a handful of bold and motivated professors decide to renounce their tenure voluntarily, we can start to change academia for the better.

Clark Kovacs is a second-year in the College.

The Lululemonification of Hyde Park The opening of a Lululemon is just the next item on the University’s long résumé of gentrification.

By LUKE CONTRERAS It’s a topic we avoid in our protected Hyde Park bubble but inevitably find intruding our thoughts.

It may first enter your mind as you search for apartment leases next year and view rent prices. Perhaps the luxury high-rise apartment buildings sprouting up near the

lake invoke its name. You may even notice it next time you walk down East 53rd Street and see a new high-end lifestyle retailer emerging each time: CorePower Yoga, Sweetgreen, and now Lululemon.

You are noticing what is referred to as “gentrification,” and although The Maroon has done

an excellent job covering the issue, we often talk about what happened in the past and what needs to happen in the future while ignoring the reality that gentrification is occurring right now. That is to say, we focus so much on the past and future of gentrification as something removed from us. Many students

love to voice their opposition to the University’s unquestionable role in gentrification, but they are silent as they sign expensive leases or spend money at chain stores rather than local businesses. Lululemon, a high-end athleisure brand, opened a “pop-up” location on 53rd Street on November 12. The opening of this store is

indicative of the ongoing process of gentrification, and it adds to the University’s push to exclude and expel South Side residents in favor of converting Hyde Park into a “college town.”

For those unfamiliar, Lululemon sells high-end athletic apparel, referred to as athleisure, CONTINUED ON PG. 9

THE CHICAGO MAROON — DECEMBER 1, 2021

9

“So what does a Lululemon add to Hyde Park and its surrounding communities?”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 8 and produces yoga, workout, and training videos. It markets the premise that purchasing these products will gain you entrance into a “global community” of other Lululemon consumers. This idea is what differentiates Lululemon from other athletic apparel brands such as Nike or Under Armour, makes Lululemon popular among millennials, and justifies its higher prices. And the prices are high—for example, men’s joggers and women’s leggings both sell for more than $100.

To begin understanding why the addition of a Lululemon is yet another example in a larger project of gentrification for which our University is at fault, we must first consider that the University’s push for development in Hyde Park began as a response to an increasing Black population on the South Side of Chicago.

In her 2017 A.B. thesis, University of Chicago graduate Juliet Eldred wrote extensively about UChicago’s nearly century-long history of gentrifying Hyde Park and many other South Side neigh-

JANICE CHO

borhoods through its control of real estate and “urban renewal” projects. Since the late 1940s, the University has made moves to combat what it called “forces of deterioration” from the influx of Black residents to the surrounding neighborhoods following the Great Migration. For example, the University purchased a plot of land between East 60th and East 61st Streets to “serve as a buffer between the University and the deteriorating neighborhood to the south”—referring to Woodlawn, then predominantly Black—and displaced thousands of families from their homes between 1953 and 1962.

What is clear from Eldred’s research is that the University has deliberately developed Hyde Park to serve its own interests, which are historically rooted in the notion that residents of color should be restricted from entering the neighborhood.

In the present day, the University continues to be intentional about its self-interested development goals through its sick obsession with mimicking the Ivy

League schools and making Hyde Park a “college town.” UChicago has explicitly declared that it desires to convert 53rd Street into a retail district within a neighborhood that has otherwise seen no such growth. In fact, the administration stated in 2012 that it needed to convince retailers “to think a little differently about Hyde Park” since many of them seemed to believe that “there must be something wrong with the area because otherwise retailers would be down here.” The University also admitted that it has “always been very competitive when it comes to providing a great intellectual community” and found that students in other cities like New York or Boston have a higher “quality of life” than UChicago students. This is a nice way of the administration saying that it wants complete control over Hyde Park so that it can attract more applicants by advertising a more attractive neighborhood to compete with peer institutions. Moves to attract upscale retailers are in line with the University’s interventions in housing markets, construction of fancy mega-dorms, and development of new retail buildings such as Harper Court.

It is painfully clear that the opening of a Lululemon store is just another step toward constructing a more gentrified neighborhood. The store is a “pop-up” location, which means that Lululemon is using it to test whether or not Hyde Park will be a profitable market. It is telling that comparable high-end apparel retailers on the South Side are rare, and if they exist, they operate in Hyde Park (such as Akira or Villa, both located on 53rd).

While those who patronize stores are most certainly not only UChicago students, retailers like Lululemon understand that the primary demand for their expensive products on the South Side would be in Hyde Park, a neigh-

borhood filled with wealthy students, faculty, and their families.

What makes the situation truly despicable is that these stores exist adjacent to South Side and West Side neighborhoods, where some residents must travel almost five miles to purchase necessities such as groceries; in neighborhoods on the North Side similar to Hyde Park, the average travel distance for the same purchases is less than two miles. The disparity in the number of shopping options available is a huge indicator of how gentrified our neighborhood truly is. The lack of affordability in existing stores, such as Whole Foods Market or Trader Joe’s for grocery shopping, limits options and access for low-income residents.

So what does a Lululemon add to Hyde Park and its surrounding communities? Could it provide more affordable options to local low-income residents? Will it reduce the distance that these residents must travel to purchase basic necessities—that is, if a $138 yoga mat counts as a basic necessity? Can it reduce high rent prices, bring down property values, or benefit local businesses? Of course it cannot. Many of the residents in surrounding neighborhoods will see little benefit from a Lululemon. This expensive athleisure store will not provide affordable access to what residents want and need.

Ultimately, the University has built a neighborhood that serves its own interests and the interests of its students at the expense of the surrounding community.

The University’s redevelopment of Hyde Park strongly reinforces boundaries between campus and the rest of the South Side by making them physical. Such actions are detrimental to the surrounding community, and they only serve individuals, namely students, who will reside in Hyde Park for a few years. As Northwestern University professor

Lauren Michele Jackson, then a Ph.D. candidate of English at UChicago, explained in The Atlantic, the “rhetoric of the scary urban jungle forgets who the real guests are.” We are merely guests in this space, so what happens when “projects involve massive chains and the recognizable symbols of suburbia?”

The message is that the University—and we, its students—prioritize our own preferences while ignoring the detrimental effects of intruding on the surrounding communities. Lululemon is just the next addition to a list of retailers that make Hyde Park more reminiscent of a suburban strip mall than a Chicago neighborhood and signal to the rest of the South Side how little we care about its well-being.

Coming out so strongly against the opening of a Lululemon store may seem absurd, but I promise you it is not. The alternative is that we all passively watch our University displace residents to welcome high-end retailers into a neighborhood that does not even belong to us. We can grab lunch at Sweetgreen, shop at Whole Foods, or buy coffee at one of the many Hyde Park Starbucks locations while residents lose their homes and find their options increasingly limited. This alternative is undoubtedly more ridiculous. We should be more comfortable pointing out active cases of gentrification and showing our support for organizations such as the Obama Community Benefits Agreement Coalition, which works to counteract forces of gentrification. It is our job to voice our opposition to the University’s role in gentrifying the South Side because, ultimately, we are the reason that it perceives a demand for more high-end retailers among its students.

Luke Contreras is a second-year in the College.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — DECEMBER 1, 2021

10

ARTS With Bug, Steppenwolf Theatre Stages a Bold and Electric—If Overwhelming—Return to In-Person Shows

By NOAH GLASGOW | Arts Reporter Lincoln Park’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company roars back to life this month with Bug, an electric revival of ensemble member Tracy Letts’s acclaimed 1996 play about trauma, conspiracy, and bedbugs collapsing in on the occupants of an Oklahoma motel room. While Bug’s explosive second act risks alienating more timid viewers, the production is bold and unflinching, drowning its more familiar aspects in a barrage of fiery commentary on race, government power, and love ripe for our 21st-century moment.

The play follows Agnes (Carrie Coon), a waitress living in an Oklahoma motel, who enters a relationship with Peter (Namir Smallwood), a drifter on the run from mysterious forces. The two struggle to unpack their trauma as they become obsessed with the blood-sucking insects that seem to have infested their motel

room. The production takes on aspects of the grotesque as it progresses into an expansive, even overly ambitious, dialogue on the boundaries between well-founded fear and paranoia. David Cromer’s sharp direction and the production’s rapid-fire pace are enough to forgive the script’s occasional reliance on familiar archetypes to structure the beats of the story. Episodes involving Agnes’s abusive ex-husband, Goss (Steve Key), feel unoriginal, while the prescience and clear-sightedness of Smallwood’s character flirt with the “Magical Negro” convention, especially in the first act.

Bug is the first production from Steppenwolf after 20 months of closure due to COVID-19. The play ran for two weeks in February and March 2020 before the pandemic forced the ensemble company to close its doors. But with newfound vig-

or and palpable zeal, the 2020 cast is back on the stage.

The feeling of real, in-person entertainment is electric. Before the show, the house is packed, and it thrums with anticipation. Patrons, all of whom have demonstrated proof of vaccination at the door, shuttle back and forth between two full-service bars. When the house lights dim and the stage lights rise, the audience is spellbound, held to perfect silence.

Maskless, living, breathing actors—alternately clothed and unclothed, bloodied and unbloodied—move across the stage with a kineticism that feels matchless after months of in-home entertainment.

It’s hard to imagine that this production of Bug was originally staged before the pandemic. The entire play takes place within Agnes’s motel room; a sort of pandemic-era claustrophobia binds the production from the moment Agnes smashes her cigarette and locks the front

Carrie Coon as Agnes and Namir Smallwood as Peter in Tracy Letts’s Bug, now playing at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. COURTESY OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE

door. So too does the play’s commentary on race and government feel engaged in a direct dialogue with the Black Lives Matter movement that took center stage in summer 2020. Smallwood’s Peter, who might’ve been the victim of government experimentation, is cast as a Black man.

The decision opens up a rich dialogue on how generational trauma and abuse of Black bodies compounds fear and paranoia.

Despite the dominance of these conversations in the contemporary art scene, Bug feels decidedly original, perhaps because it draws on a 25-year-old source.

The production avoids an easy or neat conclusion. It’s unafraid to leave its audience puzzled or desirous of a more obvious moral statement. In fact, the sheer number of possible explanations, especially of the play’s second act, raises the question: can one even construct a single, coherent interpretation? The thematic commentary—on race, class, love, grief, paranoia, government abuse, mental illness, drug use—all overwhelms the viewer. The consequence, perhaps, is that the play loses some of its clarity and coherence, leaving the members of its audience with a sort of Rorschach test on which to project their own existing views.

The production’s run is short and ultimately not worth missing. I attended the press viewing with a friend, and the two of us made a night of the trip north: Lincoln Park is home to a number of upscale but not unreasonably expensive restaurants, and the scene, while residential, is alive later into the night. No doubt Steppenwolf helps drive the neighborhood. The company’s recent campus expansion includes a modular theater, dedicated educational spaces, and two full-service bars.

Anyone looking for a night away from campus could do a lot worse than the transfixing and resonant—if occasionally perplexing—Bug, playing now through December 12 at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — DECEMBER 1, 2021

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The Office Experience: A-Not-So Office-Like-Experience

By EVAN WILLIAMS | Arts Reporter Growing up, I spent hours upon hours, days upon days, in my dad’s office. Most afternoons when school was over, I’d meet him off the bus and start my homework while he took meetings.

There were cubicles, printers, phones, and the mechanical rumblings of a busy workspace. There was a breakroom, and there were people. None of it was flashy, but it was comfortable.

It was this formative memory that led me to The Office during my senior year of high school for familiarity and distraction during the college application season. I loved the show because it depicted with near perfection the zany mundanity of an office setting, a less sentimentally tinged version of my dad’s office. There was nothing flashy; that’s not where the zaniness came from—it was from the cubicles, the printers, the phones, the mechanical rumblings of procrastination and productivity alike, the breakroom, and the people. The Office was never about the product, never about the profit of the paper industry, at least not really. Sure, you could point to the first major narrative arc and argue that the Scranton branch’s fight against downsizing is ostensibly about profit margins, but the show’s value never relies on such considerations. More often, it’s about the ways Dunder Mifflin’s employees subvert productivity and how their lives find meaning beyond ostentation.

I was thrilled to get the chance to cover The Office Experience, an interactive exhibit by Superfly X that recreates the set in its entirety as well as a number of famed scenes from the series, including Pam’s hot coal walk, Kevin’s chili spill, Flonkerton, and even Jim and Pam’s wedding. I invited my roommate, and we made our way to the event’s Michigan Avenue address.

Guests arrive at a corner building on the Mag Mile, the outside digitally draped with the quintessential stick-person logo that closes the show’s intro theme. Entering the building, the Chicago soundscape disappears, and you’re in the Warehouse. Well, you’re in the gift shop, which is sparse and mostly concrete in an effort to make it look

like the Warehouse. It has a few shelves with reams of paper stacked high and some bubble wrap. It’s neighbored not by stairs to Dunder Mifflin’s corporate space but by escalators to take visitors to the beginning of the experience.

General ticket prices range from $37.50 to $55 depending on when you plan to go and whether you want a personalized ID badge—a card with the Dunder Mifflin insignia, your name and photo, and a “Security Threat” status.

The tour begins with a mini-museum of The Office memorabilia—props, costumes, and the like. It’s something of an aperitif, and it worked—I was chomping at the bit to get “on set” by the time my friend and I were through. Reading the last of The Office’s employee résumés, we tiptoed into the entryway of Dunder Mifflin, pausing to have our photo taken in front of the sign by one of the many employees stationed throughout The Experience. Then, we were there, right in the thick of it. To my right was Pam’s desk, complete with jelly beans; to my left, Michael’s office, door ajar; straight ahead, Jim and Dwight’s desk block, Phyllis and Stanley’s behind that, and the break room yet farther back. It should have been an awesome moment, but it felt off.

We were shepherded through the layout, pausing to take pictures in each of the major spaces—at Michael’s desk; in the conference room, decorated with “It is your birthday” signage; in the kitchen; at Toby’s desk; and in the break room, where we were encouraged to pose menacingly with a chair opposite the vending machine in homage to Kevin’s destruction of the very same machine during a fire drill in “Stress Relief” (Season 5, Episode 14).

We posed for a Flonkerton picture with our feet strapped into boxes of paper, ran across the hot coals made famous in “Beach Games” (Season 3, Episode 23), visited Schrute Farms, danced down the aisle of the chapel in which Jim and Pam married, and each filmed a confession before being let out into the Warehouse—the gift shop.

I couldn’t figure out why The Experience felt so dry, so empty. It wasn’t

Unlike the show itself, The Office Experience is located in a gorgeous corner building downtown, and not in a dull office building a suburb. COURTESY OF WBEZ CHICAGO that I didn’t enjoy it, and it wasn’t that I was underwhelmed by any particular element of the exhibit. While waiting to interview Superfly’s vice president of marketing, Jamaal Orr, about The Office Experience, I walked around the gift shop, where reams of Dunder Mifflin–branded copy paper were being sold for $9.95 a pop. It was there, with a view out onto the Mag Mile from the Warehouse/gift shop, that I realized it was the posture of the entire thing that put me off, not any one piece.

Speaking with Orr, I brought this just-formed thought to the table. I asked him what the artistic process was like trying to make a spectacle of something that thrives on mundanity. As the project’s marketing lead, he admitted to having little answer to the question, but he told me that the show’s fans don’t need spectacle; they want to feel the mundanity. That’s what they come for, and that’s what the company sought to deliver. I countered, asking why, if the point was to bring the mundanity to the fore, The Office Experience was held in a gorgeous corner building in downtown Chicago rather than a dull office

building in a suburb. Here, Orr felt more comfortable sharing an answer, as it was a problem of engagement. In short, the decision was natural—this is where people would be, and this is how they would attract visitors.

Though Orr wouldn’t confirm, our tour guide told us that the exhibit would be staying past its current closing date of January 17 and that there are expansions to Dunder Mifflin’s hometown, Scranton, as well as nearby Philadelphia in the works.

Stepping back into Chicago’s soundscape, I felt scammed. It’s precisely what makes The Office great—its mundanity—that prevents it from being used as a spectacle. By attempting to do just that, Superfly X muddles its mundanity, ruining the spirit of the series itself.

The Office Experience is extravagant; it is out of place; it is thorough in its exhibition but lazy in its adherence to the values of the series. It is above all else a cash grab with good lighting for group photoshoots in front of a familiar and widely popularized backdrop. I took photos, but I did not buy a ream of copy paper.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — DECEMBER 1, 2021

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SPORTS Maroons Advance to the Final Eight With 1–0 Win

By FINN HARTNETT | Sports Editor The UChicago men’s soccer team defeated the Calvin Knights this Friday to progress to the final 8 of the 2021 NCAA Division III Championship. Second-year Robbie Pino’s acrobatic volley in the second half proved to be the only goal of the match; the Maroons saw out wave after wave of pressure from Calvin to take home the victory.

The match began at 3:30 p.m. with both sets of fans noisily voicing their support. The Calvin supporters had come to Hyde Park in full force, waving pom-poms, ringing bells, and filling the visitor’s bleachers with red and yellow clothing. The UChicago fans’ support was more cerebral; loud shouts of “Go Maroons!” as well as criticism of the officials could be heard from the home section throughout the match.

The Maroons pressured well in the beginning of the match—third-year Naz Kabbani almost scored straight away from a beautiful set-piece from first-year Jack Lueker—but the Knights grew into the game as it went on and began to look every bit as dangerous going forward as UChicago. Calvin winger Seamus Kilgallon swung in a cross that UChicago third-year Griffin Wada almost sliced into his own net. Twenty

minutes into the match, Calvin had an even better scoring chance as winger Chris Schau stole the ball high up the pitch and made a nice pass to Kilgallon.

Fifth-year senior Ben Brandt’s lunging tackle was the only thing that stopped Kilgallon from putting Calvin up one.

That moment seemed to sum up the first half, as the two sides both defended solidly throughout. It was a game of tackles and clearances, without many clear-cut scoring opportunities. One had the sense that both sides would need a moment of magic to break the deadlock.

The fans, to their credit, didn’t let the scrappy game affect their spirit; as the first half drew to a close and the weather grew colder and colder, they continued to exchange loud chants of “Let’s go Calvin!” and “Chicagooo!” UChicago fans pounded on the bleachers as their side won a corner in the dying seconds of the half, and they almost saw the ball fly into the goal. But the Knights’s goalkeeper, Kaelen Matascastillo, made a good catch, and the Calvin fans let out a loud cheer.

In the second half, the Maroons again began well, immediately creating a few shooting chances. They switched back to their usual 4-3-3 formation from

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the 4-4-2 formation they had used at the start of the match and looked more like themselves as a result. In possession, they were more fluid, able to play through Calvin’s midfield with ease.

By the 60th minute of the match, the sun had fallen, and a full, yellowing moon was rising over second-year Will Boyes in the UChicago goal. The action, however, was on the other side of the pitch. A long, high ball had been swung in from the left-hand side of the field to second-year Ryan Yetishefsky, who had headed the ball across goal to Robbie Pino. The midfielder hadn’t scored a goal all year, but you wouldn’t have guessed it at that moment. Pino chested the ball down expertly, turned, and fired a volley past Matascastillo to put UChicago ahead. It was an electric finish; the Chicago fans burst into a frenzy.

UChicago almost added to its lead immediately after, as Yetishefsky had a good shot saved and then dragged another wide of the post. After those chances, though, Calvin pushed forward, and UChicago was pinned back.

The Knights created some good attacks, mostly through their wingers.

Their leading goal scorer this season, Sam Twigg, fired a great half-volley off the crossbar from 25 yards out. Then, with 25 minutes to go in the match, Calvin forward Oliver Akintade missed a great chance; his free header bounced weakly into the hands of Boyes. Boyes had been injured for almost the entire regular season; now that he was back, one got the sense he wanted to make up for lost time. In the final 15 minutes, he made a vital stop after a free kick from Calvin midfielder Mason Smith had been flicked dangerously towards goal.

Calvin pushed all their players forward for the final minutes of the match; their season was on the line, after all.

But the Maroons held firm; good clearances and positioning from their defense, as well as some voracious tackles from freshman midfielder Lyndon Hu, kept Calvin at bay. After the Knights were flagged for offsides in the final few seconds, the referee blew his whistle for full time. UChicago had won, 1–0.

The Maroons next face North Park University, which defeated St. Olaf College in its round of 16 match, tomorrow afternoon.

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