021315 Chicago Maroon

FRIDAY • FEBRUARY 13, 2015

CHICAGOMAROON.COM

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SINCE 1892

Students and faculty mourn victims of Chapel Hill shooting

ISSUE 26 • VOLUME 126

U-Pass passes on to the next phase Sarah Manhardt News Editor 10 out of 12 divisions of the University voted in favor of Student Government (SG)’s referendum on U-Pass, a CTA program that provides unlimited rides to full-time students during the school year. Approximately 50 percent of students in the College voted on the referendum, with 55 percent voting in favor.

“I’m incredibly encouraged by the amount of turnout we received,” SG President Tyler Kissinger said. “[T]here’s obviously a lot of very real

interest in the issue, and I think this is a fairly commanding margin in the College, particularly given the turnout.”

4,878 students voted in the nonbinding referendum across 12 divisions of the University. The College, Law School, Biological Sciences Division, Booth School of Business, Divinity School Graham School, Harris School, Humanities Division, Institute for Molecular Engineering, and Social Sciences Division all voted in favor of U-Pass; Pritzker School of Medicine and the Physical Sciences Division voted against it. The School of U-PASS continued on page 2

Obama library: one step forward Marina Fang & Ankit Jain Senior News Editor & Senior News Staff

The Maroon Veterans Alliance hosted a Points for Patriots tournament last Sunday at the Ratner Athletic Center. The three-on-three charity basketball game was attended by more than 150 people.

COURTESY OF ZANE MAXWELL

Tamar Honig News Staff On Thursday evening, approximately 50 students and faculty members gathered in Bartlett Quad for a vigil commemorating the lives of Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, and Deah Shaddy Barakat. These three Muslim Americans—newlywed couple and the bride’s younger sister—were shot and killed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on Tuesday.

Police said that the incident allegedly occurred because of a dispute with a neighbor over parking, but the families of the victims believe that it was a hate crime, dating back to previous run-ins with the same neighbor. People across the United States and the world have also criticized the media for not reporting on the news for at least eight hours after it occurred.

Third-year Maira Khwaja, who helped organize the vigil, discussed the importance of arranging this community response, even on such short notice.

“I think there is a lot of grieving and fear and

concern in the Muslim community, and I think we want grieving together. That’s a strong tradition within the Muslim community, for people to mourn together and pray together,” Khwaja said.

“Having it in such a public setting where allies can come to support is very comforting because we’re at a time right now where on our campuses, Muslim students feel harassed or unsafe, especially if they’re wearing hijabs.”

Fourth-year Sumaya Bouadi, a member of the Muslim Students Association and another organizer of the event, also discussed the need to create a more welcoming and inclusive environment for Muslims.

“I think there’s definitely a lot of tension. It’s not only a UChicago campus thing—it’s a United States thing,” Bouadi said. “People point this out in terms of the media coverage of this attack: it took eight hours for any media outlet to report it, and it had already exploded over the Internet by that point.”

The candlelit vigil outside Bartlett Dining Hall HILL continued on page 2

Kagan urges the U.S. to “lean forward” Adam Thorp News Staff Is America indispensable? Robert Kagan, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former presidential foreign policy advisor, sought to answer this question during a talk on Thursday evening sponsored by the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism (CPOST) and the International House’s Global Voices lecture program. Kagan responded to this question with an emphatic yes, arguing for a more proactive policy aimed at enforcing a liberal world order and maintaining American primacy.

Kagan began by laying out his view of American foreign policy since World War I. He argued that a policy of American disen-

gagement seemed appropriate in the context of the peaceful 1920s, when America had an isolationist foreign policy. This was discredited, he said, by the chaos of the 1930s, followed

by World War II. “I’ve often lately been accused of thinking that it’s always the 1930s as I look ahead at the future; I want to plead guilty only of always thinking it is the 1920s. Which is to say that the global order…is a fragile thing and it’s amazing how quickly it can crumble,” Kagan said.

The postwar era was built on a basis of American power to avoid a repeat of that collapse. Kagan described this era of American supremacy as a period of exceptional stability, economic growth, and democratic flourishing.

The Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners unanimously voted to transfer control of parkland in Washington Park and Jackson Park to the City of Chicago on Wednesday evening.

The land contains two University-proposed sites for the Obama Presidential Library.

No land will actually be transferred unless UChicago’s proposal is selected. The agreement has a reversionary clause, which would revert control of any land not selected back to the Park District. The Chicago City Council still has to vote to approve the land transfer.

The move is an effort to shore up UChicago’s bid, which came under criticism from the Foundation because neither the University nor the City owns the land for either of the proposed sites.

The Board’s vice president, Avis LaVelle, said that the transfer of the land allows the city to make the strongest possible case for the library.

“No decision that you make is going to make everybody happy, so we know that there will be those who leave here today entirely unhappy with what we’ve done,” she said. “But what we do feel like we are doing is positioning the city as well as we can to be favorably considered in the grand sweepstakes for the Obama public library.”

The Board’s general counsel said at the meeting that the land transfer agreement would require the City and the Obama Foundation to make their best effort to keep the footprint of the actual building at five acres or less. This requirement is not listed in the publicly available legislation text.

LIBRARY continued on page 2

Univ. crime lab takes on youth violence Alice Xiao News Staff The University of Chicago Crime Lab is soliciting innovative strategies to combat youth violence as part of a new competition. Winning entries will receive up to $1 million for implementation of their proposed programs. Submissions can come from any nonprofit organization or group of nonprofits whose work focuses on youth violence.

Youth violence is the second-largest cause of death for 10- to 24-year-olds nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This problem is especially pronounced in certain urban neighborhoods. The Chicago Public Schools system (CPS) has consistently recorded around 290 to 330 student victims of shootings per year, according to statistics from the Chicago Community Trust and police records from The Huffington Post.

“The competition has the potential to discover a very promising intervention. One of the main aims of the design competition is to rigorously evaluate a promising idea, to work to build the body of social science evidence about what works, for whom, and why,” Amanda Norton, communications director for the Crime Lab, said. The entries should focus on youth ages 13 to 18 who live in communities with high levels of violence or on the parents of such youth.

KAGAN continued on page 2

This competition is a collaboration between the Crime Lab and Urban Education Institute, with funding from the MacArthur Foundation and Get In Chicago. Winning organizations will work alongside researchers from the Crime and Urban Education Labs to implement their proposals. The competition timeline requires submission of a statement of interest by March 2. One or more winners will be notified later that month and then will submit a full project proposal.

Previous Crime Lab competitions have produced successful policy programs. The much-lauded Becoming A Man program was the winner of a competition held by the Crime Lab in 2008. It involved an unprecedented randomized controlled trial of nearly 2,500 adolescent boys in 18 schools in Chicago.

Results for that academic year saw a 44 percent reduction in violent-crime arrests among participants during the program year. The program was part of the motivation behind President Barack Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative that launched in 2014, encouraging communities to develop cradleto-college strategies for helping children prepare for educational opportunities.

“Building evidence about what works to prevent youth violence and build human capital among atrisk youth could have a significant impact on youth in disadvantaged neighborhoods not only in Chicago, but also in other cities throughout the country,” Norton said.

IN VIEWPOINTS

IN ARTS

IN SPORTS

A time for progress » Page 4

Beards, woodsmen, and lumbersexuals—oh my! » Page 5

UAA Championships underway in Atlanta » Back page

Winter Dragon drags on » Page 6

NYU, Case Western stand in the way of elusive title » Page 7

Campus crush saga » Page 4

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THE CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | February 13, 2015

10 out of 12 University divisions voted in favor U-PASS continued from front

Social Service Administration did not participate, as it already has U-Pass.

The CTA allows universities to join the program by school or division, though all full-time students in participating schools or divisions must take part in the U-Pass program. If approved by the divisional deans, U-Pass will be rolled into the Student Life Fee and will cost approximately $85 per quarter per student, roughly equivalent to four CTA rides per week. Students on financial aid will have the $85 fee factored into their aid awards.

Kissinger said he thinks the decision of the Office of Financial Aid in the College to subsidize U-Pass for students on financial aid was a major factor in the success of the referendum in the College.

During the three-day voting period, discussion about U-Pass circulated throughout the College, especially on social media. Many students focused on the fact U-Pass would be subsidized for students on financial aid, with some saying that students not on financial aid would effectively subsidize the U-Pass program for students who receive financial aid.

Kissinger objected to this characterization.

“I think by participating in U-Pass you are not subsidizing other peoples’ travel,” Kissinger said.

“You pay your own fee, which is for your U-Pass, which you can choose to use or not to use, based on your preferences.”

Kissinger said SG will work with deans of each division, who have the final say on U-Pass.

Park District voted 5–0 to transfer parkland to city

Senior students from the Hyde Park Academy speak in support of the Obama Presidential Library at a Chicago Park District meeting on Wednesday.

ANKIT JAIN | THE CHICAGO MAROON LIBRARY continued from front

Most presidential libraries have used up to 50 acres of land, but the buildings typically take up only around three acres. The entire site of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, the only existing library located in a major city, covers about 10 acres in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood.

Friends of the Park, a public park advocacy group in Chicago, said it is considering a lawsuit to prevent the land transfer. Park land by law must be used for a public purpose, according to Fred Bates, a lawyer and a member of the organization’s board. “Illegal is a tricky word, but it’s a good one. It would be illegal,” he said. “There are certainly legal bases on which to challenge any use of park land that isn’t clearly continuing a high level of public use, and the Obama Library is in fact a private usage.”

While the Barack Obama Foundation, a private entity, would obtain title of the land to build the library, the administration of the library would be transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration, a public entity, once construction is completed. Bates said he is unsure how this would affect a possible lawsuit.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel commended the board’s vote in a statement. “I am committed to moving heaven and earth to ensure that the Obama Presidential Library makes its home on Chicago’s South or West Side, not on Manhattan’s Upper West Side,” he said. “Today’s action by the Park District is another step toward ensuring we’ve met the President’s request to secure the three finalist sites.”

The Foundation affirmed that the vote “improves Chicago’s bids for the Obama Presidential Center,” according to a statement. “We appreciate the City of Chicago’s efforts to develop a competitive and robust proposal and the engagement of the community and City Council in an open dialogue about the potential of a future Center.”

The 5–0 vote followed a series of community speakers at the board’s regular meeting at the Jesse White Community Center on the Near North Side on Wednesday afternoon. LaVelle

noted that including Wednesday’s board meeting and the two community hearings in January, the board has heard about eight hours of community input on this issue.

Park District President Bryan Traubert recused himself from the discussions and vote due to his ties to the Obama administration. He has raised money for President Obama and is married to Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker.

Bernita Johnson-Gabriel, the executive director of the Quad Communities Development Corporation, which works on economic development projects on the South Side, spoke in favor of the library at the vote.

“What is conceivably a sliver of either park can be parlayed into a huge piece of the pie for South Side communities that have endured years of disinvestment. I appreciate the sentiment for those who have told me that parks should be off limits for the Obama Presidential Library. I do,” she said. “But most likely, they have not experienced the decline and disinvestment these communities have endured. They most likely do not live in communities with double-digit unemployment, crime, and overall substandard quality of life.”

Hyde Park resident Robin Kaufman told the board to delay the decision and consider not transferring the land.

“I beg you, I implore you: take your time. Wait until the spring. Go out and see what these parks look like, how they’re used, what those trees look like. Defer your decision. Don’t let other people bully you into giving away and giving up [the land]…you’re entrusted with this land,” she said.

Warren Beard of the Woodlawn Community Development Corporation organized a group of high school seniors from Hyde Park Academy to attend the meeting and make a presentation in support of the library, as part of a service learning project for the students.

“It was easy to convince them to come, with Hyde Park being right across the street from Jackson Park. It would be a perfect location, and it’ll mainly be African-American kids taking advantage of the library,” he said. “We just want it in Chicago and on the South Side. This is [Obama’s] home.”

NEWS IN BRIEF

NEWS IN BRIEF

UCMC opens new Heart and Vascular Center

Univ. designer creates recycling website

The University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC) officially launched the longawaited Heart and Vascular Center earlier this month. This venture will employ more than 40 faculty experts in the fields of cardiology, cardiac surgery, and vascular surgery. The center will be headed by UCMC Medical Director James Liao, Surgical Director Valluvan Jeevanandam, and Chief of Vascular Surgery Christopher Skelly.

Liao said the creation of the center was the joint effort of Pritzker Medical School Dean Kenneth Polonsky, UCMC President Sharon O’Keefe, Jeevanandam, Skelly, and himself. “[The Heart and Vascular Center] has been in development in various forms, over the past 13 years,” Liao wrote in an e-mail.

“It gained momentum with my arrival at the University of Chicago in August of 2012, and was finally developed (infrastructure and strategic plan) over the past two years.”

Liao added that the new center will “facilitate multi-disciplinary collaboration in a disease-centric approach to patient care, improve coordination of care and…patient experience, and optimize efficiency, eliminate redundancy, and reduce costs.”

In a previous statement on the UCMC website before the launch of the center, Liao wrote that “we are building toward a new home [with the] University of Chicago Heart and Vascular Institute, which will include: inpatient and outpatient facilities, physician offices, a multimodality imaging center, a digital classroom and a translational research center (with adjacency to basic science laboratories).”

According to the UCMC website, more than 40 percent of Americans are expected to have some sort of cardiovascular disease by 2030. —Katherine Vega

Your building doesn’t recycle? There’s a website for that.

Claire Micklin, an interaction designer in the University’s IT Services department, and a group of developers from across the city have created a website called My Building Doesn’t Recycle! to survey buildings around the city where landlords don’t comply with recycling codes. The group— a part of Open Gov Hack Night (OGHN), a weekly technology event in downtown Chicago—developed the website on January 27.

According to Chicago law, “the owner of each high density residential building shall provide to the residents of each building an effective recycling program.” The legal code defines “high density” as having five units or more. Many landlords however do not comply with this law and the city does not do much in the way of enforcing it, Micklin said. The website allows residents of Chicago to list their apartment building if they find that their landlord isn’t complying with the legal code.

Micklin contends that “the goal of creating the website is to get the city to enforce the law.” My Building Doesn’t Recycle! says that "Once there are a significant number of reports [their] group can begin to use these reports to show elected officials a rough estimate of how many multi-unit buildings are not providing recycling services.”

Third-years Carson Gaffney and Sam Taylor, residents of MAC a partments—a widely used property management firm in Hyde Park—live in a building listed on the website as not complying with recycling codes. Taylor said that his building is in fact set up in accordance with the code, but the main issue is that the residents don't comply with the recycling code. “There are three bins, two for trash and one for recycling, that are all used by residents of the complex,” he said.

Gaffney added that “[the bins are] not sorted or organized, but it has to do with the residents of the buildings…a lot of people just dump their trash in the recycling bin.” —Isaac Easton

“They’re not looking for less America.”

KAGAN continued from front

In an interview session following Kagan’s speech, political science professor Robert Pape pushed Kagan on whether the rise of new global powers might contest America’s status as a superpower. Kagan argued that China, which he sees as the most likely challenger to the standing world order, faces substantial social problems and an international community skeptical of its rise.

“Fundamentally, I think we are in a better strategic position then we were through much of the Cold War… Our situation remains tremendously advantageous for maintaining this world order,” Kagan said.

In response to Pape’s concerns that Kagan’s theory of a “lean forward” strategy might actually threaten American primacy by alienating America’s allies, Kagan claimed that many governments in the Middle East and Eastern Europe would prefer a more engaged United States.

“They’re not looking for less America; they’re looking for more America, insofar as

they get alienated...because they’re getting less than they want…It’s not about love, it’s not about affection, it’s not that they think we're smart. They know we’re not smart, they don’t really love us—[but] they have the need,” Kagan said.

After the interview, the floor opened to questions. Audience members asked Kagan about the relationship between support for Israel and American national interest, a rising China, and Russian strategy in Ukraine. On the last issue, he argued for American involvement.

“I think we are being a little bit psychologically bamboozled by [Russian president Vladimir] Putin, but, if you ask me, at the end of the day I would say ‘move a NATO division forward, if that’s what it takes.’ Does he want to have a war with NATO?... However, I think that that’s not necessary; I think that we can keep him at bay,” Kagan said.

CPOST will host talks addressing foreign policy issues every two or three months over the next two years.

Approximately 50 people gathered on Bartlett quad HILL continued from front

began with a welcome speech and prayer recited in both Arabic and English led by Imam Tahir Abdullah, Assistant Director of Spiritual Life and Advisor for Muslim Affairs at the University.

“Gatherings like these are proof that faith and prayer and the space to worship in community with others are essential, not tangential, to human life,” Abdullah said. “Whether you come from Syria or Nigeria or the South Side of Chicago, your lineage, your community, your historical memory about where you come from is precious and must be preserved and protected.”

Abdullah’s words were followed by a moment of

Fatiha, a specially designated time of silence to recite the Surah al-Fatiha, a prayer for God’s guidance in the first chapter of the Quran.

Following these speakers, students and faculty were invited to share words, prayers, and poems in an open mic format.

“This hints at a larger problem of people feeling unsafe because of how they look, what they believe in, the way they decide to practice their beliefs by wearing a headscarf,” said second-year and student vigil organizer Maha Ahmed. “I just want people to realize how unsafe a lot of us feel on this campus and it means a lot that you all are here just willing to stand with us.”

THE CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | February 13, 2015

3

New News representatives discuss future of journalism Anne Nazarro News Staff Gossip, cat videos, and the future of journalism were the talk of the night at a panel event with Gawker Editor-in-Chief Max Read, BuzzFeed Executive Editor Shani Hilton, and former Vice Editor-in-Chief Rocco Castoro, hosted by the Institute of Politics on Wednesday. The panel, called The New News, was moderated by Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute.

Castoro, near the beginning of the talk, announced that he was no longer working at Vice. “As of last night, I’m no longer with Vice…. I was there for a decade and loved so many people there and they’ve done great work,” he said. He did not elaborate on the details behind his departure.

Each of the guests discussed their status as “new media,” the missions of their respective websites, what they wanted to be for their readers, and the future of their own websites and of journalism as a whole.

Read spoke about Gawker’s status as a blog and its dedication to reporting news to its readers as people would actually talk about it.

“The goal is to make everybody on the inside, to tear down the gatekeepers,” he said.

Hilton affirmed the idea that BuzzFeed wants to be a trustworthy source for its audience, especially in her division of News.

Although BuzzFeed is mostly known for its GIF-enriched lists, quizzes, and “cat videos,” as Rosenstiel mentioned, this is not all that BuzzFeed is now, according to Hilton. “We hadn’t been presenting ourselves as a trusty source of news, and that’s what[’s] been changing in the past couple of years,” she said.

For Vice, Castoro said that even though

the way news is distributed has changed, the trust of the audience is most important. “One thing that Vice has taken from sort of the old guard is just listening to its readers and viewers, and those are really the people at the end of the day you have to answer to,” Castoro said.

Despite the fact that each source wants to be trustworthy, they have different definitions of what that means.

Gawker, for example, intentionally doesn’t have an official code of ethics. “My sense of ethics codes is that they tend to be used to trap us,” Read said.

Read means that he wants readers to know that what they’re being told is, while not entirely accurate in the details, honest. “I think that ‘trustworthy’ is a sort of funny word.… I want people to trust that we are being honest with them, not that what we are writing is true,” he said. “We’ve always been a gossip rag and we embrace that.”

However, both Hilton and Castoro agreed that in being trustworthy, you can’t take yourself too seriously. “Journalists should be funny because they have to deal with all the crappy stuff,” Castoro said.

Hilton expressed that when people find out that BuzzFeed supplies not only entertainment like lists and quizzes but also hard news, their opinion of the website as a whole goes up. “The answer is not to do less of the fun stuff, but to do more of the news,” she said.

The take-home message, it seemed, was that the current media is always the “new media.”

“Journalism is constantly evolving. What we think of as journalism as a permanent thing has never been the case,” Rosenstiel said. “You are going to invent the next journalism.”

ASH WEDNESDAY WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 18 A day for remembering who we are: mortal, imperfect, beloved

12 noon and 7 pm | Bond Chapel Ecumenical services for Ash Wednesday, with communion and imposition of ashes Led by Rev. Bromleigh McCleneghan, Associate for Congregational Life and Stacy Alan, director of Brent House 8:30 am - 4:30 pm | Rockefeller Chapel “Ashes to go” throughout the day 6 pm | Rockefeller Chapel We warmly welcome Archbishop Blase J. Cupich to celebrate and preach at the Ash Wednesday Mass, at the invitation of Calvert House and the Roman Catholic community at the University. The service features the Mass of Creation sung by the Calvert Choir, with Schola Antiqua offering anthems of Guillaume de Machaut, Heinrich Isaac, and Palestrina.

Msgr. Patrick Lagges, Executive Director of Calvert House, concelebrates.

Sponsored by Spiritual Life/Rockefeller Chapel and Brent House, the Episcopal ministry

rockefeller.uchicago.edu 5850 South Woodlawn Avenue | Chicago, Illinois 60637 | 773.702.2100

You have books, but do you have a

book collection? t Do you love searching for books on a particular topic?

t Are you interested in the physical features of books, such as illustrations or bindings? t Are you passionate about owning books by a favorite author or on a specific topic?

If so, you may be eligible to win the…

T. Kimball Brooker Prize For Undergraduate Book Collecting Prizes awarded: $2,000 to a fourth-year student $750 to a second-year student Applications are due by 11:59 p.m., Wednesday, February 25, 2015 to brookerprize@lib.uchicago.edu www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/alumnifriends/brooker

VIEWPOINTS

Editorial & Op-Ed FEBRUARY 13, 2015

A time for progress The MAROON Editorial Board is calling the University to action. Here are our most demanding demands. Go big or go home, University!

1. U Pass. I Pass. We Pass. All our classes.

2. More shuttles downtown. More shuttles to other neighborhoods in Chicago. More shuttles out of state. More shuttles to New York City. More shuttles to replace Amtrak. More shuttles to replace Greyhounds and Megabuses across the nation. Shuttles to the

moon. Shuttles to the ’60s. Shuttles to the 1760s.

3. Cancel classes when it’s cold.

4. UEA vs. FBI vs. CLI: GAME TIME. Live televised showdown (sponsored by the IOP).

5. Have students’ Yakarma score negatively factored into their GPAs. 6. *BAN FREE SPEECH*

7. If we miss out on the Obama Library here are some other meaty options: Nate Silver Library, Tucker Max Memorial Library, Renee Granville-Grossman Library, Dun Boyir Lyberry for Iconomyk Studiez, Cuco Omelet Museum Library.

8. Campus climate survey on campus climate. (Too hot or too

cold? More precipitation? Less??

Snow ??? Wintry mix????)

9. Annual ski trip to the summit of Mansueto (150 feet) 10. Dean Boyer (D-Bo), will you be my Valentine?

11. Bean Boyer (B-Bo), will you be my Valenbean?

12. Study Abroad: Fort Wayne, Indiana.

13. Study Abroad: Hyde Park.

14. Study Abroad: My off-campus apartment.

15. Aramark.

Happy Valentine’s Day. xoxo, The Maroon Editorial Board

Campus crush saga Viewpoints columnist Liam Leddy sits down with the editors of UChicago Crushes, the university’s most loved Facebook page

Liam Leddy

Katzenjammer Created in March 2013, UChicago Crushes has swiftly become an important piece of our campus culture. For the uninitiated (I bet there are like six of you, although, if I’ve now made you feel bad for being one of them, I apologize), UChicago Crushes is a student-operated Facebook page to which anyone can submit anonymous missives proclaiming their affection for any given student (or sometimes faculty member, group, item, or any other kind of noun, really). The crushes are then posted for the world to see, their intended targets get tagged in the comments, and everyone’s day gets brighter.

Today, the page has 4,215 likes, and the number of crushes on the page is more than 18,000. Everybody wants to receive a crush, and there is obviously a healthy number of people writing them. But perhaps the most crucial link

in the chain remains a mystery. Who’s posting the crushes? Most people are aware that someone edits UChicago Crushes, but almost no one knows who.

Who is crazy/passionate/kind-hearted enough to devote their time to brightening the days of others in exchange for little more than good karma? Who’s behind the curtain?

I’d asked myself those questions for a long time. So I finally took the plunge.

I messaged Crushes and asked if they’d be willing to sit down and tell me about the page, why and how they run it, and where it’s going. And being the benevolent and kind souls that they are, they obliged.

Yes, I said they, as in multiple people.

But that wasn’t always the case. When the page began, there was only one editor, which then grew to two, and eventually to the current handful. Almost

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.

Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Grey City Editor Kristin Lin, Grey City Editor Sarah Manhardt, News Editor Christine Schmidt, News Editor Kiran Misra, Viewpoints Editor James Mackenzie, Arts Editor Tatiana Fields, Sports Editor Marina Fang, Senior News Editor Liam Leddy, Senior Viewpoints Editor Sarah Langs, Senior Sports Editor Jake Walerius, Senior Sports Editor Natalie Friedberg, Deputy News Editor Alec Goodwin, Deputy News Editor Marta Bakula, Associate News Editor Raymond Fang, Associate News Editor Nina Katemauswa, Associate Viewpoints Editor Sarah Zimmerman, Associate Viewpoints Editor Andrew McVea, Associate Arts Editor Evangeline Reid, Associate Arts Editor Ellen Rodnianski, Associate Arts Editor Helen Petersen, Associate Sports Editor Zachary Themer, Associate Sports Editor Peter Tang, Photo Editor Frank Yan, Senior Photo Editor Frank Wang, Associate Photo Editor Annie Cantara, Head Designer Sophie Downes, Head Copy Editor Alan Hassler, Head Copy Editor Sherry He, Head Copy Editor Hannah Rausch, Head Copy Editor Emily Harwell, Social Media Editor Amber Love, Video Editor

Megan Daknis, Copy Editor Jacqueline Feng, Copy Editor Kyra Martin, Copy Editor Katarina Mentzelopoulos, Copy Editor Rebecca Naimon, Copy Editor Morganne Ramsey, Copy Editor Erica Sun, Copy Editor Amy Wang, Copy Editor Katie Bart, Designer Emily Harwell, Designer Stephanie Liu, Designer Wei Yi Ow, Designer Morganne Ramsey, Designer Elle Rathbun, Designer Kaitlyn Shen, Designer Julia Xu, Designer Jen Xue, Designer Andrew Koski, Illustrator Alice Xiao, Illustrator Lenise Lee, Business Manager Nathan Peereboom, Chief Financial Officer Kay Li, Director of Data Analysis Harry Backlund, Distributor

Editor-in-Chief E-mail: editor@ChicagoMaroon.com Newsroom Phone: 773.702.1403 Business Phone: 773.702.9555 Fax: 773.702.3032 Public Editor: PublicEditor@ChicagoMaroon.com For advertising inquiries, please contact Ads@ChicagoMaroon.com The Chicago Maroon is published twice weekly during autumn, winter, and spring quarters.

Circulation: 6,800. © 2014 The Chicago Maroon, Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 East 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637

two years since its founding, running UChicago Crushes, while certainly not a trivial task, is a fair sight simpler than it once was. In the page’s early days, the first editor, who has since graduated, ran the page using Google spreadsheets, and had to copy and paste every crush to Facebook, which, given the speed with which Crushes became popular, quickly became something of a hassle.

As one of the current editors told me, “The first editor got really tired. If you look at the things that we published in 2013, which are still on Facebook, we published once every week, just because there were so many submissions and we don’t have that much time.”

But since then, both manpower and innovation have grown. Seeing that there was a need to streamline the posting process, Crushes brought on new members to develop a tool to do just that. The result is AnonyMonkey, an open-platform web service that allows pages like Crushes to both anonymize submissions and post directly to its Facebook page without copying and pasting anything. Editors can even use the service on their phones, meaning they can post from anywhere, whether they’re bored at a party or simply don’t want to start their math homework.

The upshot? “Now, if I publish in the morning once and at night once, it’ll be 10 minutes or so every time.”

AnonyMonkey has worked so well that it now supports thousands of pages, including the Crushes equivalents for schools like St. Andrews University, National Taiwan University, and even our favorite rival, Harvard. The service has made posting crushes remarkably easier, but as one of the editors told me, there are two different sides to managing the page. One is maintaining AnonyMonkey. The other?

“People who moderate the content to make sure there’s no bad stuff going through, and are checking messages so that if someone demands to have a post taken down for privacy reasons, we can respond to them.” It turns out that running customer service for UChicago Crushes isn’t all fun and games. While we all know that love can be highstakes, sometimes the Crushes editors get caught in the middle of it. “We receive some angry messages: ‘Tell me who this is, or I’m gonna, you know, do something to you.’” This was the one bit of information I was requested to relay to the dear submitters: editors are human, and they make mistakes, so please treat them kindly when you ask

them to take down a crush or tell you who submitted one.

But the latter request seems to be a not-too-uncommon one. While AnonyMonkey prevents the editors from knowing who submits crushes anyway, it’s a natural desire to want to connect with people who dig you, and see if, perhaps, the feeling is mutual. As of now, Crushes is an online receptacle for love, but most, if not all, of the affection is unrequited. As the editors told me, “Right now, when people post on UChicago Crushes, the biggest problem people have is that it’s really one-sided.

There’s no bridge in between; they can’t actually connect with people.”

Well, the Crushes editors are looking to change that. Building on the success of AnonyMonkey, they’re developing a Crushes app that will allow users to post content both anonymously and under a username, as well as to have anonymous chats with their crushes if they like. “We want to build a bridge between the people who are writing the crushes and the people who are receiving them, and that’s what the app is going to do.” AnonyMonkey and diligent content management are the crux of Crushes now, but the app may well take over that role in the future.

There are, of course, minutiae to running Crushes beyond the simple “how it works”; these are funny tidbits that don’t really affect the page’s functioning, but are nice to know anyway. Like the fact that Crushes editors do get crushes, and they perhaps don’t always publish them. “I got a few in the past.

Some of them I deleted, first because I didn’t know who they were, and second because at that time I was dating someone. But most of them I publish just like normal ones. And of course it cheers us up. It’s like, ‘Yes, I did something right today!’” There’s also the dilemma of how many people you tell that you’re involved with the page. One of the editors I spoke to hadn’t told anybody, while the other had let it slip to their roommate. And, finally, there are those times when people go a little crazy with self-love: “I know this guy.

All of his friends knew he really wanted to be on Crushes, so they sent in like 20 or 30 crushes, just about him.”

I learned a lot about UChicago Crushes in one interview, things both important about the page and relatively trivial, and thankfully I’ve been able to share them here. But, as for who’s behind the curtain? Well, knowing that would ruin all of the fun. People use

and look at UChicago Crushes mainly because they like receiving crushes and reading them, but a fraction of the page’s appeal is due to not knowing exactly who’s behind it. Because as much as we love hearing about how damn cute we look in our new rain boots, we also enjoy some well-crafted mystique.

And that mystique likely won’t go away anytime soon. The editors bring in fresh blood on a regular basis to make sure the page will live on after they graduate. Indeed, one of the editors I spoke to was a fourth-year, the other a first-year. So, don’t worry, the crushes will keep coming.

I’m not gonna lie: Even if I can’t tell you guys, seeing who was behind the curtain for myself was pretty cool.

But more than their identities, what I wanted to know about the editors was why. Why do those who edit the page continue to do it? “First, people are using it. If there are no submissions, why the hell are we doing it? There’s a huge demand for it... And I guess we’re doing something good for the community, and it makes us feel good. This is a place that we care about.” This was the sentiment from both editors I talked to, that this truly is something they do because they care about our campus and the people on it. They care about the UChicago student body more than I, or I really think most people, do, and they make sure to impact all of us in a positive way.

But the page is also, if you think about it, quite clever. It’s fitting really that the editors’ mystique is generated from their anonymity, because that’s the beauty of the page: They’ve figured out how to make anonymity on the Internet a good thing. The inhibitions and nerves that keep us from approaching our crushes in person are a little less strong online. And in a collegiate world being overrun by Yik Yak, it’s nice to see proof that anonymity can be used for good. As one editor put it, “The things that we don’t say, we say through the page. And they’re positive things, and we like to bring that atmosphere to campus.” So you could call it the power of love, or the power of anonymity that allows UChicago Crushes to brighten our days and our campus. But we also shouldn’t forget the students that make the whole thing possible. Thanks to them, and happy Valentine’s Day. Liam Leddy is a third- year in the College majoring in economics.

ARTS

What is love?

FEBRUARY 13, 2015

In break from Reg-ular study grind, the Reg offers day of fun and workshops Darren Wan Arts Contributor The Joseph Regenstein Library, affectionately called the Reg, is hosting its inaugural installment of RegFest, an annual celebration of the nexus of social life at the University of Chicago. Given the somewhat unsurprising popularity of the Reg’s Valentine’s Day events in previous years, the library has decided to launch RegFest in conjunction with the Academic and Schol-

arly Technology Services division of IT Services on campus– the organization that runs the TECHB@R at the Reg. Hosted today, on the alleged College Break Day, RegFest will be comprised of a series of half-hour programs. Some activities serve to aid students in their personal and professional development, while a good number highlight lesser-known collections and services available to students. One session at 10:30 a.m. encourages students to trace their family’s

history using the Library’s resources, while another at 3:30 p.m. at the Special Collections Research Center will exhibit a curated selection of Ezra Pound’s letters, revealing the sardonic wit of a great writer. Perhaps the icing on the cake is the event entitled ‘Bad Romance: Make Your Own UChicago-Themed Valentine’s Day Cards,’ conducted at noon. Using images of the University taken from the University archives, participants can customize their own Valentine’s Day

cards, since their relationship with this institution is undoubtedly an apt metaphor of their love and affection for their better halves.

And if this does not sound tempting enough, samosas will also be available to participants of this event.

Apart from these exciting activities, participants of RegFest have a chance to enter a drawing for Amazon gift cards at the closing ceremony. Chances of winning increase with every RegFest program attended.

While participants are not

required to attend the closing ceremony, snacks will be provided.

If you are too busy to attend these sessions, be sure to at least partake in the photo opportunities that the Reg will be offering. At the TECHB@R, there will be a photo booth to give everyone the opportunity to take a photo with the friendly robots from the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library.

Outside, students will have the unparalleled opportunity of taking a photo with a life-size cut-out of a former

president of the University of Chicago, Robert Maynard Hutchins.

Given the high traffic of students at the Reg on such days off as College Break Day, RegFest promises to be the most well attended event all quarter. Be sure to be at the Reg for, as always, a fruitful and enjoyable time.

Friday, February 13, The Joseph Regenstein Library, TECHB@R (Regenstein Room 160), 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., registration recommended.

Beards, woodsmen, and lumbersexuals—oh my!

Will Dart Senior Arts Writer February 10 was National Flannel Day. I know this because I was recently invited to attend an event commemorating the holiday at a big box store in the North Side. There, a popular men’s deodorant company was launching a new collection of fragrances “inspired by ingredients found in nature,” complete with a number of “lumberjacks”—large, bearded men in plaid and overalls—busy handing out free samples to interested patrons. The press release billed the event as Lumbersexual.

Have you heard this term before? Prior to Flannel Day, I had not. But, according to the Internet, lumbersexuality is all the rage among today’s youth. According to Tom Puzak of GearJunkie, who broke the news on this latest “trend,” young men are adopting the lumberjack look in droves. Beards, flannel, axes—these are the accouterment of the modern man about Brooklyn. As Puzak says, “He looks like a man of the woods, but works at The Nerdery, programming for a healthy salary and benefits. His backpack carries a MacBook Air, but looks like it should carry a lumberjack’s axe.” Sound familiar?

That’s right: As it turns out, this newest incarnation of the hipster looks a whole lot like the old incarnation of the hipster. Large beards, plaid, and leather work boots have been staples of the Blue Line since at least the late 2000s. Almost everyone who goes to the University of Chicago owns one or more expensive cloth backpacks. Bon Iver—arguably the elder statesman of the soulful woodsman aes-

thetic—has been popular for nearly a decade. All of which leads me to conclude that the idea of “lumbersexual” as a trend in male fashion was almost definitely coined as a joke.

Nevertheless, the blogosphere has decided to run with it. Since coming to the consciousness of the literate public in late October, lumbersexuality has been dissected, intellectualized, and problematized ad nausaeum. Some commentators, such as Willa Brown of The Atlantic, have adopted the now-familiar stance that any new trend in male fashion must obviously be a compensatory stress-reaction to the increasingly tenuous position of male masculinity in the modern world. Men are no longer the primary breadwinners in their families, so they’re forced to wear flannel. Or something.

Meanwhile, Aleksander Chan (of Gawker fame) puts the lumbersexual as “a foil to the metrosexual”— bearded instead of clean cut, baggy jeans instead of fitted slacks. “The metrosexual is clean and pretty and well-groomed; the lumbersexual spends the same amount of money, but looks filthy”—but, again, hipsters have been paying exorbitant funds for beat-up bomber jackets since 2001, and not because they felt that their masculinity was in question.

Finally, Jezebel—ever the giant of feminist theory— concludes that, although the trend is “somewhat misleading” (these guys don’t actually chop down trees or skin small animals), “the lumberjack look is still pretty hot.”

Cutting-edge criticism, as always.

Hot or not, it’s undeniable that lumbersexuality, both as a concept and as a term, LUMB continued on page 6

Cassidy Slaughter-Mason, Jennifer Coombs, and Mary Ann Thebus toast to womanhood!

COURTESY OF GOODMAN THEATRE

Women Rapture, Blister, Burn following their unsatisfying post-collegiate decades Taylor McDowell Arts Staff Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn, a 2013 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, opens discontentedly and contemplating midlife morass at the Goodman Theatre’s Albert venue. Sparsely elegant sets emphasize the everyday routine that, as weeks in the doldrums of post-collegiate life bleed into decades, the narrative establishes as its primary antagonist.

The premise, not unlike a Disney plot (indeed one character makes the necessary ironic prod in selfreferential fashion toward such infamously infantile tendencies rife in films catered toward a juvenile audience), is more pedantic than exciting. It is, however, not without its own certain entertainment: two 40-something former gradschool roommates who find dissatisfaction in their life paths (one, a housewife

and stay-at-home mother, the other a feminist scholar touting critical success and a kind of popular, celebrity-like status) decide to swap careers, so to speak, and search for a fulfillment as-of-yet unfound in the other’s life. The centerpiece of the play is Don Harper (Mark L. Montgomery), whose wife Gwen (Karen Janes Woditsch) decides to swap places with Catherine ( Jennifer Coombs), the feminist scholar on sabbatical and Harper’s old girlfriend who, since he left her back in college (for the dissatisfied stay-athome Gwen), has stumbled through unfulfilling relationships and sought after an ever-elusive (and possibly non-existent) love.

What ensues is a sub-lecture on historical and contemporary feminist theory siphoned through the opinionated spouting of individuals spread across three generations and (it turns out, as the mouthpiece for mem-

orable moments) masked as a plot-thread for college undergrad Avery Willard’s (Cassidy Slaughter-Mason) quirky humor and hopeful cynicism to shine. Since four of the five cast members are women grabbing and gripping at the rare air of feminist theory, Don Harper’s aimless driftingas-flotsam between two women and through the beer-soaked eve of his middle years makes an ironic kind of sense to the play.

But the aim in the course of the characters’ lives (to find [to make?] meaning, to know a certain vital fulfillment) remains ambiguously undefined and left for the audience’s own subjective and interpretive designs.

That is to say, the play is an inquisitive vehicle for generating a sense of self and place within the individual whose own trajectory is not particularly mapped in ink or at length. It is a narrative that starts out confusedly at the crossroads of plati-

tudinous midlife malaise and modern alienation, and seeks, by its end, toward the apparition of warmth on some horizon’s equatorial region, without quite arriving at any grit or soft surface of substance.

That is, however, rather the point. The elements of the production are each fashioned with a certain excellence. What is more, the material hangs in the air as something that is true, and engaging, and of a real kind of value. The characters themselves might float through nihilistic apparitions and never land on anything anywhere, but the audience member, at the end of it, leaves his seat feeling not as though he had lost something, or wasted it, but instead as though he had gained the jewel of an idea to contemplate in the palm of his mind.

The play will run through February 22nd in the Albert.

THE CHICAGO MAROON | ARTS | February 13, 2015

6

Sketch

“...‘I think I’m more lumberfluid,’ he the Romance, Briefly. <3 told me.”

LUMB continued from page 5

is somewhat disagreeable.

As a friend recently pointed out to me, the practice of cosplaying as members of the working class—especially when those cosplayers are comparatively wealthy and listen to Father John Misty—is kinda weird. And who’s to say that actual lumberjacks aren’t being harmed by this kind of cultural appropriation? At some point, somewhere, it’s possible that a sawmill lineman might’ve been briefly confused for a hipster. And that’s a traumatic experience.

Fortunately for real jacks, and unfortunately for real lumbersexuals, the trend seems to be on the way out.

I don’t know that it can survive being used in an ad campaign for a line of men’s deodorant, and the absolute commercialization of the lumberjack ideal—from fresh mountain air to Fresh Mountain Air™ Scent—left me feeling a little nauseous at Monday’s Flannel Day cel-

ebration.

And so, after quietly vomiting into the dumpster behind the Toys “R” Us, I made the trip to Wicker Park, hoping to observe the lumbersexual in his natural environment before he went totally extinct. There—in a crowded bar room on North Milwaukee—I met a man named Jake. Bearded, with exaggerated sideburns and long hair, he looked like he could’ve been the Brawny Man’s cousin; the one who did porn in the ’80s when he needed to make rent. I asked Jake if he identifies as “lumbersexual.”

“I think I’m more lumberfluid,” he told me. He doesn’t own an axe, or even whittle. It seems likely that he’d die after only a few days stranded in the Rockies. But he does like the look, and identifies with the culture.

“I don’t wear flannel every day. But I’m a woodsman at heart.”

And isn’t that what really matters?

There’s nothing like trying new things and breaking a sweat to inspire a bit of romance, or at least a whole lot of fun. So get dressed up and bring your friends or perhaps a date to Chicago Swing Dance Society’s Valentine’s Day Dance, complete with a live band, music, food, and drinks. Don’t know how to do swing dance?

Don’t worry. The evening kicks off with an hour long lesson at 8 p.m. before the rest of the evening and open dancing begins in earnest at 9 p.m. Who knows, maybe you’ll decide to pick up one of their dance lesson sessions next quarter!

Friday, February 13, Ida Noyes Hall, third floor theatre, $5 for students or $8 unaffiliated with the university Is your valentine really a big fan of folk music? If you answered yes to this question you should check out the Folklore Society’s annual Folk Festival! Featuring performers from various genres spanning bluegrass to blues. Performers include, but are not limited to The Buckstankle Boys, John

THE CHICAGO MAROON since 1892 have a tip? let us know!

773.702.1403

HOW MUCH CAN BIOLOGY EXPLAIN? John F. Haught Georgetown University

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 19 4:30PM BSLC 001

Many scientists and philosophers claim that a Darwinian understanding of life has rendered the idea of God unnecessary. Descent, diversity, design, death, suffering, sex, intelligence, morality, and religion—features of life that had previously been understood theologically—now seem open to a purely natural explanation. This lecture will consider whether the claims of evolutionary naturalists are coherent and whether a theological understanding of life can still be reconciled with biological accounts.

Presented by the Lumen Christi Institute, the Program on Medicine and Religion, & the Theology and Religious Ethics Workshop WWW.LUMENCHRISTI.ORG

This weekend, the UChicago Department of Music and KMP Artists will present A Musical Theater Valentine with Mark & Anne Burnell, the latest in Logan Center’s ongoing Sunday Song Styles series. With a program including both fin de siècle parlor music and grand Broadway duets, the Burnells will present classics from the American popular canon. Whether February 14th for you means Valentine’s Day with your date or Pal-entine’s Day with a showtune-belting partner-in-crime, this concert is sure to delight.

Sunday, February 15, 2015 at 4:00 p.m., Logan Center, Performance Penthouse 901. Event is

WEI YI OW

|

THE CHICAGO MAROON

free with a UCID, $15 general admission.

Any Valentines Day celebration wouldn’t be complete without a great love song. To highlight some of these great songs of the past, Hyde Park Records will be hosting a meet and greet with '70s soul singers Michael Henderson, Jean Carn, and Norman Connors on Valentine’s Day. The three, who collaborated on the 1975

hit “Valentine Love,” were popular during the mid-70s for their midtempo love songs and ballads. While none of them attained lasting mainstream success, they each had multiple songs make the top 40 on the R&B charts including “You are my Starship” by Connors and Henderson and “Don’t Let It Go to Your Head” by Carn.

Saturday, February 14, 2015, 2:00–7:00 p.m., Hyde Park Records

Winter Dragon drags on

THEOLOGY & EVOLUTIONARY NATURALISM

A lecture by

Lilly, and Mississippi Gabe Carter. Along with numerous performances, the festival will feature free workshops that are open to all. The Folk Festival will take place in Mandel Hall and will run from February 13th to February 16th. Admission to the performances ranges from $10 to $30.

February 13–16, Mandel Hall, $10 to $30

James Mackenzie Arts Editor Early on Monday morning, when most of us were sleepily finishing problem sets and cramming for the last round of midterms, a TV “pilot” slipped past the radar on FXX. The show, titled Winter Dragon, was mostly unremarkable: low production values, no recognizable names besides star Billy Zane (the designated bad guy from Titanic), and... wait. Based on Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series? Some quick thoughts: Wait, what?

You mean THAT Wheel of Time? The tent-pole, contemporary fantasy series that didn’t get the HBO softcore treatment? The one that institutions no smaller than NBC have tried and failed to adapt in both film and television? Yeah, that one. After years of failure, Winter Dragon dropped inauspiciously at 1:30 a.m. EST. As of this writing, there is not even an IMDB page, leaving potential viewers with many questions, among them, “What’s FXX?”, “Is Billy Zane still alive?”, and, “Is it actually any good?”

No, it is not.

The pilot is a straight adaptation of the prologue from the series’ first entry, The Eye of the World, wherein Lews Therin Telamon (Zane), a.k.a. The Dragon, is visited by ancient foe and generic, cloaked villain Ishamael, the Betrayer of Hope. If you’re not keeping up with these terms, don’t worry; the characters will repeat them at least 11 times.

The show itself seems to have been written and shot in the most economical way possible. Most of the dialogue is ripped directly

from the book and all of the action takes place in what is essentially one large room. Dialogue is filmed in elementary shot-reverse-shot and virtually everything else is some variation of a long tracking shot following Zane around a room as he calls for his dead wife. This makes a fair amount of sense; according to director Seda James’ Twitter, virtually the entire 22-minute episode was shot in one day. For readers who might not realize, that’s akin to writing a novella in a day. The result is not going to be pretty.

Billy Zane is still alive.

I literally cannot think of a single relevant production Billy Zane has been a part of since Titanic, and this one does not break his streak. He pretty much meanders around the set wearing fancy clothing and reciting even more meandering lines. The character he is playing is meant to be insane, but if I didn’t know the dialogue from the book, it might look like he was just ad-libbing.

He is so totally out of it. But no one wants to see an actor and his dreams die out, so it’s cool just to see him work.

This has to be some kind of tax fraud scheme.

Actually, that’s not too far off.

While author Jordan was alive, the TV and film rights to his series were purchased by Red Eagle Entertainment, which proceeded to do nothing with the property while Jordan succumbed to terminal illness and HBO turned A Song of Ice and Fire into one of the most important pillars of cable television. The Game of Thrones envy is pretty clear in Winter Dragon; the title sequence and music is a pretty direct, if lowquality, reproduction of the former’s iconic introduction, and

the set and costume designs try and fail to evoke the same aesthetic.

While Game of Thrones airs in the Sunday primetime slot on creative juggernaut HBO, Winter Dragon premiered in the earlymorning hours on FXX, the spillover channel for FX, which itself started out as an outlet for Fox’s pet projects. After some poking around, it became clear that Red Eagle may well have wanted this to fly under the radar. There’s a term in the industry called “ashbinning,” wherein a poor product in an established franchise is created exclusively for the purpose of maintaining development rights. This can take the form of a professional production (such as this year’s Fantastic Four) but more often than not it means a hack job made in a week to hit a deadline. In this case, the deadline for the Wheel of Time rights was this past Wednesday.

A Wheel of Time adaptation is farther, not closer.

Red Eagle has shown no ability to adapt Wheel of Time, so the fact that they have successfully made this pilot to hold on to the rights actually decreases the chances of a proper adaptation. Jordan’s wife hinted at legal action this week; coincidentally, pilot director Seda passed away suddenly following a car accident. No one knows what Red Eagle hoped to accomplish by holding onto these rights; somehow I don’t think we’ll see a Billy Zane-headed show coming this fall, certainly not on a budget approaching anything like Game of Thrones. But I wouldn’t mind watching a half-hour variety show of Zane rambling at no one in particular. At this point, that looks more likely than a proper adaptation.

THE CHICAGO MAROON | SPORTS | February 13, 2015

7

NYU, Case Western stand in the way of elusive title

Blank slate against Lewis for No. 12 South Siders

Wrestling

Women’s Tennis

Eirene Kim Sports Staff The Maroons look to take down No. 24 NYU and Case Western this weekend as they fight for the UAA championship title.

Chicago knows that to get to a UAA championship, it cannot take any match lightly, especially with a nationally ranked team such as NYU in its way.

“This weekend we are going in with the mentality that every single match is important, even more so than it was against Augustana. NYU is a ranked team so we can’t take them lightly,” said first-year Devan Richter.

NYU may be ranked, but after last weekend’s victory over No. 29 Augustana, Chicago feels optimistic going into the UAA championship weekend. Despite several injuries during the Augustana dual, the Maroons were still able to pull out a win.

“We should have a more complete lineup this time

which is a definite plus.

Some of our main guys were out with injuries for the dual with Augustana, so now that they are back, we definitely have a little bit of an edge and a bit of pressure taken off as well,” Richter said.

Now that Chicago is at full strength with its complete lineup, the Maroons feel confident going into this weekend.

“NYU is ranked 24th, but Augustana was ranked 28th. So if everybody shows up and wrestles their best, I think we have a good shot at winning,” Richter said.

The Maroons have prepared all season for this weekend, and a huge win can help the Maroons prepare for the NCAAs. “A lot of our preparation throughout the season has been for the UAA title. It is really important to our coach to win this. He has put quite a bit of pressure on us to do our best, and has been pushing us. But if the end result is a UAA title then I’d say it is worth

it. If we can win a UAA title as a team, I feel as though it would give us a nice momentum going into the NCAA regional tournament, and help with the team confidence,” Richter said.

A UAA title would be a breakthrough for the coach and the team after having been runner-ups for the past three years.

“The team has come in second place at the UAAs for three years in a row, and it would mean a lot if we could finally take first,” Richter said.

A UAA championship would further reflect Chicago’s growth as a wrestling program, as it would “definitely illustrate how not only the upperclassman are improving, but that the coach is bringing in solid new talent to fill gaps in the lineup to make a stronger team,” Richter said.

The Maroons take on NYU this Saturday at 10 a.m. in Cleveland, and face Case Western shortly after at either 11:30 a.m. or 1 p.m.

Maroons face doubleheader against Emory, Rochester Men’s Basketball Michael Cheiken Sports Staff The Maroons split on their road trip last weekend, going 1–1 with a victory over Case Western and a disappointing loss to Carnegie Mellon, and this weekend the Chicago men are traveling again. Tonight they play their rematch with Rochester University before heading straight to Atlanta for a game on Sunday at noon.

“We are really excited to play these two teams again.

Playing someone the second time around is always a challenge but it is one we are excited to take on,” second-year guard Alex Gustafson said.

The Rochester (9–11, 5–4 UAA) squad provided a challenge for the Maroons (14–6, 6–3) on Neon Night a month ago, but ultimately fell to the Maroons. That game was played at the rowdy Ratner Athletics Center, though. The Maroons have been a different team on the road, winning only one of four conference games.

If they wish to hold on to their position atop the conference, the squad is going to have to break that trend.

Rochester, on the other hand is riding a four game winning streak into the matchup, and will be trying to knock the Maroons off the pedestal. The Yellowjackets are in a five-way tie for second place in the conference with a 5–4 conference record, and a victory over our hometown squad would bring the Rochester side into a tie atop the conference.

The Maroons won’t make it easy for them though.

The team isn’t leading the league by accident. Chicago has sported the second-best defense in the UAA this season, and the Rochester offense ranks in the bottom half of the conference.

While expecting to win, the Maroons cannot take the Yellowjackets lightly, and they cannot be looking forward to Sunday’s game just yet.

The Maroons’ (19–9, 5–4) travel and recuperation day will find them making their way down south to Atlanta. The Eagles will be carrying a chip on their shoulder. This weekend finds them on a home stand against Wash U and Chicago, teams that account for two of their five losses.

The Emory squad will be looking to avenge its earlier defeats, and the Maroons are going to have to take full advantage of the recovery day to be at the top of their game Sunday. The Eagles are an astounding 10–1 at home this year, losing their single game last weekend on an NYU game-winning layup.

“We obviously love playing at home but there wouldn’t be anything better than getting a win on Emory’s home court. I think that will provide some energy and incentive for the team,” Gustafson said.

The game will rest heavily on how the Maroons are able to deal with Emory fourthyear forward Alex Foster.

Foster leads the league with 20.8 points per game and is also the conference’s fourth-best rebounder. But when he pulls outside, you still have to mark him since he shoots more than 40 percent from behind the arc.

If the Maroons are able to slow down the Eagles’ big man, they should be able to win the game.

The Maroons control their own destiny in the UAA. Now all that’s left is to ensure it on the road.

The Sports Editors

After coming away from their first DIII weekend of winter play with a whopping three wins, the Maroons will be looking to improve their record this weekend with a match against DII Lewis in what is sure to be a test for the No. 12 Maroons.

Chicago defeated No. 28 Denison, No. 32 Oberlin, and Kenyon this weekend in a convincing manner. The Maroons downed the Big Red by a score of 7–2. They were then edged out of a victory by conference rival Case Western. The team suffered its only defeat to the No. 23 Spartans.

The squad bounced back to defeat Kenyon and Oberlin by a clear 9–0 margin.

First-year Ariana Iranpour earned the honor of UAA Athlete of the Week after going 8–0 on the weekend. Iran-

pour did not drop a singles or doubles match in the four games. Her partner and the Maroons’ No. 1 singles player, fourth-year Megan Tang, was also undefeated throughout the weekend.

Despite the weekend having shown the potential of the young Maroon squad, the loss to Case is a firm reminder that the talented squad has a ways to go to fulfill its potential.

The weekend proved to have taught Chicago lessons to keep in mind moving forward in the season.

“We’re always looking to play with more confidence and to execute better in the big moments. I think that despite the loss last weekend… the team, and myself included, learned a lot about what it takes to be successful under pressure and we will use that experience moving forward,” said head coach Jay Tee. The squad will face off

against DII Lewis. The Flyers will be competing in their third game of the winter season. Thus far the team is 1–1 on the season with a loss to DI Northern Illinois 1–6 and a victory over Western Illinois 5–2. It is one of the rare teams on Chicago’s schedule that the South Siders do not play on a regular basis.

“Unfortunately we have very little to no history with…

Lewis so we don’t know much about them as a team other than [that] they’ve been a historically strong team in Division II,” Tee said.

The squad has a lot to look forward to heading into its remaining games. The team heads to the ITA Indoor Nationals in Greenville, IN the following weekend to face off against some of the best teams in the country.

The match against Lewis begins at 4 p.m. on Saturday.

Write for Sports.

editor@ chicagomaroon.com

Get in the game.

Chicagolands supply opportunity for more hardware Track Zachary Themer Associate Sports Editor At the rate the Maroons have been dominating their meets this season, one might joke the squad will soon need an additional bus to travel with in order to carry all the trophies, medals, and awards it has been winning. After having won two meets earlier this season, the Maroons took back their place atop the podium this past weekend at the Windy City Invitational as both the men’s and women’s teams took home first. However, the South Siders will not have time to rest on their laurels as they have another meet this weekend—the Chicagoland Championships at North Central College.

Taking a step back, the Maroons know that this meet is one of the toughest on their schedule. Teams at the meet include DIII powers such as Lewis University, Carthage, Chicago State, and a host of others from throughout the area. Furthermore, after coming in fifth on the men’s side last year, and fourth on the women’s, the South Siders

want to turn the tide and capture victory this year against the stacked field.

However, the Maroons are careful not to focus on the level of competition. They know they are competing against themselves, and they are more than prepared to rely on all the hard work they’ve put in this season.

“I think that all of us need to trust the training that we’ve put in over the past several months and just really focus on performing to the best of our ability for ourselves and for the team,” said second-year sprinter Charissa Newkirk.

Even with all the training the South Siders have put in this season, they are also keenly aware that there may be issues of endurance. After all, with this being their sixth meet in as many weeks, the South Siders have had little time to rest.

“Some athletes are looking to break out as much mentally as physically,” said third-year long-distance runner Henry Blood. “However, every meet is an opportunity to improve, but the pressure is generally really low unless an athlete is

coming back from injury.”

To take home the top prize this weekend, the Maroons are going to have to rely on not only Blood and Newkirk, but also some of the other usual suspects that have guided and led them throughout the season.

On the men’s side the Maroons will look to the likes of third-year Michael Bennett in the pole vault, who is looking to win another national championship this indoor season; third-year Ben Clark in the 400-meter run; and first-year standout Patrick LeFevre in the 60-meter run.

As for the No. 23 women’s squad, the Maroons will turn to top performers from this season such as secondyear Michelle Dobbs in the 400-meter run, third-year Brianna Hickey in the 800-meter run, and fourth-year Pam Yu in the long jump.

In its pursuit of domination and glory this weekend, the women’s team will compete today at North Central beginning at 5 p.m. Meanwhile, the men will compete tomorrow with events beginning at 11 a.m.

SPORTS

IN QUOTES “Man I wish everyone stop saying I beat a kid in the hospital 91–35.... It was 98–35, had 91 with 1:26 left in the 4th” –Ohio State quarterback Cardale Jones on his video game victory over children during a hospital visit

Chicago sits atop conference rankings heading into Rochester Women’s Basketball Russell Mendelson Senior Sports Staff

Fourth-year guard Morgan Donovan sets up the offense in a game earlier this year.

COURTESY OF UCHICAGO ATHLETICS

UAA Championships underway in Atlanta Swimming & Diving Katie Anderson Sports Staff Both the Maroon women and men are in Atlanta, GA this week to compete in the long-anticipated four-day UAA Championships hosted by Emory.

The College Swimming Coaches Association of America currently ranks both Maroon squads No. 10 in the nation coming into the meet. Chicago hopes to improve on last year’s championship results, where the men finished second behind Emory, and the women third behind Emory and Wash U. Action began on Wednesday with the men’s one-meter dive competition, where Maroons gained a significant lead in the standings.

In the preliminaries, fourth-years Matt Staab and Anthony Restaino placed second and third, respectively. First-year Dean Boures and fourth-year Kevin Steffes both also placed in the top six.

In the final, Austen Blease of NYU came out on top, while Staab took second place, and Restaino took third.

“There are a lot of great

Chicago has a busy weekend ahead of them as it prepares to suit up for a pair of UAA games on the road. Competition kicks off this evening in Rochester followed by a trek south to Atlanta where the team is slated to face Emory on Sunday afternoon.

The Maroons (14–6, 8–1 UAA) are currently in the midst of an eight-game winning streak, putting them in a tie for the best record in the UAA with No. 7 Wash U (19–1, 8–1). Both teams have taken their sole losses against some of the strongest teams in the conference, with Chicago’s coming against the Bears in St. Louis, its only loss of the new year thus far. Wash U fell to No. 12 NYU (18–2, 7–2) two weeks later, a team whose perfect season was snapped at the hands of the Chicago squad two days after the Bears’ loss. Fourth-year forward Ellie Greiner commented on how this streak has changed how the team is perceived.

“This winning streak has

been huge for our team’s mentality. All season we have said we’re confident in our ability to win. However, with the past eight wins, we’ve finally showed it,” Greiner said. “As for how our opponents view us, I think being number one in the conference automatically puts a target on our back. We need to be prepared to see the best effort from every team we face here on out.”

A strong effort from the competition this weekend will be expected as the first opponent of the weekend, Rochester (12–8, 4–5), delivered NYU’s only other loss of the season.

Emory (11–9, 3–6) has a winning record overall. Considering that every team except for Case (7–13, 1–8) has a winning record for the season, as of now any conference matchup is seen as a threat for a playoff-hopeful team such as the Maroons. The strength of the UAA only adds to the enormity of the feat required of Chicago to play as well as it has within the conference so far.

“The pressure our guards put on our opponents’ ball handlers completely disrupts offenses,

and forces teams into tough shots,” said Greiner, attributing the team’s stellar play over the streak to indomitable defensive play.

“Luckily our post players have been huge on the rebounding end, ensuring that teams don’t get additional opportunities to score after being forced into these difficult looks.”

The streak could be put in jeopardy this weekend as Chicago must fly to Rochester for its first game and follow this with a second flight to Atlanta for game two. Athletes have been known to tire on long road trips such as these, making what can already seem like a challenging weekend even more so.

“This year we’ve shown that we’re really tough on the road,” Greiner said, brushing off any notion of exhaustion for her and her teammates.

“Even though this is our three-flight weekend, I don’t expect that to change our play.”

The Maroons tip off against the Yellowjackets this evening at 5 p.m. and will do the same against Emory at 1 p.m. on Sunday.

Oberlin, Wheaton take on No. 17 squad on home turf Men’s Tennis

divers we compete against, so being able to place third was great,” Restaino said. “A lot of that goes to our coach, Abbey [Bernardo], for preparing us so well for UAAs.” “I was very happy with Wednesday’s outcome,” Staab said. “I was able to improve on my prelim score in finals and hit almost all of my dives so it’s always exciting to go on an upward trajectory through a meet.”

However, with the men’s three-meter competition to take place on Friday, Staab is not yet satisfied. “Threemeter is my favorite board so I’m hoping to keep the momentum going and finish strong,” he said.

At the end of Wednesday, Chicago was the clear leader in the standings with 104 points, followed by NYU (55). Wash U and Rochester were tied for third (37), followed by Case Western (26) and Brandeis (16).

“I think the team is pretty excited about where we stand after the first day,” Staab said. “It’s definitely shaping up to be a competitive meet and some of our biggest rivals didn’t get any points from diving today so we’re hoping it will give us a nice boost.”

The women’s three-meter dive competition will take place on Thursday, followed by the men’s three-meter on Friday. The women’s onemeter will take place on Saturday.

As for swimming, competition kicked off for both the men and women on Thursday and will carry on through Saturday.

Despite a wide lead after Wednesday’s competition, the Maroons know how tough the UAA competition is, especially this year.

Six of the eight women’s teams are ranked nationally in the top 25, led by Emory at No. 1. Four of those six teams, including Chicago, are in the top 10.

On the men’s side, five teams are ranked in the top 25, four of which, including Chicago, are in the top 10.

“We just need to take everything one event at a time,” Restaino said. “We were so close to winning last year and we are a much stronger team now. If we think about how hard we prepared we have probably the best chance in memory of knocking Emory off the top of the podium.”

Helen Petersen Associate Sports Editor After a weekend of battling it out with some of the nation’s top-ranked squads, the Maroons will now face a pair of regional rivals in Wheaton and Oberlin, this time at Tennis XS, the team’s home indoor courts in Hyde Park.

Chicago went 2–1 last weekend against three top30 teams, including a win over No. 12 Kenyon. It was the first time Chicago has defeated Kenyon since 1986.

Over the weekend, the No. 1 singles player in the nation, first-year Nick Chua, suffered his first DIII loss of the season against Case Western.

The doubles duo of second-year Max Hawkins and first-year Luke Tsai went undefeated over the weekend.

Tsai wrapped this up by also going undefeated in singles play.

“We’ll be looking to accomplish exactly what we were looking to accomplish last weekend, which will be to win every match at every spot and improve on our weaknesses. I think a big takeaway from last weekend was [that] we have many ar-

eas in which we have to improve but at the same time we have the ability to beat the teams we’re going to play, especially playing with the energy that we’ve been playing with,” Hawkins said.

This weekend’s matches will be the first time No. 17 Chicago has not found itself on the road. This weekend also represents the first DIII opponents the team will face that are not nationally ranked.

The South Siders will face off against Oberlin on Saturday to kick off weekend play. Their opponent is 0–2 in the winter season, having dropped matches to Wabash and Tiffin by 4–5 and 2–7, respectively. The Yeomen have yet to find their footing with their starting lineup as it has yet to be consistent from one competition to another.

Later on Saturday, Chicago will face Wheaton in its second match of the day.

The Thunder will be facing off against Oberlin earlier on Saturday. The match is only the second for the Thunder in the winter season. Wheaton opened its season with a close win over UW–Eau Claire, 5–4. Against UW–

Eau Claire, Wheaton swept the doubles competition, winning only one singles match on the day.

The match also has the last DIII opponent Chicago will face in February. The team will go on to compete against the DI University of Illinois at Chicago next weekend.

The squad, despite the success it has experienced since the beginning of the regular season, is still very aware that it has places to improve and that it can’t afford to get comfortable.

“Especially with losing to Case, I think it has elevated our focus, and though on paper Wheaton and Oberlin may be weaker teams, our attitudes towards them and every other team will be the same: to win at every spot, play with an unwavering determination, and thus show everyone what we’re made of. Put the fear of Chicago into them, so to speak,” Hawkins said.

The match against Oberlin begins at 2 p.m. on Saturday, followed closely by a match against Wheaton beginning at 6 p.m. Both events will take place at Tennis XS in Hyde Park.