012715 Chicago Maroon

TUESDAY • JANUARY 27, 2015

CHICAGOMAROON.COM

ISSUE 22 • VOLUME 126

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SINCE 1892

Graduate student rights group to petition Univ.

Isaac Stein Senior News Writer

Local bike shop hits bump in the road David Jones, owner of DJ’s Bike Doctor located on East 55th Street, hard at work last Sunday fixing a bike. The local establishment faces possible closure if fundraising efforts fall short. Read more on page 2.

ALEX JUNG | THE CHICAGO MAROON

Study Chicago program to launch this spring Eileen Li News Staff Twenty undergraduate students will make the city of Chicago their classroom in the inaugural “Study Chicago Quarter” in spring 2015.

The new program will mirror the University’s study abroad programs in other cities, with three courses focused on the city itself in addition to guest lectures and weekly excursions.

The program will collaborate with the University Community Service Center (UCSC) and the Chicago Studies program for its regularly scheduled excursions. Applications are due February 2nd.

Adam Green, Master of the Social Science Collegiate Division, worked closely with Dean John Boyer and other faculty to develop the design and curriculum of the program.

“Knowing more about how Chicago works increasingly will be an excellent

way to know about how the world works,” Green wrote in an email. “It is the hope of Dean Boyer, myself, and everyone involved in this endeavor that we leverage our proximity to this dynamic and significant city, so as to best equip students to pursue and apply their education in ways that fully realize their ambitions, and sense of purpose.”

The quarter consists of three courses, focusing on history, English, and public policy. “Making Chicago: Chapters in the City’s History” traces the history of the city from the 19th to the 21st century. The English course, “Representing Chicago: the City in Art, Literature, and Music,” centers on literature produced in Chicago but will also cover other forms of Chicagobased art. The third course, “Remaking Chicago: The City that Works on Social Change,” is a sociology and public policy course that explores the role of “change-agents” in the city, ad-

dressing Chicago’s social problems.

Paul Durica, who will teach the English course, stated that the excursions will include both civic and cultural institutions and offered more details on the course’s foci. “I’m focusing on more cultural destinations, ranging from larger institutions like the Poetry Foundation and the Newberry to neighborhood-based nonprofits like the read/write library, Spudnick Press, South Side Community Art Center, Young Chicago Authors, and the Guild Literary Complex,” he said.

Durica said the program should provide students with a unique understanding of the city.

“The hope is that students will end the quarter feeling like citizens of Chicago as well as students at the University of Chicago and that they will want to continue to engage and explore the city and carry the relationships made during the quarter into their life beyond the university,” he said.

Alderman, challenger talk Fifth Ward Wendy Lee Maroon Contributor In the race for alderman of Chicago’s Fifth Ward, experienced candidate Anne Marie Miles is facing off against current Alderman Leslie Hairston. Miles is the leading contender among four challengers to Hairston for the seat. The Fifth Ward stretches from 47th Street to 79th Street, encompassing Hyde Park, Woodlawn, South Shore, and parts of Grand Crossing and Kenwood.

Hairston has represented Chicago’s Fifth Ward since 1999. Anne Marie Miles, a lawyer specializing in elderly law, ran against Hairston in 2011 as well. Both candidates are Democrats.

In an interview with the Maroon, both Miles and Hairston voiced their support for the University of Chicago’s bid to bring the Obama presidential library to the South Side. “The library belongs on the South Side of Chicago, and the community could have been more involved earlier in the conversation,”

Miles said. She said that the Obama presidential library has the potential to change socioeconomic dynamics within Hyde Park. “One of my main goals is to shape discussions about how to preserve Hyde Park’s history and retain its strong neighborhood feel,” she said.

Hairston shared similar views on the importance of the Obama presidential library to the Fifth Ward, advocating for the library’s placement in Jackson Park.

Hairston was quick to say, however, that ALDERMAN continued on page 2

More than 40 representatives of Graduate Students United (GSU) convened at University Church on Monday night to voice concerns regarding the University’s policies for graduate students, including the structure of the Student Life Fee (SLF), University policy for international students, and child-care stipends for student-parents.

According to Madeleine Elfenbein, a GSU member and sixth-year graduate student in Near Eastern languages and civilizations, the organization was founded in 2007 in the aftermath of an expansion in University aid for graduate students that did not include current graduate students.

“The Graduate Aid Initiative punished people who were suckers enough to take the deal [of enrolling] before it got really sweet, and left them out in the cold. So, we formed a union the next year, and succeeded in doubling TA salaries,” Elfenbein said.

However, Elfenbein contends that since 2008, the University has attempted to erode GSU victories by increasing the SLF at an unreasonable rate and by not providing adequate disclosures of the money’s allocation.

The SLF, according the Office of the Bursar’s website, “provides funding for health and wellness, student activ-

ities and centralized campus services.”

The SLF is currently assessed at $347 per quarter for graduate students and $371 per quarter for undergraduates.

Eric Powell, a GSU member and third-year English literature graduate student, said the SLF for graduate students has increased by 87.5 percent increase from academic year 2004–2005 to the present. He added that the SLF does not cover services that are standard at peer institutions, such as bus passes.

In addition to discussing the SLF at the meeting, the organization also focused on the concerns of international students—in particular, the University’s policy of not refunding the federally mandated $200 annual Student Exchange and Visitor Program (SEVIS) program fee.

GSU member Sarath Pillai, a second-year history graduate student, said that the University does not offer sufficient support for international students and should assist them in purchasing necessary supplies for living in Chicago (like winter coats) as Oxford and Cambridge do.

Members also discussed supporting student-parents. Claire Roosien, a third-year graduate student in Near Eastern languages and civilizations, said that she believes that the University’s system of child-care stipends should be reformed.

GSU continued on page 2

UChicago revamps IT and user data policy Wendy Lee Maroon Contributor The University is introducing a newly updated policy on information technology and user data. The previous policy, which had been in effect since 2000, was reportedly outdated in “technology, regulatory climate, and broadening dialogue on individual privacy concerns,” according to an email sent to the student body by Ronald Thisted, the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs.

In collaboration with the faculty Board of Computing Activities and Services and the Council of the University Senate, the new policy was formed to ensure and “enhance the transparency and accountability of [the university’s] internal processes as well as to articulate and promote the ethical, legal, and secure use of information technology by all members of the University of Chicago community,” as stated in the policy.

The new policy gives significant power to the University to access information from student accounts. Though the University assures the community that its main priority is to respect users’ privacy interests, the policy emphasizes the University’s ability to access any University-related information on any user’s personal computer, laptop, cell phone, or other electronic device in case of an “imminent threat to other users or to the University’s technology infrastructure or in case of a violation of the University’s policies, legal duties, or contractual obligations.”

The policy also lists several specific courses of actions in the situation that the University technology is being used in such a way that it “poses a likely violation of the law of University Policy,” such as changing passwords, disabling computers, or even removing access rights altogether.

The policy, announced January 21, has since taken effect.

IN VIEWPOINTS

IN ARTS

IN SPORTS

What are we fighting for? » Page 3

Academy is Wild for Witherspoon » Page 5

Women’s basketball: Squad knocks off previously undefeated NYU

Senioritis by Sarte » Page 3

» Back page

American Sniper deserves a fair viewing » Page 6

Men’s basketball: Shooting troubles plague East Coast trip » Page 7

THE CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | January 27, 2015

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Hyde Park bike shop gears up fundraising in effort to avoid closure Sam Koenig Maroon Contributor A bike store has turned to crowdfunding in an effort to avoid going out of business.

DJ’s Bike Doctor, founded by Hyde Park native David Jones in 2009 and located on East 55th Street, is facing the possibility of closing as a result of missed tax payments and low sales over the past few years. Jones is asking for donations from the community through GoFundMe, a crowdfunding website, to prevent closure.

At the time of publication, the campaign had raised no money toward its $25,000 goal.

The primary reason for the store’s current troubles is unpaid taxes, which, according to Jones, are the fault of the accountants he hired right after opening his store. “I hired a very bad accountant followed by another bad one and got myself into some tax trouble,” Jones wrote in an e-mail. “I hired two very bad accountants in a row who did not make the tax payments that I thought they were making.”

As soon as Jones realized what was happening, he hired a new accountant who he described as “excellent,” and his store finally began paying taxes. “I didn’t find out for a few years, but now I have a payment plan for both the state and the IRS and have been making regular payments for a couple years now. I’ve been cleaning up and trying to get things straightened out since then,” Jones said.

Despite the fact that the business is on its way to recovery, progress is being made too slowly for the store to stay open unaided, which is compounded by the seasonality of the bike industry in Chicago; during harsh winters, people are less likely to buy bikes or need repairs on bikes they haven’t ridden in months.

“With the bad winters and slow springs we have had the past couple of years I find myself further and further behind; now I find myself asking for help from the community,” Jones wrote in an e-mail. The shop also faces competi-

GSU met to discuss painful Univ. fees, policies GSU continued from front

tion from other area bike stores, including Blackstone Bicycle Works on South Blackstone Avenue and East 61st Street and 53rd Street Bicycle Center, as well as Divvy, a bike-sharing system launched in 2013 with more than 10 area locations.

Jones has turned to the community for help to save his store. “I’ve always had a very good relationship with the community,” he said.

“I’ve been doing this both here and at Art’s Cycles [a now-defunct local bike shop] for well over 30 years,” Jones said.

Several other local businesses have turned to crowdfunding in recent years, mainly using the start-up LendSquare to raise funds.

LendSquare allows customers to pledge a loan at a set interest rate, which is repaid on a monthly basis over a fixed time period. Businesses that have used LendSquare include Open Produce and Z&H Market Café.

Jones said that he would do “whatever it takes” to thank the community in in “any way [he] can” for the help.

“[Student-parents] who are making 20 [$20,000] per year are receiving the same childcare stipend as those who make 65 [$65,000]. Stipends should be tied to income and number of kids,” Roosien said.

For Elfenbein, the result of a steadily increasing SLF, along

with other rising fees and unaddressed graduate student concerns, is reduced diversity among the graduate student body.

“We have to ask whether we want to include students who, perhaps, had some kids along the way, or have a disability, or don’t have a trust fund. If we

want to have that kind of community, we have to claim it,” Elfenbein said.

The GSU will hold a rally on the main quad at 2 p.m. on Friday. Elfenbein said that the GSU does not yet have an explicitly defined agenda for petitioning to the University, but that it is forthcoming.

Election issues include Obama library, rising housing costs ALDERMAN continued from front

she will not sign onto anything until she formally addresses the issue with her constituents.

At the January 10 forum hosted by the Coalition for Equitable Community Development (CECD), both Miles and Hairston were present along with fellow alderman candidates Robin Boyd-Clark, Tiffany Brooks, and Jocelyn Hare. One of the major concerns raised at the forum was rising housing prices and the departure of small businesses from the Fifth Ward.

If reelected, Hairston insisted that she would continue to work with small businesses and local banks. “[We] have been working for several years to link small businesses with larger corporations in order to help them stay and grow in the community as well as to stabilize the community itself,” she said, citing her

team’s past success in the South Shore neighborhood.

Her opponent noted similar goals at the CECD forum, stating that if she were to be elected as alderman, one of her main goals would be to keep housing in the ward affordable. Miles also emphasized her desire to increase the accessibility of the Fifth Ward’s main office. Criticizing the office’s current location in the Southeast corner of the ward, Miles said that she would like to “move the ward office to a busy street in the center of the Fifth Ward because it’s hard for people to get [to the office] as it currently stands.”

Miles also aims to increase the accessibility of the ward by creating “a business and an affordable housing council as well as other committees depending on the community’s needs.”

Miles also questioned the lack of economic develop-

ment on Stony Island Avenue under Hairston’s leadership at the January 14 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) forum. In response, Hairston responded, “It’s funny that [Miles] would mention a lack of economic development when I brought the city’s first drivethrough Starbucks to Stony Island, as well as the Save-A-Lot, Anna’s Linens, and the K&G Fashion Superstore. Development is constantly happening.

Her assertion that has been none is absolutely incorrect.”

Other points of disagreement between the two candidates include Miles’ plan to bring the Fifth Ward’s participatory budgeting program back, in which residents of the ward join together to come up with proposals to improve the ward.

The election will take place on February 24.

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VIEWPOINTS

Editorial & Op-Ed JANUARY 27, 2015

What are we fighting for?

Blind endorsement of the military is not patriotic: in fact, it’s far from it Mickey Desruisseaux Maroon Contributor While rather dully titled, I think American Sniper is a very good film. Bradley Cooper turns in another strong performance as the eponymous sniper Chris Kyle, and it serves as a reminder that if there’s one thing Clint Eastwood does really well besides squinting menacingly, it’s directing powerful war movies. Sniper ultimately comes across as neither a militant’s creed nor a plea for pacifism. It is nothing more or less than a stark expression of the brutal impact of wars on a microcosmic and personal level, for both the people who fight them and for those they leave behind, and it is damned effective, even if it glosses over the circumstances that led to this particular war.

Of course, the film has been making headlines recently for other reasons, namely for the accusation that under Eastwood’s direction, Cooper portrays a Chris Kyle that is much more sympathetic than his real life incarna-

tion. The Kyle of the film has misgivings and doubts regarding his actions in Iraq as time goes on, ultimately culminating in a palpable sense of regret before his tragic death at the hands of another veteran suffering from PTSD. By his own autobiographical account, the Kyle of reality wasn’t nearly so tormented. He continually refers to Iraqis as “savages” whose sole aim is to kill Americans and any Iraqis who sympathized with them, and when asked if he had any regrets responded only that he wished he’d killed more. To say the very least, had Eastwood’s version of the character dovetailed closer to reality, it would have been a very different film. I don’t know if Eastwood was obligated to have done so, but it’s a fair question to ask. All the same, the resultant furor over some of the more high-profile criticisms has reawakened an uncomfortable yet integral truth about our culture: If you ever want to see how little the freedom of expression means to some Americans, even those MILITARY continued on page 4

ALICE XIAO

| THE CHICAGO MAROON

Senioritis by Sartre Stomaching the prospect of life after college

Lear Jiang

C(Lear) and Simple Like many of my fourth-year peers, I find that I am becoming more and more preoccupied with thoughts about the future. Every

graduating senior has asked questions like “What will I be doing next year?” and “What if I don’t like what I’m doing ?” in the past

The student newspaper of the University of Chicago since 1892 Emma Broder, Editor-in-Chief Joy Crane, Editor-in-Chief Jonah Rabb, Managing Editor The Maroon Editorial Board consists of Harini Jaganathan, Ankit Jain, Nina Katemauswa, Liam Leddy, Mara McCollom, Kiran Misra, Jake Walerius, and Sarah Zimmerman.

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six months, and if they say they haven’t, they’re lying. The fact is, many of these questions don’t necessarily have an answer, and that’s why they linger in our minds.

Many fourth years are fortunate enough to have already secured jobs after graduation. I’m sure you know the type: ready to begin the path that they have planned since sixth grade, finally able to break free from school after 17 years in the classroom. But, for the vast majority of soon-tobe graduates like myself, it’s quite as if we’re sleep-walking through the career fair, shoulder-to-grubby-shoulder with the Class of 2018. Stuck are we in this ivoryspun Purgatory, unsure of where we’re headed, of what lies for us ahead—or whether salvation (read: stable employment) will ever be within reach.

And, to make matters worse, there’s Facebook. Yes, even in Purgatory. With everyone is curious about each others’ future “plan,” it’s near impossible to juggle keeping both envy and pride at bay when inevitable question comes knocking : “So, do you know what you’re doing next year?”

If the answer is no, that’s OK. Students here are competitive, but the very same ambitions that push this student populous excel too often lays the brickwork for dissapointment; and it’s easy to become discouraged whenever there’s disappointment. However, not everything is black and white, and there are many more options open to us than we may

think. Much of the anxiety rests on the fact that it will be the first time when we will no longer have a conventionally set path to follow. After elementary school there was middle school, then high school, and then, as evidenced by our presence here, college. Even if there was some semblance of choice between perhaps public or private high schools or which college to attend, the general guidelines were laid out in front of us, and all we had to do was jump through the hoops—it was an easy trajectory.

But as that path winds down and we approach the unknown that is the beginning of the rest of our lives, the choices we’re confronted with are much greater— and perhaps more immobilizing.

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote about La Nausée—the nausea that we feel when confronted with endless, and often undesirable, choices.

The resulting paralysis is not because we are unable to decide, but because we are afraid it is the wrong choice to make. But this openness of choice is both the curse and the antidote to our current dilemma. Compared to literally 99 percent of the world—and I’m not deliberately making an Occupy reference—we have more opportunities in more places than almost anyone else, yet many of us still feel like our options are “limited” in the sense that there are jobs or careers we would never consider, but are open to us if we chose to pursue them. Take a second to think if you or any of your friends have considered working a trade after

graduation? Carpentry? Plumbing ? How about working in a kitchen? For many of us, if we don’t obtain some sort of job that requires sitting at a desk, working off a computer, and/or using analytical problem solving, we think the job is not worth pursuing.

Why is that?

By June, we’ll be fortunate enough to have graduated from one of the most prestigious universities in the world; what may be truly limited is our scope of the world or the perception of the narrow goals that have been laid out in front of us. Life doesn’t automatically place you from college into another sequence of predetermined success.

Everything is no longer about school or grades; rather, it is what you make of it. While expectations exist, we determine which expectations are the most important—and whether that is starting a high-paying career, taking time off before graduate school, or buying a one way plane ticket somewhere, we need to remember that we have the agency to decide. For much of our lives, we did not necessarily set our own expectations and we were not as in control of which path to take as we are about to be. But for the first time we not only have the agency, but also the capability to approach any endeavor—the only decision is whether that knowledge pushes or paralyzes us when deciding what to do.

Lear Jiang is a fourth-year in the college majoring in political science.

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THE CHICAGO MAROON | VIEWPOINTS | January 27, 2015

“The people of the United States... are both the greatest guardians and the worst threats to the freedoms we associate with being American citizens.”

MILITARY continued from page 3 who would profess otherwise, just criticize an American soldier.

That’s the lesson filmmaker Michael Moore and actor Seth Rogen are emphatically learning after comments they made last week in the wake of the film’s release.

The notoriously anti-war Moore tweeted that he was taught that “snipers were cowards” who would “shoot u [sic] in the back,” while Rogen tweeted that the film was reminiscent of the propaganda film-within-afilm from the third act of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Bastards.

Reading the responses to these tweets, you would probably think both men had started publicly recruiting for ISIS. Actors, pundits, critics, and veterans alike pounced on Moore and Rogen, alternately demanding apologies, telling them to leave the country, challenging them to fistfights, citing their own failure to enlist, or criticizing their weight. But the one thing that was repeated on the Internet, on the airwaves, and in the printed press repeatedly was the ageold dictum that resurfaces with any military critique: Chris Kyle, and men and women like him, fought, killed, and died for our freedoms, and in exercising those freedoms to criticize them, we disrespect their sacrifice and dishonor ourselves as Americans.

There’s no way to put this gently, so I won’t try. That isn’t true, at all. It’s a pernicious myth that needs to stop being perpetuated by soldiers and civilians alike, because it does a lot more damage to our country than either seem to understand.

You don’t need to have taken a class with John Mearsheimer (though I heartily recommend it) to understand that the United States is afforded a lot of security by the strength of its military. There’s no question that there are people all over the world who would do us harm given the opportunity, and it’s equally certain that the speed, ferocity, and totality with which the American military machine can ruin their day is a powerful consideration in staying their hand. But Russia has a powerful military.

China has a powerful military. Citizens in both states can rest easily at night knowing that an external threat is extremely unlikely to endanger their well-being and that an internal threat will be swiftly punished, if not preemptively snuffed out. Yet, by any metric, I don’t know that people would argue that Russian and Chinese citizens are as free as Americans, especially in their freedom of speech. When a Russian or Chinese soldier is killed, what freedoms did they die to protect? Is it just home-field bias, or is there something inherently better about American soldiers that makes their sacrifices inherently more meaningful?

If our military defends our freedoms, particularly our freedom of speech, then it stands to reason that these freedoms are under attack by someone. To which, I would simply ask: Who? Al-Qaeda? ISIS? Boko Haram? Decepticons, Daleks, or maybe the Reapers? Who, of the many external enemies that the United States has, is specifically out to destroy or undercut our freedoms? It’s what we were told over and over again in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, in lieu of any other possible political considerations. But repeating it ad nauseam doesn’t make it true, just as the repeated (and since disproven) rationale for the war in Iraq cannot retroactively validate itself. The United States hasn’t faced an opponent that posed a sustained threat to its supremacy over its territory and to its citizens’ freedom since World War II; if you put stock in professor Mearsheimer’s thinking, you may have to go back even farther to the 19th century to find such an opponent. You can very well chalk that up to the hegemony of our military, yes, but secure

states have existed throughout all of human history. Security is not, and will never be, inherently equal to freedom.

Our rights neither come from nor are defended by our military. For all the military supposedly does to defend our freedoms, I missed the part in the history books where they intervened to protect civil rights protestors until specifically ordered to do so, or to stand against the Red Scare and the HUAC hearings, or when they marched on Congress to block the passage of the PATRIOT Act. And lest I be pegged as another spineless liberal, no, I am not a thrall of the despotic God-Emperor Obama who believes that our freedoms are derived from Big Government either. Our rights come from ourselves. The people of the United States, from whose ranks our soldiers are trained and our officials are elected, are both the greatest guardians and the worst threats to the freedoms we associate with being American citizens. They only get taken away when we allow them to be taken away to be lost under the sound and fury of our full-throated defense of the idea of freedom of speech. The reality that we make arbitrary distinctions on what exercises of freedom we choose to defend all the time.

We like the concept of the marketplace of ideas, where reason and rationality and debate reign supreme and even those ideas we find distasteful are allowed their day in the sun, so long as they don’t pose an active threat to someone’s well-being. But every time we approach the reality of what that might look like, our true colors show.

How else can you explain potential presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s condemnation of Beyoncé’s lyrics as too sexually explicit while he embraces Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever?” How else can you explain the way in which some public assemblies that result in property damage and arrests are decried as riots in Ferguson and New York, while others are waved away as revelries in Ohio and New Hampshire?

How else can you explain Seth Rogen going from being lauded as a champion of free speech last December when Sony canceled the release of his comedy The Interview (it of assassinating-a-foreign-dictator fame), to being vilified as a traitorous coward for poking fun at another film? What makes the New York Police Department’s protests of their mayor more legitimate than the protests of the police themselves by New York citizens?

Let’s not even get started on the hypocrisies here on campus now that the University’s new statement on freedom of speech is out; I didn’t see such full-throated embrace of the First Amendment and school pride during the student trauma center demonstrations or #blacklivesmatter protests, and it’s laughable to me that the most vocal cries for freedom of speech on campus are done via an anonymous internet forum for fear of being criticized for their opinions (imagine being criticized for an opinion, the horror). You know, because there’s so much intellectual value in insinuating that trans students have a mental illness, Muslim students’ faith is a plague on the earth, or that black students have only been accepted to the University thanks to affirmative action. What’s being celebrated here isn’t the freedom of speech or inquiry; it’s the freedom from being challenged on the grounds of that speech, and a desire for that speech to be as equally validated as its opposite number simply because of the legality of its existence. It says much about us as a bastion for intellectual thought that some people’s fears of the shadowy PC police are taken far more seriously than others’ fears of actual police officers.

But let me be clear: While there may be nothing intrinsically heroic about the ac-

tions soldiers perform in uniform, there is something intrinsically heroic about the simple act of putting that uniform on. Vietnam wasn’t that long ago, and yet it seems Americans have forgotten how lucky we are to have the luxury of a ferocious fighting force comprised solely of volunteers, especially considering that the government has the power to compel military service from the populace if it so chooses. Every soldier who enlists voluntarily makes it less likely, however slightly, that another civilian will ever be conscripted against their will. That is where the heroism of our military lies, in their simple existence. These are the grounds on which one can critique Moore’s comments. Say what you will about any individual soldier, their broader mission, or their actions in that mission’s services, but accusing a volunteer soldier in an active war zone of cowardice is a criticism that is almost always going to miss the mark. The suggestion that snipers are an inherently unheroic or cowardly lot by dint of their battlefield position is incredibly unfair.

But what happens once they are deployed is something that needs to be judged on its own merit, both within the parameter of their orders and without.

The blanket endorsement of any soldier’s actions as always being honorable, always being right, and always being done to defend the lives of those back in the states isn’t merely “problematic”; it is actively dangerous. To say that we cannot criticize our military, which is essentially an enforcer of our government’s will, is to suggest that we cannot criticize that government, or that to question our government is at best unpatriotic and at worst treasonous. That is not a

hypothetical; a cursory glimpse at the last fourteen years of American history is replete with evidence that this has happened and will continue to happen. To grant carte blanche all military actions in the name of defending the American people is to excuse the atrocities that some have suffered at the hands of our soldiers, and to turn a blind eye to their inevitable consequences. And to say that every soldier’s death, while tragic, is a death in the defense of our freedom is a greater insult to their memory than any Hollywood icon could ever make, because it allows the people responsible for ordering them to fight to dodge any criticism or culpability for why they really died.

By all accounts, Chris Kyle was an excellent soldier, if an unpleasant person. I only wish that he could’ve been deployed into a situation that was worthy of his talents as a soldier, and where the reality of what he fought for lined up with his beliefs. And as good of a film that American Sniper is, it elected not to make that statement. As was its prerogative— perhaps it would’ve impacted the film’s reception, or more importantly its box-office bottom line. But questioning and criticizing both the men with the guns and the men who order those guns to be fired will never be treasonous, no matter how some might claim otherwise.

For citizens of a country that was founded by rebelling against the injustices of its suzerain state, there may well be nothing more patriotic.

Mickey Desruisseaux is a fourthyear in the College majoring in political science.

ARTS

What is art?

JANUARY 27, 2015

Overzealous direction kills Tosca faster than it can kill its own protagonists MJ Chen Arts Staff At the Civic Opera House this past Saturday, it was hard to tell which was the greater tragedy—Puccini’s melodrama Tosca or its new Lyric coproduction.

A largely consistent, compelling vision did little to assuage musical disaster. Static orchestral direction exacerbated the soloists’ vocal difficulties, contributing to a dramatically unsatisfying performance.

Tosca is a drama involving three characters: Cavaradossi (Brian Jagde), a revolutionary painter; Floria Tosca (Tatiana Serjan), his fiercely jealous lover; and Baron Scarpia (Evgeny Nikitin), the lustful chief of police.

The escape of a political prisoner sparks a conflict between Rome’s establishment and republican forces aligned with Napoleon, with Cavaradossi and Tosca caught in the crossfire.

With her lover’s life at stake, Tosca must decide what she is prepared to sacrifice for happiness.

Puccini’s operas revolve around their leading ladies, and Tosca is no exception. The Puccinian heroine is a (dated, but nevertheless dramatically effective) feminine ideal: passionate and naïve, living and dying by love. Among them, Floria To-

sca is an outlier: She is jealous, headstrong, and driven. Nor does she seem a particularly doting lover, so devoutly Christian she refuses to kiss Cavaradossi in front of the Madonna. Therein lies her character development.

As the plot of the opera unfolds, circumstances force her to turn from religion to love. Her famous second-act aria, “Vissi d’arte,” expresses her despair toward an indifferent God. Ultimately, Tosca the role makes or breaks Tosca the opera—high stakes for the prima donna.

That said, Tatiana Serjan’s Tosca was literally laughable, her jealousy in the first act provoking chuckles from the audience.

Serjan lacked the gravitas to make her suffering convincing: Her vocal performance fueled further disappointment, pairing a warm middle with an upper register thirstier than a straight white boy on Tinder. The metallic bite in her high notes sounded especially grating in the second act, given its stratospheric tessitura. Like Tosca’s deadly fall in the finale, Serjan falls short of good Puccini.

Her male counterparts fared no better in attempting to realize their characters. The drama in their roles depends on interactions with Tosca; the lack of a captivating, commanding

prima donna reduces their impact. Evgeny Nikitin’s Scarpia felt more bored than menacing, somehow managing to dampen his baritone to a bagpipe-like drone. However, Brian Jagde as Cavaradossi proved the lone vocal success; his virile, powerful tenor directed positive attention to an otherwise soupy soundscape.

Director John Caird’s vision for Tosca is one of a “darker and more brutal world” than more traditional, ornate treatments.

His aesthetic aims to make the struggle between revolutionary and reactionary forces— embodied by Cavaradossi and Scarpia, respectively—central to the opera’s plot. The brooding, warehouse-like sets by designer Bunny Christie succeed at creating a brutalist-establishmentarian-edifice vibe, looking very much like the exterior of the Reg. However, Caird’s myriad theatrical flourishes are less straightforward than painfully obvious. We know from both the text and music that Tosca’s faith wavers in the face of Scarpia’s oppression—do we really need a “child Madonna spirit character” beating that dead horse? Do we really need a dummy corpse hanging from the ceiling, spinning like a morbid pinwheel, to remind us that

Despite the best efforts of Brian Jagde and Tatiana Serjan, the Lyric Opera's new production of Puccini's classic opera Tosca doesn't live up to it's legacy COURTESY OF TODD ROSENBERG

everyone dies in the end? Not even the lighting escapes Caird’s aggressive kitsch. I knew exactly when Tosca felt vulnerable because the lights dimmed and turned a particularly drowned shade of blue. Please, that’s Broadway bull.

Caird’s overzealous symbolism was orders of magnitude more forgivable than conductor Dmitri Jurowski’s catastrophic interpretation of the score. Under his baton the Lyric orchestra sounded brutish and monolithic, a far cry from the voluptuousness associated with Puccini. His most

violent opera, Tosca certainly has a sound to match its substance: powerful low strings and brass, bolstered by militaristic percussion. Yet it also has moments of extraordinary tenderness—Tosca’s devastating “Vissi d’arte” in Act Two comes to mind—when the orchestra fades to a mere thread of sound.

Balancing the two extremes takes a sensitivity of interpretation that Jurowski does not possess. This distended lower register proved problematic for the opera’s calmer moments, creating a vacuum in Puccini’s more delicate scoring, which

sounded empty by comparison. Moreover, Jurowski demonstrated total unawareness of good dramatic pacing, equating sluggishness with tension. His rubato at key points was more liberal than Cambridge, Massachusetts—paint dried faster than the last measure of the “Te Deum.”

Puccini’s Tosca is a Lyric calling card. A list of past casts reads like a who’s who of great opera greats: Renata Tebaldi, Sherrill Milnes, and Tito Gobbi, just to name a few. Saturday’s production was unworthy of succeeding their stage.

Chicago hosts rockin’ indie fest Academy is Wild for Witherspoon Kiran Misra Viewpoints Editor January 14–18, Schubas and Lincoln Hall presented Tomorrow Never Knows, which can be concisely summed up as “a music festival for moderately, but not overly, obscure hipster bands.”

It becomes clear that maybe they’re not so obscure when you note that past artists at the festival have included Bon Iver and Neon Indian. In its 11th iteration, the annual indie fest featured 46 bands and four comic acts at six venues over five days, gathering a number of both well-known bands and “up-andcoming local and national indie acts,” under the umbrella of a uniquely Chicago institution.

The headline acts of this year’s festival were Cloud Nothings, The Kishi Bashi String Quartet, and Jukebox the Ghost. The first is a lo-fi pop band hailing from Cleveland, Ohio. Since its inception in 2009, the band has released four popular albums, the most recent of which was titled Here and Nowhere Else.

The second is a rock group featuring guitar, violin, and myriad other instruments. The third headliner, Jukebox the Ghost, is a pop-rock trio from Washington, D.C. who had a Friday early evening set at Metro Theater.

The night started off with rock and roll, by an almost allfemale group, Secret Someones.

Bess Rogers (guitar), Hannah Winkler (guitar/synth), Leila Broussard (bass), and Zach Jones (drums) played songs off their 2014 EP I Won’t Follow.

Next up was Twin Forks fronted

by Chris Carrabba. The Mumford and Sons–esque group garnered whistles and hand claps for its relatable and countryinfluenced songs.

After a moment of uncertainty over the functionality of the keyboard on stage, the band hit the ground running with a piece from its recent self-titled album, which was produced by Dan Romer and Andrew Dawson, the same people who are responsible for the success of big names like Ingrid Michaelson, Kanye West, and Fun. With Ben Thornewill on keyboard, Tommy Siegel on guitar/bass and Jesse Kristin on drums, the D.C.–based threesome displayed their musical dexterity by switching seamlessly between songs you could jump up anddown to at your high school prom and more serious numbers fit for slow dancing at a wedding.

The group prominently featured songs from its 2014 album, including “Postcard,” “Sound of a Broken Heart,” “Made for Ending,” and “Hollywood,” as well as older crowd favorites “Hold it In,” “Victoria,” “Somebody,” and “The Sun.” “We’ve always been the kind

of band that juxtaposes darker lyrics with upbeat music, but this record feels a little more personal,” said Thornewill of the group’s sound. “You need pain to get joy, and joy to get pain; they’re inseparable.” This apparent contradiction is part of what has made Jukebox the Ghost so successful over the years. The three have performed for over a decade, playing 150 shows per year.

The highlight of the show was when corned beef hash was thrown into the crowd, to the delight of the audience members. TNK may have been an amalgamation of eccentric indie pop-punk personalities, but not eccentric enough to shower meat on the heads of unsuspecting 20-somethings. Hash was actually a stuffed dog, brought on tour by Kristin, a, “full grown man who does order stuffed animals off Amazon prime,” accorrding to Thornewill. Hash was tossed around the stadium to the band’s hit “Schizophrenia,” bringing a whole new type of crowd surfing to the North Side.

Jukebox the Ghost ended the night by bringing Secret Someones back up to the stage, where the two groups covered the song “Walk Like an Egyptian” together. Thornewill explained, “Sometimes, bands get together and jointly cover a song. And that’s how bands make love.”

Sam Zoeller Arts Contributor December is commonly regarded among cinephiles as the best time for movies all year. As various films attempt to court Oscar voters as the nomination process begins movie theaters are seemingly bursting at the seams with high-quality and emotionally rich films. January, not so much. With half-assed sequels like Taken 3, and poorly thought out thrillers like the Jennifer Lopez vehicle, The Boy Next Door near the top of the box office, it’s fortunate that many of the high-quality films from last month are still in theaters.

Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon and directed by JeanMarc Vallée, is one of these acclaimed films. Making more

than $34.7 million in the United States alone, Wild is adapted from the memoir of the same name by Cheryl Strayed. The storyline of this particular adaptation is an account of Cheryl’s journey across the Pacific Crest Trail—a hiking trail stretching from Mexico to Canada.

Haunted by a failed marriage, heroine addiction, and the death of her mother, Cheryl embarked on this ambitious hike in order to return to nature and find the answers to the questions within herself that she couldn’t seem to find in her real life.

Although the plot wasn’t as full of action as many other modern movies, Wild is extremely intriguing nonetheless.

The scenery alone makes it nearly impossible to tear your eyes away. From arid deserts to

snow-capped mountains to lush northwestern forests, the movie is produced in such a way that the viewer feels immersed in the locations along with Cheryl. However, the film isn’t just a prolonged video of Cheryl walking through beautiful scenery. As she progresses along the trail the movie flashes back to previous moments in her life.

Through these flashbacks the audience is able to learn more about the demons inside Cheryl’s head and gain an understanding of what it would take for her to overcome them.

Cheryl also runs into people on the trail intermittently; some are friendly, some less so. Despite a few tense interactions with some threatening men on the trail it was nice to see that, even though it was clear in cerWILD continued on page 6

Panel puts spotlight on city lighting Darren Wan Arts Contributor The iconic beacons of light have become a mainstay of the Midway Plaisance, illuminating busy sidewalks on dark, wintry nights. Such lighting projects have significant impacts on the urban experience, especially since artificial light compromises the human perception of

light in the night sky. A panel discussion this week seeks to explore the tension between artificial and natural light, a concept that underpins and informs urban design. Apart from discussing the Midway Crossings project, the panel will discuss the role that light plays on the campus of the University of Chicago, by considering how light affects human behavior

and how humans experience urban environments. Panelists will come from different backgrounds and specializations, including professors of art history, physics, and neurobiology, and architects, designers, and photographers.

Thursday, January 29, Logan Center for the Arts, Performance Lab 501, 7–8.30 p.m., free

THE CHICAGO MAROON | ARTS | January 27, 2015

6

Despite its divisiveness, American Sniper deserves a fair viewing Hamid Bendaas Arts Staff The biggest January release in history is also one of the most controversial in recent memory. American Sniper, directed by Clint Eastwood, pulled in more than $90.2 million when it opened across the country two weekends ago while the American-Arab AntiDiscrimination Committee released a report noting that the film’s portrayal of Arabs in the Iraq War was leading to increased hate speech and antiArab sentiment.

It’s fair to wonder why a movie that had earned mixed pre-release reviews and significant criticism for its alleged glorification of the Iraq War was able to gather six Oscar nominations when the more critically acclaimed Selma only garnered two. I certainly shared that concern before I went to see American Sniper myself.

American Sniper is based on the memoir of sniper Chris

Kyle (Bradley Cooper), who is credited with the most confirmed kills in U.S. military history, and its portrayal of his story has earned a reputation as a sort of mirror to any individual member of its audience.

Those who defend the Iraq War will have their beliefs confirmed through Kyle’s undying commitment to defending his country and fellow soldiers, and his commitment to the moral philosophy passed down by his father that one should serve as a “sheepdog� against the wolves of the world.

Those critical of the war, like myself, are supposedly destined to view it the same way and despise it on those grounds, or to interpret it as a largely sardonic criticism of Kyle’s commitment to his naïve sheepdog philosophy and the military, in which he ignores the larger questions of the war’s purpose and its larger effect.

I expected to come away adhering to these anti-war interpretations, but I believe

such responses miss the mark, not giving enough credit to the most challenging moral questions the film poses. Snipers have a unique position in armed conflict, in that they not only see but watch every target they kill. As we see through Kyle’s story, they not only wait to see if their target poses an imminent threat, they also fulfill a paradoxical role of being the furthest away from any target they do kill, but also in a way the closest, as they watch and follow their target for the last minutes and seconds of their lives.

Kyle is unquestionably a racist (more so in his memoir but in the film as well), commonly referring to the Iraqis as “savages.� But, due to his role in the army, he’s actually the least likely to risk collateral damage of unarmed Arabs as he is closely focused on specific targets. Several scenes in the movie show Kyle holding his trigger until he can confirm a person is an imminent threat,

and the people he kills in the film are themselves attempting to kill someone else, usually a US soldier. In these instances he can either shoot or hold his shot, but someone, Iraqi or American, will be killed in the next few seconds.

The tragedy of American Sniper lies in this conundrum: Kyle must kill and kill and kill to save lives, and though the moral tradeoff might even out—taking a life to save a life—the moral rationalizations can’t protect his humanity from being torn at the seams. “I need you to be human again,� his wife pleads after he returns home. By presenting us with this specific moral question, Eastwood demands we examine the effect of killing on the human psyche, like a modern Crime and Punishment. This is killing in its most unaffected form, where the sequence of events that leads to the situation is put out of mind, where there is no punishment or obvious reward for the killer, and

where the consequence is a net even—a life is taken to save a life.

A cynic will watch Cooper’s performance toward the end of the film, as Kyle becomes emotionally erratic and ultimately zombie-like—speaking only in mantras and half-hearted jokes—and claim that the mere act of killing is an assault on one’s own humanity to such a great extent that who one is as a person is altered completely by the first shot one takes. An optimist will look to the film’s ending, of Kyle helping other veterans and living happily with his family, and claim that killing in this context can take its toll but ultimately one can recover through altruism and support, as Kyle does.

It’s a credit to the filmmakers and Cooper that, despite my own passionate anti-war stance, I, an Arab, wanted Kyle, an anti-Arab racist, to be able to recover after it all, though ultimately I believe all he could do was pretend.

As a country, we often evaluate the Iraq War on the particulars—the consequences it had for our country, the consequences for our soldiers, and the consequences for those in Iraq—and many of us have, on that basis, decided to take a stand against it because we believe the mission wasn’t worth the cost. But American Sniper hands us the gun that was handed to Kyle and asks us to look down its scope. Following a utilitarian sensibility, I would have taken most of the shots the film’s Kyle took and probably more, and I wouldn’t have waited as long as he did to shoot in many of those cases. Kyle is a paradox: The most efficient killer in a bad war might still be the most moral person on the battlefield, but he is also the tragic center of warfare, where sand and ruin overwhelm all moral distinction and bury the sheep with the wolves.

Read the full version online at www.chicagomaroon.com.

“...the movie is produced in such a way that the viewer feels immersed in the locations along with Cheryl�

WILD continued from page 5

tain situations that Cheryl was suspicious of the men she met, for the most part they turned out to be genuinely good and helpful. By the end of the movie, the tragic character of Cheryl became extremely uplifting

through her story and generally gave Wild a nature of inspiration.

This movie has received a lot of buzz lately as a result of both the two leading ladies receiving Oscar nominations. Reese Witherspoon, who has come a

very long way as an actress from her days as Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, is up for another chance to win an Oscar for Best Actress. Her first Oscar win was in 2006 for Best Actress as June Carter-Cash in Walk the Line, and it will be interesting to see

if she can get another. Her somber and moving performance in Wild certainly makes her deserving. Laura Dern, who plays Cheryl’s mother in the various flashbacks, has been nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Although the film itself is not up

for any nominations, it brought out incredible performances on behalf of the actresses. This is unsurprising since the director, Jean-Marc VallĂŠe, also directed the wonderfully successful Dallas Buyers Club, which won six Academy Awards in 2014.

However, it is surprising to some critics as well as fans that Wild was not nominated for Best Picture. A personal story of growth and adventure, Wild is an important movie to see even if it wasn’t dubbed so by the Academy.

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THE CHICAGO MAROON | SPORTS | January 27, 2015

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With UAAs around the corner, seniors take the lead Swimming & Diving

The men’s swim team took victories over DePauw University and Trinity University this past Saturday.

FRANK WANG | THE CHICAGO MAROON

Katie Anderson Sports Staff The No. 10 Maroons had a strong weekend in their meets against Lewis University on Friday and DePauw and Trinity on Saturday.

Against DII Lewis University on Friday, the women’s team won

118–87, while the men lost a close battle by a score of 104–100. The South Siders won 12 events in total and broke four pool records at the meet.

On the women’s side, secondyear Michelle Law won the 200yard IM and the 100-yard backstroke. The freestylers performed well, with second-year Maya

Scheidl winning the 200-yard freestyle, third-year Karen Chu placing first in the 500-yard freestyle, and second-year Alison Wall winning the 100-yard freestyle. Thirdyear Ciara Hu won the 100-yard butterfly by a slim .02 seconds.

Chicago also finished first in both the 400-yard freestyle and the 400yard medley relays.

On the men’s side, third-year Matthew Veldman placed first in the 100-yard butterfly and also earned wins in the 400-yard medley relay and the 400-yard freestyle relay. Second-year Jonas Fowler added a victory by placing first in the 200-yard IM. On Saturday, both teams were victorious at the Senior Day meet against DePauw and Trinity. The men beat Trinity 205–87 and DePauw 192.5–105.5, while the women defeated Trinity 206–89 and DePauw 197–103.

The men’s team garnered nine wins. Fourth-year diver Tony Restaino took home first in the three-meter dive while also setting a school record in the process, and he won first in the one-meter dive as well. Fourth-year team captain Andrew Angeles won the 100-yard and 200-yard breaststroke events.

The women’s team also had nine wins on the day as well. Fourthyear team captain Jennifer Hill won the 100-yard and 200-yard breaststroke. Hill was also a member of the winning 400-yard freestyle relay and the 200-yard medley relay.

Before the meet, the Maroons honored their eight seniors: Sofia Gross, Hill, Angeles, Michael Charysh, Robert Kunkel, Restaino, Matthew Staab, and Kevin Steffes.

Gross was thrilled that she and her fellow fourth-years competed so well on their senior day.

“Having our final dual meet at home be victorious against two great teams was an amazing feeling,” Gross said. “As seniors, we all felt very accomplished Saturday.

After all the morning practices, training trips, and away meets, we finally made it.”

Gross praised her classmates, saying, “I couldn’t have gotten through these years as a collegiate athlete without my teammates.

Being a member of this team has been a vital part of my college experience, and I’ve learned so much about myself and from my teammates in the process. We’ve stuck together as a team and work really well together.”

Next up for the Maroons is the UAA Championships. The teams will take a break from competition this weekend to taper and rest.

“We’re all focused and ready to train for conference to finally show up as an entire team at Atlanta because last year we were split between two cities,” Gross said.

“Our hard work, dedication, and commitment this season has paid off and I’m excited to see where it will take us at conference this year.”

The championships will take place February 11–15 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Shooting troubles plague East Coast trip

DI Demons prove to be too much for Maroons

Men’s Basketball

Men’s Tennis

Michael Cheiken Sports Staff After capping a fun-filled Neon Night weekend with a dramatic victory over Emory, the No. 21 Maroons (11–5, 3–2 UAA) prepared for their first road trip of UAA conference play.

“Coming off the three wins to start off the UAA, we knew we were in a really good position and coming into the weekend we knew that great position could be tarnished with losses,” said third-year guard Jordan Smith.

They opened the weekend with a game against the Brandeis Judges (7–9, 2–3 UAA), a nine-loss team with a deceiving record. Despite their losses, the Judges had yet to lose a single game by double digits, proving that they can hang in there with some of the more successful squads.

The Judges came out of the locker room with a certain ferocity and drive, acquiring and holding the lead for a majority of the first half. However, towards the end of the half the Judges went cold and the Maroons seized the opportunity. The Chicago squad went on a nine-point run and headed to the locker room with a 30–23 lead over Brandeis.

Play resumed at a fairly even level. The scales tipped here and there, but the point differential stayed almost static as the Maroons held tightly to their lead.

With two minutes remaining, the

South Siders laid claim to a fivepoint advantage over the Judges, but it was not to stay. With a minute and a half left in the game, Brandeis’s Colby Smith sent a tipin through the netting to bring the Judges within three. Consecutive offensive fouls by second-year point guard Tyler Howard gave the Judges plenty of opportunities and they took them, making a lay-up to pull within one point of the Maroons with just 18 seconds remaining.

With the shot clock turned off the Judges were forced to foul, and they must have liked their prospects given that the Maroons possess only a single player shooting over 67% from the charity stripe.

With a chance to put the Maroons up by three, second-year forward Waller Perez missed the first free throw of his one–and–one, and the Judges gained possession of the ball, trailing by a single point.

With six seconds remaining, Perez fouled Smith, sending him to the line. Smith shot with ice in his veins, sinking both his free throws, and providing the Maroons with just six seconds to steal back the victory. It was not to be. Jordan Smith’s drive was blocked by Colby Smith and the Maroons left Boston empty-handed.

They had no time to dwell on the loss, however, as the Violets of NYU (12–4, 3–2 UAA) were waiting confidently after a 24-point trouncing of No. 4 Wash U. The Maroons could not dig themselves

out. Sloppy defense and hot shooting from NYU’s Hakeem Harris allowed the Violets to shoot 50% from both in the paint and behind the arc. The Maroons were able to keep pace with the NYU team for the first half, going into the break with a three-point lead, but at halftime the shooting hands went cold. The Maroons went 0–9 from downtown in the second half and shot just 31% from the floor. NYU showed no signs of slowing down, dominating in the second half and sending the Maroons packing with a second defeat on the weekend with a final score of 85–68.

“I think our team learned that there are no guaranteed games when playing in the UAA,” said third-year forward Nate Brooks.

“Because of the strength of the conference this year, every game is a battle and we have to approach it that way.”

Jordan Smith agreed.

“After dropping a close one on Friday it was particularly frustrating to not be able to get back on track on Sunday, especially because we had the lead at half,” Smith said. “There are no bad teams in the UAA this year and you can’t afford to take a game off because everyone is capable of beating one another. I know were a better team and we’re anxiously waiting for the next opportunity to prove it.”

The Maroons’ next game is Friday in Ratner against Case Western Reserve University.

Helen Petersen Associate Sports Editor The Maroons went toe-to-toe with DI DePaul this Friday. While the Blue Demons came away with five of the six matches, the young Chicago squad gained high-level collegiate experience and a chip on their shoulder.

“I think the most important thing we can take away from the match is we aren’t where we want to be yet. It’s easy to get complacent after a great fall, but I think this match was a good reminder that we must get better as individuals and as a team,” said first-year standout Nick Chua.

Chua is joined by three fellow firstyears in the starting lineup of six. Despite their youth, the South Siders came into the season ranked No. 17, in large part due to Chua’s performance in the fall. Chua won the singles title at both the National Small College Championships and the Central Region Championships, earning ITA All-American accolades a mere three months into his college career.

However, DePaul’s third-year Sten Leusink proved too much for the young star in a No. 1 singles matchup.

Leusink took the first set 6–3, but Chua bounced back in the second set to take the All-Big East Dutch into a sudden death tiebreaker. Leusink snuck away with the victory, winning in sudden death by a score of 7–5.

Despite a pair of close encounters, victory eluded the lone fourth-year in the lineup, Deepak Sabada. Sabada and first-year David Liu dropped the No. 1 doubles match by a slim 6–4 margin to the Blue Demon pair of fourth-year David Vieyra and third-year Jan-Wil-

lem Feilzer. At No. 2 singles, Sabada was again edged out, this time by DePaul second-year Nathan de Veer, 7–6 (7–3), 6–2.

The lone win of the day came from first-year Luke Tsai. In his first collegiate match, Tsai faced off against third-year Paul John. Tsai started out strong, winning the first set 6–2, only to drop the second set by the same score. The rookie then captured the third set 6–4 to earn his first collegiate victory.

“My goals heading into the match against DePaul was mainly just to compete my hardest and try to acclimate myself to the college tennis atmosphere because it was my first dual match,” Tsai said. “I’m really happy I got my first collegiate win, but I know that there’s still a lot of work to be done for myself and the team.”

The No. 3 singles match proved to be the most thrilling of the day. Secondyear Sven Kranz took DePaul’s thirdyear Kyle Johnson to a third set after having bounced back from a first set loss to win the second 6–3. The two battled until the very end, with Johnson coming away with a 7–4 victory in a sudden death tiebreaker. Kranz and fellow second-year Max Hawkins also suffered a 6–2 loss in No. 3 doubles at the hands of the Blue Demons.

The fledgling Maroons will look to learn from the fierce competition of last weekend as they prepare for the season ahead, with Coe up next on their schedule.

Chua echoed the sentiments of the team when he said, “Coach Tee knows what we have to work on and we’re working very hard in practice, so I’m confident that we’ll keep improving and working towards our goals.”

SPORTS

IN QUOTES “You don’t get that hot in [in the video game] 2K. Them video games are real now. That wasn’t real.”

– Golden State Warriors guard Draymond Green comments on his teammate Klay Thompson’s record-breaking 37-point third quarter in a game against the Sacremento Kings.

Squad knocks off previously undefeated NYU Women’s Basketball Russell Mendelson Senior Sports Staff This past weekend the Maroons traveled to the East Coast to showcase their talents against two strong, interdivisional teams.

Chicago (10–6, 4–1, UAA) strung together two important wins as they first beat Brandeis (9–7, 1–4) on Friday by a score of 67–50. The South Siders managed to trump this feat with an even more impressive effort on Sunday as they shut the door on any hopes of a perfect season for NYU (15–1, 4–1) topping the Violets by a score of 87–73.

“I think we had a solid week of practice/preparation and knew how to attack these teams and also how to stop them defensively,” said fourth-year Morgan Donovan regarding the team’s recent success. “We did a great job playing as a team and playing unselfishly, which opened up opportunities for myself and others.”

Donovan put together an impeccable weekend of her own with eight points and eight rebounds in the win against the Judges. Donovan, however, took her game to

another level on Sunday against the No. 7–ranked Violets as she scored 16 points and added seven assists.

“Despite their undefeated record, we treated NYU just like every game we’ve played this season.

We focused on ourselves and executing our game plan,” said fourthyear Claire Devaney.

Devaney led the upset with a double-double as she scored a team high of 17 points and collected 11 rebounds in the victory.

The Maroons did start off a little shaky against NYU as they were unable to take the lead in the first five minutes of play.

The tide began to turn late in the fourth minute when Devaney sunk a three-point shot, putting Chicago within striking distance.

The South Siders secured the lead for good less than a minute later when fourth-year Ellie Greiner blocked an NYU shot and the passed the ball to second-year Stephanie Anderson for the layup, giving Chicago a lead they never gave up throughout the rest of the game.

“Against a good team like NYU the first few minutes are always

high energy. It took us a few minutes to get in rhythm offensively and figure out how to get the shots we wanted,” said Donovan. “We also started clicking defensively which allowed us to flow right into our offense.”

With these two wins, Chicago is now positioned in a three-way tie with NYU and Wash U for first in the UAA with a month left to go in the regular season.

“We know we can’t be satisfied with where we are at,” said thirdyear Caitlin Moore on the team’s record and performance so far.

“We have to keep improving every day and keep in mind the teamwork and the little things that have gotten us to this point and build off of that.”

“Moving on through the rest of the regular season, we have to continue practicing hard and focusing on one game at a time,” explained Devaney. “If we keep working hard and playing together, I think we’ll be in good shape.”

After their last game this Friday against Case Western the Maroons will play eight games in the month of February, all of them in-conference.

Britta Nordstrom prepares to pass the ball in a game against Loras earlier this season.

COURTESY OF UCHICAGO ATHLETICS

UW–Milwaukee overcomes No. 12 Tang and co.

Team cranks out another impressive meet performance

Women’s Tennis

Track and Field

Zachary Themer Associate Sports Editor When you ask people to give a list of winter sports, their answers are typically going to include things like basketball, wrestling, swimming, and diving. However, those people would be forgetting one sport that is very much in season right now: tennis.

Specifically, the No. 12 Maroons women’s tennis team kicked off the beginning of its 2015 campaign this past Sunday against the DI University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

Despite their best efforts, the Maroons (0–1) were not able to pull off the upset as they dropped the match to the Panthers (1–3) by a score of 34.

While the South Siders may not have been able to take home the win on Sunday, this does not mean they came unprepared. Since the fall season wrapped up a few months ago, the Maroons have been consistently training for a season that they hope will end with a national championship.

“During the offseason, we focused a lot on fitness and did a lot of conditioning, lifting, and hitting in order to prepare,” said fourth-year

Megan Tang. “We also focused a lot on improving our doubles positioning.”

As for the actual matches on Sunday, things began with a trio of doubles matches. Of the three pairs the Maroons sent to the courts, only one was able to win its match.

That pair was the grouping of first-year Courtney Wa and second-year Tiffany Chen, who won the second-seeded doubles match by an impressive game score of 8–4.

Unfortunately, the other two Chicago pairs were not able to score victories in their matches. The pairing of Tang and first-year Ariana Iranpour dropped their set by a score of 5–8, while first-year Jasmine Lee and third-year Sruthi Ramaswami also fell, in their case by a score of 3–8.

Since the Maroons were only able to win one of the three doubles matches, they had to cede the doubles point to the Panthers, leaving them with an early 0–1 deficit heading into singles play.

In order to top the Panthers, the Maroons would need to win four of the six singles matches. While things initially looked very hopeful for Chicago in singles play, with five of the six women winning the opening set, the

Maroons ultimately faltered as they were only able to win three of the six singles matches, thus dropping the contest by a total score of 3–4.

Winners for the Maroons in single play included No. 2–seeded Iranpour, who won her match in consecutive sets by a score of 6–3, 6–4; No. 3–seeded Chen, who won in straight sets by a score of 6–1, 6–4; and the No. 4–seeded Lee, who also won in straight sets by a score of 7–5, 6–2.

The other three Maroons (Tang, Ramaswami, and Warren) all went to three sets in their matches, but none were able to close the deal.

While it was a tough opening loss for the Maroons, they know that they faced a strong opening opponent, and their season still looks promising.

“I’m looking forward to the rest of the season,” Tang said.

“I know we have the potential to be one of the best teams in the country, we just have to put in the work, take care of our bodies, and make the best plays during matches.”

With their heads held high, the Maroons will take to the courts again on February 6 at 5 p.m. as they trek to Dennison University for their second match of the season.

Bronagh Daly Sports Staff The Maroons had a successful meet this past Saturday at the Illinois Wesleyan University Indoor I–55 Triangular, competing in seven different events and taking home first on the women’s side with a total of 90.5 points and second on the men’s side with a sum of 90 points.

These first– and second– place finishes could not have been possible without the success of a number of individual performers. “[Third-year] Nelly Trotter and [first-year] Ade Ayoola both had exceptional days in high jump. They P.R.’d and attempted the school record—I wouldn’t be surprised if they got it sometime soon. Ayoola also P.R.’d in shot put, which moved her up to third in the conference,” said fourth-year thrower Reecie Dern.

Fourth-year thrower Kelly Wood seemed to agree with this assessment of the team’s success, adding a few more names to the list of standouts in the Triangular.

“We had a ton of great performances this weekend.

[Third-year] Ben Clark, on the men’s side, had a lifetime

P.R. in both the 60 and the 200, and hadn’t P.R.’d in a couple years so it’s obvious he’s at a really great point competitively right now,” Wood said.

Third-year Nkemdilim Nwaokolo took first in both the shot put with a distance of 12.56m, and in weight throw with a distance of 14.68m. Nwaokolo, while happy with her finish, felt there was room for improvement.

“I’m always satisfied when I’m able to contribute points for the team, even though I strongly dislike throwing shot put,” Nwaokolo said.

“I was surprised in my shotput performance seeing as though I’ve only practiced it once this entire year. As for weight throw, I’m disappointed in my ability to achieve consistent marks, but I’m hopeful for the remainder of the season!”

Nwaokolo was also quick to acknowledge the role the team has in her performance and determination.

“I think keeping the mentality that it is important to score for the team rather than focusing on individual success was the key to winning this meet,” Nwaokolo said.

Wood added to the discussion, speaking to where the team seems to be in the current season.

“This time of the season is always kind of both good and bad because conference is pretty far away so it’s hard to keep in mind that we’re working towards that. It’s also kind of rough because now we’re all bogged down with school and people are getting sick or not feeling 100 percent physically,” Wood said.

Chicago seems hopeful that it will find itself sitting in a prime place and will be able to carry some momentum into the rest of the coming reason.

“I think we need to just keep doing what we’re doing, trust the system and put in the work,” Dern said.

“As long as we keep working towards becoming a stronger team, we have big things ahead of us.”

The Maroons take to the track once again this Friday when they travel to Whitewater, WI to take part in the Warhawk Invite hosted by the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater. The meet will begin at 5 p.m. with individual competition times being confirmed at a later date.