FRIDAY • JANUARY 31, 2014
CHICAGOMAROON.COM
THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SINCE 1892
ISSUE 23 • VOLUME 125
University at risk of lowered credit rating Joy Crane Associate News Editor
Wait, wait...tell me more Panelists talk with students after a taping in Mandel Hall of NPR’s “Wait, Wait...Don’t Tell Me” on Thursday night. From left: Mo Rocca, Tom Bodett, Faith Salie, Carl Kasell, and Peter Sagal. KRISTIN LIN | THE CHICAGO MAROON
Students to petition changes to Summer Links William Rhee News Staff Students will deliver a petition this afternoon in response to recent changes made to Summer Links, a social justice internship program run by the University Community Service Center
(UCSC). Alumni of the program penned the petition, addressing it to UCSC Director Amy Chan, and Assistant Vice President for Student Life Eleanor Daugherty (A.B. ’97). They plan to deliver it to the front of Levi Hall at 3 p.m. today. The petition
has surpassed its original goal of 1,000 signatures, and approximately 80 people said on the event’s Facebook page that they would attend the delivery. Summer Links, a paid, selective internship, was previously a 10-week program offered to both undergraduates and gradu-
ates that paired students with nonprofit organizations in Chicago. According to the petition, changes slated for the program include reducing the program by one week, adding for-profit internship sites, and more than LINKS continued on page 2
Two major rating agencies lowered the University of Chicago’s outlook on debt to negative, placing the institution at risk of a credit downgrade. Standard & Poor’s rating service put UChicago’s $2.6 billion rated debt on watch yesterday, mirroring the action of Moody’s Investor Service on January 28. A report by Moody’s cited declining operating performance, forthcoming new debt, and the cost of rising debt. The University’s current credit rating of Aa1, Moody’s second highest grade, is lower than that of Northwestern University. Big-ticket construction projects over the next five years—including the expansion of the Laboratory Schools, housing for the molecular engineering program, and the construction of the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics—will rack up $1.46 billion in expan-
sion costs for the University, according to Crain’s Chicago Business. Long-term debt is projected to grow by 21 percent to $3.37 billion by the end of fiscal year 2018, according a five-year financial plan for the University presented on June 6, obtained by Crain’s. In a University press release, the financial report was described as the latest scenario projection as of June 2013, and stated that the plans were not binding. Moody’s Aa1 rating of the University has stayed constant since at least 2001. The shift of the outlook of the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC) to negative in November of last year was listed as a top concern, given that the hospital’s “surpluses have funded the University’s own deficits” in the past. S&P, which has not revised its outlook for the UCMC, flagged the University’s longterm debt as at risk of losing its AA rating, the second-highest CREDIT continued on page 2
Alum returns as VP University of Chicago doctor advances for finance and admin child abuse pediatrics, raises awareness Alec Goodwin Maroon Contributor University of Michigan administrator Rowan Miranda has been appointed as the new senior associate vice president for finance and administration and treasurer of UChicago, the University announced last week. Miranda will lead the central financial and treasury operations of the University. Miranda has served as the associate vice president for finance at the University of Michigan, where he has also been an adjunct professor since 2009. He will start in his new role this March. He will oversee financial processes like accounting, purchasing, and payroll management. “Like other administrative leaders, my role will be to support the work of our faculty and stu-
dents, and help sustain the long-term eminence of the University,” Miranda said in an e-mail. Miranda has held a number of faculty appointments in the past and also has business experience. Before his time at Michigan, Miranda was an executive partner at the consulting firm Accenture, according to a University press release. Not unfamiliar to the University, he obtained his M.A. and a Ph.D. in 1992 in public policy analysis from the Harris School. “I consider it an honor to come back to a university that has been so critical in my development as a professional, [as] a teacher, and as a person,” Miranda said. “What makes the University of Chicago so special to me is the intellectual life on campus and the intensity of focus on advancing knowledge.”
Preston Thomas News Staff For Jill Glick, M.D, who specializes in child abuse pediatrics, social work goes hand in hand with medicine. Glick works at Comer Children’s Hospital and has devoted her career to pushing the young subspecialty of child abuse pediatrics toward full legitimacy within the medical profession. In addition, she has worked to improve communication between doctors, law enforcement officers, and social service workers from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). When she began her career in 1985, child abuse pediatrics did not exist as a subspecialty. A child abuse pediatrician is, in her words, “someone who has had clinical experience and training in the identification, then the evaluation, and most importantly interven-
tion with children [exhibiting] abuse or neglect.” Equally important is child advocacy work. “Going to court is a big part of what we do,” Glick said. “It’s really kind of an interesting merger of legal interest, medicine, and social services.…The real work of a child abuse pediatrician is often policy, working with state legislatures.” Glick established the Child Protective Services (CPS) team at Comer in 1993 and has spent the past 20 years helping develop the field. Child abuse pediatrics achieved subspecialty status from the American Board of Medical Specialists in 2009 thanks in large part to her efforts. She realized the consequences of poor communication between doctors and law enforcement early on in her career. While working as an ER physician, she met four children with abuse-related
injuries that were mistakenly labeled as accidental. Three of those children died as a result of further abuse and neglect. “That was a wake-up moment. There was no communication between what doctors were saying and what police officers were finding,” Glick said. To solve this problem, she envisions child protection centers similar to trauma centers, but with a particular focus on child abuse. “There would be a medically directed interdisciplinary team: child abuse pediatricians, social workers, and subspecialists who all internally collaborate on cases. We’d have our own DCFS investigator, our own liaison or police assigned,” Glick said. In trying to actualize this vision, she has run up against frequent regime changes within the DCFS as well as the pervasive problem of limited funding for state programs.
“You’re faced with budgetary constraints and limited resources,” Glick said. “But now we’re in a great place to really get legislation.” She advocates for a statewide digital database of patient files, which would eliminate the inefficiencies caused by outdated modes of communication among social service workers. Critics of her program often point out its costs. She firmly believes, however, that the initial investment would reduce inefficiency and save money for the state in the long run. With a new DCFS director, Arthur Bishop, installed last Friday, Glick recognizes the challenges ahead but is optimistic. “We’re going to have to reeducate and get his endorsement,” she said. However, she also notes that Illinois has an impressive record in child welfare programs. “We could clearly be a leader again.”
IN VIEWPOINTS
IN ARTS
IN SPORTS
Letter: A broader perspective of social justice » Page 3
At Harris Theater, Deavere Smith bids goodbye with Grace » Page 5
Club sports spotlight: Squash » Back Page
Close to home » Page 4
In Lasky’s voice, poems take flight » Page 5
Tough competition awaits at UW-Whitewater Invitational » Page 7
THE CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | January 31, 2014
2
Administrators unconcerned with outlooks on debt CREDIT continued from front
score issued by the agency. Another ratings agency, Fitch Ratings, affirmed its stable outlook. Despite the negative outlook, the University maintains that its financial decisions are sound. “The University’s planning balances pro-
grammatic opportunities with financial risks and resources. It is more than a financial plan; it is a long-term strategy for the continued excellence of the University,” Tim George (S.B. ’74, M.B.A. ’75), Chair of the Board of Trustees Financial Planning Committee, said in an e-mail.
Weekly Crime Report By Alex Hays
Since Jan. 1
Jan. 23 Jan. 29
6
0
Arrest
» January 24, 970 East 58th Street (University of Chicago Bookstore), 3:55 p.m.—An unknown male stole four jackets from a display rack and fled from the bookstore.
0
0
Assault (multiple types)
0
0
Attempted burglary
2
1
Attempted robbery
3
0
Battery (multiple types)
4
0
Burglary
» January 26, 1225 East 60th Street, 11:45 p.m.—Two males attempted to steal a cell phone from the hand of a victim walking on the sidewalk. The suspects fled without taking it, and the victim declined medical attention.
0
0
Criminal trespass to vehicle
7
1
Damage to property (including vehicle)
47
13
Other Report
5
2
Robbery (multiple types)
0
0
Traffic violation
13
3
Theft (including from motor vehicle)
0
0
Trespass to property (including residence)
Here are this week’s notables:
S. Lake Shore
Ellis
51st 53rd
Battery Criminal tresspass to vehicle Damage to property
55th
Other Report Theft
Robbery Arrest Attempted Burglary
Professors Emeritus Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph were awarded the Padma Bhushan Award, the third-highest civilian award for distinguished contributions to the Republic of India, last Friday. The Rudolphs have spent more than 50 years researching and publishing literature regarding culture, politics, and education in India, including eight books. “The number of people interested in India has
dramatically increased over the 50 years of scholarship and research we’ve done about India,” Susanne Rudolph said. The Rudolphs have made 11 trips to India. “It was always very interesting from seeing the social, economic, and political development in India over the years to watching my three children adapt to the Indian school system,” she said. The Rudolphs now live in California but continue to research and host discussions that foster global audiences’ interest in Indian culture, crediting their time at the University for kick-starting this lifelong project. —Alice Xiao
The January 17 article “Five for Friday” printed the incorrect blurb for track and field. It should have discussed the Private School Championships.
Cornell
60th
Stony Island
Attempted Robbery
University
59th
Burglary
NEWS IN BRIEF
underwent these changes without any input from those who are most invested in it, such as alumni and former directors. We’re not going to take these changes without a fight.” A former participant in the UCSC’s Chicago Bound and Seeds of Justice programs, second-year Tyler Kissinger, Student Government Community and Government Liaison and a member of the UCSC Advisory Board, similarly took issue with the lack of transparency and external input. “[The restructure] came out of nowhere. There was no direct consultation with students about any sort of realignment in the UCSC,” he said. Barrows said the importance of the petition lies in students’ claiming ownership of the UCSC, which she said was created to serve students and shaped over the years by the interests of students. “We hope to signal to Amy Chan and Elly Daugherty that this is an issue that is not just a special interest, but that a wide swath of the community will be affected by this,” Barrows said. “Summer Links has been the cornerstone of a larger social justice program that we feel is being eroded by these changes, and the repercussions will be large.”
CORRECTIONS
57th
Traffic violation Trespass to property
LINKS continued from front
doubling the cost of housing in International House. Graduate students can no longer take part in the program but can act as program coordinators, a position no longer open to undergraduate alumni of the program. The program will also fall under the purview of the Jeff Metcalf program for the first time. “I see this as an attempt to make this more of a preprofessional, personal growth program, which to me is antithetical to the original mission of Summer Links, which is grassroots community building,” said third-year Ione Barrows, a former Summer Links participant and a College Council representative. Barrows said that the alumni decided on circulating a petition because they felt that the usual channels of communication, such as meeting the staff and director, were not transmitting the proper message. “Our major demand is for the UCSC to restore the essential aspects of the Summer Links program,” she said. “The biggest issue with these changes is the lack of transparency, and I find it ironic that this program which is all about relationship building
Professors receive Indian honor
Blackstone
Assault
(except traffic violation)
S. Hyde Park
Source: UCPD Incident Reports
Cottage Grove
» January 28, East 55th Street between Kenwood and Dorchester Avenues, 5:50 p.m.—Two men armed with a handgun took money 47th and cell phones from a retail store. The case is now being investigated by the CPD.
Type of Crime
Summer Links alums vowed to fight for program
The January 28 article “Chicago Gains Meaningful Experience Against DI Foe” incorrectly stated David Gao’s position. He is Sports Staff.
62nd *Locations of reports approximate
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FEBRUARY 7–8, 2014 University of Chicago Law School 1111 East 60th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 Reception to Follow
For the complete conference schedule, visit http://www.law.uchicago.edu/events/crimeinlawandlit This conference is free and open to the public. No response is required but seating is limited. For more information, please contact Bill Watson at fwwatson@uchicago.edu or by calling 612.408.9745. For special assistance or needs, please contact Rebecca Klaff at rklaff@law.uchicago.edu or 773.834.4326.
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VIEWPOINTS
Editorial & Op-Ed JANUARY 31, 2014
The rule, not the exception Administration and students must actively participate in increasing disabilities accessibility The student newspaper of the University of Chicago since 1892 REBECCA GUTERMAN Editor-in-Chief SAM LEVINE Editor-in-Chief EMILY WANG Managing Editor AJAY BATRA Senior Editor DANIEL LEWIS Senior Editor MATTHEW SCHAEFER Senior Editor EMMA THURBER STONE Senior Editor THOMAS CHOI News Editor MARINA FANG News Editor HARINI JAGANATHAN News Editor ELEANOR HYUN Viewpoints Editor LIAM LEDDY Viewpoints Editor KRISTIN LIN Viewpoints Editor EMMA BRODER Arts Editor ALICE BUCKNELL Arts Editor WILL DART Arts Editor LAUREN GURLEY Arts Editor DANIEL RIVERA Arts Editor SARAH LANGS Sports Editor SONIA DHAWAN Head Designer KEVIN WANG Online Editor MARA MCCOLLOM Social Media Editor CONNOR CUNNINGHAM Head Copy Editor
Although UChicago hosts interesting speaker events and student functions every day, sixth-year Ph.D. student Margaret Fink (A.M. ’07) oftentimes cannot attend—not because of scheduling conflicts, but because she is deaf and, as a result, needs captioning to fully access speaker events. While Student Disability Services (SDS) currently provides accommodations like captioning, students must request them a few weeks in advance, Fink said in a fall interview with Grey City. “Before SDS it wasn’t clear who I should be even requesting the captioning from in terms of if it was for a lecture or not just my classroom experience. And so honestly, for a lot of graduate school, I have just not gone to the events because they don’t [provide captioning]—it’s going to be a waste of my time if it’s not accessible to me.” That any student feels excluded because of a disability is simply unacceptable. This quarter, Student Government
(SG) has come up with a partial solution to this problem by launching an RSO Disabilities Accessibility Pilot Program. The program aims to make events more accessible to students with disabilities by training RSO leaders to access SDS resources. SG’s decision to find funding for this program, which is slated to be a prerequisite for any RSO applying for SG funding next year, demonstrates their awareness of accessibility problems on campus. But neither the conversation nor the solution should be one-sided: In order to make this campus and its programming truly inclusive to disabled students, RSO leaders and the administration must engage with disability awareness issues beyond basic institutional requirements. As the Maroon reported, the pilot program has yet to secure funding past its initial stages. The administration can help increase awareness about disabilities accessibility by supporting the
pilot in the coming years. It is critical that this program maintain a consistent presence on campus in order to truly make an impact on the student body. While the Office of the Reynolds Club and Student Activities is funding the pilot program, long-term funding is uncertain. The administration must ensure that the program endures; disabilities accommodation should be a given, not something left by the wayside because of funding challenges. The University is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), but as reported in Grey City, many students still have trouble accessing buildings and events. While regulations are in place and on paper, they can only solve half of the problem. Students, faculty, and other community members must play a part as well by actively providing accommodations—even without the request of an attendee. No student should feel like
requesting accommodations creates a hassle. Accessibility should be the default, not something that has to be specially requested weeks in advance. Disability should not be a barrier to a student’s experience on this campus, whether in or out of class. Without proper accommodations, disabled students are denied the opportunity to participate in dialogues and debates on campus. SG should be commended for the step they have taken to remediate the current inconveniences of these students, but the success of their program hinges upon stable funding, as well as the active participation and consideration of everyone on campus—not just those in need of the accommodations.
The Editorial Board consists of the Editors-in-Chief and the Viewpoints Editors. Rebecca Guterman has recused herself from the writing of this editorial.
ALAN HASSLER Head Copy Editor SHERRY HE Head Copy Editor BEN ZIGTERMAN Head Copy Editor SYDNEY COMBS Photo Editor JULIA REINITZ Photo Editor PETER TANG Photo Editor FRANK YAN Photo Editor
Stars and stripes Judaism and Zionism are not the same
COLIN BRADLEY Grey City Editor JOY CRANE Grey City Editor SINDHUGNANASAMBANDAN Assoc.NewsEditor ALEX HAYS Assoc. News Editor STEPHANIE XIAO Assoc. News Editor TATIANA FIELDS Assoc. Sports Editor SAM ZACHER Assoc. Sports Editor
TYRONALD JORDAN Business Manager TAMER BARSBAY Director of Business Research SHAWN CHEN Director of Internal Marketing ANNIE ZHU Director of External Marketing VINCENT MCGILL Delivery Coordinator ANNIE CANTARA Designer CARINA BAKER Designer AURNA HASNIE Designer JANE JUN Designer JONAH RABB Designer NICHOLAS ROUSE Designer MOLLY SEVCIK Designer KRYSTEN BRAY Copy Editor SOPHIE DOWNES Copy Editor MICHELLE LEE Copy Editor CHELSEA LEU Copy Editor KATIE LEU Copy Editor JOHN LOTUS Copy Editor KATARINA MENTZELOPOULOS Copy Editor CHRISTINE SCHMIDT Copy Editor OLIVIA STOVICEK Copy Editor ANDY TYBOUT Copy Editor LAN WANG Copy Editor RUNNAN YANG Copy Editor
The Chicago Maroon is published twice weekly during autumn, winter, and spring quarters Circulation: 5,500. The opinions expressed in the Viewpoints section are not necessarily those of the Maroon. © 2014 The Chicago Maroon, Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 East 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 Editor-in-Chief Phone: 773.834.1611 Newsroom Phone: 773.702.1403 Business Phone: 773.702.9555 Fax: 773.702.3032 CONTACT News: News@ChicagoMaroon.com Viewpoints: Viewpoints@ChicagoMaroon.com Arts: Arts@ChicagoMaroon.com Sports: Sports@ChicagoMaroon.com Photography: Photo@ChicagoMaroon.com Design: Design@ChicagoMaroon.com Copy: CopyEditors@ChicagoMaroon.com Advertising: Ads@ChicagoMaroon.com
By Eliora Katz Viewpoints Columnist If you link six equal lines into two equilateral triangles, turn one upside down and on top of the other and you’ve got a hexagram—you’ve also got a loaded geometric compound known as the Star of David. I once found myself sitting in a campus dining hall next to a friend who shares my Iranian heritage but doesn’t share my political views. We’ve never discussed them, but as hers are quite visible through her involvement in campus activism, we maintained this tacit agreement to keep the peace in our friendship by keeping politics out. While grabbing her fork one day, she noticed my phone, particularly the blue hexagram adorning its rose-colored case. “What’s this?” she asked, clutching my iPhone. “Oh, during Hanukkah,” I began, “they were decorating the kosher food station with stickers of dreidels, menorahs, and Jewish Stars. I asked for one and chose the star figuring the others would be so passé post-holiday season.” “Well you know how I feel about Israel,” she quipped. “I would have chosen the dreidel.” Struggling to keep my jaw from hitting the floor, I explained that first and foremost the Jewish star has served as a symbol of the Jews since the middle ages—which Google tells me evidence of this relationship actually dates back to a third–to fourth–century century synagogue—and only following the Dreyfus affair in the 19th century was it adopted
as a symbol of early Zionists. It was only after 1948 that the addition of two lines to the star made the symbol officially represent the Zionist state of Israel. When Hitler forced Jews to wear a yellow star, he did not have Zionism in mind. “If someone is wearing a Jewish star, that doesn’t say anything about her relation to Israel,” I told her. “I’m not going to accuse a cross wearer of being an infidel butchering crusader because the cross served as the crusader’s emblem.” In a similar vein, I wanted to tell her I would neither assume every Iranian agrees with the Supreme leader Khomeini, nor that every Muslim is a Jihadist. My disquiet over this incident subsided, and remained that way for some time, but was recently instigated by a distasteful cartoon by artist Peter Schrank in a magazine widely read by students here at UChicago: The Economist. The cartoon depicts Obama fettered by a seal of Congress littered with hexagrams/Jewish stars/Stars of David/Zionist symbols while trying to shake hands with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who himself is pinned down by villainous, American flag–burning Iranian radicals. The cartoon accompanied an article on the dispute between the United States and the Islamic Republic over Iran’s nuclear program, and was eventually replaced after much-deserved objection. Successful cartoons get their 1,000 words worth of meaning by using familiar images and then encouraging readers to read between the lines to eventually arrive at an intended message. The cartoon from The Economist fails in its nebulousness, namely in its ambiguous presentation of that geometric shape. Is the star referring to Jews? Israel? As exhibited, the illustrator clearly knows how to draw a flag, and if he wanted to draw Israel’s he could have. The symbolism is unclear and as a result, like in the dining hall, Zionism is equated with Judaism—an equation with dangerous consequences. ZIONISM continued on page 4
Letter: A broader perspective of social justice Since announcing substantial changes to the Summer Links (SL) internship program several weeks ago, the University Community Service Center (UCSC) has come under fire yet again. Students have expressed concern that changes to SL programming, including the addition of for-profit and philanthropic internship sites, threaten to eliminate SL’s unique and transformative focus on social justice. As current UCSC program participants and leaders, we believe that providing internship opportunities within these sectors does not threaten the critical engagement and social justice framework that SL and other UCSC programs have successively fostered in the past. Incorporating a handful of these opportunities within the SL cohort would provide unique insight into the ways in which powerful institutions can perpetuate or work to eradicate inequalities. It is undeniable that businesses and philanthropies are powerful players when it comes to both the perpetuation of social inequality and the promotion of equal opportunity and fairness. Businesses determine wages, benefits, and working conditions for employees across the globe, and play an integral role in both community vitality and systemic inequality. Philanthropies provide billions of dollars annually to make the work of nonprofits and other social initiatives possible. There is much to critique in the relationship between these sectors. It is exactly this critique that makes internships with forprofit institutions appropriate for a program such as Summer Links. As Michael McCown described in his Viewpoints op-ed (“Cash
Rules Everything Around Me,” 1/14/14), SL in the past has asked program participants to “maintain a critical eye toward the relationship between money, power, and social inequality.” However, instead of suggesting that the inclusion of for-profit internships would dismantle this critical engagement, we believe that introducing internships in these sectors would force students to more closely examine the relationship between money and power. It is a discredit to UChicago students and the critical thinking skills we value to suggest that participants would be unable to maintain a critical eye if for-profit internship sites were included. In reality, including internships with corporations and philanthropic foundations simply offers another perspective from which to examine social justice. In our experience as participants and leaders within two UCSC programs, we have learned the value and necessity of broad, cross-sector partnerships in the pursuit of social equality. As MAPSCorps interns throughout the past year, we worked within a partnership that included the University of Chicago Medical Center, small community organizations, and local businesses to support a program that promotes the health and vitality of individuals and communities on the South Side. As Group Leaders and later Program Coordinators for the social justice pre-orientation program Chicago Bound, we introduced first-year students to a variety of perspectives on social justice by exposing them to the work of government agencies, small community organizations, UCSC continued on page 4
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THE CHICAGO MAROON | VIEWPOINTS | January 31, 2014
Close to home Though art’s practice and promise are as rich as they’ve ever been, it’s all too easy to scroll past
By Ajay Batra Senior Editor Something I always think about when I see posts from Humans of UChicago on Facebook is that people don’t seem to understand that only Humans of New York (HONY) could never have failed to become a hit. Among all the high-minded photography projects that have followed it into existence, HONY is the only one with such a vast supply of subjects: New York City is a bottomless reservoir of “interesting people”—white women with short hair, people of color who look vaguely industrious, adorable mixed-race children, and any older person at all. I’m being reductive, of course, but I’m not really. HONY’s essential mission, to ache ceaselessly after some essence of humanity by sampling from its most sprawling and diverse coalescence, will never “succeed,” whatever that might entail. But it will consistently come close, in the eyes of its audience, by virtue of its always seeming to be coming closer. Its auteur, Brandon Stanton, always manages to ask each subject precisely the right question to evince a remark whose powerful air of profundity is itself usually evinced by an inoffensiveness so overwhelming that we have no choice but to applaud it, in awe of the sheer flatness and uniformity of the Wonder Bread on display before us. To use
another food metaphor, since I’m hungry, looking at a HONY post is now like eating a bacon-wrapped date, or one of those tiny little hamburgers: Though it was once a novel experience, the immediacy of its newness has dissolved, rendering it a figure for the sort of feeble and pathetic “difference” qua quirkiness we embrace on the Internet for lack of anything better to do there or in our lives. I’m being harsh, of course, but I’m not really. Though I am being reductive. I’ll admit that there are some HONY posts with substance. Those are most frequently ones that capture a being—and, indeed, being—on the verge. A scan of images from the past week alone shows stories of dealing with depression, the trauma of walking away from long-term partners, and even the psychic pain of losing a long-loved spouse. In the most compelling cases, these human stories express the sort of experiential meaning capable of evoking emotional catharsis when seen by the right set of eyes. This does not, however, negate the reality that the composite average HONY post, according to a very sophisticated algorithm I devised, depicts a Yorkshire Terrier/little girl hybrid—wearing a plaid denim tutu, and a pearl necklace from her husband, who was a WWII fighter pilot and quite the dancer—holding a fudgesicle made of flowers. The composite average top comment is, “KEEP it strong!! keep it STRONG ON!! Simple :) This brings the hope the joy for humanity 8) Simple.” I’m sorry—that is really harsh. I’m being too dismissive. That’s honestly something I’m working on. It’s too easy to derive enjoyment from senselessly knocking things that are essentially good. I suppose what I meant when I said that “people don’t seem to understand” that only HONY could never have failed to become a hit is that, in light of the understanding of it I just explained, I have a hard time making sense of the various offshoots the project
has inspired in cities across the country, in other countries, and even on our campus. What the most meaningful HONY stories share with their audience is perfectly global: They distill the human wisdom of people for whom the present moment is liminal, and constitutive of profound liminality, or for whom that is the case for a visitable moment in their past. The project could really be called “Humans”—though I would argue that calling it Humans of New York is as good as doing that. It’s not just about the size of the city, though. Reasonably large places like Denver and Detroit and Seattle, which boast their own similar pho-
“
What the most meaningful HONY stories share with their audience is perfectly global....
”
tographic anthologies, are no doubt smaller, but also lack the inherent universality of the outward-facing (figuratively, but also literally, in the geographic and historical senses) monument to human multitude that is New York. Few other places are idealized in quite the same way. And that’s why, for example, Humans of Denver’s Facebook bio collectively describes its subjects as “a peaceful people of great depth & diversity”—a line that reads like something out of the journal of a pleasantly surprised South Sea explorer in the 1850s. What I’ve realized is that unlike HONY, and as in other cities of its size and stature, Humans of Denver is motivated by a curiosity that is more narrowly ethnographic, and
which is undergirded by civic pride; similarly, the relatively well-known Humans of Tehran, for example, will, for better or worse, always be defined by its (stated) mission of showing that “Tehran is not as faraway as you think it is.” These projects aim to document “a people,” rather than “People.” The meaning they make will therefore not endure without regard to place; in nobly aiming to bridge geographic and cultural difference, it is contingent on that difference. That’s why, in my view, only a Humans of New York (or a Humans of London or of Tokyo, or something, if one of these others is ever actually done really well) is readily poised to become a truly global sensation. After all, what kind of Facebook user chooses to confront and parse difference when she can bravely combat the way she’s been feeling lately instead? It’s almost too easy for this Brandon guy; all the other Humans pages do the same on-the-ground work that he does, yet yield meaning that’s a little more challenging, both to create and appreciate. And that’s why they’re all the more valuable, and all the more likely to appeal to a narrower group of interested people, and all the more likely to cater to that niche until a HONY-esque book deal never comes, and all the more likely to become unviable and die out. It’s tough, this game; ask anyone who’s ever tried to build and keep an audience when dealing in things like this, in human things—it makes me want to squint when I look far ahead, though not for the reasons I want. What’s sad is that I think another way of saying all of this is that we find it too hard to show genuine interest in knowing things about other people that have nothing to do with us, even when those stories are miraculously served right up to our faces. So yeah, enjoy Squirrels of UChicago. Ajay Batra is a third-year in the College. majoring in English.
The Economist’s political cartoon misassociates Social justice includes the philanthropic sector ZIONISM continued from page 3 Not every Jew is a Zionist and not every Zionist is a Jew. If Jews and Zionists were one and the same we wouldn’t have two separate terms. Some ultraOrthodox Jews vehemently oppose the Jewish state, some ultra-secular aren’t supporters either and, as a Pew study shows, many Jews are just plain apathetic. In fact, Jewish criticism of Israel is now more prevalent than ever before. Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig named his most famous book, The Star of Redemption, after the symbol, and he himself felt returning to Israel would entangle the Jews into a worldly history they should abjure. The Economist cartoon can be compared to the use of the Islamic crescent in a certain context to refer to Turkey instead of Islam—another precarious association. Why is equating Jews with Zionism dangerous? Because Zionism has become stigmatized, and associated with “racism,” “warmongers,” and “apartheid.” Because in Europe anti-Semitic attacks have been rising since the Intifada. And because in 2012, Mohammed Merah attacked a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, killing a rabbi and his two sons, and then chased a seven-year-old girl, shooting her at point-blank range to “avenge Palestinian children“ since “The Jews kill our brothers and sisters in Palestine.” But if you want, forget about this sticky semantic syllogism; there is a larger issue with the cartoon: Taken out of context, that same cartoon from The Economist would fit perfectly in an article titled “Jews run America” or “Jews control the West.” Intentionally or not, this cartoon perpetuates pernicious prejudices against Jews by echoing similar images of the past and present. The cartoon suggests that Israeli/American Jews are using their control of America’s government to thwart peace. Its style evokes anti-Semitic canards around since before the Middle Ages, continuing on to the Weimar Republic, and still to this day. Schrank’s cartoon feeds into age-old conspiracy
theories (like the Elders of Zion) that point at the menacing Jewish control of western governments. The cartoon is even reminiscent of the cartoon in the Qatari Al-Watan newspaper illustrating an Orthodox Jew driving with Obama’s head as a gearstick and the U.N. logo as his steering wheel, in addition to Steve Bell’s Guardian cartoon depicting Netanyahu as a puppeteer with Tony Blair and William Hague as finger-puppets. The Economist can cloak toxic readings in subtlety, but by incorporating the star in the emblem of the U.S. Capitol, with a “hint, hint,” it encourages readers to jump to conclusions about Jewish control over Washington. I’m not denying the strength of the American Jewish lobby. The problem rests in depicting the Jewish ability to advocate in a democracy, like any other minority, in a sinister manner. There are no hook-nosed men in the back of a synagogue discussing world domination over lox and bagels. Jews operate just like any other people. But by slyly comparing Jews to flag-burning Iranian extremists, and by harboring specific and established anti-Jewish imagery, Schrank’s work implies Jews have evil intention disguised by the legality of Congress. If not overtly, the imagery subliminally propagates baseless Jewish stereotypes which lead to unfounded hate and violence. Israel should be criticized when deserving, and questioning if Jews should be lobbying Congress in an effort to hamper diplomatic efforts is not only legitimate but also in Israel’s interest. Nonetheless, a loaded cartoon with dark implications is not the way to go about addressing the issue. Especially in recent days, as Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are on the rise, it’s important to know the allusions, words, and facts associated with the images around us, and to think twice before calling someone the Z-word. Eliora Katz is a first-year in the College.
UCSC continued from page 3 local businesses such as B’Gabs Goodies, and large philanthropies such as United Way. By providing students with these cross-sector experiences, we learned that people in a variety of fields and professions care about their communities and are committed to addressing inequalities. We agree that social justice is fundamentally about achieving fairness and that programs with a social justice focus should provide students with opportunities to think critically about inequalities and the ways in which they can contribute to solutions. However, our experiences with UCSC programs have shown us that forprofit and philanthropic sectors are key players in achieving social justice, and that it is not productive to exclude these sectors from the conversations about how to effect social change. Professionals and people from all sectors and backgrounds bring different, equally valuable skills and resources to the pursuit of social justice. A more inclusive view of social justice,
a view we see the UCSC encouraging in its programs, welcomes contributions from all sectors and encourages everyone to work toward solutions, whether from a nonprofit, a hospital, a law firm, or a corporate social responsibility office. While it is clear that UCSC should incorporate more student input into its decision-making processes and increase transparency, it is also clear that the UCSC remains true to its commitment to social justice and fostering an understanding of service and civic engagement in the student body. The for-profit and philanthropic sectors are key players in the realm of social justice, and providing opportunities for students to critically engage with them certainly falls within UCSC’s mission of supporting students in becoming productive, thoughtful citizens and effective, inspiring leaders in their communities. —Amelia Hansen amd Emma Gonzalez Roberts, Class of 2014
SUBMISSIONS
The Chicago Maroon welcomes opinions and responses from its readers. Send op-ed submissions and letters to: The Chicago Maroon attn: Viewpoints 1212 East 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 E-mail: Viewpoints@ChicagoMaroon.com The editors reserve the right to edit materials for clarity and space. Letters to the editor should be limited to 400 words. Op-ed submissions, 800 words.
ARTS
Heartlandia JANUARY 31, 2014
At Midway Studios, Nutting gambles with controversial debut Daniel Rivera Arts Editor
I was 13 in a Tampa Bay middle school when Debra Lafave was infamously arrested for repeated sexual misconduct with a boy just one year my senior. I remember my mom driving me to school as radio jockeys crudely puzzled over why she’d do it with a 14-year-old when a woman with her looks could’ve had any man. This symptomatic rationale found footing in court, where Lafave’s lawyer argued that her incarceration would be tantamount to “putting a piece of raw meat in with the lions.” The words stuck, Lafave faced no time behind bars, and a few years later, author Alissa Nutting wrote Tampa, a novel loosely inspired by the events that transpired. Though Nutting went to high school with Lafave, at a reading in Midway Studios last night she repeatedly stressed that her fictional character, Celeste Price, was not Lafave, nor representative of her—in fact, Nutting balked at the idea that anyone might contextualize Celeste as a real human at all. Retrospectively I consider myself one of the lucky ones for whom the rampant sexual abuse Nutting explores here only ever registered peripherally. My sixth grade science teacher hanged himself at the local YMCA ropes course after child pornography allegations, but only after I’d entered high school. I was in high school, also, when the mother of an old friend was arrested for engineering a sexual relationship with a student in a class for which she’d been substituting. Lafave
taught at a middle school miles away from mine. But it has been a persistent and sharp nagging, refined into a single point of inquiry only as I’ve aged—the question of why here? Nutting’s Tampa, despite its name, makes no effort to answer this question. Locality is secondary, and only relevant as Celeste plans out where she might take her pubescent lover in order to have him most wholly. There’s no sense of place beyond the ubiquitous humidity which causes sweat to bead on Celeste’s skin as she watches 14-year-old Jack Patrick from her car, parked outside his house. When asked “Why Tampa?” by someone at her reading, Nutting responded with frankness that parts of the city were just, well, “porny.” “It’s a better setting than Chicago,” Nutting said, “where people pour rock salt in the driveway and come over in down coats.” Celeste teaches eighth grade. She’s beautiful, and married to a trust-funded cop named Ford. Together they’re the American standard. Ford’s brother-in-law drunkenly slurs at their wedding, “You two are like the his-and-hers winners of the genetic lottery.” Celeste spends their money on a strict beauty regime and barbiturates, the latter so she can sedate herself whenever Ford’s sexual urges become irrepressible. “All adult men just repulse her,” Nutting said. Unless, of course, these men allow her to get closer to adolescent boys, at which point they’re tolerable at best. Celeste is mentally unhinged and knows it. Hers is a psychosis wellhoned, sharpened with intention and repression so that she might get what she wants.
And so she does, with Jack. Their relationship is the crux of the novel, Lolita-like in its scope but with none of the pretense of florid language; the comparison is one Nutting shuns. Hers is an aesthetic of shock. In the opening sequence, Celeste touches herself and trails a wet finger along her classroom desks, hoping to leave a pheromone trail that will tell the pupils everything “she isn’t allowed to verbalize.” Proceedings escalate from here. “It’s sexual,” Nutting warned us before her reading, and everyone laughed. Celeste as a character eschews any pretense of sanity or innocence. Nutting doesn’t disservice the character by saddling her with a maligned past of sexual misfortune or male exploitation. At no point in Tampa’s proceedings does anyone feel compelled to offer her a motive other than want. Neither Nutting nor Celeste is interested in your sympathy. Said the former, “I wanted her to be the Hannibal Lecter of female sexual predators.” It’s a gamble, and with Nutting’s capable prose, it pays off. Nutting veers so confidently into caricature that Celeste is dimensionalized almost collaterally. She is the rare narrator who goes so far beyond the known and explored spectrum of female identity and agency that her existence exposes a gaping lack of a certain kind of representation. In Tampa, Nutting not only confronts our socially-imposed double standards of sexual depravity and our conflated values of beauty, but she also lays waste to the conventions of her own medium.
The cover from the upcoming paperback edition of Tampa, which critics have called a “gender-swapped Lolita.” COURTESY OF ECCO PRESS
It’s a pill deliberately hard to swallow, but once the last page’s aftertaste subsides, you’re glad for it. And yet, for a novel so committed to being too much, for me it often felt like not
enough. Tampa as a place maintains a nebulous sense of identity, a sum of expressways stitching together swaths of suburbs that have nothing to do with each other. You wind along TAMPA continued on page 6
So, Seinfeld and his car collec- IFC’s Babylon is a rip off the tion walk into a comedian... old nighttime soap block Will Dart Arts Editor In December 2012, some 14 years after Seinfeld last aired, a now-famous Twitter account launched an attempt to “update” the series. What would Jerry, Kramer, and company be doing these days? @SeinfeldToday pitched new episodes to the Twitter-sphere, wherein the beloved characters had to contend with modern (in) conveniences: smartphones, fixed-gear bicycles, awkward Facebook conversations. For a time, the tweets were pretty funny. It’s since started to feel a bit flat—visit the account today and you’ll see a lot of hipster buzzwords shoehorned into old Seinfeld pitches. Besides, it’s no longer necessary to wonder what “Modern Seinfeld” would really look like—because it
exists. It’s called Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. How do you really modernize a show like Seinfeld? Mainly: Put it online and make it free. Comedians in Cars is a webexclusive series distributed by Crackle; you can find it on YouTube or on its very own slickly-designed website. It’s paid for by Acura, in the form of hilariously obvious product placements (“Hey, it’s one of those new Acura food-trucks!”) and dumb ads written by Jerry Seinfeld himself. But beyond that, the show is entirely Seinfeld’s baby, and without NBC executives around to get in his way, he’s been able to fully eliminate what’s always stood in the way of Seinfeld’s greatness: plot. As Larry David says in the show’s premiere episode, Jerry has “finally done the show about
nothing.” The format is almost exactly the same every time. Seinfeld fires up one of his hundred-odd vintage cars: a vintage Austin-Healey 3000, a 69 Jag, a Delorean. Seinfeld calls up a comedian friend for coffee: Ricky Gervais, Sarah Silverman, Patton Oswalt. And then Seinfeld announces, with obvious excitement, “I’m Jerry Seinfeld, and this is Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” Beyond that, there is no script—it’s just 12 to 20 minutes of two funny people talking about cars, coffee, good and bad gigs they’ve had, and why people tip after meals instead of before. As of late, watching this take place has almost always been the best 12 to 20 minutes of my entire week. More overtly than Seinfeld, CCC continued on page 6
James Mackenzie Arts Staff The “pure spoof,” as I’ll call it, is a type of story that shouldn’t work under any rational analysis of what makes a good story. We enjoy stories by being invested in characters, by being pulled along by a series of interesting events, or by appreciating the artful construction of set-ups and payoffs. The “pure spoof ” genre, which includes films like Airplane or Scary Movie, instead seeks to have characters the audience does not care about, plot events played for gags, and “revelations” determined by the material being spoofed. Why we enjoy these works remains something of a mystery, but the good ones are effective at making us laugh. By this
standard, IFC’s new fauxdrama The Spoils of Babylon is a resounding success in deliberately terrible television. Produced by Internet comedy group Funny or Die, the show is presented as a re-airing of a 1970s or ’80s miniseries based on the work of author Eric Jonrosh, played by Will Ferrell. The story itself follows the rise and fall of the Morehouse family through the illicit love affair between adopted siblings Devon (Tobey Maguire) and Cynthia (Kristen Wiig). The ensuing story takes place over numerous decades— despite the characters’ appearing to age by merely a few years—and finds Devon helping his father strike it rich in the oil fields of Texas before flying in the Pacific Theater of World War II
and even joining the Beatnik movement of the ’60s. The show begins with Ferrell as author Jonrosh extolling the virtues of his work while drinking copious amounts of wine in an empty restaurant. From there, we see Maguire and Haley Joel Osment engage in a deadly shootout before Maguire drives (with toy cars on an obvious miniature set used to show travel) to a building so he can record his story while bleeding out from a gunshot wound. No illusions are ever made about what this series strives to be and if anything, it grows more ridiculous over time. From Wiig teleporting around a room between shots to Maguire bringing home a mannequin wife (voiced by Carey Mulligan) from England after the BABS continued on page 6
THE CHICAGO MAROON | ARTS | January 31, 2014
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Seinfeld web series hitting stride in third season With Spoils of Babylon, “there is always the sense of effort...that its contemporaries lack� BABS continued from page 5 war, every scene goes the extra mile to grab the laughs, every premise more ridiculous than the last. Yet the show never stretches without purpose: Nearly every joke or absurd moment is either a twist on some trope from the material being parodied (although I admit that my knowledge of such old TV miniseries is very limited) or some kind of bizarre metaphor. This stands in stark contrast to many contemporary spoof movies that seem content to take a caricature of a figure from some recent movie, pair it with a fart joke, and call that parody. Babylon never shies away from the absurd, but there is always the sense of effort put into the show that its contemporaries lack. If nothing else, the show is a fine example of the quality that a
spoof can reach when really talented people are involved. Of course it helps that the silliness on display is much more palatable in small doses than in a feature-length film. Each episode lasts just over 22 minutes and for the most part moves from scene to scene in quick succession. The good jokes never overstay their welcome and the bad jokes are quickly ousted before they bog down the show. So on a larger scale, it’s probably good that this show is limited to such a short run so it can avoid the inevitable downward spiral that seems natural to its brethren. As it stands, watching the entire series once the remaining episodes are available will make for an entertaining afternoon time-waster just in time for midterms.
Nutting’s Tampa “feels certain of its place in time�
ALICE BUCKNELL
| THE CHICAGO MAROON
CCC continued from page 5 Comedians is a study on how comedy is made: It’s about how a particularly enterprising performer can take an awkward interaction, a weird social norm remarked upon by accident, and turn that into next month’s rent. No matter who Jerry is having lunch with, the show ultimately amounts to two craftsmen talking about their craft, albeit in a pleasantly meandering sort of way. It’s enjoyable to watch, in the same way that it’s enjoyable to overhear two plumbers discussing pipe repair at the next table over. I don’t believe I’ve ever audibly laughed while watching Comedians, but I tend to smile throughout. Slow though the actual content may be, the show’s packaging is ridiculously slick. Gratuitous car and coffee porn shots abound. The camera pans lovingly over the liquid sex curves of an all-original 1949 Porsche 356/2 as slap-bass funk plays in the background. Switch to a close-up of roasted coffee beans, freshly plucked from the feces of a civet cat. And either it’s another feat of trick camerawork, or nobody at the cafÊ cares that Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno are having lunch
right over there. (Most of Seinfeld’s friends, legendary comedians though they might be, are still only somewhat recognizable in public, although Alec Baldwin makes a bit of a scene.) It’s not clear that Comedians was originally intended to be anything more than an elaborate joke on Seinfeld’s part. But at three seasons deep, the show appears to be hitting its stride, despite deviating a bit from Seinfeld’s original project. The season opener, in which he goes out on Louis C.K.’s boat, is my favorite of the series. And having exhausted his supply of old Jewish men in season one, Seinfeld seems primed to delve into yet weirder and more spectacular realms of coffee and conversation with some of the legends of comedy’s newer guard. This week’s episode features Tina Fey, and I’d love to see him have an espresso with some members of the Apatow Gang. If the talent pool in L.A. and New York City is half as deep as Jerry’s garage, we may have another 200 seasons in this one. Seinfeld in 2014 is not Seinfeld in 1998—and so far, there isn’t really anything wrong with that.
TAMPA continued from page 5 curving overpasses and see subdivisions and almost-subdivisions, where the land was cleared before a deal fell through and the undergrowth has come to take it back. In this sense, Florida has always seemed to me a place of false natures, liminal spaces of openness, so that every cow pasture comes with a giant “For Sale� sign butting against its barbed wire. There’s less a sense of land than one of predevelopment. There’s beauty, too, in a rare sort of wilderness that is locked in a battle which has elsewhere been won. The seven o’clock sunset hits “porny� strip malls and leathered skin alike, with an irreverence that makes anything beautiful. Beautiful like Celeste Price, who maintains a false
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nature of her own. It’s not that Nutting loses sight of these details, but that they were never in her crosshairs to begin with. Certainly, as Nutting is a Tampa native herself, these weapons were in her arsenal. I was looking for an explanation where she had no intention of providing one, if only because she is painting with broader strokes. And regardless of where it finds itself in space, Tampa feels certain of its place in time. As an exploration of extremes, of caricatures and psychosis and our collective inability to frame female sexuality as anything but welcome and repose, Nutting’s Tampa feels ripe and necessary, a fanged mouth poised to bite the social hand that’s overfed it.
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THE CHICAGO MAROON | SPORTS | January 31, 2014
Tough competition awaits at UW–Whitewater Invitational
Chicago to face UAA second-best and worst on weekend road trip
Track & Field
Men’s Basketball
Isaac Stern Sports Staff This weekend, the Maroons will line up against the strongest competition they’ll see this year outside of Nationals. In the nineteam field at the Leonard “Squig” Whitewater Invitational, five teams rank in the top 10 in DIII for the men and the top 15 in DIII for the women. DI UW–Madison will also be in attendance. Chicago has little chance to win this meet. However, it will provide an excellent opportunity for the Maroons to run against a level of competition similar to what they’ll encounter in the UAA. On the women’s side, UW–La Crosse, UW–Oshkosh, UW– Whitewater, North Central, and Monmouth are as talented as conference rivals Wash U and Emory. On the men’s side, the Maroons will challenge themselves on all fronts in a true test of their abilities. “The field this weekend is going to be incredible,” second-year Michael Bennett said. “The only events at this meet that don’t have anyone in the top 10 in DIII are the 800 and the 3000 on the men’s side.” The most interesting aspects of the meet will be the individual matchups. With such high-quality competition, Chicago’s studs will have their hands full against the athletes who will likely be their toughest competition to qualify for Nationals. “We’re in a recovery week this week so our team is hoping to put up some big times and marks this weekend now that we’re rested up,” Bennett said. The men’s distance team, led by 20thranked fourth-year Dan Povitsky, will like-
ly face a faster pace during the race. The women’s 4x4 has bright hopes for Nationals and will compete against the best 4x4 in the nation, UW–La Crosse. Both the men and women’s DMRs, ranked seventh and 15th, respectively, will race the fastest runners they have faced all year. In addition, fourth-ranked third-year Pam Yu will take on the best and ninth-ranked long jumpers in DIII. The pole vault will also be key to follow. Including Chicago’s own Bennett, the meet will feature five of the top 10 pole vaulters in the country. Bennett currently ranks second with his height of 16 feet, 0.75 inches and Jeffery Hill of UW–La Crosse ranks third by less than two inches. The winner in the pole vault of the meet could very well be crowned national champion come March. “I’m coming back from a few weeks off and I’m hoping to jump high,” Bennett said. “The pole vault competition is basically a preview for the national meet so I’ll get to see where I stand compared to the other athletes.” The level of competition does not make this a must-win for any of the Maroons. The top 13 men and top 15 women in the national rankings for each event qualify to Nationals regardless of where and when they entered the rankings. No matter what happens, expect the Maroons to crowd the infield of Kachel Fieldhouse and display their love and affection for their teammates as they compete against the nation’s best. The meet will start on Friday with the men’s events at 5 p.m. and conclude on Saturday with the women’s events, which begin at 11 a.m.
Jenna Harris Maroon Contributor After touching both ends of the spectrum last weekend with a thrilling win against Carnegie Mellon and a disappointing loss to Case Western, the Maroons take to the road once again to face Emory and Rochester. Today at 8 p.m., the South Siders (10–6, 3–2) are bringing the frost to Atlanta. The snowstorm of two inches that hit the Southern school last week is nothing compared to what the Maroons are bringing to the Eagles (12–4, 4–1). Emory is known as a tough competitor in all sports, especially on the basketball court. Chicago needs to watch out for fourth-year forward Jake Davis and fourth-year guard McPherson Moore because the Eagle offense can get out of hand very quickly if the Maroon defense doesn’t get a handle on it from the beginning. “A lot of people say we are a three-pointer team,” said fourth-year forward Charlie Hughes. “But I think our strengths lie in our defense.” This was proven last Friday in Chicago’s buzzer-beater win against Carnegie Mellon (9–7, 2–3). Ironically, Emory’s one UAA loss was to CMU. Two weeks ago the Eagles lost to Carnegie Mellon because they could not keep up with the Tartans’ second-half aggressiveness. The Maroons saw this same tactic a week ago and overcame it. They were able to stay with CMU when Emory couldn’t. Emory may be tough, but a win is completely plausible and within the South Siders’ grasp.
Sunday sees the Maroons in Rochester, NY to play the University of Rochester Yellowjackets (7–9, 1–4). The Yellowjackets, in terms of stats, are the antithesis of Emory. This is somewhat of a strange situation for Chicago. In the UAA, one might put Rochester toward the bottom of the conference, but looking at its record, one can see that the one conference team it did have a victory over is one of the opponents that the Maroons failed to beat: Case Western (10–6, 2–3). Rochester’s key to that victory was its underclassmen on the bench. Its rookies have seen some good and some bad games but when they are in the zone, their shooting game can really make a difference. The future of the UAA Championship is anyone’s game right now. Teams expected to do well have done so, but not without their mishaps, and the same goes for the underdog teams. The Maroons are up there with their victories against CMU and NYU. This week saw a hard few days of practice and now another long weekend of travel, but if there is one quality that we know a Maroon student-athlete has, it is perseverance and a drive to succeed despite any sort of adversity. Fourth-year guard Derrick Davis and third-year guard Royce Muskeyvalley agreed after last weekend’s games that they need to start each game with “intensity” and “to continue to push the tempo throughout the entire game.” This is the mindset of the Maroons as they leave Chicago. Tip-off against the Eagles is set for 8 p.m. in Atlanta on Friday, January 31 and against the Yellowjackets on Sunday at noon.
2014 unbeaten run on the line at stacked Wheaton tourney Wrestling David Gao Sports Staff Chicago has charged out of the gates after winter break, going 3–0 at the Chicago Duals and garnering first place out of five teams at the Elmhurst Tournament. That momentum will be tested this coming weekend, as the Maroons travel to Wheaton College to participate in the Wheaton Invitational today and Saturday. “We are coming off some pretty nice wins, so that definitely helps morale. Hopefully we can keep that streak alive this weekend. It is probably the toughest tournament we have all year until regionals, so we will definitely need to step it up. But I am feeling good about where we are, and I believe the other guys are as well,” thirdyear Mario Palmisano said. Palmisano was one of Chicago’s top competitors at the tournament last year, placing sixth in his weight class and contributing to the 45.5 points which ultimately placed the Maroons 15th out of 29 teams. Traditionally, the Wheaton tournament has hosted numerous competitive teams, many of which were capable of taking the championship. “The Wheaton tournament has pretty clearly been the toughest DIII tournament in the nation. There will be DII scholarshipped team[s] in the field as well. We expect a total of 31 teams, with many of them being nationally ranked,” head coach Leo Kocher (M.B.A. ’87) said.
As a two-day tournament, the Maroons will need to head into the competition prepared for multiple matches. “The challenge for all tournaments is the fact that there are a lot of matches packed into the two days, so not only physical but mental endurance is crucial to wrestling well,” first-year Paul Papoutsis said. “We have some tough competition at the tournament, so it will be great experience for us before Case and NYU.” With each weight class averaging well over 25 wrestlers, many of whom are nationally ranked, including 10thranked first-year Chicago wrestler Charlie Banaszak, Chicago will have to work hard throughout the tournament. “With the quantity and quality of this tournament you have to be ready every match—knocking off a ranked wrestler early does not get you to the awards podium because it is likely there will be other tough wrestlers you will have to get past. You can have some great wins in this thing and still not place,” Kocher said. After the Wheaton College Invitational, the South Siders will have two more meets at Augustana and Case Western before the UAA Championships, held two weeks from now on February 15 in New York. “Every competition builds on the ones before it. We try to get better every week and correct our mistakes as we get further into the season. UAAs is always a big one and hopefully we get better this week and next in preparation for that and regionals,” Palmisano said.
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SPORTS
IN QUOTES “People get a bad perception of Salt Lake City... It’s the perception which is like, ‘Mormon, no fun.’” —Former Utah Jazz point guard Deron Williams on the city’s reputation among players
First-years starting in season opener Up-and-coming club team holds its own Men’s Tennis
Second-year Gordon Zhang prepares for the upcoming season at practice earlier this school year. COURTESY OF UCHICAGO ATHLETICS
Alexander Sotiropoulos Senior Sports Staff There is a lot of hype surrounding the University of Chicago men’s tennis program. After receiving commitments from four four-star recruits, according to tennisrecruiting.net, the Maroons have what is considered the best incoming class in school history arriving in the fall of 2014. But, as excited as head coach
Jay Tee is for the future, he does not want anyone to forget about the talent this year’s team has. “The team now is very, very good, and I think we know that, and we tell them that every day,” Tee said. “This year’s team has plenty of things to accomplish. We don’t need to lean on other people to achieve those goals.” Tee is already putting a large amount of trust in the squad’s
newcomers. While the lineup is not completely finalized, Tee has an idea of the starters to open up the season. First-year Sven Kranz has been placed at No. 2 singles and No. 1 doubles, firstyear Brian Sun is going to start at No. 3 singles and doubles, and first-year Max Hawkins will be at No. 2 doubles. “I wouldn’t put them up that high if I didn’t feel confident they could win,” Tee said. “That’s where they deserve to be.
They’ve all earned their spots.” Kranz has already had success at the collegiate level. He reached the semifinal of the ITA Regional Championships in the fall before falling to teammate and No. 1 doubles partner thirdyear Deepak Sabada 6–3, 6–3. The duo reached the final of the tournament as well, barely losing 5–7, 6–4, 1–0 (8). Sabada will take the helm at No. 1 singles while fellow thirdyear Ankur Bhargava has rotated from No. 2 to No. 4. “I don’t think there’s a No. 4 player in the country he can’t beat,” Tee said. Second-year Gordon Zhang holds No. 5 singles, and fourthyear Zsolt Szabo returns from a year abroad to take the No. 6 singles spot. In doubles, Szabo joins Hawkins at No. 2, and Bhargava teams up with Sun at the No. 3 spot. As a whole, Szabo said team morale is the highest it has been in his time at Chicago. “The whole team has been working very hard these past weeks because we know that we could be capable of great things this year,” he said. “Unlike past years, now, each team member individually has the mentality of putting a lot of work into reaching our goals—not just relying on talent—and this creates a very productive team atmosphere.” The Maroons’ goal this week is to beat Kalamazoo in Michigan. Although the Maroons have had recent success against the Hornets, besting them 8–1 last year, Tee is quick not to overlook Kalamazoo. The Hornets have won their conference tournament for 75 years in a row. “They definitely have our full attention,” Tee said. “We’ve got to be ready; that’s for sure.” Doubles is set to start at 1 p.m. on Saturday.
Club sports spotlight: Squash Derek Tsang Sports Staff The University’s squash club has been around for less than two years, but they’re already making waves. Fourth-year Ameer Allaudeen founded the club in spring 2012 to replace a squash RSO whose members had, for the most part, graduated. Beginning with only two players with competitive experience, the club has quickly expanded to a roster of 12, including a larger group of recreational players. “I’ve been playing squash for most of my life,” said Allaudeen, who picked up squash as a middle-school student in Singapore. “I wanted to keep playing at a competitive level by establishing a club team.” After participating in a handful of tournaments last year, the men’s team is halfway through its first full season in the College Squash Association. It’s ranked 58th with a record of 5–1. The club started its season with a November 8 loss to Northwestern, finishing fourth out of eight teams at the Mid-America Collegiate Cup despite missing three of its top five players. It’s been unbeaten since; on Friday, it beat its crosstown rivals 7–2. Allaudeen’s goal for the team is to make the Men’s College Squash National Team Championship in February. “We are aiming for a top 40 or 45 finish nationally,” he said. Squash is a racquet sport akin to tennis, but instead of hitting the ball over a net,
players share a single court surrounded by four walls and aim the squeezable rubber ball at the front wall. As in tennis, players have one bounce to return the ball. However, the ball can ricochet off the side and back walls, introducing subtleties of spin and angle. “The sport is pretty physically and mentally intense, requiring both strategy and fitness,” said second-year Seth August, the club’s treasurer. A 2003 Forbes article rated squash the healthiest sport to play, with an especially large number of senior players. As a one-on-one sport, squash is a good litmus test for one’s character. “You can learn a lot about another person by how he conducts himself on the court,” August said. American squash is more East Coast than Midwest, but Chicago’s team has an international flavor; the sport is huge in Singapore and South Asia. The club is coed, with “a good mix of experienced and beginning players,” August said. The club has a close relationship with METROsquash, which uses squash as a way to engage students both academically and physically. METROsquash helped the club get off its feet, and in return club members volunteer at the urban squash program’s practices. This weekend the team is headed to St. Louis to face off against Wash U, Sewanee University, and the University of Minnesota in its last regular season tournament.
Maroons aim to extend three-game winning streak in Atlanta and NY Women’s Basketball Adam Freymiller Sports Staff The Maroons (9–7, 3–2 UAA) have plenty to look forward to in the coming weeks. The team has dropped over 80 points in each of its past four games, winning three straight, and looks to continue this string of exceptional performances to climb the UAA standings and send a message to its conference opposition with upcoming road games against Emory (14–2, 3–2) tonight and Rochester (7–9, 1–4). Today’s game against Emory promises to be very tightly contested. While the Eagles are currently No. 17 in the NCAA DIII rankings, they have lost two consecutive games to Brandeis and NYU, and if the Maroons have their way today, Chicago will surpass them for third in the UAA standings. To do this, it’ll need to find a way to shut down Emory’s offense, led by fourth-year
point guard Savannah Morgan with 14.5 points per game, and ensure that it maintains ball control and makes the most of its offensive possessions, as the Eagles have averaged over 14 steals per game. Overall, it looks to be an entertaining spectacle and a challenge the Maroons will relish. Rochester currently resides at the bottom of the UAA standings, but this is potentially a misleading statistic. Although the Maroons have had their fair share of close victories themselves, the Yellowjackets have lost five games by a margin of five or fewer points and are 5–2 at home this season. Look for the Maroons to double-team top-scoring third-year guard Ally Zywicki and force other Yellowjackets to step up, and use their guard play and rapid transition offense to create opportunities at the other end. While each conference game brings with it varying degrees of strategic, physical, and mental challenges, the team appears to be taking each
conference tilt at a time. Head coach Carissa Sain Knoche believes that if the team can work on improving its collective play during practices, the results will take care of themselves irrespective of the opponent. “We continue to work on getting better as a team in practice. With each game we have an opportunity to show our improvement and this weekend I thought we definitely did. The focus is on us, more so than on the opponent,” Sain Knoche said. Some players, such as fourth-year guard Maggie Ely, believe that the conference schedule allows players on different teams to rekindle the flames of competition from previous matchups. “Conference games are always a great test for a team’s endurance and intensity; over the years of playing in the UAA you learn how specific players and teams operate, and I’m a true believer that conference games let great players and teams
shine. Rivalries run deep in conference play, and these games are so fun [for] us,” Ely said. Ely went on to emphasize the holistic nature of how the team has bonded this season. “Each girl on our roster brings a different perspective to the team, on and off the court. I’m so proud of the team, [be it third-year guard] Claire [Devaney]’s consistency, [second-year guard] Paige [Womack]’s spark, or [first-year forward] Britta [Nordstrom]’s willingness to compete at a level beyond her collegiate experience. It would be foolish of me to try and pinpoint one player who has been more valuable than the next in regards to our success.” Certainly, Chicago is optimistic that these combined attitudes and outlooks will provide important wins for seasons to come, and be vital down the stretch of its current one. Tip-off is at 5 p.m. tonight in Atlanta, and tipoff on Sunday is at 1 p.m. in upstate New York.