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NEWS: Astronomy and Astrophysics Professor Erik Shirokoff Dies After Fall PAGE 2

NEWS: UC Med Sets State Record With 66 Heart Transplants in 2022

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LOCAL POLITICS: What You Need to Know for the 2023 Chicago Municipal Elections

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VIEWPOINTS: There’s Something Rotten in the State of UChicago’s M.A. Programs

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FEBRUARY 23, 2023

EIGHTH WEEK

VOL. 135, ISSUE 10

SPORTS: Pedaling Through Hyde Park with Dean Boyer

PAGE 25

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

JANICE CHO

Astronomy and Astrophysics Professor Erik Shirokoff Dies After Fall

By AUSTIN ZEGLIS | Senior News Reporter

Erik Shirokoff, associate professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and senior member of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (KICP), passed away on Thursday, January 26, according to multiple emails from department faculty.

A Facebook post from a family friend of Shirokoff confirmed that he sustained fatal injuries after falling down the stairs in the lobby of his apartment building Sunday evening, January 22.

Shirokoff’s death was first announced to his colleagues in an email sent on Thursday evening by Astronomy and Astrophysics Chair Joshua Frieman and KICP Director Abigail Vieregg. A subsequent email on Thursday from Physical Sciences Division (PSD) Dean Angela Olinto announced Shi-

rokoff’s passing to all PSD faculty, staff, and graduate students.

“Erik was passionate in pursuing his vision for the future of cosmology and astrophysics, advancing the field using his unique creativity and technical expertise to develop new instruments and detectors,” Frieman and Vieregg wrote.

Shirokoff studied at UC Berkeley, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in physics and astrophysics in 2002 and a Ph.D. in physics in 2011. After receiving his Ph.D., he became a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology and eventually joined the University of Chicago Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics as an associate professor in 2014.

At UChicago, Shirokoff conducted re-

search on instruments that study the cosmic microwave background and high redshift galaxies. At the time of his death, he was involved in multiple projects developing spectrometer technology. Shirokoff is also credited on more than 200 published journal articles.

“Erik’s colleagues will remember him for his creativity and technical expertise as well as his passion for the field,” Olinto wrote. “Erik touched many lives within the PSD and the broader Astro community, and he will be greatly missed.”

Editor’s note: We hope to follow up on this article with an obituary memorializing professor Erik Shirokoff’s life and his time as a member of the University community. We ask anyone who has memories they want to share to contact us at editor@chicagomaroon.com.

courtesy of erik shirokoff

Pritzker Withdraws from U.S. News Rankings, Citing Methodological Concerns

By ANUSHREE VASHIST | Deputy News Editor

On January 26, the Pritzker School of Medicine announced it would no longer participate in the U.S News & World Report ’s annual “Best Medical Schools” ranking beginning in 2024, citing concerns about the magazine’s methodology and the impact the ratings have on equity in medical education. The school was ranked number 20 out of 192 in the 2023 rankings; of the 192 schools surveyed, 130 schools submitted data.

“We have notified U.S. News editors that we do not plan to submit data for their medical school rankings next year,” Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs and Dean of the School of Medicine and the Biological Sciences Division (BSD) Mark Anderson said in UChicago Medicine’s statement announcing the decision.

U.S. News has indicated that they will still rank medical schools using publicly available data regardless of their participation in the process, Anderson added.

This trend among graduate institutions

began in November 2022, when Yale and Harvard withdrew from the law school rankings. Among medical schools, Harvard Medical School announced on January 17 that it would no longer submit data to U.S. News, leading other top-ranked schools to follow suit.

Dean of the UChicago Law School Thomas Miles announced last November that the school would continue to submit information to U.S. News.

Frustration with the U.S. News rankings for undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools has long been prevalent, with critics accusing them of skewing educational priorities. In their statement, UChicago Medicine addressed this criticism, arguing that the current ranking system raises concerns about improving equity in medical education.

“This decision is based on our judgment that the current methodology raises deep concerns about inequity perpetuated by the misuse of metrics that fail to capture the

quality or outcomes of medical education for those who most need these data: applicants to medical school,” Anderson said in the statement.

According to U.S. News, ranking metrics include student selectivity, research activity, and evaluation by peer institutes.

In an email to The Maroon, Dean of Medical Education Vineet Arora expressed similar methodological concerns. “It is no secret the metrics used in the rankings process are flawed and do not actually reflect the quality or outcomes of a medical school education,” she wrote. “Given the announcement by Harvard and several others, we felt it was time to not only state our concerns about the methodology, but also add an important element that was missing to date: a request for a conversation.”

In their letter to U.S. News, Pritzker requested that the publication convene with medical schools, students, and applicants. Anderson said in the statement that the medical school would be open to reconsidering its withdrawal if U.S. News were to reevaluate its current methodology.

“We certainly hope that through discussion, we can see the necessary changes to improve the rankings system enacted,” Arora said.

Arora also told The Maroon that medical school applicants deserve useful data and that the Biological Sciences Division— which oversees biomedical research and education at the undergraduate, graduate, medical, and postgraduate levels—has a responsibility to educate pre-medical students about medical school.

“As the Biological Sciences Division is also responsible for educating many students who do apply to medical school, we are particularly motivated to see meaningful improvements in the methodology,” she said.

Arora explained that in the meantime, Pritzker intends to address concerns about transparency by sharing “relevant metrics of medical school experience and outcomes” on its website.

UChicago Medicine will continue to participate in the U.S. News “Best Hospitals” ranking.

SJP Condemns University Protest Response as Sign of Bias

By NAINA PURUSHOTHAMAN | Senior News Reporter

In an online post and statements to The Maroon, organizers from Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) condemned the University’s alleged obstruction of a protest in front of Cobb Hall on February 2.

Footage of the demonstration shared with The Maroon by SJP organizers showed multiple scenes from the protest in front of and outside Cobb Hall on February 2. In one clip, a University safety ambassador denies protestors entrance into Cobb Hall.

Another clip showed a campus safety ambassador opening an alarmed door to allow University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) officers to enter Cobb Hall. SJP organizers claim that the University’s Dean-on-Call then told demonstrators to leave the building, citing that alarm.

“The few of us in the front collectively recall the dean saying something vague to stop and discourage us from moving in after the alarm went off,” read a statement from SJP.

In a statement to The Maroon, the

University said, “The protesters this morning were not prevented from entering Cobb Hall. They entered the building after a brief delay of under three minutes, which allowed time for a Dean-on-Call to speak with them.” The statement went on to reiterate the University’s commitment to freedom of expression.

“As part of our commitment to free expression, the University is fundamentally committed to upholding the rights of protesters to express a wide range of views,” said the statement.

SJP’s demonstration protested a course called “Security, Counter-Terrorism, and Resilience: The Israeli Case,” taught by Meir Elran, a veteran brigadier general in the Israeli military, and sought to raise awareness about the deaths of 10 Palestinians in the Jenin Refugee Camp. The action on Thursday was not the group’s first protest of Elran’s class, but it was the first to be promoted on the group’s social media page before it began.

The presence of security personnel at protests is not uncommon. However, UCPD officers and the University’s secu-

rity ambassadors do not usually confront or interact with demonstrators.

The University told The Maroon, “Deans-on-Call are often present at and monitor protests, demonstrations, and other events on or adjacent to University property. The Department of Safety & Security was aware of the planned protest and officers were present as is customary for protests on campus. Officers were not present at the request of the Dean-on-Call.”

However, SJP contends that the actions taken by the University were beyond standard protocol and demonstrate a bias against the group.

“We can confidently say that students were within their right to protest but treated as guilty and purposely obstructed by administrators and UCPD throughout the action,” an SJP member said.

When recounting the conversation with the Dean-on-Call, the SJP member said, “These so-called security explanations [the Dean-on-Call] was giving were after-the-fact rationalizations. She acknowledged that we followed the rules and also that they didn’t have any

justification for denying us entry in the first place. She acknowledged none of this should have happened.”

After the protest, SJP members claimed that a protester attempting to re enter the building in order to retrieve their belongings was stopped by the Dean-on-Call, who said protestors could not re enter without showing their ID and being escorted by an officer.

The University maintains that no student was stopped from entering Cobb without justification.

In a later statement to The Maroon, the University wrote, “Per University policy, ‘Individuals occupying University spaces or using University resources should understand that on occasion they may be asked to show identification or their ChicagoCard to a University employee whose role includes insuring [sic] that only authorized individuals are present on University property or in facilities operated by the University, or that only authorized individuals are using certain University resources. If asked by such a University employee to show identification, UChicago ID carriers are required to show their card.’”

UC Med Sets State Record With 66 Heart Transplants in 2022

By NAINA PURUSHOTHAMAN | Senior News Reporter

The University of Chicago Medical Center (UChicago Medicine) performed 66 heart transplants in 2022, surpassing its 2021 milestone of 61 transplants and setting a new state record for the second consecutive year. Dr. Valluvan Jeevanandam, director of the Heart and Vascular Center and chief of the Section of Cardiac Surgery, and Dr. Christopher Salerno, director of Adult Cardiac Surgery and surgical director of the Heart Transplant and Mechanical Assist Device Program, spoke to The Maroon about this recent accomplishment.

The transplant program has reformatted its structure and leadership in the past eight years. “We really started increasing our cardiology faculty, increasing the infrastructure expenditure and expertise,” Jeevanandam said.

Since then, the transplant program

has become one of the leading programs in the world. UChicago Medicine has the lowest hazard ratio, or likelihood of patient complications, recorded nationally: 0.25. This means the complication rate for patients who received heart transplants is significantly lower than the complication rate for untreated patients. In addition, the UChicago transplant program has the shortest wait times and the highest percentage of Black patients treated.

“[This is] quite a tribute to being on the South Side of Chicago [and] providing good health care despite the disparities in health care,” Jeevanandam said.

According to Salerno, one reason that the program is so unique is the experts working there. “We have really sought out people with particular expertise and created an environment where they’ll do well,” Salerno said. “It’s an environment

where people are used to doing new things and pushing the envelope in an effort to improve patient outcomes.”

The UChicago Medicine transplant program has also been at the forefront of several scientific breakthroughs. For example, it was the first program in the world to complete a multi-organ transplant of the heart, liver, and kidney successfully.

Furthermore, 15 percent of the program’s patients are Jehovah’s Witnesses, who cannot receive any form of blood product. “They are probably the hardest transplant patients to do and take care of,” Jeevanandam said. “Most other programs shy away because, for a heart transplant, about 60 percent of the people end up getting blood transfusions after a heart transplant, and so you have to have a program that is confident in their ability to provide this care and, in a sense, be respectful of somebody else’s beliefs to be

able to provide that care.”

UChicago Medicine also takes care of the largest population of Jehovah’s Witness patients in the country. “The numbers don’t reflect the complexity of the care we do,” Jeevanandam added.

As for next steps, Salerno strives for UChicago Medicine to perform 80 transplants in the next couple of years. He also hopes xenotransplantation, the transplantation of organs from animals, can be implemented within the next five years. Eventually, Salerno believes the program will do 100 transplants a year.

UChicago Medicine plans to launch a pediatric transplant program and will continue its efforts to search for new sources for potential donors. Jeevanandam said, “There are things in the horizon we want to do that will expand the field even more.”

“The sky’s the limit for us,” Salerno added.

Harris School Dean Katherine Baicker to Be Next Provost

By AUSTIN ZEGLIS | Senior News Reporter

Katherine Baicker, dean of the Harris School of Public Policy, will serve as the University’s next provost, according to an email from President Paul Alivisatos sent out to the University community on Monday, January 30.

She will succeed Ka Yee C. Lee, who is transitioning into the newly created role of executive vice president for strategic initiatives. The move will be made official on March 20.

Baicker is the Emmett Dedmon Professor at the Harris School and has served as the school’s dean since 2017.

Alivisatos’s email highlighted Baicker’s achievements as Harris School Dean, including curricular innovation and an increasingly selective admissions process coupled with a growing student body. Baicker was also integral in the development of the Harris School’s Diversity and Inclusion Roadmap.

“Kate will bring to the role of provost both her knowledge of the University’s academic enterprise and experience leading innovative change,” Alivisatos wrote in his email.

Baicker’s current research centers

around the distribution and health care quality effects of public and private health insurance reform. She is part of a program researching the effects of expanding health insurance coverage in an Oregon Medicaid expansion.

Baicker received her bachelor’s degree in economics from Yale in 1993 and her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard in 1998, after which she accepted a position to teach economics at Dartmouth College.

After leaving Dartmouth for UCLA in 2005, Baicker was appointed by then-president George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate to serve as a senior economist in his Council of Economic Advisers.

There, her research areas included topics such as health economics, welfare, and public finance. Within public finance, she focused on the financing of health insurance, spending on public programs, and fiscal federalism. Baicker played a leading role in the development of President Bush’s health care reform proposals, which emphasized high-deductible health plans and Health Savings Accounts.

Adedokun, Jaiswal, and McClure to Lead Th e Maroon in the 2023–24 Year

By NOAH GLASGOW | Senior News Reporter

Third-years Solana Adedokun and Nikhil Jaiswal will become co–editors-in-chief of The Chicago Maroon, and fellow third-year Michael McClure will become managing editor.

The three incoming executives ran on a platform prioritizing long-term organizational stability at the paper’s election on Saturday. Adedokun, Jaiswal, and McClure also promised to foster cooperation between The Maroon’s different editorial sections. Both elections were uncontested.

“We, the editorial section, can do better,” McClure said.

Adedokun and Jaiswal will replace fourth-year Gage Gramlick, while McClure

will replace fourth-year Yiwen Lu.

Adedokun, who will be the first African student and second Black student to serve as an editor-in-chief of The Maroon, promised to grow connections between The Maroon and other student organizations, particularly affinity groups, which she hopes will diversify The Maroon’s content and editorial perspectives.

Adedokun already served as the editor-in-chief of The Maroon’s Black History Month special issue, which platformed the writing and multimedia work of Black students at the University. She is an editor for The Maroon’s long-form section, Grey City, and a member of the editorial board.

She held that position until 2007, when she accepted a dual appointment to teach at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In 2017, she came to UChicago and accepted the position of dean at the Harris School of Public Policy.

Baicker is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has previously been a member of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the Mayo Clinic Board of Trustees, and the Congres-

sional Budget Office’s Panel of Health Advisers.

“As provost, she will act as a curator, champion, and defender of academic excellence across the University,” Alivisatos said in his email. “She will commit her efforts toward upholding the University’s distinctive culture and values, supporting scholarship and teaching, and collaborating with deans and other university leaders to most effectively engage the opportunities before the University.”

Gage Gramlick, Editor-in-Chief

Yiwen Lu, Managing Editor

Matthew Chang, Chief Production Officer

Astrid Weinberg & Dylan Zhang, Chief Financial Officers

Solana Adedokun & Nikhil Jaiswal, Editors-in-Chief–elect

Michael McClure, Managing Editor–elect

Allison Ho, Chief Production Officer–elect

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

NEWS

Nikhil Jaiswal, editor

Anushka Harve, editor

Rachel Wan, editor

Michael McClure, editor

GREY CITY

Laura Gersony, editor

Milutin Gjaja, editor

Solana Adedokun, editor

Rachel Liu, editor

VIEWPOINTS

Irene Qi, head editor

Ketan Sengupta, associate editor

Eva McCord, associate editor

ARTS

Angélique Alexos, head editor

Natalie Manley, head editor

Noah Glasgow, deputy editor

Zachary Leiter, deputy editor

SPORTS

Finn Hartnett, editor

Eva McCord, editor

Kayla Rubenstein, editor

COPY Michael McClure, copy chief

Arianne Nguyen, copy chief

Caitlin Lozada, copy chief

Tejas Narayan, copy chief

Kayla Rubenstein, copy chief

Erin Choi, copy chief

McClure and Jaiswal have both come to their executive positions after being editors of The Maroon’s news section. McClure also serves as a copy chief, and both he and Jaiswal are members of the editorial board.

Jaiswal has led The Maroon’s recent coverage of efforts by University of Chicago graduate students to unionize. McClure, who has written for nearly all of the paper’s editorial sections, has covered topics as diverse as a Woodlawn dorm fire and a touring concert pianist.

Adedokun, Jaiswal, and McClure are close friends inside and outside The Ma-

DESIGN

Allison Ho, production editor

Elena Jochum, design editor

Anu Vashist, design editor

Anjali Subramanian, design associate

Ryanne Leonard, design associate

PHOTO Han Jiang, editor

Angelina Torre, editor

Emma-Victoria Banos, editor

CROSSWORD

Henry Josephson, head editor

Pravan Chakravarthy, head editor

PODCASTS

Gregory Caesar, chief editor

Carter Beckstein, editor

Jake Zucker, editor

BUSINESS

Kaelyn Hindshaw, director of finance

Nathan Ohana, director of finance

Prarthana Kaygee, director of community engaegment

Aisling Murtagh, director of marketing

Maya Russell, director of operations

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roon’s basement office in Ida Noyes.

The Maroon also elected second-year and current production editor Allison Ho as chief production officer. In her new role, Ho will oversee the production of The Maroon’s biweekly print issue. Her election was also uncontested.

Third-years Dylan Zhang and Astrid Weinberg were reelected chief financial officers of The Maroon in the third and final election of the afternoon, also uncontested. Zhang and Weinberg pledged to continue their goal of bringing The Maroon back to its pre–COVID-19 volume of advertising and revenue.

Editor’s Note: 2023 Municipal Elections Voter Guide

By MICHAEL Mc CLURE | News Editor

Four years is a long time at The Maroon. It’s the length of a standard undergraduate career and the maximum time most staffers spend on the paper. It also happens to be the gap between each of Chicago’s municipal elections, one of the most consequential citywide events. This year’s municipal elections will happen February 28, a few days after this series appears in print and online.

Reporting on a regular yet rare event is difficult in a newsroom predicated on developing its staff, not on retaining them for the long term. Institutional memory of the 2019 municipal elections, when The

Maroon published its last extensive voter guide, rests only in our archives; those who reported on it have all graduated. Those who will report on the 2027 elections are not yet old enough to cast ballots.

For our readers in Hyde Park and Woodlawn, this isn’t just any local election. Two of the three aldermen who currently represent Hyde Park are vacating their seats. Fourth Ward alderman Sophia King’s mayoral run and Fifth Ward alderman Leslie Hairston’s retirement have handed a golden opportunity to the seven and 11 candidates respectively vy-

ing to replace them. Additionally, a new position on the ballot for police district council members means that voters can have even more say in how their interests are represented.

Even for the most seasoned voters, the stakes of this election are uniquely high. It’s our responsibility, therefore, to inform our readers as thoroughly as we can.

In this issue, you’ll find explainers for each of the races on the ballot, details about candidates’ key stances, and interviews with aldermanic candidates who have strong ties to Hyde Park and the University of Chicago. You can also read about two officials reelected to posts in Cook County in November 2022. The

people in this series will inevitably feature in our coverage over the next four years. Now’s the best time to learn about them.

With my own election to managing editor earlier this month, putting this series together has been my final project as a member of the News section. I am so excited to keep supporting the talented reporters and editors who realized my vision for this project. Their skill and tenacity make me confident that The Maroon ’s compelling, insightful reporting on local politics will continue long after my own four years here conclude.

— Michael McClure, news editor and incoming managing editor

What You Need to Know for the 2023 Chicago Municipal Elections

By KAYLA RUBENSTEIN | Deputy News Editor

On February 28, Chicagoans will vote for the mayor, city clerk, and city treasurer of Chicago, as well as members of the Chicago City Council and of the Police District Councils. Administered by the Chicago Board of Elections, the elections will feature incumbent candidates such as Mayor Lori Lightfoot and new organizations like the Police District Councils.

The mayor, city clerk, and city treasurer are the only citywide elected positions. Residents in each of the city’s 50 wards vote for their respective aldermen, and three police district council representatives will be elected within each of the 22 police districts. All elected officials have four-year terms.

On the mayoral ticket, incumbent Lightfoot faces competition from eight candidates from a variety of backgrounds. Mayoral responsibilities include submitting the city’s annual budget; appointing council committee chairs; and determining the agenda for City Council, composed of the 50 aldermen. Notably, City Council

determines which ordinances get passed; the mayor has the authority to appoint people to lead committees.

The alderman position is more uniquely tailored to each councilman’s ward. City Council, with specified limitations, can operate on issues such as housing and safety.

In May 2022, City Council approved changes to Chicago’s ward map for 2023. Though Hyde Park and Woodlawn are still entirely encompassed by the Fourth, Fifth, and 20th Wards, internal shifts have occurred. The region between 51st Street and 55th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue and Ingleside Avenue has shifted from the Fifth Ward to the 20th Ward; the region encompassing Nichols Park from the Fourth Ward to the Fifth Ward; and much of the region between 60th Street and 61st Street from the 20th Ward to the Fifth Ward.

This year, voters will see a new position on the ballot: Police District Council member. The District Councils were created as part of an ordinance passed by the City of Chicago in July 2021 establishing “a new

model for police oversight, accountability, and public safety.” Each of the 22 districts will have three representatives. Hyde Park is covered by the second police district.

The District Councils seek candidates from a variety of backgrounds. Significant roles include “building stronger connections between the police and the community at the district level” and “collaborating in the development and implementation of community policing initiatives.” The Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, also created by the July 2021 ordinance, receives input from community members gathered through monthly public meetings hosted by each council. Elected council members can also nominate people to serve on the community commission.

The city clerk and city treasurer positions are uncontested. Incumbents Anna Valencia and Melissa Conyears-Ervin will remain in their respective posts.

The city clerk role is to establish an official record of Chicago City Council sessions and ensure that city residents can access municipal legislation. The city clerk

also manages official documents, including parking permits, ordinances passed by City Council, and municipal IDs.

The city treasurer assumes three main roles: banker, investor, and advocate. This official is responsible for keeping a record associated with all of the city’s operating costs; monitoring the city’s investment portfolio; and offering counseling on and disseminating information about financial education, support for small businesses, banking access for residents, and educational programs. The treasurer also manages the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund and the four pension funds for city employees.

Early voting will run from February 13 to 28 throughout the city. On campus, students can register to vote and cast their ballots early with UChiVotes at Reynolds Club February 22–24 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. with their UChicago ID and proof of housing.

If none of the candidates in each election receive at least 50 percent of the vote, runoff elections will occur on April 4 with the top two candidates in each race. Candidates will assume office in May.

Who’s Running for Mayor of Chicago?

By PETER MAHERAS | Senior News Reporter

Nine candidates are running to lead Chicago as the next mayor in an election to be held on February 28.

The field includes incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who is running for a second term. Challenging Lightfoot are activist Ja’Mal Green, Alderman Sophia King, State Representative Kambium “Kam” Buckner, businessman Willie Wilson, Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas, Alderman Roderick Sawyer, and U.S. Representative Jesús “Chuy” García.

Chicago’s system requires candidates to receive a simple majority—at least half of the total votes cast—to win. If no candidate receives more than half of all votes cast, the top two candidates proceed to a runoff election on April 4.

Recent polling has shown that no candidate is expected to win a majority, making February’s election likely to be a contest over who makes the runoff. Polls generally show a close race between Lightfoot, Vallas, García, and Johnson for the top two spots.

Lori Lightfoot

Lightfoot is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School and has served in city government for nearly two decades. Prior to becoming mayor, she was the president of the Chicago Police Board and cochair of the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force. She was elected in 2019 after receiving 17.5 percent of the vote in the preliminary election and 73.7 percent in the final round. Turnout for both elections in 2019 was 35.45 percent of Chicago’s roughly 1.58 million registered voters.

Lightfoot has spent much of the campaign defending her actions as mayor against attacks from the eight challengers in the race, especially on crime and policing. During a debate hosted by WTTW in early February, several candidates criticized Lightfoot over the Chicago Police Department’s lack of compliance with a 2017 court-ordered consent decree that mandated broad police reforms following an investigation that found significant civil rights violations within the department.

“I appreciate that all these folks want to throw bombs from the cheap seats,” Lightfoot said at the debate. “The fact of the mat-

ter is the facts are really clear. We are in compliance or improving our compliance every single day. And this nonsense that you’re hearing from some of these folks is really completely belied by the facts.”

Lightfoot’s website touts raising Chicago’s minimum wage, creating a civilian police oversight board, and attracting $7.9 billion in venture capital investments to the city as her most notable achievements as mayor.

Ja’Mal Green

Ja’Mal Green is a community activist who previously ran as a write-in candidate for mayor in 2019 before endorsing Lightfoot in the runoff. In 2016, Green was arrested while participating in a Black Lives Matter protest. According to his website, he currently runs the My Turn to Own initiative, which he claims has facilitated more than $10 million in mortgages for first-time homeowners. The initiative’s website was not active at the time of publication.

Green’s public safety proposals focus on addressing the root causes of violence and holding police accountable. He proposes giving 10,000 Chicagoans living under the poverty line $1,000 a month and building 10,000 new homes on vacant lots to improve housing affordability. He supports fining police officers who turn off body cameras or obstruct investigations as well as abolishing CPD’s so-called gang database that tracks information on gang activity, including the names of individuals the police believe are affiliated with gangs.

Sophia King

Sophia King is the Fourth Ward alderman on the Chicago City Council, representing a district spanning from the South Loop to northern Hyde Park. King was appointed to City Council in 2016 by then-mayor Rahm Emanuel. Prior to serving on the city council, King helped start Ariel Community Academy, a public school in Kenwood, and was the vice president of Planned Parenthood Chicago. On the city council, King served as the chair of the Progressive Caucus.

King’s campaign has particularly focused on public safety. Her public safety plan criticizes Lightfoot’s city-wide task forces and calls for a community-based

approach to policing. King would expand non-police responses to 911 calls related to mental health issues, drugs, or poverty. She supports hiring more police officers and restructuring officer shifts to attract more applicants. The plan would increase the use of technology, including surveillance cameras and drones, to discourage officer pursuits.

Kam Buckner

Buckner is the state representative for Illinois’ 26th district, which spans from River North to South Shore. The district includes most of the University campus and western Hyde Park.

Before being elected to the Illinois House of Representatives in 2020, Buckner worked for U.S. Senator Dick Durbin and led community outreach for the Chicago Cubs. He was appointed to the Illinois House by Governor J. B. Pritzker in 2019 after the previous representative became a deputy governor.

Buckner’s campaign has been focused on public safety, education, economic opportunity, and financial stability. He has pledged to hire more police officers and detectives, recruit officers from the neighborhoods they would serve in, and create an internet intelligence unit to monitor crimes planned online. His education plan calls for social workers and nurses in every public school and affordable housing for every public school student.

Willie Wilson

Willie Wilson is a businessman and a perennial candidate who has previously run for U.S. president, U.S. senate, and mayor of Chicago. This election marks his third time running for mayor. In 2019, Wilson received around 11 percent of the vote.

Wilson previously owned McDonald’s franchises before starting a medical supplies company. He made headlines in 2022 for giving away $2 million in gas and food to people in Chicago and the suburbs.

Wilson’s campaign is focused on lowering crime rates and attracting economic investment. On crime, Wilson proposes splitting the city into four districts, each with its own police superintendent, and supports hiring additional police officers. He also wants to combat poverty and homelessness as well as lower taxes to incentivize businesses to invest in Chicago.

Brandon Johnson

Brandon Johnson represents parts of the West Side and Chicago’s western suburbs on the Cook County Board of Commissioners. He is a former Chicago Public Schools teacher and organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union. Although he has had a relatively short political career compared to other candidates, Johnson has enjoyed strong fundraising support, especially from teachers’ unions.

According to his website, Johnson’s public safety plan focuses on community investment, mental health support, and victim support. Unlike other leading candidates, Johnson does not call for hiring more police officers. Instead, he supports promoting 200 current police officers to detectives to increase the rate at which crimes are solved. On education, Johnson hopes to expand access to childcare, overhaul Chicago Public School funding to make it more equitable, and place more mental health professionals in schools.

Paul Vallas

Paul Vallas is a former education administrator who served as the head of several school districts, including those of Chicago and Philadelphia. He previously launched unsuccessful campaigns for governor, lieutenant governor, and mayor in 2002, 2014, and 2019 respectively. Public opinion polls have consistently placed him among the candidates most likely to reach a possible runoff.

According to his website, Vallas has centered his campaign on improving schools and increasing public safety. He supports opening public schools in the evenings and weekends for student support programs and decentralizing Chicago’s public school system with elected local school councils. On crime, Vallas wants to hire police officers, create a city-operated witness protection program, and replace Police Superintendent David Brown and his leadership team.

Other candidates have attempted to portray Vallas as a more right-wing candidate. Multiple candidates have run advertisements featuring a 2009 interview in which Vallas said he was “more of a Republican than a Democrat now.” Lightfoot criticized Vallas’ acceptance of an endorsement from the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, Chicago’s police union.

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Recent polling has shown that no candidate is likely to win a majority, making February’s election likely to be a contest over who makes the runoff.

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“The bottom line is I’m a lifelong Democrat,” Vallas told ABC7 Chicago in response to the criticism. “I’ve always been a lifelong Democrat. I’ve never taken a Republican ballot.”

Roderick Sawyer

Roderick Sawyer currently serves as the alderman for Chicago’s Sixth Ward, which spans from South Loop to Fuller Park. He was first elected to the city council in 2011. Sawyer is the son of former Chicago mayor Eugene Sawyer.

According to his website, Sawyer is most focused on public safety and economic development. His public safety plan calls for hiring 1,000 additional police officers and allowing retired officers to be rehired for responses to non-emergency 911 calls. Sawyer also proposes several measures designed to attract more officer applicants, including easier hours, better pensions, and career development training. Sawyer’s economic development proposal calls for expanded loan programs to develop vacant lots for small businesses

and affordable housing.

Chuy García

García is the U.S. representative for Illinois’ fourth congressional district, which includes much of the West Side and parts of the western suburbs. García began his political career in 1984 as a committeeman in the Cook County Democratic Party. Since then, he has served in the Chicago City Council, Illinois State Senate, and Cook County Board of Commissioners. He unsuccessfully ran for mayor against then incumbent Rahm Emanuel in 2015,

coming in second place with nearly 44 percent of the vote in the runoff.

Like other candidates, García has emphasized public safety in his campaign. He calls for replacing the Chicago Police Department’s leadership, sending civilian teams instead of police to mental health calls, and investing in community violence prevention. In the plan, he claims Lightfoot’s more combative approach to politics has prevented constructive collaboration between public safety agencies.

Who’s Running for Fourth Ward Alderman?

By NEIVE RODRIGUEZ | Senior News Reporter

Seven candidates are running for the position of Fourth Ward alderman in the 2023 Chicago elections, which will take place on February 28. The elected candidate will replace Sophia King, whose mayoral campaign will prevent her from returning to her aldermanic position, which she has held since 2016.

The Fourth Ward represents South Side lakefront neighborhoods such as Hyde Park, Oakland, Kenwood, and Bronzeville. If no aldermanic candidate receives at least 50 percent of the votes in the February 28 election, the two candidates with the highest number of votes will face off in a run-off election on April 4.

Helen West

West is a retired South Side educator and the holder of two master’s degrees and a doctorate. Prior to working as a computer science teacher, West held several management positions at Lucent Technologies. According to her website, West was introduced to the local political scene through her family, as her father was the first Black precinct captain of the 24th Ward. For her doctoral thesis, West researched the impacts of STEM programming on Black and Hispanic students, opportunities she plans to expand upon if elected. Like many other candidates for the Fourth Ward, West emphasizes proactive approaches to crime in her campaign

and housing reform.

Tracey Y. Bey

Bey is running for the seat for a second time after losing to former alderman Will Burns in 2015. Bey is currently the director of operations for Ex-Cons for Community and Social Change, an organization that aims to “provide dedicated community servants trained to change the dynamic of trauma and violence in our communities.” In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Bey argued that public safety is the most pressing issue for the Fourth Ward and proposed having “community appointed liaisons” work with the city on programs to prevent violence. According to the Hyde Park Herald, Bey supports the idea of increasing police presence in the ward and emphasized the importance of having police officers foster personal relationships with the community members they serve.

Lamont Robinson

Robinson has been a state representative in the Illinois General Assembly since 2019 and is the body’s first out gay Black member. In 2021, he helped acquire state funds for the construction of a South Side medical clinic and community center for LGBTQ+ individuals operated by Howard Brown Health. If elected, Robinson plans to tackle the issue of crime through community involvement and make schools in

the Fourth Ward more equitable.

Khari Humphries

Humphries is involved in local politics through his leadership roles in organizations such as the Ellis Park Advisory Council, where he coordinates youth employment programs and community events, and the Community Builders, a Bronzeville housing nonprofit where he acts as senior manager of community life.

In 2018, Humphries was accepted into UChicago’s six-month Civic Leadership Academy, a development program for “high-potential” Chicago-area leaders at nonprofits or in local government. Within the City of Chicago, Humphries served as the Senior Director of Youth Policy, Education, and Human Resources under Mayor Lori Lightfoot from February to October 2022, a role through which he “launched citywide initiatives designed to increase safety throughout the city.”

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Humphries stated that public safety was the biggest issue in the Fourth Ward.

Ebony Lucas

This is Lucas’s third attempt at securing the Fourth Ward seat after she lost to King in 2017 and 2019. Lucas is currently a real estate attorney at the Closing Firm. According to Lucas’s website, among her top concerns are improving Chicago neighborhoods and “expanding [city] ordinances” to aid Chicago’s unhoused population. Lucas also hopes to prioritize

mental health care for Chicago residents as alderman and emphasize resident collaboration, creating a community-accessible aldermanic office and supporting resident-driven initiatives and programming.

Prentice Butler

Butler, a UChicago alum (B.A. ’02, A.M. ’20), is currently the chief of staff for incumbent alderman King. Butler’s top priorities, according to his website, are “quality within economic development, quality schools, public safety and government transparency.” In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Butler expressed support for crime prevention programs, workforce development programs, and increased state investment in public schools.

Paul Pearson

Pearson was originally set to appear on the ballot but was struck January 16 after a challenge filed by Robinson’s campaign proved that he had failed to meet the minimum of 473 valid signatures. He is continuing his campaign as a registered write-in candidate. Pearson is an adjunct faculty member at Chicago State University and is expected to receive a doctoral degree in higher education this spring. His website, which is not functional at the time of publication, previously stated that his interests lie in improving Chicago education so that it can “reduce crime and poverty in the inner city.”

Who’s Running for Fifth Ward Alderman?

By PETER MAHERAS | Senior News Reporter

Eleven candidates are running to replace Alderman Leslie Hairston in Chicago’s Fifth Ward in an election to be held on February 28. Hairston is retiring after more than two decades on the Chicago City Council.

The Fifth Ward includes parts of Hyde Park, South Shore, Woodlawn, Kenwood, and Grand Crossing. It houses the University of Chicago campus.

If no candidate receives an outright majority, the top two candidates on February’s ballot will proceed to a runoff election on April 4.

The candidates running to replace Hairston are Renita Ward, Marlene Fisher, Joshua Gray, Robert Palmer, Tina Hone, Jocelyn Hare, Dee Perkins, Desmon Yancy, Kris Levy, Gabriel Piemonte, and Wallace Goode Jr. A 12th candidate, Adrienne Irmer, was struck from the ballot in January after the Board of Election Commissioners found she did not live in the Fifth Ward. Earlier this month, nearly 4,000 voters were erroneously sent mail-in ballots with Irmer’s name still listed.

Renita Ward

Ward is an attorney, clergy member, and graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School (M.Div. ’18). She is currently an associate general counsel at Northwestern Medicine. Like most other candidates, Ward has identified public safety as the most pressing issue facing Fifth Ward residents.

“Public safety is a primary duty of our government. If we fail in this regard, we have failed to effectively govern,” Ward told the Chicago Tribune. “Violent crime is a public health crisis and must be treated as such.”

She has proposed employing a more data-driven approach to public safety to respond to community concerns that she claims are often ignored at the city level. Ward called for the installation of a city disinvestment control officer tasked with monitoring and directing public and private sector investments into historically underinvested communities. In a Hyde Park Herald interview, Ward identified 71st Street in South Shore as an area in need of more investment.

Marlene Fisher

Fisher is a community organizer currently working at the University of Chicago as an IT security administrator. According to her website, Fisher’s work as a community organizer has centered on cleaning up empty

lots to create community green spaces. She serves as the president of the Greenwood University Block and a project lead for Habitat for Humanity.

In an interview with The Maroon, Fisher said her campaign is focused on financial literacy, public safety, and community engagement. She wants to help renters find strategies to afford rent. On public safety, she hopes to work with the University of Chicago Police Department and suggested that private neighborhood security could be used. Fisher also said she would make it easier for residents to raise concerns through an improved ward website.

Joshua Gray Gray is a political consultant and community organizer. His early career focused on anti–gun violence efforts with Chicago CRED. He worked in education as a teacher and administrator at the Noble Schools, a large network of Chicago charter schools, from 2009 to 2016 before becoming a lobbyist for KIPP Chicago, another network of charter schools. After leaving KIPP in 2018, he served as an aide to Alderman David Moore in the 17th Ward before starting a political consulting firm focused on grassroots organizing. Gray ran an unsuccessful campaign for Cook County commissioner in 2018.

According to his website, Gray’s platform emphasizes public safety, community and economic development, and constituent services. His public safety vision focuses on addressing the root causes of violence through job creation and youth programs. He wants to use existing city programs and partner with commercial developers to bring new businesses into the ward. He also supports hiring new detectives to improve homicide clearance rates.

Robert Palmer

Palmer is a special education teacher who has worked in Chicago Public Schools for 15 years. He unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2022. He pledged that if he were elected, his office would ensure that the ward’s residents were included in decision-making processes. He proposed investing in youth internship and entrepreneurship programs that would help address the root causes of crime.

In an interview with the Hyde Park Her-

ald, Palmer accused current alderman Hairston of being unresponsive to her ward.

“I’m passionate about my community, and I don’t like to see the community mismanaged in the way that it’s being mismanaged and has been mismanaged,” Palmer said. “You can look at some of the data and see that in certain parts of the ward, people are not reached out to, phone calls are not returned.”

Tina Hone

Hone, a graduate of the College (A.B. ’84), is the former chief engagement officer for the City of Chicago. After practicing at a law firm and working with Teach For America as a middle school teacher, Hone moved to Washington, D.C., to work in the federal government as a congressional aide and associate undersecretary at the Department of Commerce. She was elected to the school board of Fairfax, Virginia, in 2008 before moving back to Hyde Park to work for YMCA Chicago and the City.

Hone’s public safety plan calls for both addressing the root causes of violence and improving law enforcement. She hopes to decrease police response times while also investing in affordable housing and job creation. Her website highlights the economic disparities in the Fifth Ward between Hyde Park and South Shore.

“It’s important that we put development dollars into neighborhoods that have been completely disinvested,” Hone told the Hyde Park Herald in an interview. “71st Street should be as vibrant as 53rd Street.”

Jocelyn Hare

Hare is a project director at the Harris School of Public Policy. She unsuccessfully ran for the same seat in 2015. At the Harris School, Hare focuses on urban housing policy. She has spent the past six years working on the South Side Housing Data Project, which maps land usage to improve affordable housing policies.

Hare’s campaign is focused on equity, affordable housing, and public safety. On her website, she claims the Fifth Ward is receiving a “tidal wave of development” that could make the area too expensive for existing residents. To promote equity, Hare calls for city-level financial support to keep existing small businesses open and for the launch of a supplemental income pilot program to keep residents in their homes. Hare also wants to encourage investment in the high number of

vacant lots in South Shore.

“There is room for populations to grow, and we know that a density of people brings in more dollars and increased safety,” Hare told the Hyde Park Herald in an interview. “Filling vacant buildings is really important. Having vacant storefronts is really bad for the community. It makes people feel unsafe. It does not bring any revenue. We’ve got to address that.”

Dee Perkins

Perkins is a business manager and professional boxer. After working at a Chicago-based tax firm, she moved to the public sector as a corporate tax auditor for the California Franchise Tax Board. Perkins has touted her business and government experience as a factor that differentiates her in the race.

“Oftentimes, we elect community activists, those with deep pockets and loud mouths, for local positions such as alderperson, when we should be electing socially responsible thought-leaders who have a business background, preferably a financial background,” she wrote in response to a Chicago Tribune questionnaire.

Perkins’s website lists crime and public safety as the primary issue concerning Fifth Ward residents. Her plan calls for the formation of a trained group of ward residents who would respond to public safety issues instead of the police. On housing, she hopes to lower property taxes and increase community ownership of housing. Perkins also wants to adjust zoning laws to align them more closely with community interests and business development plans.

Desmon Yancy

Yancy is a community organizer currently serving as the senior director of organizing for the Inner-City Muslim Action Network. He previously co-founded the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability and the Empowering Communities for Public Safety Coalition, which successfully advocated the creation of the Community Commission on Public Safety and Accountability, the body overseeing the 22 newly created Police District Councils. Yancy has been endorsed by retiring alderman Hairston.

According to his website, Yancy wants to bring the economic development seen in Hyde Park to other parts of the Fifth Ward. If elected, he hopes to expand access to childcare services and to create a youth CONTINUED ON PG. 9

Earlier this month, nearly 4,000 voters were erroneously sent mail-in ballots with Irmer’s name still listed.

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council to encourage younger residents of the ward to engage in their communities. On public safety, Yancy believes armed officers should not respond to mental health crises and non-emergencies. He wants the city to partner with nonprofits to improve access to mental health care.

Kris Levy

Levy, a resident of South Shore, is a sales director at Deluxe Wine & Spirits, an Illinois-based alcohol distributor. After graduating from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in 1994, Levy took up a variety of posts in Chicago as a salesperson and account director.

Levy’s campaign is focused on economic development, education, and public safety. According to his website, he hopes to in-

crease employment levels by incentivizing businesses to hire workers who reside in the ward. He also wants to increase public education funding and expand trade programs in high schools. On crime, Levy says he would increase the police presence in places like gas stations, grocery stores, and public transit stops, where crimes are often committed, and encourage the use of foot patrols to improve relationships between police and the communities they serve.

Gabriel Piemonte

Piemonte is a former editor of the Hyde Park Herald, consultant, and community organizer. Originally from Boston, Massachusetts, Piemonte lived in Hyde Park for more than a decade before moving to Woodlawn 12 years ago. He is the founder and president of the Italian American Heritage Society of

Chicago. He previously ran for the seat in 2019, placing third with nearly a quarter of the vote.

Piemonte is running on a platform focused on economic justice and police reform. His website outlines a “reparative justice” plan that includes requiring a percentage of city contracts to be awarded to the descendants of enslaved Americans and establishing a Freedmen’s Bureau in the ward to lobby for federal reparations legislation. On policing, he supports ending qualified immunity and tying increases in the police budget to measurable progress on public safety.

Wallace Goode Jr.

Goode was most recently the executive director of the Hyde Park Chamber of Commerce, a post he left in June 2022 after more than 11 years. Before that, he served as

an associate dean of students at the University and as director of the University Community Service Center. Prior to his time at the University, Goode worked in workforce development for the City of Chicago and international corporate education programs.

In an interview with The Maroon, Goode identified affordable housing, public safety, economic development, education, and the environment as the most important issues facing the Fifth Ward. He said that his experience of working at the University and for the City of Chicago and developing relationships with their leaders would help him be an advocate for the ward. He also said he hopes to create a think tank of community leaders, including his current opponents, to assist with policymaking.

Who’s Running for 20th Ward Alderman?

By SOPHIA KANG | News Reporter

Three candidates are running for Chicago’s 20th Ward alderman in the 2023 municipal elections, taking place February 28. Incumbent alderman Jeanette Taylor, who took office in 2019, will appear on the ballot alongside Jennifer Maddox, a community organizer and former police officer, and Andre Smith, a pastor and entrepreneur. Maddox and Smith both ran against Taylor for 20th Ward alderman in 2019.

The 20th Ward includes most of Woodlawn and parts of Hyde Park, Washington Park, Englewood, and Back of the Yards. If no aldermanic candidate receives at least 50 percent of the votes in the February 28 election, the two candidates with the highest number of votes will proceed to a run-off election on April 4.

Jeanette Taylor

Taylor, the incumbent candidate, is a former education organizer with the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization. Since she took office in May 2019, succeeding three-term alderman Willie Cochran, she has been a staunch advocate for affordable housing and anti-displace-

ment measures.

In July 2019, Taylor and Fifth Ward Alderman Leslie Hairston introduced a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) ordinance that reserves affordable housing units around the Obama Presidential Center and includes grant programs for longtime Woodlawn residents. A 2019 study by the University of Illinois Chicago found that rent prices and property values had already been rising within a two-mile radius of the Obama Center.

Taylor has been a prominent critic of Mayor Lori Lightfoot. In November 2019, she joined members of the Chicago City Council Democratic Socialist Caucus in signing a letter addressed to Lightfoot that criticized the mayor’s first budget for “an over-reliance on property taxes” that are “burdensome to our working-class citizens.” Since taking office, Taylor has promised to support working families and advocate a raise in the minimum wage.

In 2015, she was one of 12 hunger strikers who successfully fought to reopen Walter H. Dyett High School in Washington Park after former mayor

Rahm Emanuel closed it and 49 other public schools.

Jennifer Maddox

Maddox is a community organizer and former Chicago Police Department officer. In 2011, she founded the nonprofit Future Ties, which offers after-school and summer learning programs to children who live in Parkway Gardens, an affordable housing community on the border of Woodlawn and Washington Park. She was recently elected to serve as a community representative on Fiske Elementary’s Local School Council.

According to Maddox’s campaign website, her priorities as alderman would be education, affordable housing, public safety and crime, and economic development in the 20th Ward.

Her nonprofit Future Ties recently bought a building on East 63rd Street and South Martin Luther King Drive; she hopes to turn it into a “one-stop shop” that will offer mental health and public safety resources to the community.

“Things have not changed since 2019,” Maddox told the Hyde Park Herald. “I threw my hat into the ring again because we’ve given the current alderman [Taylor] the opportunity to work on many of

the issues that have affected the ward. I haven’t seen a change.”

Maddox ran for the vacant seat in 2019, placing seventh out of nine candidates with 6.2 percent of the vote.

Andre Smith

Andre Smith is a pastor and entrepreneur who founded the gun violence prevention group Chicago Against Violence.

In the early 2010s, he participated in protests calling for a trauma center on the University of Chicago’s medical campus after 18-year-old Damian Turner was shot in 2010, just two blocks from the UChicago Medical Center, and died while being transported to Northwestern Memorial Hospital. If elected as alderman, he plans to prioritize public safety.

“I’m going to always serve the people, in whatever capacity that is,” he said to the Hyde Park Herald. “Even as alderman, if someone is affected by gun violence in my ward, I’m going to be there.”

He told the Hyde Park Herald that another one of his priorities as alderman would be “making our seniors and the residents feel that they’re not neglected and their voice is being heard and they’re in a safe community.” He pledged to start CONTINUED ON PG. 10

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a senior hotline and a mobile office that would serve older adults in the community. He also plans to support a property tax freeze.

Smith ran for 20th Ward alderman in 2011, facing former incumbent alderman Willie Cochran and three other candidates, and again in 2015 against seven other candidates, including Cochran. He

ran for the vacant seat in 2019, placing fifth with eight percent of the vote. Smith and at least two others were arrested for trespassing last week while protesting the city’s decision to house

migrants in the former Wadsworth Elementary School in Woodlawn.

Chicago Police District Council Elections: What You Need to Know

By RICHARD DAVIS

Content warning: This article includes discussion of police brutality and sexual misconduct.

On February 28, alongside the mayoral and aldermanic elections, Chicagoans will be voting in members of new political bodies called “district councils.” Each of Chicago’s 22 police districts will now have a three-person district council tasked with improving police accountability and strengthening relations between the police and the general public.

The members of each council will be elected every four years on the same cycle as the mayoral and aldermanic elections. This year, there are four candidates running for the district council for the Second Police District, also known as the Wentworth District. The district, which includes parts of the Third, Fourth, Fifth, and 20th Wards, as well as all of Hyde Park and Kenwood, is bounded roughly by 31st Street in Bronzeville to the north, 60th Street to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, and the Dan Ryan Expressway in Washington Park to the west.

In 2021, following a long standoff between grassroots activist groups and Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the Chicago City Council passed an ordinance meant to allow for greater public control over policing. The ordinance establishes the citywide Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, a seven-member supervisory commission charged with shaping Chicago Police Department (CPD) policy.

On the neighborhood level, the ordinance also provides for the creation of 22 district councils, one for each of Chicago’s police districts. These districts, which are intended to help CPD allocate its resources to different parts of the city more efficiently, are independent of wards, community areas,

and individual neighborhoods. Each district council will comprise three members who each serve four-year terms.

According to the City of Chicago’s website, the duties of each council will include soliciting community input on CPD policies, facilitating monthly public meetings meant to increase communication between CPD and the general public, promoting restorative justice programs in each district, and working with and nominating members of the Community Commission.

The City also encourages members of the public to participate in projects led by their local district councils. “[T]he more people who participate, the more effective the District Councils can be,” the City’s website reads.

There are four candidates running for three seats in this year’s district council election for the Second Police District: Ephraim Lee, Alexander Perez, Coston Plummer, and Julia Kline. Two of these candidates, Perez and Plummer, are running as a slate.

Ephraim Lee

Ephraim Lee is a truck driver with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District and a 24-year Navy reservist currently working on his master’s degree in social work from the University of Illinois Chicago. He has been a resident of Bronzeville for 23 years.

Lee has direct experience working with CPD as the facilitator of Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy meetings in Beat 215, a small patrol area in Bronzeville.

In response to a questionnaire from the Chicago Reader, Lee stated his belief that the City should hire more police officers and that CPD funding should stay about the same as it currently is. He feels that “police need training and some reform” and that “police

should accompany healthcare workers to [mental health] crises.” Lee believes that the role of the district councils is simply to help the police do a better job, in part by helping CPD live up to its code of moral conduct and by helping it be more transparent.

“For too many years, our police department has failed to champion and live up to a clear and unfettered code of fairness, accountability, and values, throughout the entire department,” Lee told the Reader. In response to long-standing distrust between Chicagoans and their police department, Lee believes that “only through a dedicated urgency of transparency, and a renewed focus on justice, fairness, and respect, can [those] decades of wounds be fully healed.”

Alexander Perez

Alexander Perez is from Aurora, Illinois, a satellite city to the southwest of Chicago and the second-largest city in the state. He served as the director of community affairs at West Aurora School District 129 from May 2018 through June 2019. In a Ballotpedia survey, Perez said that his time at West Aurora “highlighted the need to utilize resources to invest back into our most vulnerable communities.”

In the last few years, Perez has lived on the South Side in Bridgeport and Bronzeville. In that time, Perez volunteered with the Chicago chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), where he sought to ensure that “police were really going to respect those boundaries and not…use cannabis to harass communities of color.”

Perez stated in his questionnaire for the Reader that he has experience interacting with CPD. He believes that the City should “[fill] the vacancies that we currently have” but not hire more officers.

Perez believes that CPD funding should stay about the same. He also feels that “the

police need training and some reform” and that “police should accompany healthcare workers to [mental health] crises.” Specifically, Perez wants to bring the Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement (CARE) program to the Second Police District and extend its hours to be closer to 24-7 operation. CARE, which sends a team of mental health professionals to respond to 911 calls, currently operates in a pilot area consisting of the Chatham and Auburn Gresham community areas on the South Side as well as another pilot area on the North Side and an alternate response area on the Southwest Side.

If he is elected to the Second Police District’s district council, Perez aims to “increase transparency and accountability through modernization of communication and outreach efforts.” He hopes to achieve this by creating a “community-owned hub of information,” where safety and security information will be more “accessible and shareable and digestible” than it currently is.

Perez is endorsed by both 20th Ward Alderman Jeanette Taylor and Third Ward Alderman Pat Dowell.

Coston Plummer

Coston Plummer is a home care worker and has been a community organizer in his home neighborhood of Washington Park since 2016. Plummer has no direct experience interacting with CPD, but his older brother, Johnny Plummer, was a victim of the infamous CPD Commander Jon Burge, known for his use of torture and police brutality to extract confessions. In 1991, the elder Plummer, then 15 years old, was sentenced to life in prison for murder after officers working under Burge tortured him for 39 hours, leading to a confession. He is still serving his sentence.

In his questionnaire for the Reader, CONTINUED ON PG. 11

“We’ve given the current alderman [Taylor] the opportunity to work on many of the issues that have affected the ward. I haven’t seen a change.”

| News Reporter

The City also encourages members of the public to participate in projects led by their local district councils.

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Plummer stated that CPD officers “need training and some reform” and “should accompany healthcare workers to [mental health] crises.” He believes that the City should hire more police officers but that police department funding should be reduced. “Maybe there’s some way that we can direct some of that money that’s being spent and maybe wasted in certain areas back to mental health,” Plummer told the Hyde Park Herald in an interview.

Plummer believes that the role of a police district councilor is to be a liaison between the community and the police department,

representing community interests and establishing civilian oversight over the department.

Plummer has been endorsed by 20th Ward Alderman Jeanette Taylor as well as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), of which he is a member.

Julia Kline

Julia Kline is a sales and marketing consultant and cofounder of Neighbors Who Vote, a grassroots voter engagement organization. A former Chicago Public Schools teacher raised in Wilmette, a northern suburb of Chicago, Kline moved to Hyde Park in 2019, having become familiar with the area

through her work with progressive activist group Indivisible Chicago.

Kline told the Reader that she chose to run for the Second Police District’s district council because she feels officers who commit wrongdoings are not adequately punished. She says that misconduct allegations run rampant in CPD and that some have “multiple dozens of accusations of misconduct against them.” Kline added that as a 15-year-old, she was nearly raped by two police officers who had caught her smoking marijuana.

Kline believes that the city should reform its police department by ceasing hiring, tak-

ing funding cuts, and stopping the involvement of officers in mental health crisis calls. She also supports shifting public safety policy away from policing in general in favor of an “entirely separate safety infrastructure” based in “restorative justice, mental health resources, violence interruption and outreach.”

Kline told the Herald that “incarceration and surveillance and punishment is not how we prevent carjackings and prevent murders and prevent [sexual assaults]. The way we prevent those crimes is by recognizing how deeply hurt our communities are, and how much our communities need.”

Mayoral Candidates Talk Early Childhood Education at Logan Center Forum

By CASEY KIM | Senior News Reporter

Seven Chicago mayoral candidates discussed their plans for improving early childhood education at a mayoral forum on Wednesday, February 8, at the Logan Center.

Jesús “Chuy” García, Kambium “Kam” Buckner, Paul Vallas, Roderick Sawyer, Ja’Mal Green, Brandon Johnson, and Sophia King attended the 90-minute event, which was moderated by NBC’s Channel 5 News anchor Art Norman and Fox 32 News anchor Tia Ewing.

Each candidate had one minute and 30 seconds to answer each of the questions about their positions on early childhood education.

García, the U.S. representative for Illinois’s Fourth District since 2019, said his exposure to community activism when growing up in Pilsen inspired him to work in public service. He focused on his experience as a founding executive director of Little Village Community Development Corporation (now known as Enlace Chicago), a nonprofit organization that fights for more local public schools on the Southwest Side of Chicago.

“I understand very clearly, having had my own children and now having seven grandchildren, the importance of taking

the first steps so that our children don’t fall behind,” García said. “Children who don’t get the opportunity for early childhood education wind up having all kinds of challenges later on in life, and many of them tragically wind up at the juvenile detention center or in jail.”

Buckner, a native Chicagoan and state representative for Illinois’ 26th District, said his focus on the issue has been proven through his push for new legislation intended to efficiently distribute funds to every school in the Chicago school district, among other initiatives.

“Public education is a public good, and the public good requires public investment,” Buckner said. “I’ve done that with caregiver and provider legislation. I’ve done certain tax credits that have been given to the industry that ended with making sure we can streamline processes, so that folks who are actually doing the work to pour into our young people at the earliest ages possible have all the help that they can receive from the state and municipal government.”

Vallas, a longtime school administrator, was Chicago’s budget director from 1990 to 1993 and the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools from 1995 to 2001. He then took on

administrative roles at public school systems in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Louisiana; and Bridgeport, Connecticut. Vallas said that early childhood care should begin at the prenatal stage and emphasized the importance of offering care to expectant mothers.

“Waiting until children are four years old is, in fact, too late,” Vallas said. “So we actually established a program called Universal Prenatal to the Classroom. The objective was to make sure that the baby was born healthy and simply have the baby stimulated with early literacy, numeracy, and early vocabulary.”

Sawyer is the current alderman for the Sixth Ward and the son of Eugene Sawyer,

who served as Chicago mayor from 1987 to 1989. At the forum, he said that as mayor, he would continue his existing work of advancing early childhood education by supporting the construction of a new campus for the Little Angels Learning Center of Chicago early childhood education facility.

“In 2014, I originally filed an ordinance asking for early childhood intervention for children [from] birth to age five,” Sawyer said. “And we continue to support the efforts of the Little Angels and make sure they build that facility in Englewood, in the Sixth Ward.”

Green, the youngest candidate at 27 years old, emphasized his campaign’s plan

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Mayoral candidates Brandon Johnson, Ja’Mal Green, Sophia King, Kam Buckner, Roderick Sawyer, Paul Vallas, and Chuy García at a forum on early childhood education at the Logan Center on February 8, 2023. courtesy of zarrin ali .

education is a public good, and the public good requires public investment,” Buckner said.

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for a universal 3–K program in every school throughout Chicago as well as support for single and working mothers.

“We have helped [single mothers] become homeowners to help them obtain job opportunities,” Green said. “We also are currently building an 80,000 square-foot youth center in Auburn Gresham right now that’s going to have a 24-hour childcare cen-

ter.”

Johnson, a member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners representing the First District, recalled that his first professional job before becoming a public school teacher was as a childcare provider for Children’s World Learning Center.

“I know what it’s like to not only work with the children but also the families that dropped their children off,” Johnson said.

“As someone who is raising three children, [I] relied upon childcare centers, especially local. A better, stronger, safer Chicago needs a mayor who actually understands the meaning of childcare workers.”

Fourth Ward alderman King said early childhood education has always been one of her passions. She referred to her experiences starting Ariel Community Academy, a public school in North Kenwood, and lead-

ing the fight for a $15 minimum wage.

“[The minimum wage] brought 400,000, namely black and brown women, out of poverty, and some of those [were] early childhood educators,” King said. “I also helped put resources into early childhood education for the City Council. As a lifelong educator, I’ve been helping to put a priority around education and will continue to do that as mayor.”

Interview: Prentice Butler, Fourth Ward Aldermanic Candidate

By ANU VASHIST

Prentice Butler, a native of the South Side and a UChicago alum (A.B. ’02, A.M. ’20), is running for alderman in Chicago’s Fourth Ward. His campaign priorities include improving public safety, government transparency, economic equity, and education quality.

Butler currently serves as the chief of staff for current Fourth Ward alderman Sophia King, who is not running for re-election in order to pursue a campaign for mayor of Chicago. Mayoral and aldermanic elections will take place February 28.

Born in the Fourth Ward but raised in South Shore in the neighboring Fifth Ward, Butler graduated in 1998 as valedictorian of Hales Franciscan High School, a Catholic school in the Fourth Ward. He then attended UChicago, graduating in 2002 with a degree in political science.

Speaking about his time in the College, Butler reflected that mentors in the Community Service Center, including Michelle Obama, taught him what it meant to be a servant leader.

“They taught me that you have to be humble enough to sit down with people and listen to their needs and listen to what their proposals are for solutions,” he said in an interview with The Maroon. “You have to be open and humble enough to understand you don’t know it all, and I’ve done that myself.”

After graduating from the College, Butler chose to continue his work in service at the Chicago Area Boy Scouts of America, where he served as district executive. A year later, he joined the law offices of Ernesto D. Borges

Jr., a Chicago bankruptcy law firm, as a legal assistant. He worked there for seven years.

“That job taught me a lot about failed policies that impact marginalized communities,” Butler said, speaking about predatory lending practices by banks.

While working as a legal assistant, Butler pursued a master’s in Chicago studies at Loyola University, focusing on race, economics, and politics. “It was a great program, and it really got me to think deeper about policy and systemic issues in Chicago,” he said.

In particular, the experience made Butler want to support green jobs on Chicago’s South and West Sides.

“We have to do something about energy efficiency, and we can talk about sustainability but also save people money that have very limited funds for transit and money for utilities,” Butler said.

Butler began working for the City of Chicago in 2011. He started as director of policy communications before serving as director of constituent services from 2014 to 2017 and eventually as chief of staff for the Alderman of the Fourth Ward from 2017 to the present.

While working for the City, Butler completed a master’s in public policy at UChicago from 2019 to 2020.

Alongside his professional work and his studies, he has also been involved in community organizations such as 100 Black Men of Chicago, Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation, and the New Leaders Council Chicago.

Butler’s platform consists of four major tenets: enhancing public safety, increasing

the quality of Fourth Ward schools, ensuring equitable economic development in the ward, and increasing government transparency.

For Butler, public safety has been a deeply personal issue after he lost his nephew to gun violence in October 2008. “That experience really connects me to the trauma that everyone feels right now about feeling unsafe in their community,” Butler said. “Those kinds of incidents don’t just stay with you for a week or a month. They last a lifetime.”

Butler envisions a multifaceted approach

to improving public safety with an emphasis on crime prevention and mental health support. He hopes to implement a mental health crisis pilot program, which decouples mental health first responders from the Chicago Police Department.

Similar approaches were taken in other neighborhoods last year. The Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement program was launched in 2021 in a limited capacity in two parts of the city. The initiative was led by Alderman Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez of

“Public

| Deputy News Editor

courtesy of eva ho

CONTINUED FROM PG. 12

the 33rd Ward and eventually approved by Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

“We have to be innovative in how we address that problem, not just reactive with additional policing,” Butler told The Maroon

For Butler, public safety is also inextricably linked to educational opportunities. Noting the success of Kenwood Academy, which consistently boasts four-year graduation rates above 90 percent, Butler hopes to replicate strong academic and extracurricular programs that already exist on the South Side in other neighborhood schools.

Butler also believes the Fourth Ward should bring opportunities for students pursuing a trade. The Fourth Ward houses Dunbar Vocational High School, a trade school which has been struggling with enrollment in recent years.

“I truly believe that we need to bring honor and dignity back to the trades,” Butler said. “We try to come up with a clear path-

way for Dunbar in the hopes that we can market the school better and to get attendance up, but we need additional resources and we want to make sure that school is also a school of choice, not a last resort.”

Also of importance to Butler is increasing equity in economic development. Reflecting on the increasingly unaffordable costs of housing in Chicago, Butler believes there should be a cap on how much a landlord can raise rent in one year.

“People’s incomes are not keeping up with the drastic inflation,” Butler said. “We’ve been mindful that if we don’t get this under control...we’re going to see a drastic increase in the homeless population.”

Butler also believes that affordable housing policies must extend beyond rentals to single-family homes inhabited by the working class.

One possible solution Butler sees is selling blocks of land to a responsible developer at a lower price so that construction prices

are reduced.

“If you’re a young family, that is not affordable,” Butler said, referring to the fact that the least expensive single-family homes in the Fourth Ward sell for several hundred thousand dollars. “You have to be well-resourced and making over six figures to sustain a mortgage of that caliber.”

Additionally, Butler hopes to increase retail development. Speaking to The Maroon about establishments like a restaurant and a mixed-use development already planned on South Cottage Grove Avenue, he said he believed that in the next five years, the area would be “a wonderful, walkable corridor that has the kind of amenities that people have been looking for.”

He hopes such development could replicate the development of East 53rd Street, whose retail capacity has increased significantly since he was an undergraduate at the University. “Now there’s such a great diversity of small business owners and national

brands on 53rd Street,” he said.

Finally, increasing government transparency and accountability and improving the public’s trust in public institutions are priorities for Butler. “I want to make sure we have some oversight for city council members to make sure we’re operating ethically,” Butler said.

In particular, Butler believes elected officials should not hold other jobs while in office. Currently, aldermen are considered part-time employees who can take outside jobs but are paid six-figure salaries. Last September, Alderman Andre Vasquez of the 40th Ward introduced an amendment to the city code that would block City Council members from holding second jobs.

“It’s a full-time job,” he said. “With a limited staff, you have to be visible, you have to be present.”

Interview: Marlene Fisher, Fifth Ward Aldermanic Candidate

By MICHAEL McCLURE | News Editor

Fifth Ward aldermanic candidate and University of Chicago information technology administrator Marlene Fisher is a proud resident of Greater Grand Crossing and the president of her local block club. But in 2008, when she decided to leave her rented apartment in South Shore, she turned down an opportunity to move to a mixed-income housing project, funded by the Comer Family Foundation, in the same area.

“They had an affordable home project that they were having people of different incomes come in,” she told The Maroon “At first, I was like, ‘Nope, it’s too dangerous.’ I worked at Hirsch High School, and I dropped a couple of the students off and I said, ‘Well, what neighborhood is this?’ They were like, ‘It’s called the Pocket.’ I said, ‘Jesus, it’s just a lot of activity.’”

Fisher—a native of Decatur, Illinois— kept searching for a home, but to no avail. She returned to Greater Grand Crossing, found another home in the area that was

within her budget, and moved there in 2009.

As she settled into her new house, she found that the vacant lots down the street were used for illegal dumping. There was a police chase through one of them.

So she made another purchase. And then another.

Now, those lots on South Greenwood Avenue house a green space used for outdoor parties and community gardening initiatives, many of which Fisher, a master gardener, organizes herself.

“I decided I want to be a part of the community, so I met my neighbors. We have a phone tree, we tell each other if there’s issues, we congratulate each other on their birthdays and things like that,” she said. “I’m really community focused. It starts with the community.”

Fisher hopes to take that community spirit—and her love of gardening—from her block to the rest of the Fifth Ward, in which she is one of 11 aldermanic candi-

dates running to replace retiring incumbent Leslie Hairston, who has held the seat since 1999.

“I would love to have the Fifth Ward gardening awards [so] that we can look around and look at people’s gardens to get people outside,” Fisher said. “If there’s one thing we learned about the pandemic, it’s that outside is outside. If you can get out, you can walk, we can be active. I’m still going to advocate for the ward, advocate in the Fifth Ward, advocate in Grand Crossing. I think there’s a lot of opportunities there.”

Central to Fisher’s aldermanic campaign is financial literacy, particularly for renters. Increases in rental costs and the construction of the Obama Presidential Center have threatened to price out longtime residents of Hyde Park, Woodlawn, and South Shore, a number of whom have already faced housing insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fisher told The Maroon that the Woodlawn community benefits agreement referendum on the ballot is a good idea that has been poorly

executed because it does not prevent landlords from evicting residents struggling to pay rent.

“When we say people can’t afford it, can they, should [they] live in an apartment that costs this much and [they] don’t make this much? So a lot of it is on, ‘Do I need a roommate? Do I need these things?’ I’m empathetic about displacing people, and I want to help with any program that we can get with rental assistance, financial literacy, with helping people who have housing vouchers,” Fisher said. “We have to look out for the people who give the neighborhood the rich culture that it has.”

The University has long been accused of driving up local prices by buying more land around its campus. That, allied with its history of supporting racially restrictive covenants in the 20th century, make many in the ward wary of the University’s motives. But Fisher, who works at the University as a senior PeopleSoft security administrator, has a more optimistic stance.

“They’re trying to atone for past sins,

“You have to be open and humble enough to understand you don’t know it all, and I’ve done that myself.”

“The ward is going to look different…from a development standpoint.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 13

in my opinion. There’s a housing project the University owns. They said it’ll stay affordable housing,” Fisher said.

“They have a very vested interest in working with the community, so I see them as a partner. I do not see them as the land grabber because you have to think about it in terms of, they have more money and see more opportunity and can plan better than someone like me and you. They can plan it all out, buy it all out. However, I think it’s important to have the community have some say or let the community know what you’re doing.”

Many candidates in this election cycle tout improving public safety as one of their main objectives, and Fisher is no exception. Speaking to The Maroon, she recalled a robbery that occurred on Lake Park Avenue, outside Office Depot, while she was campaigning.

“While getting my petition signed, someone outside of the barrier got their purse stolen, just stolen at gunpoint, and it wasn’t in the security area. They said, ‘When you become alderman, can you work with getting the area widened?’ And then you say, ‘Is that the University of Chicago police’s role?’” she said.

“I went to Bradley [University] in 1990. Apparently it wasn’t safe, but we didn’t know, and now you have brazen robberies. I think there’s opportunity to work with the University of Chicago police and the University because there’s a [need] to attract students. You have to attract tourists.”

Private neighborhood security is one path forward, according to Fisher. She said

“it makes people feel safe,” particularly at times like Halloween, when criminal activity in the ward tends to spike.

Fisher, who joined the ballot in late December, has lived in the Fifth Ward for 25 years. She hopes to improve on what she saw as a lack of communication during Hairston’s 24-year tenure by making a more accessible website and easier points of contact for ward residents.

Perhaps that’s not a surprising statement for someone who works in IT. While her job at the University has helped her fund her campaign, it also poses unique quandaries: She cannot campaign within the workplace, and she must resign from

her post if she wins.

“I can’t say like ‘Hey, y’all, donate to me’ or whatever, but…I shared an article on my LinkedIn and some of the people that work here liked it. But I can’t campaign. I don’t really talk about it that much unless someone asks me,” she explained.

To promote her candidacy, Fisher has sent out mailers and met constituents in person.

“I’m trying to touch every voter that I can,” she told The Maroon. “When I knock on a door and they’re like, ‘You’re the one with the garden? Are you the one with that Juneteenth sign?’ They’re familiar, so it makes me feel better. In some

neighborhoods, you’re more familiar than others. In other neighborhoods, they want to know, ‘What are you going to do for me for these specific issues?’”

The next four years will be decisive for the Fifth Ward, with the construction of the Obama Presidential Center due to be completed and development along the lakefront expected to continue. That, to Fisher, is an opportunity to promote the opportunities available in Hyde Park, Woodlawn, and South Shore.

“More people may come and want to live over here because there’s something about living close to Lake Shore Drive, where you can drive to go wherever you want to. The bus systems and everything work, so this is an ideal location for someone who does not have a car. The ward is going to look different…from a development standpoint. I think there will be more amenities in the ward in different areas, particularly South Shore.”

Engaging Fifth Ward constituents and getting them to “vote, be involved, make a decision” is central to her mission—be they renters in Hyde Park and Woodlawn facing displacement or youth who enjoy working in her Greater Grand Crossing garden.

“It would mean everything that I would be able to advocate for the community, to advocate for people who feel like they don’t have a voice,” Fisher said. “You have this seat at the table; take it. Because that’s what I did. I didn’t just move into the neighborhood just to pay property taxes and come in my house and close the door. I moved into the neighborhood to fully participate, and that’s why I tell everybody to fully participate.”

Interview: Tina Hone, Fifth Ward Aldermanic Candidate

By ERIC FANG | Deputy News Editor

Born in Hyde Park, Martina “Tina” Hone graduated from the University of Chicago in 1984. After working in high-profile public service roles in Washington, D.C., and in Chicago, Hone now seeks to return to her roots by joining a crowded group of candidates all aiming to become fifth ward alderman.

Hone was born to a white father and a Black mother, the latter of whom raised her

after her parents divorced. Hone moved to Chatham and then Roseland in her youth, but she returned to Hyde Park in 1980 to study political science at the University of Chicago. After earning her bachelor’s in 1984, she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law in 1989.

She spent a few years in the early 1990s working at the emerging San Francisco branch of Teach for America. In 1996, she

moved to Washington, D.C., and served as a counsel for the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, the associate under secretary for economic affairs for the Department of Commerce, and the vice president of public affairs at the American Legacy Foundation. She was also elected to serve on the Fairfax County School Board in Virginia for nearly four years.

“The significance of my experience is that I know how the government works,”

Hone said in an interview with The Maroon. “I know how to navigate bureaucracy, and I know how to get things done.”

Hone came back to Hyde Park following the death of her husband in 2016. After taking a brief hiatus from work to mourn, Hone recommitted herself to public service by becoming the chief equity officer at YWCA Metropolitan Chicago in 2019 and later the chief engagement officer of the City of Chicago under Mayor Lori Lightfoot in 2020.

courtesy of marlene fisher

CONTINUED FROM PG. 14

In September 2022, Hone left her position with the city government to run for Fifth Ward alderman. In a large field of 11 candidates running to replace retiring alderman Leslie Hairston, Hone is, as a result of her school board position in Fairfax County, the only candidate to have previously served in an elected office. She believes that her experience both in Washington, D.C. and in city government would enable her to hit the ground running as an alderman.

“We’ve had the same alderman for 24 years,” Hone said. “This ward is going to feel the difference of having somebody who either knows what they’re doing or doesn’t know what they’re doing coming into this role. And I know I’m somebody who will be able to be effective on day one.”

From her career in public service, Hone emphasized her ability to communicate and work out compromises.

“In order to get things done, you have to figure out how to work with your partners, your friends, your allies, and maybe people you disagree with. But you need to be able to find common ground,” Hone said. “That seems like a lofty skill, but that is actually the most basic and fundamental skill that someone needs to successfully govern.”

Hone hopes to unite Fifth Ward constituents by focusing on general issues like public safety, which she sees as “an existential threat” to the ward and the University in particular. However, she highlighted that she would also focus on the issues that plague each neighborhood.

“The Fifth Ward is diverse,” Hone said. “The Fifth Ward is an opportunity, but the Fifth Ward is also a challenge. The Fifth Ward is grace and the Fifth Ward is grit. We have beautiful parks and we also have streets that are strewn with garbage. We have people who are living in $2 million

homes, and we have people who are struggling to pay rent on an affordable apartment. We have to be able to really work with the full diversity of this ward—racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic.”

Once in office, Hone pledges to investigate the underlying reasons behind the Fifth Ward’s high crime rate and to work with the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) and the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to determine what could be done to prevent crime. Hone told The Maroon that she was in favor of strengthening UCPD but not expanding its current patrol area, which currently lies between 37th Street to the north, 64th Street to the south, Cottage Grove Avenue to the west, and Lake Shore Drive to the east.

“I’m not anti-police,” she said. “I want to be sure that we have enough police and that the police are well assigned, that they’re not sitting behind desks. I want to be sure UCPD and CPD are coordinating more tightly. I think that’s already in progress, but there could always be more.”

As Fifth Ward alderman, Hone would also oversee the University campus. Hone credits her undergraduate education there with her ability to think critically about solutions to the problems affecting the Fifth Ward.

‘[The University] gave me discipline of thinking, and that has given me confidence,” she said. “There’s not a room that I go in and there’s not a problem that’s going to confront me that I’m not going to be able to figure out. I know how to think through a problem. And that is all University of Chicago.”

Hone recalled that during her time as an undergraduate, the University was often criticized for what she felt was well-intentioned community involvement.

“The University is sometimes situated between a rock and a hard place,”

Hone explained. “When I was in college, if the University made so much as a sideways glance [south] of the Midway, it was accused of trying to take over Woodlawn, and this included things like trying to be helpful with schools and programs and really well-intentioned and well-meaning policies. So whatever move the University made, it was criticized. I think it’s still sort of in that position.”

Hone believes the University plays a crucial role in Hyde Park but concedes that it could do more to support South Side residents. For example, she explained her desire for the University to boost opportunities for mental health care, education, and housing in the communities that surround it.

“I think people have to realize there is no Hyde Park without the University of Chicago,” Hone said. “It is the beating heart of Hyde Park. It is the largest employer in Hyde Park, I think the South Side, and one of the largest in the city. Is it a perfect place? No place is perfect.”

If elected alderman, Hone seeks to incorporate the University in her work— particularly the ideas of its students and staff. She expressed optimism at the idea of working alongside President Paul Alivisatos and the newly instated vice president of civic engagement, Christian Mitchell. She also named the Booth Business School, the Pritzker Medical School, the Urban Education Institute, the Crown School of Social Work, and the Harris School of Public Policy as potential partners to help solve community problems.

Those are some of the many people in the Fifth Ward that Hone believes she—and she alone—can represent.

“My experiences growing up has allowed me to understand the challenges of this ward and the opportunities of this ward,” Hone said. “You can’t overestimate how important it is for people to feel understood. And I think that is my secret sauce—I am the person that can represent all the Fifth Ward.”

Interview: Jocelyn Hare, Fifth Ward Aldermanic Candidate

By JUSTIN WALGREN | Senior News Reporter

Content warning: This article contains discussions of suicide.

Jocelyn Chou Hare, the senior assistant director of the Harris Policy Labs at the Harris School of Public Policy, is running

for alderman of the Fifth Ward. Her campaign priorities include preserving affordable housing, assisting local business owners, improving public safety, and expanding mental health services.

Hare has been active in the University community since 2011, when she enrolled in the Master of Public Policy (M.P.P.) program at Harris. She studied urban policy and joined several affinity groups for underrepresented minorities in the field. After earning her M.P.P. in 2013, she joined the

Hare started her campaign for alderman after six-term incumbent Leslie Hair-

Richard M. Daley Distinguished Senior Fellowship program as an urban fellow before assuming her current position at the Harris Policy Labs in 2018.

courtesy of tina hone.

“I know how to navigate bureaucracy, and I know how to get things done.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 15

ston announced her retirement in August 2022. Hare ran unsuccessfully against Hairston in 2015, and she described her defeat as an important learning experience.

“The first time you run, the learning curve is so high, especially in Chicago. There’s a reason why Chicago politics are notorious. Knowing how to play the game just sets you on a whole different level. Running and failing, you get to learn so much,” Hare told The Maroon in an interview.

Based on the experiences she has gained over the last several years, Hare feels much more equipped to run for office than she did in 2015. “I’ve been doing my homework for the past eight years,” she said.

During her tenure as an urban fellow with the Daley fellowship program, she worked with Karen Freeman-Wilson—former mayor of Gary, Indiana—on a special project to address a housing vacancy crisis in Gary. Between 2014 and 2018, she conducted surveys, secured grants, and drafted policies aimed at mapping and demolishing vacant units in the city and establishing new civic resources on the old lots.

“What I learned from Gary, Indiana, was how [to] move the needle and make things happen when you have no resources. And that was incredibly valuable,” Hare said.

After the end of her fellowship in 2018, Hare became the project lead for the South Side Housing Data Initiative, a collaborative project between the Harris School and several local advocacy groups aiming to survey housing conditions and chart housing trends in the South Shore, Washington Park, and Woodlawn neighborhoods.

Hare described the housing data initiative as her most important commitment over the past six years. She refrained from running for office in 2019 because the project was unfinished, but she said her experience with the initiative ultimately motivated her to launch her 2023 campaign.

“The project wrapped up in August 2022, [and] Alderman Hairston said she was stepping down,” Hare said. “My question to my housing partners was, ‘Who’s going to carry forward this work?’ ‘Who’s going to make sure all of your recommendations move forward?’”

When there wasn’t a clear answer, Hare asked her housing advocacy partners if they would be willing to vouch for her ex-

perience and determination in helping unhoused and disadvantaged residents. The answer: “Across the board, ‘absolutely!’” she said. “So that’s when I decided to run this time around.”

Hare underscored the importance of her education and experience at Harris in shaping her political ambitions. “Eight years ago, I ran for this spot,” she said, “and it was because I went to the Harris School of Public Policy and because of the tools I learned there and the people that I met and the mentors that I had.”

Hare particularly praised the support system and collegial environment Harris afforded her. “Any question I could ever think of for the last 10 years, I’ve gotten answers from some of the best strategists and minds working on this. There’s so many staff members who are so supportive and have always been supportive of me,” she said.

On February 28, voters will see Hare’s name alongside those of 10 other candidates on the ballot for Fifth Ward alderman. In conversation with The Maroon, Hare described her political philosophy as “community first.” She rejected the involvement of politicians external to the ward in determining ward policy and stressed the importance of knowing and understanding the constituents of Fifth Ward community areas like Hyde Park, Woodlawn, and South Shore.

“How do you make policies about the South Side of Chicago if you’ve never spent time there, if you don’t know anyone from there, if you don’t know what the actual issues are going on on the street? You have to involve [the] community first with policymaking, with decision making, every time because otherwise, you’re gonna get your policies wrong,” Hare said.

Hare also criticized the political culture of Chicago, which she described as consisting of “sociopathic leaders who are ‘win at all costs,’ dirty, corrupt, mudslinging, all of that.” She distanced herself from these officials, stating, “Nobody in my family has ever been in politics, and I never had an interest in being a politician. I was interested in how [to] help out our social systems.”

Hare’s largest campaign priority is protecting and expanding affordable housing in Hyde Park and Woodlawn. She commented on her own experiences with the housing and affordability crisis facing the

Fifth Ward. After witnessing her neighbors lose their homes, seeing small businesses get priced out of the ward, and struggling to afford her own apartment, Hare believes that the rising cost of living is the single greatest issue facing the ward.

“The small businesses, the people that are here now, the diversity of incomes, the diversity of people, that is all threatened with this development,” Hare said.

Hare also cites ensuring public safety as a top priority. She attributes rising crime and violence in the Fifth Ward to a mental health crisis, which she says started when former Mayor Rahm Emanuel cut funding for and closed many mental health clinics across Chicago. “We closed our mental health centers under Rahm. Look at what’s happening.”

Hare connected the mental health crisis to issues in policing. “We’re fighting about policing and all of this stuff, [while] we have police officers killing themselves because of this crazy system,” she said, referencing a series of CPD officer suicides that occurred in late December 2022. “The system can’t stay the same forever.”

Hare advocates reopening public mental health clinics on the South Side. She also wants to establish a community center for LGBTQ+ individuals in the Fifth Ward, modeled after the Center on Halsted in Lakeview, a priority she says is unique to her. “I’m the only candidate who’s advocating for the South Side LGBTQ+ center,” she said. “We need to have spaces on the

South Side for our kids. It’s absolutely insane that all of us in the city have to travel to the North Side of Chicago to have these condensed LGBTQ+ resources.”

Hare is also the only candidate with a public commitment to establishing a ward precinct council, a body through which Fifth Ward residents would be able to vote on key policy decisions. Hare told The Maroon that she values participatory democracy and wants to empower all constituents to have a role in shaping decisions that affect them.

“These decisions [shouldn’t be] made by billionaires and billion-dollar institutions and folks that have a whole lot of money but aren’t from here, don’t work here, don’t live here, don’t live in Chicago, don’t live in Illi-

nois. Who are they accountable to? Hedge funds, not our residents. There has to be somebody to be able to stand up to that and hold people accountable and not be afraid of billionaires and billion-dollar institutions and speak up for the people.”

That person, Hare insists, is her.

Hare hopes to serve as a role model to her students and the University community at large. She believes that people shouldn’t be afraid of politics and getting involved in public administration.

“I encourage all my students and folks that I meet that if you’ve ever thought about running for office, run for office!” she said. “Just do it. Don’t be afraid. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“The system can’t stay the same forever.”

courtesy of anthony greco

Interview: Wallace Goode, Fifth Ward Aldermanic Candidate

By ERIC FANG | Deputy News Editor

Fifth Ward aldermanic candidate Wallace Goode has worn many hats, from Peace Corps volunteer to business developer to associate dean of students at the University of Chicago. Through it all, he has prided himself on his ability to understand the unique needs of anyone he meets, a trait that he hopes can carry him to victory in the election on February 28.

“I see [the Fifth Ward as] as diverse as any place I’ve ever worked because from Kenwood to Grand Crossing to South Shore to Hyde Park to Woodlawn, each community has a very different need,” Goode told The Maroon in an interview. “One of the things that I have really been blessed with is to never make the assumption about anybody until I’ve spent enough time listening to their values and what’s really important to them.”

A self-styled “son of Woodlawn,” where his family has lived for more than 60 years, Goode attended Mount Carmel High School from 1966 to 1970 before completing his bachelor’s degree in psychology at Elmhurst University in 1975 and earning a master’s degree in education from the University of Vermont in 1977.

Goode served two tours with the United States Peace Corps, doing community organizing in the Central African Republic from 1980 to 1981 and in the Solomon Islands from 1984 to 1986. During his tours, Goode worked alongside senior executives of various companies, helping them expand their operations internationally and teaching them about the culture and traditions of each country. Goode stated that his global perspective would help him build bridges between diverse constituents and think of new solutions to long-standing problems he would encounter as alderman.

“When I think of having lived and worked in Central Africa, and having lived and worked in the Solomon Islands, I think of what I learned from [community] leaders, and how they approach problems differently than we historically have,” Goode said.

Goode then returned to Chicago,

where he was involved in city government between 1997 to 2004. He was the director of Richard M. Daley’s Workforce Solutions Division; assistant commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Workforce Development; and, finally, executive director of the Empowerment Zone program, a role through which he helped distribute nearly $150 million in federal and state funds to more than 300 community groups.

He has also served as a dean at four different universities: Allegheny College, Earlham College, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and the University of Chicago. Upon becoming an associate dean of students at the University in 2005, Goode also became the director of the University Community Service Center (UCSC), a group that matched students with community service opportunities. Under his leadership, the number of community service registered student organizations (CSRSOs) more than doubled to 75. Goode served as the advisor to all 75 CSRSOs until he left the University in 2011.

“Working at the [UCSC] was an exciting way of fulfilling two needs at once—the need for resources from community-based organizations and the need for experiential learning from University students,” Goode said.

Goode believes his experiences at the University, which is located within the Fifth Ward, will enable him to expand and strengthen its partnerships with South Side organizations. He identified incoming vice president of civic engagement Christian Mitchell, Logan Center for the Arts executive director Bill Michel, and executive director of community partnerships Wendy Walker Williams as past partners whose knowledge he could leverage as alderman.

Goode believes that in the past decade, the University has integrated itself more with the communities surrounding it, a pattern he expects to see continue.

“The University has done pretty much a major turnaround from the institution of old when I was there,” Goode said. “They have already demonstrated

a commitment to play an active role in the community in the Fifth Ward. So it’s exciting to have them on board.”

Upon becoming executive director of the Hyde Park Chamber of Commerce (HPCC) in 2011, Goode moved from Woodlawn to Hyde Park. He resigned from the position after 11 years on June 30, 2022, and launched his aldermanic campaign the following day.

In a statement announcing Goode’s resignation, HPCC president Troy Ratliff said that Goode nearly doubled

wants to tackle.

“I went to almost every coffee shop in the Fifth Ward because I wanted to get the ambience of what happens in a coffee shop in a community,” Goode said. “I hit many of the bars so that I got a sense of the crew that hang out there, and so I got a very good sense of the community. Many were folks who were engaged in their community but maybe not necessarily interested in going to forums or checking out my profile online but were very open and willing to

membership and “establish[ed] the Chamber as a major resource for the Hyde Park business community.”

When Goode first promoted his candidacy, he told the Hyde Park Herald, “I don’t know what my policy issues are yet.” But seven months and countless conversations with ward residents later, Goode has an acute sense of what he

have dialogue over coffee or over beer.”

In the wake of these conversations, Goode identified affordable housing, public safety, economic development, education, and the environment as the ward’s most important policy issues. For each, Goode listed out specific policies he would implement to help im -

CONTINUED ON PG. 18

courtesy of wallace goode

“Why do we put up with these companies that treat residents with disrespect?”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 17

prove the lives of local residents. For example, in terms of education, Goode hopes to revamp public school curricula to become “more holistic” and to teach skills “beyond the classroom.”

“In a very small microcosm, we need to define what academic excellence looks like and then reverse-engineer it back to the elementary schools,” Goode said. “When I look at the Fifth Ward, I think of an incredible space with incredible people that will be honored to help manage and facilitate an economic educational rope that can improve the quality of life for residents. I’m excited about it.”

Goode posits that improving education and job training could also reduce violent crime.

“Why aren’t we focusing on education to help mitigate the violence problem?” Goode asked. “And we need to develop employment opportunities so that there are alternatives to the streets.”

Goode also advocated for tenant rights during the interview, pledging to investigate companies that manage apartment buildings. He mentioned recent high-profile incidents in and near the Fifth Ward attributed to management neglect, including a fire at a Kenwood high-rise in January that killed a resident and a days-long power outage at Hyde Park’s Algonquin Apartments in December 2022.

“Why do we put up with these companies that treat residents with disrespect?” Goode asked. “I raise concern with the management companies and

how they’re taking care of our citizens.”

If he wins the aldermanic race, Goode hopes to build a think tank of community leaders to work on addressing each neighborhood’s needs. The ideal members? His opponents.

“When I become the alderman, the first week I’m in office on Monday, I will reach out to each of the candidates who’s in the race to help form a cabinet,” he said. “If you go to any of the [aldermanic] panels, the suggestions coming from all of these candidates are great.”

At the HPCC, Goode worked primarily with finances. Now, leading up to the February 28 elections, Goode is working primarily with the people around him—from University students to community volunteers—to get him the job he wants next.

“Volunteers are stepping up every single day. We get more and more saying that they want to work on the campaign, including a number of University of Chicago students,” Goode said. “The campaign is going well. I think it has followed the strategy of relying on human capital rather than financial capital, and I think that’s going to carry us across.”

To all those he meets—whether they be students, community members, or former co-workers—Goode simply asks them to “spread the word.”

“Share my name,” Goode said. “Spread the word that I’m a negotiator, a bridge builder, a conductor on the Underground Railroad of 2023, and that I’m committed to writing our story.”

Maria Pappas Wants to Fix Cook County’s Tax System

By LAURA GERSONY | Grey City Editor

This November marked yet another reelection for Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas. No one was holding their breath. The progressive bulldog has held onto the job for a quarter of a century, transforming the office from an opaque bureaucracy into an investigative think tank and developing something of a cult of personality in the process. (She just came out with a calendar showcasing her fashionable jackets.)

The treasurer’s main job is to manage the county’s property taxes. Using property values set by the assessor’s office, the treasurer calculates and distributes tax bills, collects payments, and then disburses the revenue to local government agencies. One of Pappas’s main accomplishments has been to make this process increasingly remote and paperless, shifting the office’s traffic almost entirely online.

Pappas has also gained notoriety for a task that isn’t in her job description. Under Pappas’s watch, the office put together a research wing that releases so-called “Pappas Studies,” which call out dysfunc-

tion in the county’s tax system. She’s hired data analysts and Chicago Tribune reporters to study issues from redlining to tax loopholes that benefit wealthy investors. The most recent analysis, which showed that property taxes are soaring in some Latino neighborhoods, is causing a reckoning over gentrification in the neighborhood of Pilsen.

The Maroon sat down with Pappas to discuss her upcoming term, what’s wrong with the Cook County tax system, and more. The conversation below has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Chicago Maroon: 2023 will be your 25th year serving as Cook County’s Treasurer. Why do you think voters want you back?

Maria Pappas: Because probably a million people know me. I don’t have a political organization that I belong to. But I have a website that’s available in around 108 languages. I was a county commissioner for eight years before this. And before that I had 10 years at a successful law practice. And then before that, for 10 years, I had a successful psychological

practice. When you’ve been around that long, everybody knows you, they like you, and they vote for you.

CM: And why do you keep running?

MP: I like what I do. I’ve created this think tank that’s getting international attention. My redlining study made 800 media outlets nationwide. And yesterday, we released an analysis of the 2022 tax rules, which made 450 news media outlets nationwide.

CM: Tell me about the vision for the office you’ve realized over the last 20 years.

MP: When I took office, our mission was to become paperless. There was no website, there was no one to pay compliance, there were no email systems. Now, I have as many as two million hits a month on a website in 107 languages.

I just returned from Cancun, Mexico, where I spoke to all South American countries about how to set up a paperless property check system. You’ve got all these countries coming in to see what I’m doing because it is all in-house programming and automation.

[As of early December], over 60,000 people have downloaded their bills and paid to the tune of $320 million. People

are responding to my online, paperless movement. So, why do people vote for me? Because I’ve made their lives easy.

CM: You’ve transformed this office from a bureaucratic post to something that resembles an investigative newsroom. Why hire reporters?

MP: They’re the only ones who are capable of doing the right kind of research. I dispatch them to find any wrongdoings in

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courtesy of maria pappas / facebook

“Isn’t that smart, to hire somebody to tell you what you do wrong?”

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my office. Isn’t that smart, to hire somebody to tell you what you do wrong?

CM: Right. A lot of your energy has been spent focusing on what the Cook County tax system does wrong. Can you put in simple language, for voters and for readers, what’s wrong with the tax system?

MP: The biggest thing that’s wrong with it is that 60 percent of everybody’s bill funds the school system. If that continues, people are just going to leave; they’re not going to keep paying these exorbitant taxes. So they’re going to have to find out another way to fund the school system.

All of my studies make recommendations about what needs to be done. My scavenger study talks extensively about hundreds of thousands of properties that are vacant and abandoned in Chicago, and how we might get them back on the tax

rolls. My most recent sale-in-error study recommends lowering the interest rate from 18 percent to 9 percent.

Editor’s Note: This figure refers to the interest rate for unpaid property taxes. Pappas’s office has proposed this change to lower the burden on homeowners with delinquent taxes—a demographic concentrated in Black and Latino neighborhoods.

CM: What are the two or three big priorities that you have for the next four years, to resolve those issues?

MP: Every six to eight months, I’ll turn out another study that’s going to have national implications. And I’ll continue to make the office more paperless. I’ll also continue with my outreach. I’ve got one of the most effective outreach programs in the county. I’ve got my phone bank called Black Houses Matter [connecting Black residents to tax refunds and exemptions they are owed by the County]. I’m going to start a similar radio show called Latino

Houses Matter.

CM: What will be the focus of the next Pappas study?

MP: I can’t tell you because somebody else will steal it.

CM: Is there anything your office wanted to accomplish in the last four years but couldn’t?

MP: The Tyler [internal digitization and technology software] system that links all the offices together is five years behind schedule. That’s my pet peeve. For every day that it’s not implemented, it costs me thousands of dollars.

CM: Let’s talk about the ongoing protests out of Pilsen. What position is your office taking on the protests?

MP: We aren’t commenting on that.

CM: One of the protestors’ demands is that your office stops collecting late fees for the 2021 property tax payments. Is that on the table?

MP: That’s regulated by statute. I

don’t think it can be done.

CM: So you think it’s out of your hands?

MP: Yeah. It’s out of the realm of my intelligence and my legal expertise.

CM: There’s been a lot of finger pointing, from the Assessor’s Office, to the Board of Review, to the legislature. As someone who understands the Cook County tax system better than anyone, where do you think protestors’ energy needs to be focused?

MP: I only deal with what I can deal with. What I’m working on right now is reducing the interest rate in Springfield from 18 to 9 percent. I can’t untie the Gordian knot here. But I can follow the recommendations of my research group, which are very clear: reducing the interest rate, stopping the loopholes for tax buyers and sale-in-error. Each of my studies has very specific legislative changes that need to be made, and that’s what I’m doing.

Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi Talks Gentrification, Transparency, and Equity

By EVGENIA ANASTASAKOS | Grey City Reporter

When Fritz Kaegi first ran for Cook County Assessor in 2018, he was an outsider on a crusade to fix flaws in the property tax system. Corruption within the office, whose job is to assign property values in Cook County, had long kept the bulk of the County’s tax burden on homeowners. With his slogan of “no favoritism, just fairness,” Kaegi promised an end to these problems and put a new emphasis on equity and transparency.

Four years into his tenure, those claims are now under scrutiny. This November, Kaegi, no longer a political newcomer, was re-elected with an overwhelming 81 percent of the vote. However, his term hasn’t been entirely without challenges. The latest round of tax bills was met with shock from some citizens, as they discovered higher bills than last year’s. In January, residents of the West Side neighborhood of Pilsen marched in protest against what they considered an unfair tax burden: their share increased

while cuts to the values of large commercial properties meant that big businesses were paying less.

Residents blame Kaegi. Kaegi blames the Board of Review, the three elected commissioners who revise and adjust initial valuations based on appeals from property owners. They have the final say over appealed property assessments and, initial data analysis shows, are partially responsible for homeowners’ tax hikes.

The Maroon sat down with Kaegi to learn more about his upcoming term, the criticisms his office is facing, and more. The conversation below has been edited for length and clarity.

Chicago Maroon: You recently won re-election. Why do you think Cook County wanted you back?

Fritz Kaegi: I think that they wanted us back for the same reason they put us in the office four years ago, which was to make a structural transformation of this office and the assessment system as a

whole, making it more ethical, transparent, and fair.

Ethical in the sense of raising the bar in terms of eliminating cronyism, nepotism, patronage hiring, and all conflicts of interest. I’m the first assessor who never took campaign contributions from property tax lawyers. That’s a very big change from the pattern that had been in place for many decades in this office. We [the Assessor’s Office] made commercial appeals anonymous, so that people don’t see the identity of the lawyers handling cases, along with a number of other ethical measures, including having a public visitors log. We publish all our data dictionaries, so that people can see how we’ve arrived at our residential numbers. People can see the results in terms of fairness in 2020. It was the first time the average Chicagoan’s property tax bill fell on the residential side. We’ve really broken this trend of inexorable growth of residential property taxes growing faster than commercial property taxes that was in place before I came into office. I think that’s why

people re-elected us.

CM: In 2022, your office got an award from the National Association of Counties because of discussions you conducted about how race impacts the work of assessors. What responsibilities do you see yourself having as an assessor when it comes to race and equity?

FK: It is really of prime importance because assessments are how we divide up a [tax] burden that’s already been determined by all of the school boards and municipalities in Cook County. Fairness and eliminating bias across the board, from every property owner, in every neighborhood, in every racial group, is the prime duty of this office. We can use our voice to really shine a light on inequities that may not arise from our own work but are part of the system and to find systemic solutions to them.

An example would be that property taxes are higher in Illinois than they are in many other states. This is because our schools only get about 25 percent of their

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funding from the state, whereas it’s closer to 50 percent in most other states, including our neighbors in Indiana. So to educate our kids, which the voters want them to do, school districts have only one tool, which is property tax revenue. That’s why property taxes are high.

If you look at a place like Harvey, which is in the South suburbs, their tax rate is six times what it is in Chicago. This is simply because they have a much, much smaller property tax base than Chicago does, for many different reasons, like deindustrialization, e-commerce, and massive inequities in our residential housing markets. In order to educate their kids, they have to tax themselves at a much higher level than we do. That’s just very unfair. Unfortunately, assessments cannot fix that problem. They can fix biases in how we value properties, but they can’t fix the bias of what kind of burden is placed on Harvey to begin with.

We’re having conversations with Professor [Christopher] Berry, director of the [UChicago] Center for Municipal Finance, whose research has found inequities and assessments across the nation. He said that one of the reasons for this was that homes at the bottom end of the price spectrum seem to be systematically overvalued, because assessors don’t have information about the condition and quality of interiors. This has led to an initiative that we’re leading, with the top 15 assessors in the nation, to get access to a federal mortgage appraisal database. This is just an example of how we’ve brought together leaders in this area.

CM: This year, some gentrifying neighborhoods, like Pilsen, were particularly hard-hit by the second installment of the 2021 tax bills. There were residents marching to the Cook County Building and property owners expressing fears of displacement. What do you think is the role of the assessor’s office when it comes to gentrification?

FK: First of all, when it comes to gentrification, the first thing is to make sure that we have the best data that we can to estimate the value of properties correctly. What you never want to do is average two

things that are very different. A lot of the time, in gentrifying neighborhoods, you have homes which are very old and might not have been renovated at all. But you also have newly constructed homes, which might have been renovated by house flippers or completely new construction. Our data science team, incidentally led by people who were originally from the University of Chicago’s Harris school, have helped us to try to use the data tools that we have to distinguish between those two different kinds of properties.

We’re also trying to increase participation in exemptions through outreach. Exemptions are a way that average homeowners to any kind of homeowner can take some of that amount off of the top just by virtue of that [being] their main home, but they have to apply for it. And about a third of homeowners don’t have their exemption. We focus it on communities where there’s been this gentrification.

But the most important thing that we can do about gentrification is addressing this overall question of fairness and the overall tax base. In Pilsen, the average bill is up by a little bit over $1,000. For the average homeowner, that’s a big increase. That’s over a third increase in some cases. In our first round of assessments, the average homeowner’s share of the burden was down about more than five percentage points: that’s over a $500 reduction that the average homeowner should have received. But then, the Board of Review cut commercial values in Chicago by 24 percent, but they cut residential by only one. So that put a lot more burden on every single homeowner and small business: it shifted about six percentage points of the burden back on to homeowners. So more than half of the total increase of the bill in Pilsen was represented just by those cuts on the big properties done by the Board of Review. The numbers show it.

However, even without the change by the Board of Review, people’s bills in Pilsen would have gone up because the value of their properties went up. If we don’t follow the changes in prices that happened in neighborhoods, like Pilsen, we put more burden on other neighborhoods, like the East Side of Chicago where house prices

have not gone up. This is why fairness in the system really requires following prices wherever they go and making sure that you’re not over assessing anyone, especially systematically.

CM: In December, you met with the Pilsen Chamber of Commerce and other community groups to discuss their concerns about these issues. What were those conversations like?

FK: The constituents in Pilsen showed us what it does to their bills when the values of people’s homes rise. What we said is, “we agree with you, and here’s what we can all do to try to make sure that this does not happen to the degree that is happening.”

The biggest commercial property in Pilsen is the data center owned by Blackstone, the biggest real estate property owner in the world. The Board of Review cut its value by 80 percent. It was really unfair to all those folks in that room to see the size of these cuts that were being made.

The Board of Review which made

those cuts is mostly made up of people who’ve been elected out of office. We’re taking the values of the commercial properties that were cut in Chicago, of the major classes where the big cuts were least explicable, back to where we set them in 2021. The new Board of Review will have to take a position on these properties. I believe that the new commissioners are not going to want to do the same thing that the previous Board of Review did. One of those new commissioners, George Cardenas, is from a district that’s heavily Latino and he’s committed to doing things to make the system [fairer], just like we are so there’s a little bit of hope there.

We also talked about finding every person who doesn’t have the exemptions that they deserve and making sure that they’re enrolled in those. Then people can get money back for taxes that they’ve overpaid for years.

CM: As you’ve alluded to, your office

“A lot of people think that whatever we decide is the last word, but it’s not.”

courtesy of fritz kaegi / twitter

CONTINUED FROM PG. 20

has been clashing with the Board of Review in this most recent tax cycle. How does conflict between key players in the tax process impact your ability to achieve campaign promises?

FK: A lot of people think that whatever we decide is the last word, but it’s not. We are responsible for assessing 1.9 million properties. Then, people appeal to us, but they can also appeal to the Board of Review. The previous administration of the Board of Review was using a lot of the methods, approaches, and mentality of my predecessor, Joe Berrios, so we’ve been coming up against each other on approaches to valuations of commercial properties. We’re looking at a pattern of data that has been shown in study after study, which was a massive undervaluation of commercial properties. There was a study done by the International Association of Assessing Officers that showed that commercial properties were 40 to 50 percent undervalued across Cook County on the eve of us taking office. In our work, we have closed that gap.

We’re cautiously optimistic that this new [Board of Review] is committed to working off of the same IT platform as us, to being more transparent in their methods, and to being more equitable. We’re working with President Preckwinkle as part of a Property Tax Task Force to address ways that we can share data, share methods, and reduce these inequities that exist.

CM: You said that the state of the tax base was returned to what it was under your predecessor, Berrios. What are you doing to avoid future setbacks?

FK: In the end, I can do what I can do. We want to work with the public and other actors so that the board review goes in the right direction too. And I resoundingly have been reelected, I was the top countywide vote getter in this election, and I beat the boss of the machine four years ago. So you know, this is the public and the public is kind of aware of what we’re doing. I don’t think they’re really aware of the board review. And the board review can’t stand in the way of this reform that the public has been demanding. So with this new Board of Review in place where we’re optimistic that things will go in the right direction.

CM: Your work has been criticized by

some other Cook County public servants. Treasurer Maria Pappas called your recent assessment “outrageous” when discussing the delayed tax deadline, saying people needed time to pay because of the outrageous assessment. The Board of Review Commissioner, Larry Rogers, said the 2021 tax cycle was the “worst assessment cycle” that he had seen of any assessor he had served with, on the basis that you made errors in your assessments. How do you respond to these criticisms?

FK: Larry Rogers really represents the old regime. He served on the Board of Review with Joe Berrios and while all these bad things were happening under the Berrios administration, he just stood by. All of these studies have shown that commercial properties were 40 to 50 percent undervalued and yet, in many cases, under Larry Rogers, the numbers have been taken right back to where they were under Berrios. He really represents the old school. We represent change and he doesn’t want to change. The county signed a contract to replace a 40-year-old mainframe, and they paid for it upfront, but the project was never advanced under the Berrios administration. We took it on ourselves to put it into place. Last year was the final phase, but the Board of Review, led by Larry Rogers, refused to recognize any change in the technology and basically made us put all the data back into the mainframe for further use. I think Cook County commissioners have been very critical of him for stonewalling on implementing the new technology. We’re pleased that the new commissioners are committed to adopting the county’s technology. So there’s that. As for Treasurer Pappas, I think she’s just trying to empathize with taxpayers.

CM: Some developers have accused you of being too political in your assessments and see your shifting of the tax burden onto commercial properties as an overreach. How do you respond to that?

FK: Crain’s Chicago Business did a deep dive looking at our revaluation of downtown properties, using the most powerful valuation tools that are out there. After the study, they said our assessments were the most accurate they’d ever been in this office and, if anything, they were still too conservative.

I’d also note that this is not universally true. Commercial properties differ from

class to class and from neighborhood to neighborhood. People like to say that we’re trying to crush small businesses, which is not true. In fact, small businesses have been hurt by undervaluation of properties downtown, because they have to pick up the burden for them and the valuations of commercial properties in the neighborhoods are actually closer to the mark or, in some cases, overvalued before we came in.

CM: What are your priorities for this year’s assessments of the North suburbs?

FK: We’ve just completed the reassessment and we’re finalizing appeals now. We’re really pleased that, for three straight years, appeals have been on the decline. In the North suburbs, the final numbers still have to come in. I believe appeals are continuing to be down from where they were when we last reassessed the North suburbs three years ago.

Preliminary tests show that we’ve dramatically reduced valuation bias. This is the first time that commercial properties have gotten a fresh look after COVID, and we think we’ve done a terrific job looking at the effects upon different kinds of commercial properties in the North suburbs. In 2023, we’ll be reassessing the South suburbs, which have different challenges. The South suburbs have high tax rates because their properties are generally not valued very highly by the market, so they have to assume a larger share of the burden to sustain educating children and other public services. When tax rates are higher, we have to make sure we’re taking that into account when we assess those properties. Another thing we have to look at in 2023 is interest rates rising. That’s putting pressure on residential housing prices. We have to make sure that we’re taking that into account when we reassess in 2023 too.

CM: The Maroon represents Hyde Park, your home neighborhood. Do you have any particular message for your constituents in our ward?

FK: I’m a Hyde Parker, born and bred. Every square foot of Hyde Park and the campus itself means a lot to me. My dad taught at the University of Chicago for 15 years. I come to events at the Institute of Politics. I was just in Hyde Park over the weekend, buying books at the Seminary Co-Op. Hyde Park is an example of an area that is very challenging from an as-

sessment point of view because we have so much segregation. You would never want to average housing prices in Hyde Park, with Woodlawn and Washington Park, even though they’re right next to each other. Being very careful about distinguishing between where prices are in Hyde Park from the surrounding communities is very important so that we don’t have biased assessments. This is one of the areas that we focused on when we were testing different valuation models and approaches.

CM: Do you have any other comments or information you’d like to share?

FK: We’re proud to have a team from [UChicago’s] Institute of Politics, helping us on one of the new initiatives that we can do as a result of our new technology. We have something called PTAXSIM, which is a data tool that helps people to understand the effect of any change in assessments, TIFs [(Tax Increment Financing)], or exemptions on every single taxpayer in the community and to help people understand how different policies can change tax bills. We have a team from the Institute of Politics that’s going to help us present this to the public in an understandable way, which is a really important part of the work that we do.

We are also really proud to have interns from the Harris School in our office, who are helping us continue to become a leader in using data science for the public good to result in more equity in the property tax system. It’s a really neat area that a lot of folks from the UChicago community can get excited about.

One of the interesting things to know is that as a result of the reassessment in the tax bills that were just sent out, tax bills mostly fell in communities south of Garfield in Chicago. There’s been a lot of attention put on the effects of gentrification in communities like Pilsen, but I don’t think there’s been enough attention focused on the fact that average bills have fallen in a lot of communities in a pretty impactful way. We saw that a lot of communities in places like South Shore and Chatham and Pullman were overvalued, and were paying too high a share of the burden, which was impeding community development and the growth of people’s wealth in those communities. We’re proud that our work had an effect there.

“I’m a Hyde Parker, born and bred.”

There’s Something Rotten in the State of UChicago’s M.A. Programs

By GALEN TSONGAS

If you spend any amount of time around graduate students, you’ll be met with a potent cocktail of depression, excitement, anxiety, and existential dread. Graduate school is hard on us for a number of reasons, especially for those living far away from family and friends, but it is also a hugely rewarding experience that opens doors into new careers and gives us opportunities to hone our skills. Yet there’s something uniquely broken about the Social Sciences Division’s (SSD) Master of Arts (M.A.) programs here. UChicago has built up a reputation for being where fun goes to die; when it comes to SSD M.A. programs, though, fun dies here for M.A. students because UChicago pushes its master’s students to their breaking points while emptying their pockets in the process.

Institutionally, these programs are—in a word—brutal. But the people who teach within them are passionate educators and incredible resources—it would be unfair to write this piece without at least acknowledging the distinction between institutional failure and individual excellence. I would be remiss if I did not say that the teaching, advice, and training from faculty are top-tier. But this is common knowledge, and it forms the backbone of the allure of the M.A. programs—it’s easier to perpetuate harm if students receive top-tier educational experiences. There are definite

benefits. This piece, however, is instead about the harm students experience within the program itself, rather than a critique of the people within them.

The University of Chicago’s SSD consists of three main M.A. programs: the Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS), the Master of Arts in Computing Sciences (MACS), and the Committee on International Relations (CIR). All three provide a rigorous, cross-disciplinary approach to coursework and are unique programs that can help students discover their interests and enable deeper engagement within a particular field of study. Some students in CIR go on to work in consulting, are accepted into Ph.D programs, and work their way up to their professional goals. These programs can position students for success, but they do so at a cost. There are deep, structural problems with these programs—specifically MAPSS and CIR—which need to be addressed. I attended the CIR program from 2021–22 and was lucky enough to receive full funding. Other students aren’t quite as lucky.

Time

First, let’s talk about the pace of these programs. There simply isn’t enough time to adequately learn, write, and live in these programs. In short, they force you not merely to compromise on one of these three things but eliminate at least one of them entirely.

You learn at the cost of living; you live at the cost of learning. Nine months—or three quarters—is precious little time under the best circumstances; it’s certainly not enough time to write a thesis, take three courses per quarter, apply for internships and jobs, and take care of yourself. The University’s decision to transition to a nine-week quarter—a policy implemented simultaneously across UChicago’s undergraduate and graduate programs—has served the express purpose of exacerbating students’ (already untenable) stress and anxiety. In an already truncated program, we lose a total of three weeks of time—a week for each quarter—dedicated to finishing class projects and preparing for exams. In exchange, we’re given a single week between the winter and spring quarters to recover. It does not work.

My work, like many others, required fieldwork; while I received funding, I had until early July to submit a first draft after finishing coursework on June 4. This works out to about a month or so to conduct fieldwork and polish theses after formally wrapping up coursework. It’s thankless, grueling work that feels futile, laughable, and exhausting in equal measure. It’s easy to argue that selecting a “realistic” thesis project might mitigate a number of these concerns, but at a school like ours, which touts “rigorous inquiry” as its most enduring commitment, writing the best, most well-researched project possible

isn’t just an option, it’s a mandate. Being forced to sacrifice standards or data to meet arbitrary, ill-considered deadlines represents a flagrant rejection of UChicago’s longest-held principles. A reasonably allotted time for thesis write-up and fieldwork should be the standard for all graduate programs; instead we’re fed to the University’s productivity machine, expected to produce papers, take exams, finish projects, and likely work parttime while attempting to produce a work of scholarship that is, in theory, its own full-time job. By the time we’re able to sit down with our thesis, we need to look for jobs, move away, or intern. One month after a grueling trudge through UChicago’s quarter system—all while we stress over what our next steps are—isn’t enough time to write, edit, review, polish, and rewrite scholarly work. While CIR offers internship and travel funding, MAPSS does not; summers are for writing theses. These programs don’t necessarily set anyone up for failure—but one year in a quarter system while trying to write a master’s thesis is a lot like trying to cook an egg on a stovetop without a pan: sure, you might be able to pull it off, but it’ll be a hard time, you’re going to have to make sacrifices, and the end result isn’t going to be nearly as good as it could be. If these programs are predicated on producing exceptional scholarship, the task of writing a publishable thesis within nine to 11 months while dealing with everything

else on our plates is Sisyphean. Ph.D. programs within SSD at the University give students a full two years to conceptualize and write up their theses—why are M.A. programs unaffiliated with Ph.D. programs only given one year? We have less training than Ph.D. students and—since we don’t receive a stipend—have more to worry about.

A huge issue with these programs is that they are positioned as fast-paced opportunities to grow as a scholar, but they do not give you the time to actually do so. Fast-paced, of course, is a euphemism for unrealistic. The excuse that this is just the way things are, which older academics parrot, elides a conversation about how unrealistic it is to expect quality work from full-time students without giving us the appropriate time to work on our thesis projects. For older students with dogs, partners, jobs, and children, this task becomes increasingly unrealistic. I, like others I’ve talked to, skipped meals and classes to finish assignments and readings; everyone, from undergraduates to faculty, seems perpetually exhausted.

The University’s insistence on perpetuating a system seemingly designed to ignore or dismiss the well-being of its students and faculty isn’t just willfully ignorant; it’s actively damaging. It’s exhausting to be met with unsympathetic responses from faculty who shrug off systems of harm

UChicago’s master’s programs are fundamentally broken, and nothing short of institutional reform can fix them.

CONTINUED FROM PG. 22

and trauma that they perpetuate—whether knowingly or not— or to be met with callousness from heads of departments and deans who ignore institutional deficiencies.

Money

These programs cost around $60,000 (not including rent, utilities, and groceries) and once the summer rolls around, the funding ends and we are expected to find jobs and internships while writing a publishable paper. One colleague of mine had to take out over $10,000 in loans over the summer in order to write their thesis. Loans for M.A. degrees have increased over the years, while the average debt held by graduate students is $71,000 (not including loans from their undergraduate years). Among all Americans, student loan debt has reached $1.7 trillion. Yet UChicago ended the 2021 fiscal year with an $11 billion endowment that

UChicago’s Annual Report states is “driven by strong investment returns, generous alumni support, and prudent spending.” The immediate question is: Why, then, exploit vulnerable M.A. students if the University is flush with cash rooted in prudent investment decisions? Why even charge so much? Perhaps this is naive, but one of the only reasons I can think of is to accumulate more wealth, which is the driving principle in our neoliberal economic system. The University is a business, and the driving logic of business in the United States is wealth accumulation. For a university that prioritizes its neoliberal Economics department (to the detriment of other SSD departments) and venerates a villain like Milton Friedman, it does not seem out of character. Alternatively, perhaps these programs fund Ph.D. programs (a common theory). Whatever the reason, M.A. students are a lucrative business transaction, and we are exploited.

SSD treats us like cash cows and expects us to write publishable theses without giving us the time and resources to do this, contributing to the continued exploitation of M.A. students in the United States. Sure, you can apply for grants, but grants are never enough or perpetually in short supply. But from a business perspective, M.A. programs make a lot of sense: charge premium prices for a prestigious degree that people will pay for. Anne Helen Petersen makes a compelling argument in her article, “The Masters Trap,” utilizing, in part, the case of two UChicago M.A. programs. The key point she makes in regard to M.A. programs making sense from a business perspective is that M.A. programs attract “a mix of first generation college students without mentors to guide them, high achievers enthralled by their perception of the academic lifestyle, international students desperate for a Green Card, students lacking the prestigious un-

ARTS

dergraduate degree or network needed to gain entry into exclusive creative industries, and students who believe that the degree they earn will be the career collateral they need to be successful.” There is always a demand, and SSD exploits these desires, fears, and the societal push for M.A. credentials. This “if you build it, they will come” mentality works well; the University knows it will always have a pool of applicants that will be willing to pay.

Perhaps the issue lies at the heart of academia itself—a rat race to produce papers, grad students, and books that keep the money flowing and increase the prestige of the University. One-year programs like SSD’s seek to produce one batch of graduate students as quickly as possible to open space for another batch, like an industrial assembly line. We are disposable inputs, ostensibly offered a leg up or an opportunity to jump start our career. I can’t help but wonder what cost these alleged advantag-

Chasing the “One That Got Away” in “Somebody I Used to Know”

By MIKI MUKAWA | Associate Arts Editor

“In another life, I would be your girl,” sings Katy Perry in her iconic 2010 hit “The One That Got Away.” But what if we got another chance in this life?

That’s the question that Somebody I Used to Know, a new Amazon Prime rom-com, attempts to answer. Cowritten by married duo Dave Franco and Alison Brie, the film follows Ally (Brie), a reality TV producer who’s finally made it big in Hollywood. Or at least that’s what Ally’s entire hometown (including her ex-boyfriend, Sean) thinks when she returns

home.

In reality, her show’s just been dropped, and Ally is utterly lost in life. “When we meet [Ally] in the movie,” Brie explained during a college roundtable discussion, “we sort of find her in this place where she’s put everything into her job, but she’s actually not really fulfilled by it, nor does she have these [romantic and familial] relationships in her life.”

But when she runs into Sean (Jay Ellis), her “One That Got Away,” she asks herself: what if he’s the answer? It’s the search for

that answer, and the undeniable spark between the two, that drives her to pursue him—even after she finds out Sean is engaged to Cassidy (Kiersey Clemons).

Brie and Franco always knew that they wanted to work on a project together. “Even though I wasn’t a writer or producer on The Rental,” Brie said, referring to her husband’s 2020 directorial debut, “I did feel like a coconspirator, you know, a real collaborator on set together.” The pandemic (or when “the world ended,” as Franco described it) was an opportunity to finally work on an idea they had mulled over for so long.

es come at. What’s the price we’re forced to pay? Money? Sleepless nights? Skipped meals? Graying hair, trembling hands, perpetual emotional and mental fragility? Near-constant exhaustion? While we know that multitasking is not humanly possible, graduate programs (especially on the quarter system) demand a level of multitasking that isn’t healthy, or even viable, all while juggling impossible financial obligations. Graduate school made me feel like a machine, and the constant demand for production here has taken the joy out of institutional learning. Academia should not feel like a business, but at every level, that is exactly what it is: an enterprise rooted in on-demand production. When it comes to truisms, people seem fond of citing one often: If you’re not paying, you’re the product. Somehow, though, students in the University’s graduate programs end up being both product and consumer in a zero-sum game that they can’t seem to win.

Brie was already interested in the idea of “relationship amnesia” because of her and her friends’ past experiences of onagain, off-again relationships. People “only remember what was great about it, sort of romanticize it in some way,” she said. But another motivator, one greatly tied to the theme of the film, is about timing. It was during a visit to Franco’s hometown of Palo Alto that they found themselves continually running into old friends and family that inspiration struck. “Confronting who you were back then compared to who you are now, and if

CONTINUED ON PG. 24

“It isn’t just willfully ignorant; it’s actively damaging.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 23

you’re happy about the path that you’ve ended up on,” Franco said, giving a tagline inspired by this trip. He hopes that one of the main messages of Somebody I Used to Know is that it’s never too late to find your happiness—it’s what his father, who returned to his passion for painting in the final years of his life, did. “I have never seen him happier,” he recounted with a smile.

Throughout the interview, it was obvious how well Franco and Brie fit each other—as co-writers, co-producers, and partners. They seamlessly finished each other’s sentences and attentively nodded,

listening to one another when building on each other’s thoughts. Having watched them interact, it suddenly makes sense why this particular film now exists. The decision to make a rom-com wasn’t a difficult one; it was an ode to the movies they had been watching during the lockdown, when the script was written, and it was a way to “infuse it with [their] collective sense of humor.” But beyond the typical rom-com aspects of the plot, it’s ultimately about finding yourself: something Franco and Brie can reflect upon because of the people they are now. “When you’re younger, you’re working towards something,” Brie explained. “You land in a

spot, and you assess it.” That’s the place that Ally finds herself in. Who is she, as a friend (for example, to Benny—played by her Community co-star Danny Pudi), as a daughter, as a partner, and most importantly, as herself?

Toward the end of the roundtable, Brie let us in on a love lesson she’s learned. “If I’m secure in myself, and if I meet a person who’s also secure in who they are and what they do, then we can coexist and support each other.” But that was something she found with the “right person,” she emphasized as she smiled and placed a hand on her husband’s. It is on this journey that we follow Ally: discovering

whether her “One That Got Away” is the right person.

We love romantic comedies because they feel like a comforting, warm hug. Or we hate them because they feel like piles of brainless mush. Somebody I Used to Know may be of this genre, but at its heart, it is a story of self-discovery—one even rom-com haters can probably appreciate.

Somebody I Used to Know, rated R, is available on Amazon Prime Video beginning February 10.

Mind Your Own Business (School): Booth’s Art Collection

By BEN De MOTT | Arts Contributor

At the Night Owls event on November 3, a self-described “moral philosophy major for undergrad and now grad school econ student” asked the first question to the guest lecturer Leon Wieseltier. His confession, with its weighty pause between the “and now,” amused aspiring intellectuals in the audience. His caveat “not the evil type” didn’t do much to quash giggles.

On campus, econ majors get bullied a fair amount. A winter quarter Theater[24] troupe recently put a comedic spin on Hamlet where, of course, he becomes a major in the aforementioned field and changes his name to Chad. Forced to seek refuge from snarky humanities and STEM people, econ majors stick to their business frats and consulting clubs. I’m prompting exploration of the Booth School, though, not just for econ students on the run. I know it might be truly hard for you film bros, art hoes, Marxists, and (pure) mathematicians to consider my proposal. But, hey, I’m not an academic advisor selling econ electives to third-year major-switchers out for more “useful” courses; I’m steering you, if you will, to see art.

Booth has a serious contemporary collection; there’s art everywhere. On every

floor, in all the hallways, even in the stairwells, there’s photography, painting, collage, drawing, sculpture, digital art, and interactive multimedia installations. The curation bends toward internationalism—it’s even a little disorienting moving from Hyung S. Kim’s photography project on a Korean community of free-diving women fishers to Seydou Keita’s graceful portraits of Bamako citizens to Andrei Tarkovsky’s Italian vacation polaroids (Booth’s set of quiet and pretty Tarkovsky pictures, more than Letterboxd ravings, might be what convinces me to finally go for Stalker or Andrei Rublev).

Looking at art in Booth is odd because of both the place’s visual clutter and its working students and staff. Promotional posters with portraits of Booth faculty members get mixed up with artwork on the walls. Labels for pieces on eye level with branded classrooms cause momentary confusion… is “Credit Suisse classroom” the title of an ironic piece? Wolfgang Tillmans’s photos compete for attention with bulletin board fliers and neoliberal memes, like a “deepfried” Milton Friedman (i.e., oversaturated image). In class or office hours, most Boothies seem too busy to acknowledge the works

around them. Their discussion of analysis models and polite networking in various languages (small talk is recognizable in any tongue) serve as an odd soundtrack for an art tour. There is little in the way of curatorial assistance. Some pieces have blurbs on their placards or QR codes (when they work) linking to audio clips with a pleasant-on-the-ear, Irish-sounding guide. Fans of the Smart’s headache-inducing, size-eight font descriptions will be disappointed.

If Boothies seem to be passing on deep reflection with their collection, perhaps the art has a passive effect—it might be working on Boothies as it’s lived around. For visitors, Booth offers an opportunity to approach art more casually. Away from museum norms of art viewing, you’re freed up, allowing for little epiphanies that sneak up on you. Exploring the place is simply fun. You’re often one-on-one with art, which may be a kind of business-class luxury…guilt me later. I’d like to share a couple works that have stuck with me. Maybe my favorites will spur you to find your own at Booth.

A forest’s ghostly prettiness first drew me to Ori Gersht’s White Noise 01 and White Noise 02. I thought they were paintings in the blurred, realist style of some Gerhard Richter pieces. I’d find out Gersht’s images

were photographs he took on a train journey between Auschwitz and Belzec. With context, it occurred to me that this fleeting, hazy scene would have come close to the last glimpses of unbounded natural world seen by those on their way to Nazi hellscape. In White Noise 02, a big snow–white house in the distance, with closed doors and no homey lights in windows, evoked the apathy of Holocaust bystanders. Only the trees don’t shirk away. The artist wrote on his website: “At all times I was aware of the photographic impossibility of the subject; how could I possibly describe the indescribable, or, as Theodor Adorno once questioned, how can anyone write poetry after Auschwitz?” Gersht does not end up “describing.” He gives us little guidance. It’s on us to catch the train to the death camps. Eyes open, never looking away, even if it’s all a blur.

At first, Eduardo Consuegra’s 85%, 90%, and 98% seem like monochrome black squares. You have to get up close to realize the titles refer to ratios of similarity between two shades of black in each painting. Consuegra bought black paints from the same store on different days and compared them.

The paintings got me thinking about Blackness in America: the experience of

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Arts contributor Ben DeMott urges you to visit Booth—not to change your major to business economics but to engage with art.

“At its heart, it is a story of self-discovery.”

Booth offers an opportunity to approach art more casually.

CONTINUED FROM PG. 24

looking and seeing only the monochrome seemed akin to the way Black people’s particular identities—as stars or as slaves—have often been elided. The various categorizations of color (from “light-skin” memes to Childish Gambino’s “Redbone”) Black people highlight seemed parallel to the way Consuegra, as a painter, attends to differences between shades. Consuegra is Colombian, and there is no curatorial or artist statement about his work in relation to race in America. My notion about Consuegra’s paintings might be off the mark, yet my encounter with his work is probably similar to most people’s: from initial dismissal—boring black—into delightful playing in the dark(s).

The piece I’ll leave off with might be one of the first you’d see at Booth. Mark Grotjahn gambled the commission Booth paid him and recounted his sprees in five drawings. Each pieces’ differing pairs of jutting rays add an aesthetic touch to straightforward summaries. We get extra detail—information about the particular card game and site of play—in the only instance of winnings. Was Grotjahn reflecting on (or, perhaps, in the throes of) momentary success’s blinding power?

Grotjahn’s work reminds us there’s a lot of money behind the collection. Apart from dates and time spent, there’s no way to make Grotjahn’s gambling results real. His pot isn’t an addict’s wages or a sly player’s carefully organized funds. Grotjahn’s play money comes from a private institution’s luxuries fund. His cavalier spending and

Booth’s indulgence—unsurprising in the world of art and cash—is detached from the budgeted, careful lives of everyday people. The placement of Grotjahn’s work might be an expression of self-awareness from Booth, an acknowledgement of the art market’s insanities. But this unnamed series could be turned the other way. For Booth’s curators, the pieces—nothing but balance sheets, raw green and chance—might be perfect business.

I’ve had a ball at Booth, and I’m sure most people would find something to connect with in the collection. A hearty endorsement, though, is iffy after a run-in with Grotjahn’s work. Booth isn’t exclusory, but it’s not perfectly inclusive either. Per UChicago Arts, photographer Wolfgang Tillmans “appreciated the fact that the works purchased for the school would be displayed in well-trafficked public spaces, rather than sequestered in storage—frequently the fate of art purchased by private collectors.” But is Booth really a public space? I only nosed around Booth because one of my art history professors told my class to check it out. Since I’ve started going, I’ve come across warm smiles and confused looks (though never any animus). I remember one particularly kind professor, John R. Birge, who told me about his favorite wacky pieces involving “art furniture” (no, not decor), simulated baseball commentary, and intensely lifelike yarn people wearing Vans. To give him a chance to talk up his affections, I pretended I didn’t know these works—I didn’t want to harsh his mellow response to the idea that a

non-Boothie was enjoying the art. When it comes to outreach, I haven’t seen posters urging University undergrads to come see the collection, or public invitations aimed at Southsiders. The building is closed on weekends, when most would have time

tion is its own justification, but educational institutions (and teachers) should be committed to democratizing aesthetic experience (All they really need to do on this score is pick up on Birge’s spirit). In the meantime, I urge you, reader, to stretch yourself. Step

for art. I hope someone in Booth’s administration grasps the distinction between Merleau-Ponty’s humanism of comprehension and humanism in extension—art apprecia-

SPORTS

Pedaling Through Hyde Park with Dean Boyer

By KAYLA RUBENSTEIN | Sports Editor

Some know him as a Civilizations professor; others, as a researcher who has dedicated years to the study of modern European history. Many know him as the Dean of the College, a position he has held for 31 years. Perhaps John Boyer’s most iconic role, however, is that of a cyclist.

In an exclusive interview with The Maroon, Boyer detailed how he began biking

70 years ago, at the age of six. Boyer grew up on the South Side of Chicago and credits the terrain as one of the reasons he fell in love with biking. “Chicago is a great city for biking because it’s flat,” he joked. “I guess when I came to the University, the natural thing was to get a bike, and another bike, and another bike.”

While Boyer’s childhood bike has since

rusted, he currently has three bikes: a light one for the summer, a sturdier one for the winter, and one he keeps in case of emergencies. Though Boyer does not name his bikes, he does extol their reliability. “The best thing is to have a good, sturdy bike that you can replace rather than a bike that’s so expensive that you know you have to treasure it and keep it forever,” he explained.

Every day, Boyer rides his bike from his home on 57th Street and Blackstone Ave-

nue to his office in Harper Library, turning a 15-minute walk into a three-minute bike ride.

Biking also has other perks besides efficiency, according to Boyer. “It’s a convenient way of getting around Hyde Park without contributing to the noise pollution and air pollution. [Bike riding] also costs nothing in terms of insurance; you may need life insurance, but not auto insurance,” he said.

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up to the Booth; everyone should take a shot.

A forest’s ghostly prettiness first drew me to Ori Gersht’s White Noise 01 [pictured above] and White Noise 02 the art collection of the university of chicago booth school of business

John Boyer’s most iconic role, however, is that of a cyclist.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 25

Boyer highlighted the value of biking over other forms of transportation. “There are fascinating neighborhoods where you can actually get to know the people by being on a bike. It’s different than being in a car or a bus, where you’re disconnected,” he explained.

Chicago’s weather in the wintertime might dissuade many cyclists, but not Boyer, who will bike in almost any conditions. “I always joke that wherever a CTA bus can go, I can go in the winter because the CTA does a pretty good job of clearing the space,” he said. “As long as you can see the pavement and you can feel the crunch of the salt under your wheels, you’re probably okay.” The only conditions in which Boyer refuses to ride is when he sees black ice on the streets. “Black ice is a no-go. There are people who do it, but I don’t want to end up in an orthopedic ward,” he said.

Twice a year, Boyer shares his love of biking with the greater UChicago community. Alongside political science professor Mark Hansen, Boyer leads a bike tour through various locations around Chicago. He adopted the idea 20 years ago from sociology professor Terry Clark, who took his graduate students on a similar biking path. Chicago Studies orchestrates the event, during which Hansen and Boyer take the group to

the South Loop, through the University of Illinois Chicago’s campus, west to Hull House, and back through Bronzeville. In the spring, the trip focuses on the South Side, with the group biking down to the Indiana border.

When searching for places to take students during biking trips, Boyer turns to his historian background. “[Chicago] is a big city with a deep history. There are a lot of interesting places to go, places that you might not think of at first.”

One such place is the St. Michael the Archangel Roman Catholic Church, located at East 83rd Street and South South Shore Drive. The church, which opened in 1909, exemplifies the Polish Cathedral style and has a rich history. “The people who built [the church] were members of the Polish community. You can look at pictures of the monumental church, but seeing it in person, you’ll go inside and see the aspirations of this community of people working in a steel mill who got the money to build this great church for the community,” Boyer detailed. “It’s a very powerful thing to have students experience.”

But Boyer also underscored the benefit of biking without a set plan. “I oftentimes will be riding along and see something that suddenly clicks in my mind, like ‘That’s a famous building,’ or ‘That’s a famous set of apartment buildings, or a famous restaurant, or a famous church or synagogue,’” he said. “And

there’s a kind of serendipity factor, because as you’re riding along, you don’t know what’s just over the horizon.”

For those looking to explore South Side neighborhoods via bike, Boyer recommends using Hansen’s book The City in a Garden, which offers a historical guide to Hyde Park and Kenwood.

In terms of his most valued bike routes, Boyer awards the ride from his home to his office as his top choice. However, he stated that rides on the Lakefront Trail, especial-

ly during sunset, hold a special place in his heart. “I remember the first time I rode my bike down to Museum Campus… I remember it was in the fall and dusk and the sun was just setting. I was standing at Adler [Planetarium] and looking at the lakefront, the beauty of the light from the harbor and the magnificent skyscrapers in the setting sun. I still remember thinking, ‘Wow, what a treasure it is to live in a city like this,’” Boyer shared. “I only got there because I was riding my bike.”

UChicago Runners Take to the Road

By BLAIR PENN | Senior Sports Reporter

What started as one undergraduate looking for some friends to run with eventually became the rebirth of the UChicago Road Runners, a club that brings together runners of all skill levels to explore Hyde Park and Chicago’s jogging paths.

On the group’s Facebook page, second-year Jordyn Flaherty, a member of the current UChicago Road Runners leadership, states that the club has existed since at least 2016 and is a “semi-official RSO… in the process of reorganizing.”

The club’s revival can be traced back to O-Week in 2021. During the first house meeting for Wendt House, second-year Lucas Berard said that he was going on a run the next day and invited anyone who was interested to join him.

This initial group of runners quickly started to bond over this activity and, soon enough, social runs within the house were taking place regularly. As the Wendt House first-years started to get more acquainted with other members of the UChicago community, Berard said that he invited even more people to run with them, and the group continued to grow.

Looking for places to run last year, Flaherty met Berard. “Lucas had a group of runners from his house, and individual runners reached out asking about opportunities to run,” she said. Flaherty ran track and cross country in high school and was motivated to start a running community partly because of these former groups.

“The team in high school was a big part

of my life, and it was hard to lose that in college. For me, Run Club has been about building a community around running again in college.”

After the group ran the Chicago Half Marathon together in the spring of 2022, Flaherty saw the potential for what a UChicago running community could be. The next step she took toward establishing a running group was to create a group chat where members could share training plans and schedule packet pickups for future races. “The group chat [didn’t make us] an official club, but people assumed it was,” Flaherty said.

Second-year Natalia Potente, who joined the group after the half marathon and now serves as a “group leader,” added that “some people only run a couple miles, and some people will go a lot lon-

ger,” though “people can turn around at any point.”

The Road Runners meet every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday at 3:30 p.m. and on Sundays at 10 a.m. They typically begin at the entrance of Stuart Hall and run along the Lakefront Trail or around Washington Park. “We usually have different pace groups based on demand and how fast people want to run that day,” Potente said. She also spoke about the amiable nature of the group. “[There is] a very friendly atmosphere,” she said. “We talk as we run and occasionally play music on a speaker.”

“We don’t have any process of membership. Anyone can come to a run whenever they want,” Flaherty added.

However, the Road Runners Club

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Boyer leading his autumn quarter bike tour. courtesy of meghan hendrix

“Perhaps

CONTINUED FROM PG. 26

doesn’t just lead group runs. One of Berard’s favorite parts of the club is when the group hosts a “speaker and run,” during which a UChicago professor offers a short lecture to the club before joining the group on their run. For example, last winter quarter, Christine Andrews, a senior lecturer of biology at UChicago, gave a talk about exercise and physiology.

One fond memory Berard has of a “speaker and run” is with Hannah Borenstein, an anthropologist and Harper-Schmidt fellow at UChicago, during autumn quarter. Because of daylight saving time, the group ended up running in the dark following Borenstein’s lecture. “It was just, like, good vibes and lots of good conversations going around, and everyone was chatting and stuff like that,” Berard said.

Third-year Tanner Baldwin runs with the Road Runners when he’s not competing with the varsity men’s soccer team. He first considered joining a running group when he saw the cross-country team running together. “I got involved in the Run Club community after seeing the cross country team running around Hyde Park together and figured it must be fun running with a group.” He then reached out to Flaherty. “She was really welcoming, and pretty soon after we got in touch, we

ACROSS

1. “So ___.”

5. Some gas stns.

were running together almost every day,” Baldwin said.

“Your value to the club is derived from your presence alone, not how fast you run,” Baldwin said. “I think everyone in the running community is really kind and we really care for each other.”

Road Runners has helped cultivate deep bonds beyond just the runs. “Ironically, my favorite memories of Run Club aren’t even while running. The best mo-

really connected to the community.”

Baldwin also extolled the health benefits of running. “Run Club keeps me committed to my fitness, mentally as well as physically. Run Club runs provide a much-needed excuse for me to take a study break and relieve some stress. Your body releases natural stress-relieving endorphins while running, so it’s a great way to take the edge off of a stressful day.”

Flaherty expressed a similar senti-

Furthermore, running with a group has additional social benefits. “Running with someone is actually a really great way to get to know them,” Baldwin said. “If you’re jogging slow enough, it provides a nice opportunity to chat while engaging in a more monotonous activity. If you’re pushing the pace together, hearing the pounding of footsteps and heavy breathing of those around you really creates a sense of a collective striving towards a common goal.”

Potente also enjoys this aspect of Road Runners. “Getting to talk to people as we run makes the time fly by. I love the people at Run Club. It is such a supportive environment,” she said.

Berard said that he “really appreciated meeting” everyone in Road Runners. He especially developed a close friendship with Potente through the club. “She is a really cool person and super kind, and also she is going to the Boston Marathon this spring, so she is really fast as well,” Berard said of Potente. “It’s always great seeing her and her smile!”

ments have happened before and after runs,” Baldwin said. “When we go as a group to get post-run fuel from the dining hall, or when everyone talks about their day and what they have been up to before we set out, those are the moments I feel

ment. “Running is a great way to clear your head,” she said. “I enjoy running regularly because it means I get to see the Point and spaces further away from campus, and it takes me out of campus and into the community.”

“The club’s revival can be traced back to O-Week in 2021.” CROSSWORD

56. Investigator

By HENRY JOSEPHSON | Head Crossword Editor

get stranded on a desert island?

25. What do you call the study of turning nocturnal birds into gold?

homesickness: Abbr.

38. Suddenly change direction

40. Hella

41. What do you call global warming caused by bivalves?

Although the thought of running five miles may seem like a daunting task, Potente says that she always “feels more energized after” her runs. “It doesn’t ever feel like a chore,” she said of the Road Runners, “but a break in my day that I look forward to.”

8. 2021 and 2022 loser of a historic college football rivalry, for short

11. Letters with a rightward slant: Abbr.

15. What cognitive behavioral therapy might treat, for short

18. Problem for someone in a cast

19. Defeats at dinner, say

21. Saxophonist’s showcase

22. It’s above an eagle

23. What do you call farm animals that

27. Golden calf, e.g.

28. It has no feet

29. Guardians, on a scoreboard

30. Answer to some Seoul-searching

31. Follows, as an urge

33. What do you call the thing a dog uses to ride around a lake?

36. Boo

37. They might be trained to help people recover from alcohol poisoning and

44. Big start?

45. It could be brown, blond, or ginger

46. Shakira’s don’t lie, in song

47. Pronoun one letter off from 47-Down

48. Noble rank that’s also a first name

52. Some Met Gala gowns

55. Yosemite ___

56. Changes chemically

59. Protagonist of Pixar’s “Turning Red”

60. Present opening?

61. What do you call the prize given to the winner of a boxing match between apes?

65. Org. for the Long Island Nets and the Fort Wayne Mad Ants

67. “___ my wits’ end!”

68. COVID-19, e.g.

69. What do you call the chemicals light-headed insects smoke?

72. Short pants?

73. “Special Agent ___” (Animated Disney show about a bear that—ironically—doesn’t speak Spanish)

74. Flannel patterns

75. ___ Aviv

courtesy of @ uchicagoruns

76. Apt rhyme for “fans”

77. The Rockies, for short

79. The first mistake of this “is to assume that it’s serious,” per Lester Bangs

80. Ward with awards

82. ___-de-sac

83. Gunk

85. What do you call animals that start (very) small businesses?

91. On an ego trip 93. Plants in a patch 94. Sphere 95. Lepidopterist’s need 96. What do you call the place scarabs wage war?

98. Shabbat, e.g.

100. Floral nickname

101. Celebrity chef Garten

102. Out of favor

105. “Only Girl (In the World)” artist, to fans

106. What do you call a group of aquatic mammals playing violins?

108. What do you call a film that explores the history of throwing bread into ponds?

111. Soul seller

112. Betting option

113. Slave ship whose name, ironically, means “friendship” in Spanish

114. Pitcher

115. Jacob’s end

116. Hardly

117. Letter addenda

118. Some records: Abbr.

119. Alternatives to hard drives in computers, for short

DOWN

1. Parts of guns?

2. Right

3. Product of Arizona

4. Epstein who broke curses for the Red

Sox and Cubs and Geisel who created The Lorax

5. Boat part

6. Point

7. Boat part

34. npr.___

35. Scrunchies’ relatives

38. Shook

39. 2020 #1 hit that urges listeners to “bring a bucket and a mop”

42. “All I Want for Christmas Is You” artist’s first name

43. Tea type

44. Bublé who covered “All I Want for Christmas Is You”

47. Verb one letter off from 47-Across

49. Supreme Egyptian god

50. Need

51. Word with paper or test

52. One with fur babies

53. “Gimme a hint!”

54. About the mass of an adult male walrus

55. First American in space

56. Meander

57. Permits

58. Word in some resort names: Abbr.

61. Good grad words

62. Bill Belichick’s team, for short

63. Lead-in to “survivor” or “loser” in song

64. Repress, with “up”

66. Pay ___

70. “Survivor,” for Destiny’s Child

71. Like the tides at a quarter moon

76. It can be blistering

78. Nova ___

80. Stamford Bridge and The Big House

81. Forget to add “+C” to an indefinite integral, e.g.

82. SCOTUS often denies it 84. Decides, as a motion 85. Bay ___ 86. Zip 87. General idea 88. Opens, as drapes 89. Syndicated 90. Teen’s bedroom, metaphorically 91. Illinois city representing average America

92. Upload again, as a document

93. In which 100 is 8

96. Ruined

97. One handing out pink slips

98. Pan-fry

14. Safe

99. Custom-made events?

103. Longtime CBS procedural

104. “Mr. Sammler’s Planet” and “Herzog,” for short

105. New Deal energy inits.

108. Fist-bump

109. Henry Josephson, Michael McClure, and others at The Maroon: Abbr. 110. Jr. and Sr., for short