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USG TO PROVIDE KN-95 MASKS TO ALL UNDERGRADUATES

JANUARY 26, 2022 THIRD WEEK VOL. 134, ISSUE 12

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Gunman Shot by UCPD Officer Told 911 He Wanted Police To Kill Him; Involved Officer Also Shot Charles Thomas in 2018

By KATE MABUS | News Editor and RUBY RORTY | Editor-in-Chief Update: The text of this article has been updated to reflect new information about Wilson’s current condition, early court proceedings, and Wilson’s mental health status leading up to the incident.

Content Warning: This article discusses suicidality and describes gun violence.

The Illinois State’s Attorney’s Office has approved criminal charges against Rhysheen Wilson, the 28-year-old man shot by University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) officer Nicolas Twardak on January 18. The University identified Twardak as the same officer who shot former UChicago student Charles Soji Thomas in 2018.

According to a statement provided to The Maroon by the University, the Illinois State’s Attorney’s Office charged Wilson with one count each of attempted murder of a police officer, aggravated discharge of a firearm to a person, and aggravated unauthorized use of a weapon.

Judge Maryam Ahmad set Wilson’s bail at $2,000,000 cash on January 20.

In accordance with University policy, Twardak is currently on mandatory administrative leave following the shooting incident with Wilson while the University and the Chicago Police Department (CPD) conduct investigations into the event. Per a University spokesperson, Wilson’s condition has been updated from critical to “serious, but stable.”

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On January 18, according to police scanner information and University reports, Twardak was on patrol on South Woodlawn Avenue when he saw Wilson walking on Woodlawn Avenue with a handgun drawn. When Twardak got out of his vehicle to investigate, Wilson allegedly fired in Twardak’s direction. Twardak took cover on the other side of the street and then on the front porch of a nearby home.

UCPD reported that Wilson advanced and continued to shoot when Twardak fired at Wilson from the porch.

Before the Incident New reporting on court proceedings by the Chicago Sun-Times has shed more light on Tuesday’s events. In a statement in court, Assistant State’s Attorney James Murphy said that Wilson was experiencing a mental health episode on the day of the shooting. Minutes before encountering Twardak, Wilson called 911 and told a dispatcher that he was suicidal and wanted to be killed by police. According to Murphy, Wilson was not taking his usual medication for schizophrenia, PTSD, and mood swings.

On Tuesday morning, Wilson called his cousin, who came to meet him in person and found Wilson crying and expressing suicidal thoughts. Wilson then left his cousin, pulled out his gun, and placed the call to 911. According to Wilson, Murphy said on the call that “he wanted to go out

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by suicide-by-cop, and that he just wants to die, and he’s ready.” Wilson told the dispatcher where he was, what he was wearing, and that he was armed. While on the phone, Wilson fired several shots in the air and told the dispatcher that “he is not going to hurt anyone but a cop,” Murphy said. He also fired at the ground close to his cousin, who had followed him.

The public defender representing Wilson declined to comment on possible mitigating factors in the incident, saying she has not yet spoken to Wilson, who is still hospitalized.

Wilson had two gunshot wounds to the thigh, two to the lower leg, and one to the groin, according to University reports.

UCPD administered medical assistance at the scene before taking Wilson into custody and transporting him to the University of Chicago Medical Center.

A Prior Shooting In April 2018, Twardak was involved in the shooting of then-student Thomas.

Thomas was breaking the windows of a building and multiple cars in an alleyway with a metal pole when Twardak arrived on the scene. Body camera footage shows Thomas did not respond to commands to drop the pole and not approach police officers before running towards Twardak with the pole. Thomas’s parents believe his behavior was connected to a psychiatric episode.

Subsequent investigations by CPD and the University ruled that Twardak’s actions in the Thomas shooting “were

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consistent with applicable law.” In March 2020, Thomas sued the University and Twardak for misconduct and negligence.

The lawsuit, which was filed by Thomas’s attorney Steve Greenberg in Cook County Court, is still pending.

“There’s a reason why someone like this is a serial shooter,” Greenberg said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times article. “And it’s not because he has some special ‘spidey sense’ that shootings require. It’s because he’s poorly trained and ill-equipped and shouldn’t be on the job.”

Following the incident, Thomas was charged with three felony counts of aggravated assault of a police officer and five felony counts of criminal damage of property.

In May 2021, these charges were dropped after Thomas completed a diversion program for first-time felony offenders.

Thomas’s shooting prompted allegations of racial bias and a surge of organizing around campus policing, including the formation of the student organization #CareNotCops (CNC). In the intervening four years, CNC has demanded the University defund and disband the UCPD, alleging that campus police exhibit racial bias and receive inadequate mental health training.

CNC organizers have expressed concern over similarities between the Thomas and Wilson cases. “From what we know right now, it seems like he was undergoing a mental health crisis, which just further connects it to Soji,” Warren Wagner, an organizer with CNC, told the Chicago SunTimes on January 19.

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“Protecting American Democracy”: IOP Speakers Reflect on the January 6 Capitol Insurrection One Year Later

By ERIC FANG | Senior News Reporter Former deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Andrew McCabe, UChicago political science professor Robert Pape, and representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) reflected on the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building during the Institute of Politics’s (IOP) first speaker event of winter quarter. The conversation, which was held over Zoom, was moderated by The Washington Post national security reporter Hannah Allam.

Krishnamoorthi recalled being inside the Capitol when around 2,000 supporters of former president Donald Trump stormed the building. Capitol police evacuated him from his office after a pipe bomb was discovered about 200 feet from his office window.

The suspect, whom the FBI has still been unable to identify, placed pipe bombs outside the headquarters of both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Republican National Committee (RNC).

“We’re still dealing with the scars of that day, and there are a lot of unanswered questions including why it took hours upon hours

for the DC National Guard to arrive to put down the insurrection,” Krishnamoorthi said. “We are also wondering why so many of those 2,000 people have not been charged and arrested and are sort of roaming free at this point.”

McCabe, who worked on the FBI’s response to domestic terrorist attacks, including the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 and the Fort Hood Shooting in 2009, expressed concern that the FBI wasn’t able to anticipate the January 6 attack.

“Watching these events take place, you can’t help but have that sickening feeling in your stomach knowing that this one got by the men and women of the FBI whose job is to prevent exactly these sorts of attacks from happening,” McCabe said. “An essential piece of maintaining your ability to protect this country is to go back and uncover what you might have missed and figure out how you change your work going forward.”

Pape shared predictions that future domestic terrorism threats may become increasingly difficult to anticipate, based

on his research on the demographics of January 6 insurrectionists. In a January 5, 2022 report conducted through the Chicago Project on Research on Security and Threats (CPOST), Pape found that insurrectionists more closely resemble the American electorate than right-wing extremist groups when considering socioeconomic variables such as age, education, and employment. He concluded in the report that far-right support for political violence could be moving into the mainstream.

“When you have collective political violence and sentiments for that violence as it is now continuing in the body politic, that really is quite concerning,” Pape said. “We are used to dealing with this problem on the fringe. This is now front and center in mainstream America and is a major test of our democracy.”

McCabe agreed with the findings in Pape’s report and urged the FBI to extend its focus from the fringes of right-wing extremism.

“There’s been a lack of transparency on the part of the leadership across the federal law enforcement spectrum regarding their

performance and how they think about changing going forward,” McCabe said.

“Are you going to catch this threat if you’re focusing only on traditional right-wing extremists? I think the answer to that is no.”

With regards to legislative policy, Krishnamoorthi questioned whether the government ought to play a larger role in monitoring misinformation and threats of violence on social media. He stressed that many of the January 6 attackers organized on social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook. By imposing stricter regulations upon social media, Krishnamoorthi believes the government could curb the spread of disinformation and online radicalization. However, Krishnamoorthi feels that the federal government’s first priority should be to arrest and prosecute all 2,000 of the insurrectionists.

“The Department of Justice has failed at properly and expeditiously prosecuting these 2,000 people,” Krishnamoorthi said.

“Two thousand people breached the capitol and committed crimes, 700 have been arrested, and 30 have been jailed. That is not a fast enough prosecution.”

USG To Provide Free KN-95 Masks To All Undergraduates; University To Distribute Free Surgical Masks

By BEN WEINER | Senior News Reporter The Undergraduate Student Government (USG) will provide free KN95 masks for every undergraduate student during the week of January 24, the first week of in-person instruction in winter quarter.

Through the initiative, led by USG President Allen Abbott and Community and Government Liaison Julia Brestovitskiy, USG has ordered 20,000 KN95 masks.

In collaboration with the University of Chicago Labor Council (UCLC), the Divinity School will provide an additional 9,000.

Masks will be distributed to all undergraduates and as many others in the UChicago community as possible, Abbott told The Maroon. A detailed distribution plan was sent to all undergraduate students via

email in the coming days.

USG’s proposal follows a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases due to the Omicron variant. The University reported 469 cases during the week of January 10 and 481 the week before, compared to fewer than 100 cases every week during fall quarter.

Abbott said the University was unprepared for the possible consequences of in-person classes starting next week. “We are in a situation where a super-spreader event on campus next week is likely. We do not have the testing availability, we do not have the isolation availability to contain such an event,” he said.

Currently, all students living in residential halls are required to participate in

testing following their return to campus.

The University, meanwhile, has halted its weekly voluntary surveillance testing program due to high demand for testing.

Some peer institutions that are also returning to in-person learning have already made plans for providing KN95 masks.

Duke University has announced a plan to distribute free KN95 masks to students who live in campus housing. Vanderbilt University said that it would provide up to three KN95 masks to all students, faculty, postdocs, and on-campus staff.

“The University isn’t providing us resources. They’re not listening. They’re not doing what needs to be done for COVID leadership,” Abbott said. “What if we just did it ourselves?” He commended, in particular, the efforts of staff and adminis-

trators who have supported USG during the “logistically complex, last-minute” initiative.

USG will reallocate $10,000 from its annual budget to fund the initiative, a surplus made possible by limited events during the pandemic. The University billed USG an additional $500 as a “rush fee” while processing the payment from its budget, Abbott said.

On Friday, the University announced its plan to distribute free surgical-grade masks to UChicago students and employees during the first week of in-person classes. Individuals can pick up the masks at the Front Desk Reception of the Quadrangle Club (1155 East 57th Street) between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. from Sunday, January 23, CONTINUED ON PG. 3

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to Friday, January 28, according to a University-wide email from Provost Ka Yee Lee and Executive Vice President Katie Callow-Wright. The announcement came one day after The Maroon initially reported on USG’s free KN95 mask initiative.

“While taking lead on our own KN95 distribution program, USG has remained in close collaboration with senior administrators about the need for a more robust and comprehensive mask distribution program for the entire University, because it takes the resources of the University to

help the entire University. We’re excited that the administration is following USG’s leadership by agreeing to complement our KN95 mask program with additional surgical masks. We have additional exciting updates to come and hope that this is the next step in building a closer, more proac-

tive partnership between USG and University decision making,” Abbott wrote to The Maroon in response to the provost’s email.

This article has been updated to reflect University announcements.

Administrators To Issue Guidance on Adjustments for Students in Isolation

By NIKHIL JAISWAL | News Editor With an anticipated return to in-person learning on January 24, the University is planning to release guidance instructing faculty to allow students who miss in-person instruction due to COVID-19 related isolation to either participate virtually or access recordings of sessions.

A statement provided to The Maroon

by Undergraduate Student Government (USG) detailed a meeting between Allen Abbott, president of USG, Julia Brestovitskiy, USG’s Academic and Career Affairs Committee Chair, and officials from the Provost’s office. According to the statement, administrators plan to email instructors the updated guidance this week, as well as post the policies on the UChicago Forward website.

The resumption of in-person instruction will come four days after on-campus students will be allowed to return to University housing, which has been operating

at limited capacity during the first two weeks of the quarter. Under current guidelines, any student who tests positive for COVID-19 must isolate (in isolation housing) for at least ten days. As per an email from Housing and Residence Life to students in housing, students can leave isolation after five days if “certain symptom improvement conditions have been met and the student has received a negative rapid antigen test.”

Before now, University policy on academic adjustments for isolating students had remained unclear. “We’ve been given no guidance or protocol for what to do if a student needs to isolate, or if we in our instructorship role need to isolate,” said Natalie Farrell, a Ph.D. student in music history and theory at the University of Chicago and course assistant.

The lack of University-wide guidance on accommodations up until this point injected

more uncertainty into already chaotic situations when students were notified of positive COVID-19 test results. Students had no guarantee that they would be allowed to participate virtually or access recordings while in isolation, and faculty were unsure of what accommodations they could make.

In the meeting with the Provost’s office, Abbott and Brestovitskiy reiterated the need for students to attend classes remotely while in isolation. They explained that “many students and instructors are under the impression that the University actively discourages or does not allow hybrid accommodations for students with COVID-19; that ambiguity surrounding the guidance will lead to inconsistency in outcomes across departments and courses; and that students might be forced to choose between falling behind on courses or violating University health policies.”

Abbott also told The Maroon that the option of attending class virtually or receiv-

ing session recordings would be made available to students who had been exposed to COVID-19 or were symptomatic while they await test results. “Faculty are not allowed to ask students for proof of a positive test result in making learning adjustments,” Abbott added.

USG’s Student Advocate’s Office (SAO) will be working with administrators to ensure that students isolating with COVID-19 are accommodated. Students who are denied the necessary accommodations can file a complaint with the SAO. Additionally, USG encourages students who are immunocompromised or face other COVID-19 related health concerns to reach out to Student Disability Services.

The University did not immediately respond when asked for comment on whether virtual learning options or session recordings would be provided to students in COVID-19 related isolation.

University Considers Housing Roommates of Infected Students in Hotels, RAs Report

By RUBY RORTY | Editor-in-Chief On Friday, January 14, the University announced that it may require residential students who test positive for COVID-19 to isolate in their assigned rooms instead of relocating to dedicated isolation housing in Stony Island Hall. In an email sent on January 21 to all students living in University housing, Assistant Vice President for Campus Life Richard Mason and Interim

Executive Director of Housing & Residence Life Heath Rossner wrote that UChicago is also considering relocating students whose roommates test positive for COVID-19 to nearby accommodations. “These alternate accommodations are located either on-campus or very close to campus and will be provided at no additional expense,” Mason and Rossner wrote.

According to a resident assistant (RA) present at a meeting of Housing & Residence Life (HRL) staff in Renee Granville-Grossman Residential Commons West on Wednesday, the University has floated the idea of using nearby hotels to house students.

The RA, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation by HRL, said that Interim Senior Assistant Director of Residence Life at Granville-Grossman Jessica Beaver-Hollman told Granville-Gross-

man housing staff that the University is considering accommodation in hotels if current quarantine housing faces additional strain.

The University reported 481 new COVID-19 cases in its January 6 weekly update and 469 cases in its January 14 update—the two highest new case counts since reporting began—but only 13 students were in on-campus quarantine housing as of January 14. Currently, the former Stony CONTINUED ON PG. 4

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“Nothing is planned out. Nothing is clearly communicated.”

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Island dorm is the only location for quarantine housing on campus. Per an email from the University, Stony currently operates at a 120-person capacity. Some students who isolated in Stony have reported that the building’s 4-person apartments are currently housing 6 people at a time.

University spokesperson Jeremy Manier declined to clarify whether the additional housing would be offered in local hotels, writing in a further comment to The Maroon, “The alternate housing would include both vacant residence hall rooms and additional spaces that are very close to campus.”

Manier added that students in any type of

alternate housing would still have access to their meal plans for the duration of their relocation.

This would not be the first time that the University has turned to local hotels to house students. In fall 2020, with residence halls operating at limited capacity, the University gave students the option to lease single-occupancy rooms on designated floors in the Sophy Hotel on East 53rd Street and the Hyatt Place hotel in Harper Court at monthly rates of $2,300 and $3,000 respectively.

Ultimately, University spokesperson Gerald McSwiggan said, the University was able to accommodate all eligible students who sought on-campus housing for fall 2020, and

no residential students lived in local hotels.

Another Granville-Grossman RA, who attended a meeting of Renee Granville-Grossman East staff on Thursday, January 13, during which the hotel housing plan was also discussed, said they thought the hotels may offer a better solution than the isolation-in-place policy.

“Nobody on [the] housing staff likes the idea of isolation-in-place. We have RHs [resident heads] with small children who can’t get vaccinated, so the idea of sick individuals living among us in our building who could potentially infect other people and make them really sick is horrifying,” they said.

The RA added that as a member of hous-

ing staff, they have struggled to keep up with the University’s decision-making during the pandemic. “I wasn’t clear what the plan was, really, and that seems to be a pattern through all of this Omicron stuff,” they said. “Nothing is planned out. Nothing is clearly communicated. We’re all floating around, waiting to see what the University is doing next.”

Clarification on Jan. 18, 2022, 10:32 a.m.

CST: This article was updated on January 18 at 10:30 AM to reflect additional information from the University about its 2020 arrangement with Olympia Hotel Management to give residential students the option of leasing rooms in local hotels.

Library Bans Eating and Drinking To Limit COVID-19 Spread

By ERIN CHOI | News Reporter Drinking and eating are now prohibited in University Library spaces except when drinking from water fountains. The new policy will not apply to “designated dining areas,” which are currently Ex Libris Café and the Law School Green Lounge. Crerar Lounge was also originally listed as an exception but has since been removed.

The policy, which went into effect on January 6, will remain so indefinitely. According to Interim Library Director and University Librarian Elisabeth Long, the Library will “continue to evaluate the need for it as conditions and regulations evolve.”

Long said the Library implemented the restriction due to concerns about the spread of COVID-19: “[W]e are taking measures to help reduce transmission among students and staff.”

Library patrons are prohibited from drinking from water bottles under the new

policy. “It is too easy for a water bottle to become an excuse to have one’s mask down,” Long said. “Students can certainly bring a water bottle, but they will need to take a break and go to Ex Libris to consume it.”

Water fountains will continue to be in use, and drinking from them is still permitted.

Harper Café, which operates in Harper Memorial Library but outside of the reading room itself, is unaffected by the policy change.

In the designated dining areas, users must continue to follow the University’s masking requirements by wearing a mask when not eating or drinking. Long also noted that the recent City of Chicago vaccination mandate for dining establishments applies to Ex Libris, and that therefore, since December 31, campus dine-in services have been limited to UChicago students and employees, who are already in compliance with

the University vaccination requirement.

Take-away food service at locations that offer it will remain available to non-University affiliates.

In the past, there have been “serious issues” with library patrons skirting COVID-19 protocols, according to John Kaderbek, a Regenstein employee and Teamster 743 union steward. He said he has seen library patrons using food and drink as an excuse to avoid wearing a mask.

Kaderbek said that workers like him were not directly consulted in the policy change, but that they had previously brought this issue to management.

Those violating the policy will first be asked by staff to refrain from eating or drinking outside of designated areas. If they continue to violate the policy or do so repeatedly, the Library will respond by “escalating the issue, first internally and then to the Dean of Students,” Long said.

According to Kaderbek, employees who

tried to ask students to wear their masks when not eating or drinking were often dismissed or ignored. “The burden of enforcement mostly falls to hourly staff, student workers, and low-level supervisors,” he said.

“I have spoken to employees who say they eventually just stop trying because if they tried to enforce these policies, it would literally be the only thing they spend their day doing, endlessly reminding people to wear their mask.”

Another Library employee, who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation by their employer, raised questions as to whether current COVID-19 levels may warrant other preventative measures. They noted that in summer 2020, when campus COVID-19 cases were significantly lower than recent levels, the Regenstein was only open for book pick-up. “Library staff have shown they can support research while limiting patron access to library spaces,“ they said.

University Reports 245 New COVID-19 Cases Ahead of Return to In-Person Instruction

By ALEX DALTON and AUSTIN ZEGLIS | Senior News Reporters The University reported 245 new COVID-19 cases and a 3.53 percent posi-

tivity rate in surveillance tests this week, according to a UChicago Forward email

sent Friday afternoon. This is a decrease from the 469 cases and 6.34 percent positivity rate reported last week.

As of Friday, nine students are in on-campus isolation housing, while 162

students are isolating off-campus.

The UChicago Forward email reiterated information from an earlier email

by Provost Ka Yee Lee and Executive Vice CONTINUED ON PG. 5

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“It is our hope that over the next several weeks we will be able to relax these restrictions” CONTINUED FROM PG. 4

President Katie Callow-Wright on Friday, which introduced the University’s plan to provide free surgical-grade masks to University students and employees. The masks will be available for pickup from Sunday, January 23, to Friday, January 28, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the front desk reception of the Quadrangle Club, located at 1155 East 57th Street.

The University also confirmed in the emails that it will be moving forward with its plan to resume in-person classes

on Monday, January 24, after two weeks of remote learning intended to limit the spread of COVID-19.

Lee and Callow-Wright wrote that overall infections in Chicago have decreased by about 50 percent since the beginning of the year and that the number of COVID-19 inpatients at the University of Chicago Medical Center has slowly decreased from the record numbers reported in late December. According to Lee and Callow-Wright, the University is therefore “moving forward with the continuing pri-

orities of maximizing in-person instruction while upholding the health and safety of [the] community and managing ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 surge.”

A separate email sent Friday morning

by Housing & Residence Life (HRL) to students in on-campus housing announced that dorm residents have been indefinitely barred from receiving visitors from outside their own residence halls, extending a policy that the University had previously announced for the period of January 1 through January 20.

The University also announced that communal kitchens in dorms will remain closed and standard room change requests have been suspended.

“It is our hope that over the next several weeks we will be able to relax these restrictions, however we are unable to provide a specific timetable for if/when these restrictions will be lifted,” HRL’s email reads. “Once those decisions have been made, we will reach out with another update.”

The Quiet Protest of Chicago’s Monk Parakeets What the green parrots can teach us about intelligence, extractivism, and making home in the Windy City.

LAURA GERSONY | Grey City Editor It happens to you slowly. You might find yourself waking before dawn, a period of a Sunday morning that really ought never to be witnessed, and catching the 6:30 a.m. bus headed somewhere. Blink, and you’re crouched in the shrubs underneath the Chicago Skyway, just before the exit to Indianapolis Boulevard, peering up into the rafters at a pile of sticks.

Ideally, the day is breaking, the air still dewy and quiet. It’s just when your neck has started to ache that you might spot one emerging from its nest, appearing as a blurry speck of lime green when you’re not wearing glasses: a monk parakeet, wild and free.

The most striking feature of Chicago monk parakeets is their utter unbelonging. These are subtropical parrots that have absolutely no right to be thriving

in this wind tunnel of a city, this town known for its hostile winters. Yet here they are, ten inches long and right at home, the most adorable middle fingers to extractivism and wildlife trafficking you’ve ever seen.

The precise origins of the city’s monk parakeet population remain something of a mystery to the ecologists that study them. Scientists know that they were among the thousands of birds transported here on cargo ships from their homelands in South America in the middle of the last century. But regarding whether the members of the original urban cohort were deliberately released by aggravated owners or escaped of their own volition, we can only speculate.

Having lived with a parrot for many years—the infamous Kuku, who was

grafted onto the Gersony family tree when the neighbor for whom we were bird-sitting “forgot” to pick him up—I find the former explanation plausible.

One too many squawks at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning can make release a tempting prospect. But I prefer the second explanation. I picture the escapee as my very own Kuku, wearing sunglasses and a trench coat, slipping out through a North Side dog door in the dead of night.

He’s a vagabond finding freedom in the big city, flapping through alleyways, tucking his wings behind telephone poles to avoid roving searchlights. Perhaps he’s following a drinking gourd, or he’s just your standard forty-niner, drawn by an instinct either liberatory or delusional to that nook below the Skyway.

One of the main reasons why parrots have piqued the settler American interest is that they are “exotic.” Rigorously

defined, this means that they are no more than one or two more generations separated from their wild ancestors. In casual usage, the term refers to a world Americans haven’t bothered to learn about.

Researchers have found that the more domesticated a bird is, the less able and motivated it will be to escape. Perhaps, then, it was the parakeets’ wildness—the pretext for their subjugation—that tipped the scales of their destiny toward freedom. *** The parakeets’ history in Chicago is well documented in a recently published anthology, Naturalized Parrots of the World, edited by University of Chicago ecologist Stephen Pruett-Jones. The first monk parakeet was spotted in Hyde Park in the late ’70s, at which point their local population started to double every CONTINUED ON PG. 6

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three years. Knowing Chicago politics to be a game of hardball, these early settlers nested across the street from then-mayor Harold Washington, who became enamored with the birds. After his death, when the Department of Agriculture called for the city’s monk parakeets to be removed, a group of Washington’s devotees threatened a lawsuit. And so the birds remained.

Ecologists believe that there are two main reasons why monk parakeets have been so successful in urban environments. The first is that they have an extraordinary ability to make themselves at home. Unlike many other parrots, monk parakeets build their own nests rather than furnishing existing holes. For this reason, the birds have been known to set up camp in odd places, from electrical wires to skyscrapers.

The second reason for the urban success of monk parakeets is that they can and will eat anything vegetarian. According to the anthology, their diet consists of “whatever is available.” Nuts, berries, leaves. They don’t discriminate.

Lest we give them too much credit, however, the city’s monk parakeet population is kept alive only by the good graces of strangers. The current scientific consensus is that in winter, they subsist primarily on backyard bird feeders. Large flocks have been spotted going from house to house in Chicago’s Portage Park neighborhood. It’s a familiar pattern: swarm, devour, exit.

In Naturalized Parrots, Pruett-Jones writes that parrots are “the most human of birds”: They typically form lifelong monogamous relationships, show an enthusiasm for play all their lives, and lock beaks to show affection. He omits from this list their unfailing cunning and opportunism. Innocent though they may appear, monk parakeets can become an agricultural “pest,” the technical term for a species that gets in humanity’s way. They are maligned in their native countries for descending upon crops of corn or sunflowers and eating up every last bit. In the 15th century, Incas stationed guards next to cornfields, armed

Monk parakeets nesting in Everglades, Florida. COURTESY OF AARON MAIZLISH / FLICKR CREATIVE COMMONS with noise-making devices specifically designed to scare the birds away. I have no doubt that if they could, monk parakeets would be acidifying the ocean right along with us, commodifying their only home, and violently capturing as pets animals whose intelligence they aren’t able to recognize.

En masse, monk parakeets are a force to be reckoned with. One of Pruett-Jones’s publications describes how, in 2001, a colony nesting in Florida’s electrical lines caused over 10,000 power outages in the state’s fossil fuel–fired energy grid. Florida officials thanked them for this brave feat of climate activism by trying to scare them out of their own nests with owl dummies. The parakeets, needless to say, were not fooled.

Nevertheless, Pruett Jones’s article continues, “despite these negative

impacts of monk parakeets, there are increasing efforts by people to protect them.” New York and New Jersey’s state legislatures have made it illegal to capture or harm a monk parakeet living in the wild.

In his short story “The Great Silence,” science fiction author Ted Chiang writes from the perspective of a Puerto Rican parrot. The narrator laments the irony of astronomers’ attempts to listen for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, tilting massive receptors up into the cosmos.

Extra-human intelligence already exists on Earth, the parrot explains; we’ve been here all along. *** I have a vegan friend who regularly experiences fits of moral discomfort over the well-being of his pets. A philosophy major if there ever was one, Yair owns

two fish, Fin and Scale, rescues originally purchased as “feeder fish” for another friend’s turtle.

When Fin and Scale came into Yair’s possession this summer, he housed them in a tank that sits atop a bookshelf in his Hyde Park apartment. This provoked in him a great deal of rumination. If the fish are happy in their tank, he’s acted in accordance with hedonistic utilitarianism, the ethical theory he espouses.

But it seemed not out of the question that the life he had constructed for Fin and Scale amounted to nothing short of a living hell. Under these circumstances, Yair tells me, the mandate for any self-respecting hedonistic utilitarian would be clear: put them out of their misery.

After months of deliberation, Yair has arrived at a fragile peace. Because the CONTINUED ON PG. 7

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“A single parakeet is a symbol of conquest—a flirtation with an exotic, resource-rich world. A flock of them is a nuisance.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 6

fish were bred for captivity, he reasons that the best thing to do is keep them in their tank and care for them well. This conclusion also has the benefit of being logistically convenient, as he is unsure he has the stomach to commit cold-blooded murder. He still believes there’s a chance that Fin and Scale live in a state of perpetual agony. But he’s pegged the odds of this as not much more than 30 percent.

These are odds Yair can live with.

I once met another philosophy student who bought a tank of tiny red shrimp during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The shrimp live in a self-sustaining ecosystem; one only needs to place the jar in sunlight, which feeds the algae, which feed the shrimp, which excrete nutrients, which feed the algae. Their owner maintains that this is the only “authentic” relationship with an extra-human life form she’s ever been in because it’s a relationship of equals in which neither party is existentially dependent on the other. She’s cheered by the possibility that the shrimp might not know she exists at all.

Parrots can’t match tiny red shrimp in this regard. But they certainly have more chutzpah than anything that swims in a jar. No bigger than a coffee cup, Kuku is far and away the spunkiest, most fearsome creature I’ve ever known. We used to call it “dive-bombing,” the way he would attack strangers: a blur of motion and feathers streaking across the kitchen to defend us against any visitor to the house, screeching ferociously, claws and sharp beak aimed at their scalp. Even if we remembered to lock him in his cage when company arrived, he’d make his aggression known, maintaining beady eye contact with the visitor while shaking the bars of his cage with his beak. It’s an action that translates—and I am absolutely certain of this—to “come at me, bro.”

But Kuku loves as fiercely as he dive-bombs. As soon as our guests disappeared, his beak became a delicate instrument of affection, smooth keratin wandering stepwise across our skin with the tender attention that only love can elicit. I used to curl up reading a book

on the couch while Kuku gently combed each of the fine hairs on the back of my neck. In exchange, we can offer him our mammalian warmth: He loves to snuggle into the nook below a person’s chin, bliss for his cool, lean body. It’s a sight that creates pangs of homesickness when I FaceTime my dad from halfway across the country. I often catch them watching reruns together, Kuku wriggled under my father’s sweater vests—those offensively argyle pullovers they stopped selling in 1960—a happy, chirping lump below the wool.

Birds have always softened my father, the son of Holocaust refugees. Robert Gersony made his career as a field worker for the U.S. State Department, gathering information during and after some of the most gruesome events of this century. His approach, unprecedented in the department’s history, was to interview hundreds of ordinary people who had survived these atrocities. He’d spend months alongside refugees, eating one meal a day and regularly working himself to the point of physical and mental breakdown.

Now, he relishes his hard-earned retirement: He catches up with old friends, relaxes, and “attends to legal matters” with Kuku (which is to say, he watches Judge Judy on his ancient, decidedly three-dimensional TV). He has also doubled down on his efforts to put food out for birds. He does this with the same degree of earnestness and care that I remember from my own childhood. A creature of insurance, my father keeps our hallway closet stocked with a quantity of bird seed that I suspect will feed our family for the first month or two of the climate apocalypse. Every few weeks, he lugs a 20-pound sack of these rations to the sunny, book-filled room we call the library. He pours sunflower seeds into the tall, lighthouse-shaped feeder and wedges sticky cakes of suet into a birdhouse— for woodpeckers, he explains. Then, in an act of athleticism I now understand is astounding for his age, he sticks himself halfway out the window and hangs the delicacies on hooks that extend from our home’s brick wall.

Exertions completed, he sits back in the leather chair by the window and rests, sun on his face, a smile wrinkling his friendly eyes, watching as the birds gradually take notice. How overjoyed my father would be to be visited by a flock of monk parakeets during a Chicago winter.

Deep in an Internet rabbit hole, I learned that nearly 70 species of birds in our home state of Virginia are at risk of extinction due to climate change. Poring over mug shots of the endangered, I recognized several of them as regular visitors to my father’s feeder.

A surprising amount of the literature on naturalized parrots is devoted not to the birds themselves but to the way people respond to them. “People are seldom ‘neutral’ as regards monk parakeets,” one of Pruett-Jones’s papers reads in an endearingly scientific tone. One study in the anthology looked at public attitudes towards the birds across Europe.

“Parisians who had private green spaces or balconies were more likely to have reservations about or dislike parakeets,” it concludes. Other findings hit deeper.

“If a rare and interesting animal is encountered with increasing frequency, it can become common and banal.” A single parakeet is a symbol of conquest, a flirtation with an exotic, resource-rich world.

A flock of them is a nuisance. We prefer them alone and caged.

Isolated from their peers, parrots have been known to develop depression and die. *** With a self-seriousness that I’m sure is naive, I feel sometimes that my whole life has been spent discovering and rediscovering a Buddhist proverb, in different shades and species of truth: that understanding is love’s other name. This is what the leader of Tuesday meditation told me last summer when I confessed to the group over Zoom that my dad and I couldn’t stop fighting. As you notice frustration blooming, she suggested, try to summon careful attention alongside it. Can you see in him your own small, suffering self, innocent and seeking comfort?

Training this careful attention on

Kuku over the years, one can detect a birdy thought process emerging from his strangeness. With time, his idiosyncrasies become familiar, even reasonable.

Grinding his beak is his way of requesting food while on a person’s shoulder. The seemingly random squawking fits occur when he spots a squirrel out the window, often too far for a human to see. And his casual destruction of household objects is no more than our shared creaturely desire to make a home: in my sweater, in the couch’s stuffing, and (to my parents’ halfhearted protests) in the wallpaper.

Watching Kuku’s long-lost cousins under the Skyway, I was seized with the mutually affirming sensations of joy and recognition. These birds are Kuku in another, freer life: These are fierce beings that my own species tried, but failed, to reduce to exotic objects. What is their naturalization in Chicago but a victory, a protest of the ethos of extraction that brought them here? Unwittingly at first, but now wholeheartedly, I’ve started rooting for them.

Just as quickly as monk parakeets arrived in Hyde Park, they began to leave.

Their population started to decline in 2005, both in the neighborhood and nationwide. Local ecologists think this is when their colonies split and spread to other parts of the city. It’s an impulse I sympathize with—hitting the road, once again, in search of a better life—though I read these studies with an unexpected pang of sadness.

Pruett-Jones can tell the rest of the story.

“After 2015,” he wrote, “the population of Monk Parakeets in Chicago and in the nation stabilized, but it has not yet begun to increase to numbers seen before the decline. In Chicago, Monk Parakeets still persist and survive but in smaller numbers.”

“The population in Hyde Park is more or less extinct, though there are hundreds of birds still nesting in the greater Chicago region. But why the birds left Hyde Park remains a mystery.” *** To learn more about the global wildlife trade, visit www.traffic.org.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — JANUARY 26, 2022

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The Reverend Jesse Jackson: “My Job Is to Teach Students Their Power” In a one-on-one interview, the civil rights leader talks power, politics, and youth activism.

RUBY RORTY | Editor-in-Chief When the Reverend Jesse Jackson travels around Hyde Park, he attracts notice.

Our Sunday morning meeting over brunch at the Sophy Hotel is punctuated by people coming over to hug him, gushing and posing for selfies. One young woman shares the name of her godfather, whom Jackson knows personally, and he holds her hands and smiles while she recounts updates about mutual friends and asks about the ongoing work of Jackson’s organization, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. As we leave the Sophy for Rainbow PUSH’s East 50th Street headquarters, a couple shyly asks him to take pictures with their two young daughters, who giggle and squirm as they hug him and smile for a cell phone camera.

Jackson, who turned 80 in October, has been embedded in Chicago civil rights work for half a century. Born in South Carolina, Jackson became involved in the civil rights movement while in college and was one of eight students who participated in a sit-in at the segregated Greenville Public Library.

Famously a mentee of Martin Luther King Jr., he helped to found the Chicago branch of Operation Breadbasket, the economic arm of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). After King’s death, Jackson founded the Chicago-based People United to Save Humanity (PUSH), which has operated out of its headquarters at East 50th Street and South Drexel Avenue since 1972. In the late 1990s, PUSH became the Rainbow PUSH Coalition after merging with Jackson’s national Rainbow Coalition campaign for minority rights, women’s rights, and LGBTQ+ rights. He ran for president twice in the 1980s and served from 1991 to 1997 as “shadow senator” for Washington, D.C., an unpaid position that he used to lobby for D.C. statehood. In short, Jackson is a giant, one of a dwindling number of last century’s civil rights champions still alive and working to shape the next generation’s fight for racial justice.

He reached out to me in October, offering to sit down for a profile as part of his

effort to educate students in Chicago about PUSH’s current priorities. We met twice, once on background and once on the record. Over the course of several hours, Jackson and I spoke about the issues on his mind lately, the hope he has for youth engagement in politics, and the impact his Parkinson’s disease has had on his work.

After leaving the Sophy, we drive through north Hyde Park in a hulking SUV outfitted with tinted windows and speakers on each of the doors, accompanied by the half-dozen PUSH staff members who joined us for breakfast. Jackson points out the sanctums of notable Hyde Parkers, from the Obamas to the investor John W. Rogers Jr., as we go. He tells me about his order at Valois—scrambled eggs, grits and bacon, and sometimes oatmeal with raisins and bananas—and insists it’s still the best breakfast in Hyde Park.

It was at Valois that Jackson met Mylon Patton, a University of Chicago fourth-year who now serves as his intern, sometimes advisor, and personal aide. Patton is of medium height with a ready smile and seems at home in business casual outfits—sneakers, slacks, and a button-down. Soft-spoken, polite, and unmistakably ambitious, he is eager to talk about his work and aspirations. Jackson jokes with him constantly—“Mylon thinks he’s the boss of me,” he whispers to me when Patton suggests a change of schedule—but also speaks with an almost fatherly affection about the young man. When I ask about Mylon’s future plans, Jackson laughs and says, “He’ll be senator, president—whatever he wants.”

In our interview, Patton also serves as an interpreter for Jackson, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2017. Jackson’s speech can be hard to make out, and Patton sits with us, helping me understand his answers.

Jackson starts our conversation by bringing up the death of Jelani Day, a 25-year-old Black Illinois State University graduate student who was reported miss-

ing from Bloomington, Illinois, on August 25. Day’s body was discovered in the Illinois River in Peru, Illinois, on September 4 but was not positively identified until late September. Jackson recounts grim details of the state of Day’s body that he considers suspicious—Day’s organs were decayed, and his cell phone was found miles from the scene. Since Jackson and I spoke, Day’s case has not been resolved, although on December 13, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that it was offering a $10,000 reward for “substantial information” about Day’s disappearance and death. Day’s mother, Carmen Bolden Day, called the reward “a publicity stunt.”

She told NBC 5 Chicago, “They want to act like they’re doing something. I want them to do something.”

Although Day’s death was ruled a drowning, Bolden Day and Jackson have been outspoken about their belief that he was murdered in a racially motivated hate crime. In a statement, Bolden Day said, “my son did not put himself in a river.”

Jackson sees Day’s death as another entry in the long record of violence against Black Americans. He says that Peru has a reputation as a “modern-day sundown town” and calls Day’s death an “Emmett Till–type case.” Jackson has been in touch with Bolden Day and, when we spoke, was in the process of pushing for more visibility for the case in hope of inciting action from the state’s attorney and governor to investigate the death further.

Jackson is also critical of how local police have handled the Day case, a concern paralleled in his criticism of Chicago police.

“All of us have to earn our reputations. The police have not earned a good reputation,” he says. “Police everywhere have a sworn duty to protect and serve. If the police can protect and serve, we want them. The problem is when they are abusive and reactionary.” Jackson also criticizes the “blue wall of silence” that prevents officers from exposing misconduct in their ranks and says that one thing private and public police have in common is that they protect

their own.

But while he has vocally supported Black Lives Matter and advocated for police demilitarization and an end to qualified immunity, Jackson has not publicly addressed activists’ calls for an end to policing entirely. When I ask about it, he is hesitant, saying that police occupation and abolition are two opposite extremes and that police are necessary because of the prevalence of gun violence in Chicago and elsewhere. Jackson says violence in Chicago has only expanded in the six years since his last major push on the issue, a campaign against gun violence in 2015. He says that Chicago’s gun culture started with the making of gangsters like Al Capone into cultural icons and that it is fueled by the accessibility of guns just outside the city. “Police need guns,” he says, because people have guns.

While Jackson may not himself endorse the calls for police abolition popular among young activists, he’s also not interested in telling students what to think.

“Students should set their own agenda,” he says, stressing that young people are worried about the right things—canceling and avoiding debt, protecting the environment, expanding access to health care, preventing police violence, and safeguarding voting rights. What he most wants is more political engagement from today’s young people, who he says should “cross the high school stage with a diploma in one hand and their voter registration in the other.”

Patton, Jackson’s apparent right-hand man, is Rainbow PUSH’s only intern from the University, a fact that frustrates both of them. Jackson says he wants students to use the organization as a place to gain experience on the ground and develop skills they can bring back to their communities and implement as future leaders. “My job,” he tells me, looking out his window, “is to teach students their power.”

He is most animated when talking about the role of youth in political progress—he spends several minutes recounting the key roles student activists have played in CONTINUED ON PG. 9

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“Leadership cannot just react. Leadership must demand, operating from a vision for the future.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 8

historical racial justice campaigns, from European teenagers who called for the abolition of slavery to college and high school students’ involvement in the civil rights movements of the 1960s. Young people, he

says, “move on a moral agenda, often with more directionality than broader movements. When students come alive, it energizes the whole country.”

Watching Jackson recount history, it’s hard to forget that he himself is very

“Young people change the course of things.” COURTESY OF RUBY RORTY

much a part of it. We leave the Sophy and enter Rainbow PUSH. Nestled in the Hyde Park–Kenwood area, the building is something of a chimera. The west-facing facade is in a stately Greek style with eight sturdy columns and huge block letters that read, “Operation PUSH • National Headquarters • Dr. King’s Workshop.” The rest of the building is in a more modern style, with a layout something like that of a midsize high school—the spacious lobby tapers into a maze of hallways, and linoleum floors and beige paint add to the effect. “[Nelson] Mandela walked through those doors,” Jackson tells me in a casual tone of voice as we enter the building. Everywhere you turn, there seems to be a reminder of the civil rights greats who have walked the streets of the South Side and the halls of PUSH’s headquarters. A huge poster board features dozens of pictures of movement leaders, many of which are signed in orange markers by figures who have come through the building and recognized themselves on the wall.

The hallways leading to Jackson’s personal office are lined with conference rooms and recording studios for Jackson’s frequent radio and podcast appearances.

Each room is named for prominent figures in the history of the civil rights movement—Rosa Parks, Emmett Till, the Little Rock Nine, and others. Framed photos of Jackson smiling next to recognizable faces, from Michael Jackson to Bill Clinton, paper the walls. His office itself is large and sunny, with a north-facing window that Jackson likes to stand in front of, gazing out at the neighborhood. The room is filled with a career’s worth of ephemera: cards from elementary school students and pictures of Jackson’s own children, an honorary Harlem Globetrotter’s Jersey, signed sports balls of every variety, several orchids (real and fake), a carved wooden horse the size of a Doberman pinscher, and a battered fireman’s helmet given to Jackson to thank him for his long-standing support of Chicago’s Black firefighters.

It’s clear that these days, the urgency of activating the next generation weighs especially heavy on Jackson’s mind. His Parkinson’s makes it difficult for him to eat or move around without help from his staff.

Jackson tells me that he first put words to emerging symptoms after a jogging injury sent him to his doctor, who gave him the diagnosis.

Parkinson’s, a progressive disease of the central nervous system, predominantly impacts movement but can also affect cognitive function in its late stages. Today, Jackson is especially cautious about his health, taking medicine four times a day to slow the disease’s progression. When he caught COVID-19 in the fall, doctors at his rehabilitation center told him that had he not been vaccinated, he likely would have died. But when I ask him how Parkinson’s has changed his work, he seems mildly surprised at the question. “You can sit around all day and do nothing, or you can keep doing the work. I’m fighting it by working,” he says. “I’m doing what I’ve always done, but slower.”

Although Parkinson’s can make Jackson’s speech difficult to understand, he still speaks in eminently quotable sound bites— delivered with the cadence and charisma of someone who has twice run for president.

“Strong minds bring strong change,” he tells me, and later, “Leadership cannot just react. Leadership must demand, operating from a vision for the future.” On his bids for the national office in 1984 and 1988, he says he was running not to win but to “protest against liberalism,” which he describes as having been morally corrupt at the time.

This bold statement underscores a key tension of Jackson’s career: his dual role as a risk-taking activist and a calculating politician.

He has been arrested countless times while fighting for civil rights and was an early and outspoken advocate for progressive causes like gay rights, ending the war on drugs, and national health care. In many ways, Jesse Jackson has lived the life of a rabble-rouser, someone who speaks out for his beliefs no matter the odds or personal risk involved. But at the same time, Jackson has long been denounced as overly ambitious, too focused on personal gain to serve the movement. King himself criticized Jackson, who he worried was too self-oriented to be a part of the SCLC’s collectivist vision. Although the two reconciled prior CONTINUED ON PG. 10

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“We’re going to make the case to the people in power, because that’s what we do.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 9

to King’s assassination, for which Jackson was present, Jackson was suspended from his role as the director of the SCLC’s Operation Breadbasket after King’s death. He formally resigned and shortly afterward founded PUSH, which began operations in Hyde Park.

But King’s criticisms were made more than 50 years ago, and in some ways, it feels unfair that the public narrative about Jackson has not moved on especially since King’s words cannot possibly reflect how the two men’s relationship might have evolved had he not been assassinated. The signage on the building’s façade still pays homage to King, and he is omnipresent inside the building in portraits, photographs, and cardboard cutouts.

At times in our interview, I felt I could see how the alleged politicking that marked Jackson’s early career has grown

into a powerful impulse for strategic bridge-building. When I ask him about Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a polarizing figure among many progressives, he is quick to compliment her. “Lightfoot is a good mayor,” he says, praising her work on immigration, public education, and police accountability and adding that he hopes voters give Lightfoot the benefit of the doubt as she governs a city famous for its history of corruption. “She’s not building a machine.

She’s been fair and open.”

Simultaneously, Patton tells me later that Jackson has been frustrated by Lightfoot’s public arguments with State’s Attorney Kim Foxx over a recent incidence of gang violence. He feels that elected officials’ fighting in the media gives an impression of fractured relationships and threatens residents’ faith in their government, and Patton says Jackson has been urging the two to reconcile. Reflected in this desire for unity

Jesse Jackson and aide Mylon Patton. COURTESY OF THOMAS MCINTOSH / RAINBOW PUSH

and in his deference to the political agenda of the next generation is a Jesse Jackson who badly wants the left to win and believes that winning comes from working together.

And Jackson’s kindness seems genuine.

It may be that he is more inclined to greet strangers with hugs and personal inquiries with a reporter watching, but I don’t think that is the case. When a woman wheeling her grandchild in a stroller stops us outside his headquarters, telling Jackson, “I’m so glad to see you. I’m so glad they’re taking care of you,” it is obvious that to people in Hyde Park, he is not just a beloved neighbor but also a symbol of the legacy of the civil rights movement. And chief in my mind as I wrote this profile was the fact that Jesse Jackson, who has been written about at length in national papers of record, chose to spend his Sunday with a 21-year-old student journalist writing for a college paper.

Whatever you think of Jackson’s leg-

acy, one thing is clear; it’s not done being written. For him, “slowing down” means something very different than it might to you or me. During our first meeting—an offthe-record breakfast—he was coming from a birthday celebration and a meeting with the Chicago City Council and the Office of the Mayor. The second time, he arrived from recording a morning radio show and left our interview to attend a Chicago Sky game. And most recently, he made national news for attending the trial for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, the Black jogger who was killed by three white men in Georgia in February 2020. The defense attorney for one of the accused men asked the judge to remove Jackson from the courtroom, repeating the complaint he had made about Al Sharpton’s attendance the week prior, when he said he didn’t want “any more Black pastors” present for the proceedings.

All three men were ultimately convicted.

At the end of our conversation, Jackson turned the conversation back to Jelani Day. He compared it to the recent, widely publicized murder of travel influencer Gabby Petito, saying that Day’s case has been underreported by the media and insufficiently investigated by authorities. “Carmen has not yet buried her son,” Jackson says, “but the case has been buried.” A few days after our conversation, he traveled to Day’s birthplace in Danville to participate in his burial service at the family’s request.

“We’re going to make the case to the people in power because that’s what we do,” he tells me about the forthcoming trip. “We get involved to get people in motion. That’s the mission: defend, protect, and gain human rights at home and around the world.”

This seems to be the heart of Jackson’s current work: using his international profile to talk about the issues that feel most pressing to him. And when he talks about those issues, it is in the voice of a minister who still preaches almost every Sunday. In explaining his attitude toward work in the wake of his diagnosis, he paraphrases the Book of Matthew: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and the rest will be added upon. Do the right thing first, for the right reasons, and the rest follows.”

THE CHICAGO MAROON — JANUARY 26, 2022

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VIEWPOINTS

An Open Letter to Admin on Conditions of Return to Campus Members of the University community call for a delayed return to in-person learning and increased transparency on the decision process.

By UCHICAGO IN THIS TOGETHER

Dear President Alivisatos, Provost Lee, and Executive Vice President Callow-Wright, We write as members of the University united by a concern to protect the well-being of our entire community: faculty, staff, students, medical care providers, and South Side residents, as well as the families and households for whom we are responsible.

Many of us have, in recent

weeks, appealed to the administration seeking clarification regarding the process and measures by which the conditions of our work, teaching, and learning in the face of surging COVID infection rates are being decided. We have received no response, and no acknowledgement of our profound and persistent concerns.

Our desire for engagement is driven by rates of infection and hospitalization due to COVID that continue to break daily records, pushing the University of Chicago

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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Medical Center (UCMC) beyond its capacity. Adult and Pediatric ERs and ICUs are full, and medical providers are exhausted by the current burden of care. Amid this emergency, evidence regarding the frequency and complexity of long-term sequelae to even asymptomatic infection continues to tell us that a COVID infection is neither a mild nor a predictable medical event. Many of us, and our family members, have suffered infections and continue to struggle with long-term effects.

Others among us understand that our medical histories mean those long-term effects are likely to be debilitating. Given all we know, and all we have yet to learn about the true risks for even the least vulnerable among us, the current plans seem irresponsible in both the short and long views.

We are also concerned about the University’s suggestion that students residing in dorms return to Hyde Park mere days before we are all expected to be back in classrooms. This means there is a window of several days where infected students are likely to still be asymptomatic and mixing with their peers, instructors, and staff. In other words, ideal conditions for a further rapid increase in infections. Under these conditions, “in person” will inevitably mean hybrid teaching and/ or mass absences due to infection or exposure.

In light of the administration’s current plan for a resumption of in-person teaching on January 24, we offer three requests for immediate consideration and action: 1. We urge the administration

to postpone all plans for in-person learning until, at the earliest, two weeks after the January 31 deadline for booster shots. February 14 is the earliest date by which January 31 vaccinations will have reached their intended efficacy.

2. We require a transparent disclosure of the public health metrics by which the administration would determine that in-person teaching is safe beyond February 14. This disclosure should include acknowledgement of the risks of long-term, chronic consequences even among some vaccinated people, as well as people whose infections are asymptomatic. It should also include an acknowledgement of the unequal risks to individuals and their household members whose particular situations place them in increased danger of serious or long-term consequences from a COVID infection. Any plan for a safe return to campus must address the specific health and safety needs outlined in recent appeals to the University administration, and include mandates for minimum thresholds for mask quality as defined by the Center of Disease Control (CDC), as well as air filtration in all University spaces.

3. Third, we call for an open forum for the discussion and appeal of the administration’s decisions regarding our shared conditions of work, teaching, and learning.

We consider these measures to be the minimal responsible and ethical response to a continuing public health emergency that threatens to leave many of us navigating not only the shortterm stresses of a surge in infec-

tions, but the long-term suffering of chronic illness or disability.

These measures are not exhaustive and complement ongoing calls for providing adequate personal protective equipment, additional mental health support services, and medical exemptions in cases of household exposure. Increased support, protections, and accommodations for staff required to work on site will be crucial.

The COVID situation is changing every day, and will, in all likelihood, continue to do so for the foreseeable future. We are all eager to return to a campus where physical distancing requirements do not interrupt learning and research. Given how much remains unknown, and yet given, too, how much alarming evidence has already become available, it makes common ethical sense to prioritize long-term concerns over shortterm anxieties. Online learning has certainly been associated with mental health challenges, but the mental health costs of potential widespread chronic illness are incalculable. For this reason, it is imperative that the metrics by which safety of the community is measured should be decided in consultation with the community.

The current plan to return to in-person learning on January 24 places staff and faculty in unacceptably dangerous working conditions, places our students in harm’s way, and increases risk to the surrounding community.

All of these issues place present burdens on our families whose potential long-term consequences are more than any of us should ask of each other.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — JANUARY 26, 2022

12

“Skip the Screen, Save the Green”: We Need the Crystal Gardens The Navy Pier shouldn’t replace the real wildlife of the Crystal Gardens with a paid simulation, and the UChicago community should advocate for this green attraction to stay.

By CHERIE FERNANDES I know I’m a live-laugh-love suburban mom at heart because I spent a good chunk of New Year’s Day cooing over a video playlist of 2021 memories, courtesy of my phone’s Photos app. An image of my sister peeking out impishly from behind a palm tree gave me pause, however; God knows we hadn’t managed a trip to the Caribbean. The location marked “700 E. Grand Ave, Chicago’s Navy Pier” was enough for me to place it as the eventful second day of a summer college visit trip: While mom pulled our disgruntled father into a caricature portrait (“he got my nose wrong!”) at the ground-floor kiosks, my sister and I had ambled up a massive staircase and found ourselves in a pocket of tropical paradise.

Nestled in Navy Pier, Crystal Gardens is an indoor botanical garden spanning an acre.

Upon stepping through the double doors, visitors are greeted with equatorial warmth and the murmur of bubbling water as they take in a 50-foot arched ceiling. The glass atrium houses nearly 90 live palm trees— among other verdant foliage— against a backdrop of twinkling lights and leaping fountains.

Cut to decidedly-not-paradisiacal present day, which sees me flipping through images of the garden on the Internet and considering the merits of a second visit. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon the architecture concept art of the space’s future, featuring

uprooted trees and the atrium awash with technicolor waves reminiscent of bad 2008 Microsoft WordArt. What had I discovered? Navy Pier is slated to replace the open-access tropical garden with “Illuminarium,” a pay-to-enter virtual reality experience that spells “the next generation in immersive entertainment,” by early 2023.

It’s easy to give this development an idle “tut” and “what a shame” as technology marches on, to think that the small crowd of sage-clad protesters insisting “Skip the Screen, Save the Green” are well intentioned, but naive. The reality, Navy Pier contends, is that the Pier has suffered significant losses in tourist revenue during the pandemic. A grand, paid experience like Illuminarium would draw more visitors, conferring positive externalities on the surrounding businesses; Navy Pier PR representative Madeline Sweeney notes, “It’s incumbent upon us to develop attractions that support the maintenance and viability of Navy Pier and boost the local economy,” pointing to the “70 tenant businesses on the Pier, which create more than 3,000 local jobs.” Furthermore, the experience Illuminarium offers would be in keeping with the attraction’s values of education and environmentalism, transporting visitors to an immersive African safari experience. The Pier will continue to offer outdoor green space in the form of Polk Bros Park, but while personal attachments to CONTINUED ON PG. 13

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“...the experience Illuminarium offers would be in keeping with the attraction’s values of education and environmentalism...”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 12

Crystal Gardens are not unappreciated, the attraction is currently “underused,” and the space is better suited to house Illuminarium.

The reasoning is compelling for all of five seconds, at which point we remember that this scenario could be ripped straight from an unwritten sequel to The Lorax. Even beyond the intense irony of replacing real wildlife with a paid simulation, Navy Pier severely underestimates the community value of Crystal Gardens.

The need for additional forms of revenue is understandable, but many point out that Crystal Gardens specifically need not be displaced. The IMAX theaters on the Pier have been shut down due to COVID-19 and if reopened, would likely compete with Illuminarium for customers—after all, who would spend their day on the Pier on two virtual experiences when there are boat tours, museums, and kiosks to explore?

The IMAX offerings may even be ignored upon the introduction of a superior (or lauded as such, at least) form of virtual enter ta inment—rega rdless, surely replacing the IMAX, or a variety of other venues, is a feasible alternative.

Navy Pier’s decision, then, is based not only on a need to build Illuminarium, but also on the perceived need to remove Crystal Gardens: It’s seemingly not pulling its weight as an attraction. However, the garden’s characterization as “underused” doesn’t do its unique contributions to the community justice, particularly regarding the proffered alternative

of Polk Bros Park. An outdoor area like Polk Bros can be enjoyed for a whopping one-third of the year, when Chicago isn’t uninhabitably cold. That Crystal Gardens is an indoor green space is what makes it special: It offers a peaceful and temperate respite during freezing months in the Windy City. Chicago has few public indoor gardens, and none are as desirably located.

The value of genuine contact with nature is well-documented; to uproot these decades-old, towering palms would spell the loss of crucial mental and physical health benefits to the community.

Additionally, with its $30+ entrance fee, the introduction of Illuminarium marks the elimination of one of the few free experiences on the Pier.

Conversations about the divide between Chicago-as-experienced-by-tourists and Chicago-as-experienced-by-Chicagoans have become increasingly relevant in campus discussions of violence and safety, but it’s also present in the form of accessibility limitations on one of the city’s most famed locations. The Illuminarium alienates residents who cannot pay for the experience, a direct contrast to the Crystal Gardens’ walk-in policy and long history of partnering with local nonprofits for educational programming.

And if the garden and associated programs have been lacking in attendance as of late—as most tourist attractions are while the city tries to buck the pandemic—perhaps they simply ought to be advertised more. I’m adamant that, for all of UChicago’s gargoyles

trussed in ivy, the Lakefront Trail’s sparkling shoreline, and the Bean’s…bean-ness, the most Instagrammable spot in the city is Crystal Gardens.

The environment is genuinely gorgeous, whether you’re there to curl up with a book under a leafy palm or pose by an arching fountain. Additionally, revenue and engagement from the many high-end celebrations the space is rented out for could be substantial should its popularity be bolstered. Crystal Gardens could be anything from a gem of a tourist experience, to a peaceful sanctuary, to a stunning and nostalgic wedding venue. This beloved community space in Chicago should not be torn down.

Droves of Chicago residents have been participating in the effort to save Crystal Gardens since September, with a growing Instagram account featuring hundreds of comments showing support and a Change. org petition with over 23,000 signatures (as of January 14). At this point, vocal public support is the best avenue, and I urge the UChicago community to engage with both of these materials. Do yourself a favor and make a visit to the gardens—it may well be your last opportunity—and, if you find yourself understanding why thousands of people don’t want to see its loss, tag your posts with #SaveCrystalGardens. We can begin 2022 by breaking out of our infamous UChicago bubble and standing against the loss of something precious to the city of Chicago.

THE CHICAGO MAROON — JANUARY 26, 2022

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ARTS What Does Entertainment Mean in Apocalyptic Times?

By NICOLE STACHOWIAK | Arts Reporter This single question lies at the heart of Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, a production most recently headed by director Jeremy Wechsler at Chicago’s Theater Wit. The play tackles questions of societal meaning, nostalgia, and art through the postmodern lens of the popular television show The Simpsons.

The first act takes place around a small campfire, in a world rife with fear and misinformation after an unspecified calamity has eliminated electrical power from the world. A small group of survivors crowds in as one attempts to recall an episode of The Simpsons, “Cape Feare,” from memory.

Wechsler’s production capitalizes on the strengths of the scene, such as the physicality of actors drawing near as the narration escalates. While the original text is written in a compellingly natural style that mimics contemporary speech patterns, it is the realization of these lines by actors that makes the scene feel so real.

The decisions made in delivery—realistic portrayals of forgetting what one was about to say next, rambling, interrupting, and talking over one another—make this strange, alien world feel like reality. The character Matt’s retelling is particularily memorable, employing different voices for particular characters and, in one instance, laughing too hard to continue his sentence.

These choices lend the first act an uncomfortable voyeuristic quality, as though the audience is overhearing a conversation at the dining hall rather than attending a play.

The second act transitions to a more developed version of the same post-apocalyptic world, where the characters have formed an acting troupe that relays The Simpsons episodes. It is in this act that the commentary becomes most textual, as characters discuss the nature of storytelling, entertainment, and even the purpose of commercials. Even the episode they perform ties back to this theme, as the plot centers around Homer taking on a new identity in the witness protection program—much like acting. One of the standout moments of this act is a long show tune medley of popular 2000s songs, featuring the eerie act-

ing style of this new world: large, uncanny smiles and overacted movements, as well as unblinking eyes set right at the audience.

The third act is perhaps the standout moment of the play, transitioning from a portrayal of realistic characters to an indepth look at the same story adapted 75 years in the future. The episode of The Simpsons has transitioned into an epic, almost operatic work, full of references to the calamity in an increasingly violent tone. Wechsler’s production capitalizes on the drama with ominous Greek theater masks and an intense moment of audience participation, where the villain Mr. Burns urges viewers to clap and shout. Our audience gladly complied.

Ultimately, this production is a rousing success due to creative staging, costume design, and enthusiastic acting—Leslie Ann Sheppard’s Quincy/Bart and Andrew Jessop’s Sam/Burns are two standout performances. The only things that hold the play back are flaws of the original text, such as the overly long and repetitive nature of the script—the book tends to belabor its point, making scenes drag.

It is not an exaggeration to claim that the Western entertainment landscape is shrinking. As cable TV declines in the wake of streaming titans like Netflix and Peacock; as Disney+ acquires competitors such as Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox; and as the box office is dominated by a singular cinematic universe, remakes, or adaptations of popular book series, it feels now more than ever that Hollywood is running out of stories to tell. The Simpsons is itself indicative of this shift, running for 32 years and over 700 episodes despite declining viewership. The tendency of the characters within the play to cling to old media is more reflective than ever of both our culture at large and the rising capitalist tendency to repackage nostalgia itself as an object of consumption. The Simpsons episode referenced within the play, “Cape Feare,” is a reflection of this pattern: It is a parody of a 1991 film, which is itself a remake of a 1962 film, which is based on a novel from 1957. Even before the show has

begun, the ouroboros is eating its own tail.

The production at Theater Wit takes pains to embody this commentary on pop culture by enhancing the show through relevant references. While The Simpsons is less current than when the play was penned (many of my peers had not seen any episodes, and I am no different), the production intentionally referenced cultural titans such as Star Wars in musical cues, added the eye of Sauron from Lord of the Rings to the background of one of the sets, and even included a nod to Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy.” This thematic echo can be easily seen in the costuming of the third act—The Simpsons characters’ costumes are composed primarily of repurposed trash, tying into the idea of recycling (whether ideas or physical objects). More than that, however, it echoes the idea of cultural artifacts. The trash itself displays long-forgotten logos, such as Ikea bags for Bart’s shorts, and other outfits made from Amazon packaging and chip bags like Doritos.

Perhaps the most unique aspect of Theater Wit’s Mr. Burns is the emphasis on the audience’s immersion and implication in the narrative itself. From the first act, when the actors shine a flashlight on the audience while searching for an intruder, the audience becomes a part of the show.

Ultimately, in the capitalistic consumption of art, the audience itself becomes a character, motivating creators to cater to

and consider it in every creative decision.

Wechsler’s production capitalizes on this yet again in act 3 when Mr. Burns coaxes his audience to raucous heights during his monologue. The theater itself is used as a venue of storytelling. Specific musical choices during the intermissions set the tone for the next act (such as 2000s pop songs by Britney Spears and Lady Gaga before act 2 or ominous, atonal xylophone and harmonica music that introduces act 3). Similarly, environmental details are revealed between acts, such as through a line of murals of The Simpsons in various pop culture appearances (including Lisa as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz or Bart wielding a lightsaber). Perhaps the most effective aspect of the set design is the various chandeliers and lamps hung from the ceiling, which were completely dark until the quite literally electrifying ending of the third act.

Despite the play’s dismal setting and grim reflection of artistic realities, Washburn’s vision of humanity is not so pessimistic. Perhaps act 3 can be viewed as a redemption for art and theater in its stark differences from the source material, turning The Simpsons, a bright, parodic sitcom, into a dark opera. Mr. Burns ultimately suggests that art reflects the circumstances under which it is produced, and so long as those continue to change, so will art itself.

Various cast members perform a scene from Theater Wit’s production of Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play. COURTESY OF CHARLES OSGOOD

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SPORTS “That Was Just What You Did to Be a Cowboy”: An Interview With Professional Bull Rider Eli Vastbinder

By FINN HARTNETT | Sports Editor If one were to ask a Chicago sports fan if they knew anything about bulls, the answer would probably be, “Of course!”

The fan might tell you that the Chicago Bulls are a team that won a plethora of basketball championships in the 1990s; they might add that the team are currently having another exciting season and are ranked first in their conference.

No, no, you would respond. Not the Bulls. Bulls.

The Chicago sports fan might then start looking at you funny.

This weekend, cowboys from all over the country flocked to Chicago for a bull-riding competition hosted by Professional Bull Riders (PBR), an organization that has been putting on similar events since 2003. This particular competition, named Unleash the Beast, involves the cowboys trying to ride their bull for eight frenetic seconds as it attempts to buck them off. The riders are then allocated points by a team of four judges according to how well they ride. The bull is also given points based on how aggressive its effort is to throw the rider off. The combined points make up the rider’s total score. Both bull and man can earn up to 50 points, per the 2018 PBR Media Guide.

Pros are usually able to earn scores of 75 or more. Scores higher than 80 are a great result; a score above 90 is fantastic.

More than 600 cowboys are licensed to compete for PBR, including riders from Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, and, of course, the United States. I got a chance to speak to one such rider on Saturday following the first round of the event.

Eli Vastbinder has been steeped in rodeo culture since he was a child growing up in North Carolina. Talking to him was the perfect way for me to learn about the sport—the rules, the locker room culture, and the labor disputes that determine the future of the sport are all discussed. The following is a transcript from the interview. Some questions have been edited

for conciseness and clarity.

Finn Hartnett: Where are you from exactly?

Eli Vastbinder: Statesville, North Carolina.

FH: Is that a small town?

EV: Yeah, it’s pretty small.

FH: And how did you get into rodeo?

EV: Just grew up in a rodeo family.

And whether it was team roper, or bull rider, or rodeo producer or something, everyone played a part in the rodeo at some point in time. So I just kind of grew up around it. I started out really young and have been in it ever since.

FH: How young would you say you were when you started out?

EV: Ah, shoot, I started out, y’know…I was probably still in diapers when I started out riding sheep. Then I went to calves, and steers, and junior bulls, and big bulls, and then on to a professional level.

FH: What was your first time being thrown off a bull like?

EV: Ah, shoot, I’ve been thrown off so many, they all just blend together at this point in time. Y’know, it was definitely one that…I remember the first big bull that I got on, and he did throw me off, but I was so hooked at that point in time that, y’know, it didn’t matter.

FH: Why do you think you got so hooked on the sport? Do you think it was your family’s doing?

EV: Well, yeah, it was definitely something to do with the family, and just growing up and that. Y’know, my heroes have always kinda been cowboys, and that was just what you did to be a cowboy.

And the money’s good, so that attracts me. And the winning and, y’know, the man against beast, and conquering it.

There’s a lot of variables.

FH: I saw, while doing some research, that one of your rodeo heroes was [former World Champion Bull Rider] Gary Leffew.

EV: He kinda taught me how to ride

when I was young, so I kinda looked up to him and his style of riding for a long time.

FH: And what would you say your style of riding is? Anything in particular?

EV: Not necessarily, it’s just little things…nothing that a normal person would ever really know about.

FH: Yeah, fair enough. But are there riders who kind of approach riding a bull differently than others?

EV: Yeah, everybody’s got their own thing that works for them, and that’s what it’s all about, just finding the things that work for you, and sticking to them.

I’m kind of a laid-back guy, I don’t really try to get too roused up or over-analyze things very much, and then there are guys over here studying the rule books before [the event] starts. Y’know, studying film and stuff. That’s not necessarily me.

FH: That’s interesting, that studying film has gotten into rodeo.

EV: Oh, yeah.

FH: It seems strange, though, because it’s such, like, a natural sport. It’s all dependent on how this animal moves.

EV: Yeah, for sure. Technology, modern technology.

FH: Yeah, it’s strange. You are 30 years old, correct?

EV: Yes sir, I am.

FH: Is that very young for a bull-rider?

EV: Nah, it’s old. Most of these kids are 18, 19, to 25 and under. I’m probably the second-oldest guy in the locker room.

It’s a young man’s sport.

FH: Are you providing, like, knowledge to the younger riders?

EV: Eh…at this point in time, at this level, you know what you’re doing. We all kind of help each other, give each other pointers. There’s times when you’re down and you need someone to give you a little bit of advice, or just say something nice. You’re here for that. I’ll take advice from these 18-year-old kids, and they help me, just like I may help them. The rodeo’s not like any other sport. We’re

not competing against each other, we’re competing against the bulls. Everybody’s pulling for each other and everybody’s willing to help each other.

FH: I imagine it’s quite different in a rodeo locker room to a baseball or a football locker room…

EV: Oh, yeah, one hundred percent.

FH: In what ways?

EV: It’s a lot different. Most of this stuff, I can’t even discuss on here. [laughs.] These guys are wild and crazy.

If you’re here, you don’t really give a shit about a whole lot. That’s just kind of the mentality. I got to watch a hockey game for the first time the other day, a [Chicago] Blackhawks game. That’s probably the closest thing I can find to another sport that’s like bull-riding. Just, their don’t-give-a-shit attitude type deal, their killer instincts…we’re both underpaid compared to other sports. That’s maybe the closest big sport I can think of that’s like bull-riding.

FH: Yeah, I’ve had some experience with hockey players, they’re crazy people. They drink a ton, they really do not care— EV: Yeah, same. Same here.

FH: How are you paid when it comes to these events? Is it dependent on what place you finish in?

EV: Yeah, there’s no set pay. They don’t pay you to come and just show up.

FH: That’s tough.

EV: If you don’t win, or place pretty good, then you don’t get anything. You walk home, and y’know, we all pay our own flights, we all pay [for] our own cars, our own hotels, everything comes out of our pockets. So if you don’t win, you don’t get paid. It’s not like any other sport really, we’re not on a salary or nothing.

FH: Yeah, that’s strange. I didn’t know that. Is there a push from rodeo riders to get more security, like to get the event to pay for transport— EV: Yeah, y’know, things are getting better for us. We’re about to start a team CONTINUED ON PG. 3

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“We’re competing against the bulls [not each other].”

CONTINUED ON PG. 3

deal. Where now we’ll be in teams, like any other sport. And they’re talking like they’re going to pay us a salary.

FH: And you’re in favor of that, I imagine?

EV: Yeah, any way we can get any bigger, and y’know, for the danger and everything, we don’t get paid near enough. So if there’s any way we can bring in some more money, and I can get these guys and myself paid what we feel like we deserve—

FH: How would teams work for rodeo?

EV: Y’know, I’ll let you know next year [laughs.] I don’t know. I’m not a guy that’s over there, analyzing it, keeping up with everything. Y’know, just tell me where I need to be, and what time.

FH: I see you won PBR Rookie of the Year. I don’t really know what that means, uh, you told me you weren’t a rookie— EV: I’m an older guy, but last year was my first year coming over to the PBR, so therefore, in the PBR, I was a rookie.

Whether you’re 40 or, y’know, 19 or 18, when you come in, everybody’s eligible for Rookie of the Year. There were, I think, 15 other guys who were also rookies—really good guys—so it was definitely an accomplishment.

FH: Finally, I’d like to ask if you’ve ridden in Chicago before, and how it’s different from other cities.

EV: I don’t know if I’ve ever ridden in Chicago before. I don’t think I have. I go to a different town about every weekend, so it’s hard to keep up…But no, I don’t

think I’ve ever rode here. And it’s cool.

It’s definitely colder than where I’m from.

But yeah, it’s been a good time. The people here have been great, and the rodeo last night was great. It ranks up there, for sure.

FH: Thanks a lot for your time, Eli. EV: You bet, buddy.

Following the first round of the event, Vastbinder was in ninth with a score of 85.5. The round’s leader, Texan rider Ezekiel Mitchell, had a score of 88.5.

Men’s Basketball Rights the Ship, Women Keep It Close in Matchups Versus NYU

By MARCOS GONZALEZ | Sports Reporter The University of Chicago’s two basketball teams have given fans plenty of reason for optimism, but their records leave something to be desired. The men started strong this season, opening with three straight wins and getting off to a 5–4 start. Their season took a sharp downward turn when the team lost five straight games. Heading into the weekend, it was clear changes would need to be made. Head coach Mike McGrath did just that by tinkering with his rotation in order to find a spark. McGrath went with an eight-man rotation on Sunday against New York University (NYU). Five of his eight players saw the court for at least 28 minutes of action, including second-year guard Elliot Paschal, who returned to the lineup this weekend against Brandeis University on Friday night following a two-game absence.

Paschal’s return was a huge boost for an offense that had been struggling to get shots to fall. He finished the game against NYU with 18 points in 34 minutes. Fourth-year guard Brandon Beckman chipped in with 19 points of his own, adding five rebounds and an assist to his final stat line. The surprise hero in Sunday’s contest against NYU, however, was first-year guard Thomas Kurowski. Despite playing only 12 minutes on Sunday, Kurowski scored 11 points, with seven of them coming from the charity stripe.

Meanwhile, fourth-year forward Zach Munson contributed to the win despite his struggles from the field. Though he hit only one shot in eight attempts, Munson grabbed a season-high 12 rebounds.

These efforts propelled UChicago to a convincing 70–57 win over NYU, which snapped their five-game losing skid. Their next game is on Friday, January 28, when they will battle a Case Western Reserve University squad that is 13–2 this season.

This game has “revenge game” potential, as graduate UChicago graduate transfer Ignas Masiulionis will get the chance to face his former Case Western team. Tipoff will take place at 5:30 p.m.

The women’s basketball team headed into their matchup against NYU hoping to begin a new win streak after a 64–58 win against Brandeis on Friday. The team knew this would be a tough matchup—NYU was off to a perfect 13–0 start entering Sunday’s game and ranked No. 4 in DIII hoops. The Maroons were ready to fight, however, trailing by one at halftime and entering the fourth quarter with a lead. The game plan from head coach Maria Williamson was very different from that of men’s head coach Mike McGrath.

Williamson had a much larger rotation, which led to multiple players getting involved on the scoreboard. Third-year guard Peyton Van Soest led the team with 11 points on 50 percent shooting, includ-

ing three three-pointers. Right behind her was fellow guard Grace Hynes, who scored 10 points in a whopping 37 minutes of play. Every player who entered the game registered points, which kept NYU on its toes for much of the game.

Despite the all-around solid effort, the Maroons fell to NYU 72–64. NYU forward Jenny Walker scored 12 of her 14 points in the fourth quarter, allow-

ing NYU to escape an upset at the hands of the Maroons. Of the Maroons’ seven losses this season, only two have been by more than 11 points. While fourth quarters have been a point of weakness for the team, there is plenty of reason to believe this team could make some noise heading into the second half of the season. They will attempt to do so when they take on Case Western at 7:30 p.m. on January 28.

Second-year guard Elliot Paschal rises over defenders. COURTESY OF UCHICAGO ATHLETICS