022514 Chicago Maroon

TUESDAY • FEBRUARY 25, 2014

CHICAGOMAROON.COM

THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SINCE 1892

ISSUE 30 • VOLUME 125

Univ. joins Common App alternative Rachel Landes Maroon Contributor Students applying to the University of Chicago next fall will be able to submit the Universal College Application (UCA), an emerging rival to the Common Application.

UChicago, which has been a Common App member since

First-year Diego Loyo (left) and third-year Esteban Valencia inform students in Bartlett Quad on Monday night about the current violence against peaceful protesters in Venezuela.

FRANK YAN | THE CHICAGO MAROON

MAC Property, Univ. honored

by Hyde Park Historical Society The Hyde Park Historical Society (HPHS) held its annual awards dinner on Saturday at the Quadrangle Club, celebrating the preservation of two historic Hyde Park landmarks: the Harper The-

ater and the Shoreland Hotel.

The Marian and Leon Despres Preservation Awards have been awarded each year since their establishment in 2005. They are presented to two organizations or persons that have championed the preservation or restoration of old Hyde Park buildings. Nomina-

tions are accepted from the community and are approved by the board members of the society, according to Kathy Huff, a member of the HPHS board.

The first award was presented to MAC Property Management for the redevelopment of the HISTORY continued on page 2

SSA continued on page 2

Coffee shop Sip and Savor joins a growing number of Hyde Park small businesses that are turning to crowdfunding to raise capital.

Owner Trez Pugh III has launched a campaign with startup LendSquare to raise $25,000 in loans directly from community investors by March 1. Pugh, who operates a location at East 51st Street and Lake Shore Drive and another at East 53rd Street and South Hyde Park Boulevard, has plans for a multi-pronged expansion, ranging from building a sidewalk café, adding an espresso machine, and reopening his coffee shop in Bronzeville.

Sebastian Villarreal (A.B. ’09) co-founded LendSquare with Jose Valdes in 2012 to help small businesses like Sip and Savor expand with help from the community. Businesses post their campaign goal, which can be up to $300,000, and the time period during which their campaign will run on the website. Customers can then pledge a loan amount and select at what interest rate

they are willing to lend the money. At the end of the campaign, the highest return at which the business achieves its goal is selected and the loans of investors who bid at that rate or lower are approved. The investments will be paid back at the selected interest rate on a monthly basis over a fixed time period.

Z&H Café, Open Produce, and the Fair Trader were the first businesses to use LendSquare, while it was in its prototype phase.

“LendSquare allows customers to invest in something they believe in and think will be beneficial to the community, especially if you’re already investing by coming in and buying my product. I think it’s a win-win,” Pugh said.

Pugh anticipates the addition of the sidewalk café will attract more business. “It will be good for the dog lovers. Usually they have to tie up their dogs and run in and grab a coffee. With an outdoor patio, they can just sit down and someone will come and take their order.”

Pugh entered the coffee shop business “almost by mistake.” He LOANS continued on page 2

Bridge Club qualifies for national championship Harper

S. Hyde Park

53rd Kimbark

Sara Cao News Staff

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Blackstone

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A new designation by the city will lead to additional city services for Hyde Park residents.

The City of Chicago approved the establishment of Special Service Area (SSA) Number 61 in a meeting in November and in January, and approved the appointments of nine committee members who will oversee the SSA’s operations.

Dave Cocagne, President and CEO of Vermillion Development, the developer of Harper Court, said, “An SSA is generally geared towards supporting services like street cleaning, marketing and promotion, security, flower planters, and extra snow shoveling.”

The SSA designation will pro-

Woodlawn

Hyde Park areas to acquire more City services with new designation William Rhee News Staff

APP continued on page 2

Local businesses turn to community loans to grow

Students raise awareness of political struggle in Venezuela

Alec Goodwin Maroon Contributor

2008, joins 43 other colleges that accept the UCA, including Duke, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins.

The announcement follows a 9.5 percent decrease in the number of applicants. During this past application cycle, the Office of College Admissions read through 27,499 applications, nearly 3,000 fewer than last year.

Using funds provided by taxes levied predominantly on businesses, the designation of the red-outlined area as an SSA will lead to additional services from the City of Chicago.

Carissa Eclarin Maroon Contributor The Bridge Club laid all its cards on the table, qualifying for a spot at the 2014 North American Bridge Championships.

Second-year Julian ManasseBoetani, third-year Bob Chen, second-year Kelly Mao, and thirdyear Ruth Ng competed on Febru-

ary 15 in the American Contract Bridge League’s (ACBL) annual Collegiate Championship Qualifiers and qualified for the Summer 2014 North American Bridge Championships. The ACBL, the largest governing organization of Tournament Bridge in North America, will host the team to compete for scholarship money in BRIDGE continued on page 2

IN VIEWPOINTS

IN ARTS

IN SPORTS

Protest for clearer dissent policy »

Bateman and his Bad Words arrive at Doc for debut, Q&A » Page 7

Buzzer-beater victory sparks second-weekend win » Back Page

Not just symbolic » Page 3

Beyond the beard: History Channel’s Vikings » Page 7

In the Chatter’s Box: Megan Tang » Page 11

Page 3

THE CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | February 25, 2014

2

UCA to “simplify” the application process APP continued from front

University spokesman Jeremy Manier cited problems with the Common Application website as one possible explanation for the dip in the number of applicants. UChicago pushed back its usual early January deadline by several weeks to compensate for widespread technical glitches in the new version of the Common App that was rolled out in 2013.

College Admissions de-

cided to use the UCA because it sought “an application option that is easy to use, reduces stress, and simplifies the process,” according to Dean of Admissions Jim Nondorf in a press release for ApplicationsOnline, the company that launched UCA in 2007, and provided the original technolog y for the Common Application.

“We have been very happy with how easy it has been to work with the Uni-

versal College Application team,” he said in a statement.

From the outset, the UCA shares many of the same features as the Common App. It accepts ACT, SAT, AP, and IB scores, and the various supplements for participating colleges.

The Universal College Application will not replace the Common Application, according to Manier.

Community interest prompted building restoration HISTORY continued from front

historic Shoreland Hotel. Opening in 1926, the Shoreland hosted distinguished guests like Elvis Presley, Amelia Earhart, and Al Capone, as well as the University’s own Milton Friedman (A.M. ’33) during its time as a hotel.

It was an important entertainment spot in Hyde Park for many years, hosting many banquets, weddings, and bar mitzvahs.

In 1976, the University bought the hotel and converted it into a residence hall. Shoreland Hall housed students until 2008, when, after years of deterioration, the building was bought

by MAC, which restored the hotel up to “National Park Service standards for historical preservation,” according to the HPHS. Notably, MAC made sure to restore the 1930s-style ballroom. Today, the Shoreland is a luxury apartment building.

The University received

NEWS IN BRIEF New Cabinet position opens Student Government (SG) has created a new Cabinet position, Director of Communications, according an e-mail sent to students by SG President and fourth-year Michael McCown on Monday.

The role of the Director of Communications will be to manage SG’s public relations and communications, developing a “strategic marketing plan” for SG. The Director of Communications will also handle SG’s publications, website, and advertisements.

“The idea behind this position is that we are functioning at capacity in terms of that the Cabinet has a lot of projects,” McCown told the Maroon. “The problem we’re increasingly running into is communicating those projects to the student community.”

this year’s second award for the “rehabilitation of the Harper Theater buildings.”

Built in the arts and crafts style of architecture, the theater originally opened in 1914 as a vaudeville house and was redone as a movie theater in 1935. Harper Theater drew audiences until 2002, when it closed.

The University acquired the buildings that year, intending to convert it into retail space. As it had fallen into a state of disrepair, the theater was nearly demolished. However, Pam Haley, a concerned Hyde Park resident, spearheaded a campaign to save the theater’s buildings. Haley collected between 2,000 and 3,000 signatures in support of preserving the buildings.

“The biggest challenge was probably the fact that the momentum was charged by the University and by various real estate interests,” she said.

Recognizing the community support, the Uni-

versity instead decided to restore the buildings back to their former glory, hiring a developer to refurbish the exterior of the building, rebuild the entrance, and install a copy of the original sign.

Harper Theater reopened in 2012, under the management of Tony Fox, who also owns a movie theater in Rogers Park. According to Associate Vice President for Real Estate Operations James Hennessy, who accepted the award on behalf of the University, it has seen commercial success.

“110,000 people showed up within the first 11 months of the theater [opening ],” Hennessy said, adding that it took the Rogers Park location three years to reach this milestone.

“In my opinion, [the Harper Theater restoration] catalyzed the rest of what you see going on in 53rd Street today.”

McCown said that a student will be appointed by the current Cabinet before the end of the quarter, with the hope that this person will also reapply for the position for the 2014–2015 school year.

This is not the first time that the Cabinet has been expanded. McCown noted that “there’s already precedent around the Cabinet being larger than it is,” as last year, SG’s Cabinet included a Chief of Staff position for the first time.

spected on February 11 and February 13, respectively.

The inspections, which were conducted by the Chicago Department of Public Health, noted a lack of separation between food preparation space and customer seating as a critical issue with both restaurants.

In the case of Porkchop, the inspection also cited the existence of “a black substance on ice cubes inside of the ice machine.”

According to Brian Richardson, spokesman for the Chicago Department of Public Health, most restaurants pass their first inspection. “Seventy percent of restaurants pass the first time,” he said.

Richardson also noted that restaurants may not open until they pass. Both restaurants are scheduled to open in early March and are in the process of hiring employees.

Neither representatives from Native Foods nor Porkchop could be reached for comment regarding the inspections.

—Harini Jaganathan

Harper court businesses fail health inspections Two restaurants located in the University-owned Harper Court complex, both of which have yet to open to the public, have failed health inspections in the past few weeks.

Native Foods, a vegan restaurant, and Porkchop, which primarily serves BBQ and liquor, were in-

—Isaac Stein

After 2008 crisis, businesses seek alternative funding LOANS continued from front

was originally in real estate when a childhood friend asked to rent out one of Pugh’s spaces to open a coffee shop in Bronzeville and later approached Pugh to become a business partner.

Pugh has since opened two locations in Hyde Park, one on East 51st Street in 2009 and one on East 53rd Street in 2012. While he closed the Bronzeville location in 2011, Pugh plans to reopen it in the next three months using some of the money from the LendSquare campaign.

Pugh anticipates spending his own capital to cover expenses that necessarily accompany expansion,

but notes that the $25,000 from the LendSquare campaign will be a significant help. So far, Sip and Savor has raised $8,220, 32 percent of its goal.

Small business owners say that the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis made it difficult for banks to lend to them because of the riskiness of the ventures.

“Getting money requires having money,” Z&H Café shopkeeper Sam Darrigrand said.

Darrigrand raised $18,500 through a two-week LendSquare campaign in 2011 during the start-up’s prototype phase. The money helped reduce the high-interest debt he had accrued after

opening Z&H’s East 57th Street location in August 2010. Z&H is currently halfway through paying off the two-year loan.

“As long as crowdfunding is a better option than banks or credit cards, crowdfunding will continue to grow in popularity. Small businesses need the money in the end,” said second-year Darek Blachowicz, who worked with the startup in the fall.

Both Darrigrand and Pugh would consider using LendSquare again in the future.

“If [banks] aren’t willing to give me the money, then I have to find alternatives because I am not willing to cut costs,” Pugh said.

Business owners showed support for SSA SSA continued from front

vide special governmental services in addition to existing City services, according to public filings from the Office of the City Clerk.

The revenues required to provide the special services will be raised by means of a services tax levied upon the area’s taxable property yearly from 2013 through 2022.

The tax will be determined by the SSA committee and will not exceed an annual rate of 0.95 percent of the taxable property’s equalized assessed value. According to public filings from the Office of the City Clerk, the SSA budget for the fiscal year beginning January 1, 2014 and ending December 31, 2014 is $264,508. “[The services tax] is a special assessment, which is very similar to a tax on property owners,” Cocagne said. “The point is, a large majority of the properties

within the SSA are commercial properties, so it’s the property owners and business owners who will end up footing most of the bill.”

Cocagne thinks this is a sign of greater community organization and involvement in neighborhood projects. During the SSA application process, community members served on the SSA Advisory Committee and attended meetings to show support for the SSA. “I think what it indicates is the property and business owners’ willingness to continue to invest in a special assessment in the area that comprises the SSA,” Cocagne said. “It’s very encouraging to see that kind of long-term commitment towards continuing to improve the area, catalyze development, and make sure that this initial set of redevelopment activities is sus-

tained over a long term.”

The establishment of an SSA in Hyde Park will not interfere with the 53rd Street Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district already in place, according to Cocagne. The TIF district, established in 2001, incentivizes economic development in the area by freezing property tax rates. The added revenues then go into a fund that finances community development projects like Harper Court.

“They serve complementary but different purposes,” Cocagne said. “Tax Increment Financing, particularly in the case of Harper Court, supported physical improvements like public right-of-way improvements and land acquisitions. The SSA is simply an extension and natural outgrowth of what has already occurred along the 53rd Street corridor.”

Collegiate bridge finals to be held in person BRIDGE continued from front

a three-day competition at Las Vegas, NV this July.

Bridge is a card game played in teams of four in two competing partnerships.

The Collegiate Championship Qualifiers were held on Bridge Base Online (BBO), a free online multiplayer bridge website. Although the team incurred a 20–0 loss to Yale University, the team bounced back with a 10–10 tie against University of Washington and defeated Caltech 16–4, Columbia University 14–6, and Whitman College 15–5, earning the 55 Victory Points out of a possible 100 that secured the team’s fourth-place win and spot in the champi-

onships. The team placed fourth after Columbia (63), Stanford (70), and UNC Chapel Hill (74).

The top three teams and the two highest-scoring teams from the tournament’s two brackets—comprised of 12 teams each—advanced to the championships.

Princeton (79), Illinois (68), UC Berkeley (57), Cornell (56) were the other championship -qualif ying teams from the other bracket.

Every Wednesday evening, the Bridge Club welcomes an average of 20 players to practice playing bridge with others whenever they want.

Bridge Club President and third year Oren Kriegel said he and Ng, the Trea-

surer, chose players according to who “[they] thought would be most successful as a team. Everyone knows everyone in the club, since it’s a small group,” Kriegel said.

Team captain ManasseBoetani did not have specific expectations for the team’s performance at the national championships.

“It depends on how much we practice, as well as in some degree on luck.

We played fairly well at the qualifiers, but we did not end up playing against some of the best teams, so I don’t know how we will stack up against them. The finals will also be in person rather than online, which adds a whole new dimension to the game,” he said in an e-mail.

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VIEWPOINTS

Editorial & Op-Ed FEBRUARY 25, 2014

Protest for clearer dissent policy Committee on Dissent and Protest’s Report opens up questions instead of answering them 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 ALAN HASSLER Head Copy Editor SHERRY HE Head Copy Editor KATARINAMENTZELOPOULOSHeadCopyEditor BEN ZIGTERMAN Head Copy Editor SYDNEY COMBS Photo Editor JULIA REINITZ Photo Editor PETER TANG Photo Editor FRANK YAN Photo Editor COLIN BRADLEY Grey City Editor JOY CRANE Grey City Editor SINDHUGNANASAMBANDAN Assoc.NewsEditor ALEX HAYS Assoc. News Editor

Last week, the Ad Hoc Committee on Dissent and Protest released its report examining University policies on campus demonstration. The Committee was convened last year by Provost Thomas Rosenbaum in response to a protest at the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC) where four people—including a current student and an alum—were arrested. Rosenbaum asked the seven-member committee to examine whether demonstrations at sensitive buildings, such as the UCMC, should be treated differently than others; whether University affiliates should be treated differently than non–University affiliates; and how communication between protesters, the UCPD, and University staff could be improved. Produced after nearly a year of deliberations, however, the Committee’s report offers little clarity on the fundamental questions raised by the protest and those it was charged to answer.

The Committee concluded that the University has the right to limit protest at especially sensitive facilities, but it did not explain what kinds of facilities satisfy that description. The existing disruptive-conduct code seems to leave open the possibility of limiting protest at virtually any facility, so the distinction between sensitive and non-sensitive in this new report is even more vi-

tal. While a hospital may be especially sensitive, do buildings housing classrooms or top administrators deserve the same protection? Even at those especially sensitive facilities, the Committee argued that it is impossible to define without context the limits that may be imposed. Omitting an explanation or guidelines for what constitutes a “sensitive facility” gives the University too much discretion in imposing limits that could have a stifling effect on campus speech.

The report also waffled on whether individuals affiliated with the University should be handled differently from those who are unaffiliated in matters of protest. On the one hand, the Committee concluded that the University should minimize differences in treatment between individuals affiliated and unaffiliated with the University.

On the other hand, it said that because there are separate disciplinary mechanisms for University affiliates, “in some circumstances it will be entirely appropriate for the University to treat members of its community differently from people who are not members of the University community.” The Committee does not address under what circumstances a University affiliate and non–University affiliate may be treated differently, and effectively leaves the question of differential treatment unre-

solved. As we have written before, the University’s “absolute commitment” to open inquiry requires that it treat University affiliates and non–University affiliates the same way.

We are also troubled by the minimal input given to the Committee by groups outside of the University.

While the Committee held an open meeting last May and invited anyone to contribute via e-mail, the only community group with which it met one-on-one was the South East Chicago Commission. Visible and equal representation from both sides of the spectrum would allow the Committee to demonstrate its commitment to providing truly constructive criticism, rather than relying solely on open meeting attendance. Meeting with a broader range of community groups such as Fearless Leading by the Youth and Southside Together Organizing for Power—two of the groups that were involved in the UCMC protests and some of the most active demonstrators on campus—would have more vigorously challenged the Committee to think about its charge. This is especially striking in light of the Committee’s own advice to the University: that it “be alert to the benefits of collaborating with representatives of the neighboring communities and other stakeholders.”

STEPHANIE XIAO Assoc. News Editor

While many of the Committee’s conclusions are too vague, we applaud its recommendation that there be a presumption against limiting protest and that the University clarify one of its statutes to more clearly define disruptive conduct. Protest, the Committee rightly points out, is always disruptive to some degree. Campus and Student Life has also recognized that current communication regarding protest policies is inadequate and we urge administrators to act on the Committee’s recommendation to train RSO leaders in these policies.

Because the Committee’s report leaves so much unresolved, though, students, community members, and administrators should see the document not as a conclusion to a campus controversy, but as a starting point for a larger effort to get the University to more clearly define free speech protections. We urge students and community members to robustly exercise their right to demonstrate when they feel it is necessary. The only way for policies on dissent and protest to become clearer is if students continue to raise difficult questions about the University’s absolute commitment to freedom of ideas.

The Editorial Board consists of the Editors-in-Chief and the Viewpoints Editors.

TATIANA FIELDS Assoc. Sports Editor SAM ZACHER Assoc. Sports Editor

TYRONALD JORDAN Business Manager

The view from down here Not just symbolic In which I suck at a lot of stuff and turn 20

Anti-divestment defeatism misses the point

TAMER BARSBAY Director of Business Research

Johnny Guy Viewpoints Contributor

ANNIE ZHU Director of External Marketing VINCENT MCGILL Delivery Coordinator ANNIE CANTARA Designer CARINA BAKER Designer CARISSA ECLARIN Desginer AURNA HASNIE Designer JANE JUN Designer JONAH RABB Designer NICHOLAS ROUSE Designer MOLLY SEVCIK Designer KRYSTEN BRAY Copy Editor SOPHIE DOWNES Copy Editor JOE JOSEPH Copy Editor CHELSEA LEU Copy Editor KATIE LEU Copy Editor JOHN LOTUS Copy Editor VICTORIA RAEL Copy Editor HANNAH RAUSCH Copy Editor CHRISTINE SCHMIDT Copy Editor OLIVIA STOVICEK Copy Editor ANDY TYBOUT Copy Editor

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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

Liam Leddy

Vignettes and Hyperlinks I’d like to say that I started my third decade auspiciously—that I emerged from my teens resilient and collected, in a state of controlled calm. But dude, shit was hitting the fan.

The midnight hour found me at my kitchen table, trying to remember what in the name of the Trix rabbit the kernel of a matrix was. I guess “remember” isn’t really the right verb, as its use supposes that I knew at one point, which I didn’t. No, I was actually just reading the solutions manual so that I could finish my homework and go to bed. It’s not something of which I’m proud, mortgaging knowledge and morality for a few more hours of sleep. I’m still not really sure which is more valuable.

Anyway, whatever the means, I finished (mostly) and went to sleep. Three hours later I woke up, rushed frantically around my apartment to compensate for the extra 20 minutes I’d accidentally slept, and ran down the stairs and out the front door. I thought I was late for the team van to practice (I wasn’t), so in my haste I jumped the last foot from my doorstep to the sidewalk. I was born around 6 a.m., so as it happened I turned from 19 and vertical to 20 and horizontal.

I landed on my ass, looked up, and saw the world for the first time as a 20-year-old. And the damn thing didn’t look any different.

It’s apparently become a Viewpoints tradition to write about turning 20, and I thought that was kind of stupid until it happened to me. But there’s something about the age of 20 that the Liams of yesteryear viewed as responsible, grown-up, and important. But this Liam doesn’t really see the difference, hear the change, or smell the

“

There’s something about the age of 20 that the Liams of yesteryear viewed as responsible...

”

transition. He’s just trying to get a few more hours of sleep.

There’s something weird about realizing that all the people I thought of as mature when I was little probably felt the same as I FALLING continued on page 5

On Friday, Maroon readers were treated to a Viewpoints column titled “Divest from Divestment” by Patrick Reilly concerning the recent push by student activists on campus for the University to discontinue direct investment in fossil fuel companies. Taking an opposing view on the issue from most previous op-eds, Reilly urges us to “look at the facts” when it comes to the impact divestment would have on the actions of fossil fuel companies, arguing that “a symbolic public relations campaign” would do little to “sway Big Oil.” Because of the relatively small size of University investments relative to the market capitalization of companies such as Exxon Mobil, he contends, “SFCC’s energies could be better spent elsewhere.”

Well, yes, divestment by UChicago alone would have little immediate impact on the University’s energy consumption habits or the pocketbooks of Exxon; that much is obvious. Assessments like these questioning the University’s economic clout in the global energy market misunderstand the approach divestment takes. That approach—the indirect “social stigmatization” effect that Reilly so casually dismisses—seems suspect, until you consider the fact that the vast majority of empirical studies on divestment have found that it wields considerable influence on the outcome of political and social campaigns.

Reilly is right: “Fundamental change in energy policy at all levels” is the only way transitioning to renewables will be facilitated. But he fails to consider that

these changes will only occur by force of a massive, overwhelming popular movement that recognizes not only the nonnegotiable imperative for climate action but also the extent to which companies like Exxon are fighting efforts to do anything.

And fought they have. Oil and gas companies are routinely top contributors to organizations and political candidates that deny climate change, although this money has become harder to track in recent years. The most ambitious legislative attempt at comprehensive climate policy in the United States, the Waxman-Markey bill, failed in 2009 thanks in large part to opposition from the industry. Last year, the largest 200 fossil fuel companies in America recklessly spent $674 billion on exploring and developing new carbon reserves, despite the fact that the vast majority of unburned fossil fuel assets will have to remain in the ground if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Actions like these, combined with lackluster investment in renewable energy (and not-so-lackluster advertising) suggest that the fossil fuel industry is forgoing its chance to “get on board” with going green. Given the success of its current business models—six of the 10 most profitable corporations worldwide deal in oil and gas—it’s easy to see why.

The most successful movements in the 20th century—American civil rights, anti-apartheid, Indian independence— did not succeed by asking nicely. While fossil fuel divestment is certainly not as morally cut-and-dry as, say, apartheid divestment, the underlying principle reDIVESTMENT continued on page 6

THE CHICAGO MAROON | VIEWPOINTS | February 25, 2014

4

We’re just going in circles If life is a wheel, then we’re along for the ride

Eleanor Hyun

Don’t go alone As of yesterday, I’m on a productivity kick. My laptop broke, but that didn’t stop me from sitting in front of a computer for hours on end. The unfamiliarity of the towering keys of the Reg computers made me hyperaware of my fingertips so that as they depressed I never digressed as I watched the clock in the bottom right corner steadily move from 11 to 12 to one and as I dragged and dropped Punnett squares. I realized that I felt like a first-year again, studying smoothly and efficiently as if the machine in my head had been newly oiled. And then I realized that I had been in a productivity slump for the entire last quarter.

During first year I would oc-

casionally experience slumps that would sabotage my progress for a week or two. And when I recognized this pattern, my excitement at hitting my stride again was always tempered with the knowledge that I would relapse into the numbing embrace of procrastination in a matter of weeks. It was like I was a pendulum; when I was on the left side, I would study just fine, but it was only a matter of time before I swung back to the right side and would somehow, inexplicably, let an entire weekend slip through my fingers.

This has always troubled me, but it especially troubled me when I realized that the swings of the pendulum have become larg-

er, so that not only am I doomed to relapse, but also every time that I do I will relapse for a longer period of time. And my productivity swings are not guaranteed the same trend—I personally have no idea how long this one will last (a day or two? A week? Let’s hope for a month).

I wrote everything above this about a month ago. I can tell you now that it only lasted a couple of days, and I continue to be routinely perplexed and frustrated at the hours I whittle away each day.

Life seems to follow these cyclical patterns, and every time I’m content I know that I only need to fall asleep and wake up in the morning to no longer be so. It’s enough to give me a distinct feeling of fatalism—a feeling that whatever agency I exert is only enough to cause a momentary blip in the course of a wheel which infallibly, inevitably continues to turn.

I was two the first time I poked my eye by running into something. It hurt a lot and I hated it.

But a new type of dread settled in

“ I’ve been living as if problems are solved in a temporally linear fashion...

”

as I poked my eye a couple more times throughout my childhood.

As I shut my eyes, waiting for the stinging to fade, I knew that this would not be the last time that I accidentally poked my eye, and even as the pain faded it was only temporary respite until the

next time it came back. Because even if I tried to avoid poking my eye like those Greek heroes of mytholog y tried to escape their fates, given my human carelessness and lifespan, it was inevitable I’d experience the same pain again at some point.

Somehow I’ve been living under the impression that problems are solved in a temporally linear fashion, and that pain is one of those problems to be solved and then be done with for the rest of my life. The life to which I should aspire is one that is under my control and, although not free from toil, free from suffering. But seeing the undulations of that cycle lying immovable ahead of me, perhaps I need to realize that pain and frustration are not things to be overcome in life, but intrinsic parts of it.

Eleanor Hyun is a second-year in the College majoring in English.

On the agenda Our relentlessly busy and monotonous schedules change enjoyable activities into bullet points to cross off Ellen Wiese Viewpoints Staff Most nights of the week, I find myself walking back from one-of-athousand RSOs sometime between nine and midnight. In between avoiding the mud puddles and the ice slicks, my mind is busy contemplating either the latest reading that I know I won’t finish, suppressing my lingering and childish fear of the dark, or worrying that the tall stranger behind me might be a mugger or a werewolf. But if I can set my roster of worries aside in that brief time between one commitment and another, I have the rare moment to consider not just the transition from one activity to another, but my schedule as a whole.

At moments like these, I almost reflexively check the calendar on my phone—full of little blue boxes with little blue labels, overlapping

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on another night where I won’t get everything done. Merely getting through the endless, constant grind of busyness has become an end in itself, above and beyond the commitments that form it.

Some of this grind is habit. The days pass by and I do what I signed up for—I complain about it, put it off, avoid it if I can, and move on to the next impending semi-disaster which seems so big in my windshield, but so small in the rearview mirror. The weekly, monthly, and quarterly schedule is a merry-goround where the music never stops, and after a while you can’t see the colors or enjoy the breeze because of the spinning.

This monotonous, dispassionate routine is such a given of winter quarter that we’ve long since stopped talking about it by the time eighth week rolls around, much less questioning its seemingly obvious origins. Yes, the pa-

rade of gray days, slush, and hopelessly plummeting temperatures is depressing, and the enormous course load doesn’t exactly help.

But these are expected, and even anticipated. Rather, winter quarter feels so much darker than fall quarter because the never-ending effort of balancing everything has itself become routine.

I tell myself that I love being busy, and that’s not wrong. I find a certain pleasure in full days and late nights hunched over the seven-page paper due in six hours with five cups of super-caffeinated tea. And, generally speaking, I’m busy for good reasons—the Core requirement, self-improvement, sheer enjoyment, or even just a commitment I have to keep. The college student, and the UChicago student more than most, is constantly running from one thing to the next on far fewer hours of sleep than problems on your average P-set.

But the problem isn’t really the activities, classes, and commitments—it’s the schedule itself. Not the next choir concert, the next practice, the next set of proofs at two in the morning, but the nonstop push through these things, the endless roster, the to-do list with too many empty boxes. When simply moving through the schedule becomes something we do for its own sake, fulfillment and enjoyment are lost.

When doing everything robs the meaning from what we love, how do we decide what we still care about?

There are plenty of short, catchy, perfectly acceptable answers to this problem—mindfulness, time management, balance. But a bigger part of the solution is the realization that regardless of your commitment to the life of the mind, your discomfort with free time, or your type A personality, it is impossible

to do everything. Not because of the commitments themselves or the collective time they require, but because of the mental strain the treadmill of constant activity puts you under.

Walking back from one-of-athousand RSOs, if I can hold off fretting over the latest P-set and convince myself that tall strangers probably aren’t muggers or werewolves, there is a certain calm that comes from an unavoidable few minutes of inactivity. Despite the race of the day, moments like this keep us sane. Struggling to maintain the things we care about against a schedule that reduces them to just one more time-sucking commitment, sometimes we need to leave space for emptiness to remember that being busy is not an end in itself.

Ellen Wiese is a first-year in the College.

THE CHICAGO MAROON | VIEWPOINTS | February 25, 2014

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“...I just spent the entire day on my ass, trying to get up to no avail.”

FALLING continued from page 3 do now, and really as I did then: small. I don’t mean small in a necessarily bad way, or in a whiny, petty way. I rather mean small in the way that we all feel unimportant, insignificant, made so by the sense that no matter how we search for meaning—low and high, far and wide, undulatingly and flatulently—we’ll still look like we lost our keys.

My upstairs neighbors have arbitrarily taken to playing music very loudly the past few days, and MAC has taken to slightly less arbitrarily turning off our water the past few weeks. As I write we’ll be sans water in T minus seven hours and 50 minutes, and my neighbors are listening to “Teenage Dream.”

It’s a rough life (see, as long as I self-deprecate about my problems in order to implicitly acknowledge that I come from a solidly middle-class family and attend an elite private university and have running water [mostly {Is this like math? Can I have nested parentheticals?}] and have things paid for by loving parents, you won’t think I’m an asshole. Although I probably killed that with this parenthetical [and the whole nesting thing ]). Kind of funny that they’re playing “Teenage Dream” though, right? Seeing as I’m just now no longer a teenager? You get it?

I ran out of toothpaste, and I keep forgetting to buy more, so I’ve been using my roommate’s.

Sorry, Brendan. (Or am I using Gus’s? Which one of you uses Colgate Total Advanced with Whitening?)

All right, this article is reaching “But what the fuck, you know ?” territory, so let’s bring it back

around. I didn’t actually finish my math homework before I went to bed. I left a little to do in econ the next day. Then my teacher caught me doing it, and he was just like, “Doing a little linear algebra?”

And Bobby and I just started laughing because, well, yeah, I was.

And he said, “That’s OK,” and he laughed too. Bobby and I laughed it off, and Sebastien Gay laughed with us.

I find myself laughing it off a lot. I laugh off my Kramer-like entrance into my third decade, I laugh off the holes that are in my tennis shoes, and now my socks, and probably my toe soon. I laugh off all the jackwagons that comment on columns in our newspaper and everywhere else on the Internet and tell people to stop writing, shut up, or transfer.

There are a multitude of places this post could now go. I can tell you that I’m an idiot for laughing, and that I should stop trivializing my problems and realize that they’re not a laughing matter; that I ought to take my issues seriously and seek to correct them, and that you should do the same. Or I can tell you that we all need to relax about our problems and gain some perspective, to stop sweating the small stuff and just try to enjoy ourselves. Either of those would make for a nice, clear moral with which to walk away, both for me and for you.

Or I could leave it right here, tell you that I don’t give two falafel what conclusion you draw or what you take away from any of this, or what you take away from anything I think. Hear what you want to hear, believe what you want to believe, I really don’t care what you do. Not just because I

ALICE XIAO

don’t know you, not just because you probably go to UChicago and I therefore no longer possess any interest in your thoughts and opinions, and not just because directly addressing the reader is a dramatic way to end an article.

But because I have no idea what’s going on, and, more importantly, I’m all out of falafel.

But my sister texted me after reading my last article and asked if I could make the next one happy. I

told her I’d try, so we’re gonna go with the happy ending here.

I fall on my ass a lot. Sometimes literally, but more often figuratively. And I fell on my ass a lot in the first hours of my third decade.

Actually, it was more like I just spent the entire day on my ass, trying to get up to no avail. No matter how I tried, pushed, pulled, and squirmed around—when all was said and done I think I set a oneday record for most butt scoots—I

| THE CHICAGO MAROON

couldn’t separate my bottom from the ground. But you know the thing about the world from down here, from a toddler’s height?

(There I go, addressing the reader again [what a douche bag {I know, right?}]) The damn thing doesn’t really look any different.

Liam Leddy is the blogger behind Vignettes and Hyperlinks. He is a second-year in the college majoring in economics.

Passion in the pits Sometimes admitting you’re bad at something is harder than actually being bad at it

Grace Koh

No Airs and Graces Over the course of my year and a half at this university, I’ve come to terms with the fact that my B in Math 152 will forever mark my grand egress from quantitative academia, and that there will always be biology major pre-med students who understand Marx more quickly than I do. I’ve decided that I want to spend my time in college just learning what I want to learn—all that “life is too short, so you need to do what you love” stuff. I thought I’d found the answer to living a life without ever having to worry about constructing the perfect résumé or impressing others, just by doing what I love.

So I sought solace in hobbies and decided to minor in music. I have never considered myself an exceptionally talented violinist, with an inordinately long list of failed auditions to prove it, but no one could tell me I

didn’t enjoy it. Yet as I sat in class and listened to my peers discuss the differences between the greatest musicians of the time and compared that to my inability to tell the difference between the quality of a world-class performance and elevator music, I felt that pervasive sense of inferiority catch up to me again.

My immediate reaction was frustration. Am I so incompetent that I can’t even enjoy something right?

While others had been going to concerts and listening to recordings of great musicians, what was I doing with my life? Probably watching Friends reruns for the 50th time or spending way too much time on Pinterest.

But strangely, herein lay my real answer to living a life without insecurity. Even though I really did enjoy playing in orchestra and listening to concertos, if my

peers practiced for hours every day while I struggled to barely get through an hour a couple times a week, did I actually love playing violin? Without disregarding the aspect of discipline, if I don’t ultimately enjoy that process of cultivation, can I really call it a passion?

We see someone who seems impossibly better than us at something and characterize her as possessing some intangible, inherent superiority. Previously, I had always attributed my musical incompetence to lack of talent. But shouldn’t it be obvious that people who invest more time and effort into developing their skills in music are inherently more musically developed than I am? And frankly, the only thing that stopped me from practicing as much as others was that I just didn’t want to.

As Albert Einstein said, “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” My true issue was never a lack of talent, but rather a lack of passion.

At a university where

the valedictorians of public high schools, the salutatorians of New England prep schools, and students from all over the rest of the country are thrown into one classroom, the idea of “talent” often seems misused and overrated. What’s commonly perceived as talent is just a construct—a delusion created from circumstance and the pressure to find and invest in certain interests earlier in life.

As college students, we often consider this time of our lives as one in which we can figure out what we want to do; we are told over and over again that the best career in the world is one that you love. But we also tend to limit our search only to interests that have an established career path attached to them, like following stocks. We dismiss our more “obvious” interests because they don’t have a clear return value.

Perhaps what discovering a passion really involves is digging deeper into what you already know you enjoy. There may be only so

many times you can watch a sitcom, but there is a lot to learn about what instigates laughter or how to analyze media, for example.

We too often assume that hating the everyday trudge toward our dreams, or discovering our dreams, is just a natural part of what it means to work hard. I may hate econ P-sets and absolutely dread going to lab every week, but nothing and nobody can ever tell me that I can’t do it. But there is someone who can tell us that we can’t do it: ourselves.

Instead of worrying about being seen as a failure or trying to come to terms with “not being talented enough” and beating ourselves up for not being able to work harder, what if we considered the fact that we’re just interested in something else, even if it means giving up prospects of a more prestigious or idealized career? There’s a difference between learning to persevere and repeatedly finding oneself desperately searching for motivation to keep going.

All passions require dedication, and the idea of “no pain, no gain” is absolutely valid. But I also think that sometimes realizing and admitting that we actually don’t like something is harder than thinking that we can’t do something.

Maybe it’s because the former doesn’t have as clear a solution as the latter. Maybe it’s the difference between telling ourselves that we don’t know how to do something and telling ourselves that we don’t know how to be somebody. Whatever it is, sometimes we waste a lot of time and energy fighting ourselves unnecessarily.

I still love music, and I still plan on minoring in it. I would still love to be better at violin, but it’s OK if I’m not, because I’ve accepted the fact that I just don’t care as much as some people. It’s not a passion. I’m reserving that for something that, at the end of the day, I can honestly say I love doing.

Grace Koh is a second-year in the College majoring in political science.

THE CHICAGO MAROON | VIEWPOINTS | February 25, 2014

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Global Investor Survey on Climate Change found that 23 percent of investors overall took divestiture action in 2013, up from nine percent the previous year.

Not all of these divestments were driven by moral concerns. Many investors heeding warnings from Jeremy Grantham, Hank Paulson, and others about a growing carbon bubble and the need for climatechange risk assessment are simply trying to minimize market exposure to stranded carbon assets and climate deterioration.

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim and U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres have both come out explicitly in favor of divestment on financial terms. These developments have had some effect on big oil’s bottom line: In January, Exxon, Shell, and Chevron saw their collective market capitalization fall $24 billon.

Whether propelled by moral or monetary incentives, the University doesn’t exist in a vacuum; nor is its support of fossil fuel companies (or anything else, for that matter) apolitical. When preserving the status quo threatens the long-term viability of our species, is that not an “exceptional instance…incompatible with paramount social values”? This quote, taken from a clause in the Kalven Report, was written for times like these. Let’s not disappoint.

Johnny Guy is a first-year in the College .

Spring 2014 Courses in the Big Problems Capstone Curriculum for juniors and seniors

TWO NEW COURSES: THE AFFECT SYSTEM

John Cacioppo (Psychology), Eric Oliver (Political Science), Stephanie Cacioppo (Psychology) BPRO 23800, PLSC 23810, PSYC 23880

MYTHICAL HISTORY, PARADIGMATIC FIGURES: CAESAR, AUGUSTUS, CHARLEMAGNE, NAPOLEON Michèle Lowrie (Classics), Robert Morrissey (Romance Languages & Literatures) BPRO 26700, CLCV 26713, FNDL 22912, FREN 26701

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

For more information, please see: http://collegecatalog.uchicago.edu/thecollege/bigproblems

The Big Problems curriculum addresses matters of global or universal concern that intersect with several disciplines and aȔect a variety of interest groups.

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.

p r o b l e m s

DIVESTMENT continued from page 3 mains: The only way the propagators of a destructive system will change is if people demand they do so via the removal of their support, symbolic or otherwise.

There’s no questioning that industrial progress powered by coal, oil, and gas has yielded impressive gains in wealth and standard of living over the past two centuries, or that these energy sources comprise “a trillion-dollar, public-private industrial system that connects and supports every individual on the planet.” But this latter fact is precisely the problem: Fossil fuels are so deeply rooted in our economy that it’s impossible for businesses, families, and universities not to be complicit under current conditions.

Divestment isn’t perfect; it will be impossible for the University to remove full support of the fossil fuel industry until the goals of the green energy movement have been achieved. Nor is divestment intended to be an exclusive action—advocacy for sound, specific policies is equally important and the focus of UChicago Climate Action Network’s other campaigns—but it is a necessary one.

Another flaw in Reilly’s argument is his assumption that divestment is meant to be a practice particular to universities. While only nine institutions of higher learning in the United States have divested from fossil fuels as of today, thousands of municipal governments, religious groups, nonprofit organizations, and pension funds have done their part. The

Announcing

b i g

Divestment here will influence others

Yoga. Meditation. We have it.

TWENTY MINUTES STILL Every weekday 8 am, Rockefeller Chapel Twenty Minutes Still is a daily opportunity to still the mind, still the body, and open the heart. No experience or particular spiritual or religious commitment needed. Free.

Monday: Nadia Chana Tuesday: Ginger Carr Wednesday: Meredith Haggerty Thursday: Yaniv Ron El Friday: Kat Ziegler

ZEN MEDITATION Every Wednesdays at 5:30 pm, Rockefeller Chapel (5 pm for instruction) Rockefeller offers Zen meditation weekly throughout the year, with Taigen Dan Leighton and Nyozan Eric Shutt of Ancient Dragon Zen Gate. Free.

SAMATHA MEDITATION Every Wednesday, 6 pm, Rockefeller Uncommon Room Samatha Buddhist meditation (calmness through attention to the breath) for beginners.

GENTLE YOGA Every Thursday 4 pm, Bond Chapel Meredith Haggerty instructs a gentle yoga class, a slightly more active one than the Tuesday restorative classes. This class is a combination of easy movement and breathing exercises to relieve stiff necks and backs! Suggested donation $5, free to students.

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

QUIRE & PLACE III: THE THIRD SEASON

VOCALESSENCE SUNDAY MARCH 2, 3 PM

ROCKEFELLER CHAPEL | 5850 SOUTH WOODLAWN AVE VocalEssence offers the première performance of Timothy Takach’s To Love, To Be Swallowed Up, with classic American and Mexican choral works including Stephen Paulus (The Day is Done), Eric Whitacre (Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine), Aaron Jay Kernis (Glorious Majesty), Jorge Cózatl, and Carol Barnett (Bluegrass Mass), and a salute to Stephen Foster on the 150th anniversary of his death.

The Rockefeller Chapel Choir adds music of English greats Benjamin Britten and William Walton.

Tickets $20 online or at the door. Students are free w/university ID (any student)!

For more information, please call 773.702.2100.

rockefeller.uchicago.edu

2013/14 SEASON

RESTORATIVE YOGA Every Tuesday 4:30 pm and 5:45 pm, Rockefeller Chapel Meredith Haggerty offers an hour of restorative yoga in the noble setting of Rockefeller Chapel — poses held for deep relaxation and restoration. Bring your own yoga mat if you have one. Suggested donation $5, free to students.

ARTS

Heartlandia FEBRUARY 25, 2014

Bateman and his Bad Words arrive at Doc for debut, Q&A Bateman is no stranger to success, given his Golden Globe win and numerous prestigious nominations; that his film has so far been well received by several top critics, most praising it for being hilariously mean-spirited and tart, is not surprising.

BAD WORDS Max Palevsky Cinema February 25 9 p.m.

Chaitanya (Rohan Chand) and Guy (Jason Bateman) go shopping before the big Bee in the latter’s directorial debut.

COURTESY OF FOCUS FEATURES

Rohan Sharma Maroon Contributor Like many, I was first introduced to the actor Jason Bateman through Mitchell Hurwitz’s popular television sitcom, Arrested Development.

I fondly remember laughing for hours with my mother at hot cops, blue men, loose seals, Aztec tombs, and the cringe-inducing mayon-egg.

Bateman’s character, the endearing Michael Bluth, has always

been immensely quotable in his attempts to hold together the erratic yet lovable Bluth family. On Tuesday, February 25, students at the University will have a chance to see the actor in person as he tours to promote his most recent film, Bad Words, with an advancescreening at Doc Films. The event will also feature a Q&A session afterwards for anyone wondering if there really was a dead dove in that refrigerated brown paper bag, what

Michael’s chicken dance looks like, and also for those who are interested in learning about Bateman’s career as an actor and budding director.

Bad Words is Bateman’s directorial debut, a new venture in an industry that he has been familiar with for over 30 years.

The cast includes the legendary Philip Baker Hall, Allison Janney, and Bateman himself in a film consisting of a bitter spelling bee loser, Guy Trilby, who through an obscure loophole

in the Golden Quill rule book attempts to redeem himself as an adult. During the journey to prove his mastery of the English language on a national platform, Trilby also finds a corruptible little Indian friend and a renewed sense of purpose.

Billed as a dark comedy, the movie’s red band trailer alone reveals a delightful amount of casual racism, snappy foulmouthed comebacks, raunchy sex jokes, and an impressive spelling of “absquatulate.”

Outside of his rich career as an actor on television and Netflix, Bateman has starred in several critically acclaimed and celebrated films including Juno, Up in the Air, and Horrible Bosses. It would also be terribly wrong of me to exclude his first lead role in the 1987 film Teen Wolf Too, a movie that allowed a very young and dashing Bateman to display his full range as an actor of both man and beast. His body of work, although heavily focused within the genre of comedy, also features some dramatic roles like in the 2013 thriller Disconnect. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter last September, Bateman stated that he is very interested in continuing his career as a director and views acting as a way to make that goal financially possible. True to his word, he is currently filming for Horrible

Bosses 2 while also in the preproduction stage for directing The Family Fang, an adaptation of the best selling 2011 novel of the same name by Kevin Wilson.

The free event, made possible through the combined efforts of Doc Films and Focus Features, marks the second celebrity visit to Doc this winter quarter. Earlier this month Crispin Glover paid a visit to Max Palevsky Cinema prior to the screening of David Lynch’s Wild At Heart, a film that is part of the Nicolas Cage series, to promote his two short film projects. Although these celebrity visits are abnormal when viewed in the context of Doc’s recent history, the student organization has throughout its history garnered notable attention from famous directors like Darren Aronofsky, Woody Allen, and Alfred Hitchcock.

Due to the large turnout anticipated by Doc, patrons are asked to bring their UCID, RSVP online in advance of the screening and Q&A session, and arrive by 8:30 p.m. There are 400 seats reserved for those who RSVP, and the remaining seats will be allotted on a first-come, first-serve basis. The screening will be at 9 p.m. in Max Palevsky Cinema, which is located on the first floor of Ida Noyes. Bad Words will be in theaters March 14.

Beyond the beard: His- Percussion ensemble booms at Logan tory Channel’s Vikings Will Dart Arts Editor Full disclosure: Like every young boy, I grew up fascinated

by Vikings. I devoured all three of the Norse mythology picture books at the school library. I listened to Led Zeppelin III on repeat. I sat through Antonio Banderas’ performance in The 13th Warrior on more than one occasion. And when my friends and I gathered ’round the gaming table to wage campaigns in D&D and EverQuest, I picked The Barbarian every time, Cheeto-dusted fingers snatching the club-bearing figurine with glee. I was a shrimpy kid, after all, and bad at sports— The Mage or The Thief would have been far too on-the-nose for me. I always wanted to be bearded, broad-shouldered, and blonde. But my stubble grows in patches, the weight racks at Crown scare me, and, besides, I’m half-English and half-eastern European Jew—my people have been on the losing end of Germanic conquest for a thousand years on end.

And yet, I still can’t shake my burning love of the Viking ideal:

Freedom, adventure, pelts. The idea that, over a long weekend, you and some buds could suit up, hop in a ship, sail down the coast, get in a good scrum or two with the locals, and come back for beers with a boatload of booty. Those were the days! And so when the History

VIKINGS History Channel Season two premiere: Feb. 27 9:00 p.m.

Third Coast Percussion, pictured here at an earlier show, finished its weeklong residency at the Logan Center last Friday.

Channel announced that its first scripted drama ever would be titled Vikings, I was more than a little intrigued.

The series, which debuted in March of last year, follows the exploits of Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel), a roguish Norse farmer and parttime raider of great ambition and above-average cunning.

The show’s first season sees him attempting to go against Viking code and sail west to greater riches, this against the advice and better judgment of his chieftain. It spoils nothVIKINGS continued on page 8

COURTESY OF LATINOMUSICFEST.ORG

Taylor McDowell Maroon Contributor The sounds coalesced into the skeleton of a music so much its own thing that it punched pain into my eardrums with its unfamiliar, lingering sharpness.

And yet these same sounds worked together and were distinct, somehow both harmonious and not. As I sat two-thirds of the way back in the Logan Center for the Arts’s performance

hall last Friday, I became, for the first time, the distinct, uneasy prisoner of an all-percussion ensemble.

The performance I found myself entombed in had the same atmosphere I imagine certain moments of the Professional Bull Riders circuit must have when you watch it live, in person, and close enough for moist flecks from off the bull’s nostrils to graze your upper lip.

This is not what I

thought as I listened, caught up and enraptured on Friday evening, to Third Coast Percussion’s performance of Guo Wenjing’s “Parade”—the second piece of the night. But it is what strikes me now, as the thing continues to reverberate in my memory.

This second piece was the most aggressively shrill of the three-part performance played that evening. A set of four blacksmith-men set about to hammering ,

really beating the hell out of six Beijing gongs laid out prone, flat, atop the face of a table.

That’s not to say the thing was all muscle and no silk. The four percussionists stood hovering— floating—across the table in such close, fevered proximity that the thing had an intensity both acute and weighty, made more so as the musicians, with their elastic fluidity, built DRUMS continued on page 9

THE CHICAGO MAROON | ARTS | February 25, 2014

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Vikings star Clive Standen on filming: “I got a spear straight through the shoulder this season”

ALICE XIAO

VIKINGS continued from page 7 ing to say that he eventually succeeds, but not before earning the ire of some of his peers, his brother Rollo (Clive Standen) included.

A veteran of action-packed period pieces like Robin Hood and Camelot, and a total dreamboat, Standen is no stranger to sword swinging and cuirass wearing. Yet he jumped at the chance to be a part of Vikings. “As much as I enjoyed the other shows, in a way I feel

like they were just a warm-up for this one,” Standen said in a recent phone call. “Vikings is what I was really looking for in a period drama. I’ve always been mad about history, and with History Channel teaming up with Michael Hirst, it just seemed like the package I was waiting for.” With Hirst’s writing, Standen says, they’ve been able to tap into a demographic that includes fans of classic period drama—“the Pride and Prejudices, the Downton Abbeys…”—as

| THE CHICAGO MAROON

well as a younger audience who enjoys seeing large men whack each other with swords. And, besides, it’s just good fun.

“I’m just having a blast doing it.”

Well, most of the time, anyway.

Special attention was paid to proper Viking seamanship (“We all had to go through boat camp”), and to realistic Viking brawls. “It helps that there’s real danger to kind of get you in the right mindset.... I can think of many moments where I’ve gotten shields in

the face, rugby tackled. I got a spear straight through the shoulder this season, and we carried on filming.” So fucking metal. “But if you’re gonna complain about that shit, you might be signed up for the wrong job!” Standen said with a hearty Viking laugh. “And it’s nice to go for a pint afterward, talk war stories.”

But despite the broad appeal of beard-on-beard violence, the show has still been a bit of a risk for the History Channel. Of late they’ve found a nichemarket catering mainly to enthusiasts of extraterrestrials and somewhat dubious antique appraisal. It wasn’t immediately clear that Vikings would be anything more than a rather long version of the historical reenactment scenes they used on the old (and excellent) History documentaries.

That is not the case. Vikings has plenty of sword swinging and ship sailing, but it also has real, human drama and a gripping storyline, albeit one that’s not always excessively faithful to the History Channel’s project. This is an unavoidable consequence of broadcasting on network television. Show runner Michael Hirst has the difficult task of being faithful both to what Vikings (as we understand them) were actually like, and to what people think they were like. No, real Vikings probably didn’t wear leather breeches, sport dope tattoos, or land on English beachfronts with boots that a modern Brooklynite would be proud to brandish at the local brewpub.

But Rollo wasn’t really Ragnar’s brother, either, nor even his contemporary. There are far more glaring inaccuracies in Vikings than its characters’ choice of winterwear. And if the show

DESIGN.

DRAW.

fails to accurately capture your history professor’s vision of 10th-century Scandinavian life, it stays true to the spirit of the 1,000-year-old sagas it draws upon, and the lessons they have to teach: War is brutal. Life is full of trials. No man may know wisdom until many a winter has been his portion.

Just good, meat-and-potatoes storytelling, of the type that’s grounded in real human experience and has no expiration date. “The Vikings lived in a world that seems fantastical, like a world like Game of Thrones—you almost expect dragons and monsters—but to them it was very real. I think that’s what’s captured people’s imaginations; it’s a historical drama, but it skirts the realm of fantasy as well,” Standen said.

But Vikings is not Game of Thrones.

It’s not House of Cards or The Sopranos, either. Compared to Washington or Westeros, intrigue in Viking Age Scandinavia goes about as deep as pond water. The show’s dialogue is often less than snappy, the plot twists are somewhat predictable, and, besides, you can spoil the whole show for yourself by opening up a history book. And that’s not a bad thing. The Vikings, it turns out, weren’t just brawlers and raiders— they were explorers, statesman, scholars. These are the thinking man’s sort of Viking, more ponderers than wanderers, and the season ahead promises to be one of growth and exploration both for the show and its characters (watch out for Rollo in particular). Horned helmets certainly wouldn’t have hurt anybody, but still I’ve enjoyed this new take on the lovable barbarians. Vikings still makes you want to go chop wood and build a fire, sure, but only so that you can read a thick book by its light.

WRITE.

COPY EDIT.

SEEKING WRITERS, DESIGNERS, COPY EDITORS, CARTOONISTS, PHOTOGRAPHERS Have what it takes to make the Maroon Staff? Contact us: editor@chicagomaroon.com

THE CHICAGO MAROON | ARTS | February 25, 2013

Percussion quartet’s dreamy set list mesmerizes DRUMS continued from page 7 crescendos that were left, faded, or killed off suddenly by their dampening of the humming gongs quickly with their palms.

This second piece ended with an onslaught of applause. Yet the real moment of the evening was a performance of Augusta Read Thomas’s “R esounding Earth,” which followed Wenjing’s “Parade” and an opening rendition of John Cage’s 1941 composition “Third Construction.” This was a special performance before the piece was begun.

Third Coast Percussion was in residence at the University all week, it seems, for this very performance. The diverse, seemingly endless strata of instruments (bells from all over the world, for example 25 different sizes of Japanese rin gong) were center stage, anchored on both sides by the previous instruments cast off.

Thursday afternoon was a daylong seminar populated with faculty and student panels about the technical and historical implications of Thomas’s piece that I accidentally attended, mistaking it for the event itself.

The piece was introduced as “her dream...to write a piece for bells only, because the sound of bells is so cap-

tivating [to her].”

It was indeed a special performance, and the highlight of the evening.

David Skidmore, of the ensemble, would go on to say that “we’ll never have this level of collaboration again because Augusta is so wonderful,” referring to the relationship the musicians shared with the composer as she’d written the piece specifically for the ensemble. He related it to the shared work of composing, and of discovering the instruments—nearly 300 pieces of metal—from around the world.

There are four movements to Augusta Read Thomas’s “Resounding Earth.” When the first movement began the room was well lit, unlike during Wenjing’s piece, and so I could watch, enraptured, and take notes as the music came drifting into my mind.

I was not scratching across the page vainly, in the dark, hoping the scratches made sense later.

I didn’t write anything for the first movement. I only recalled my pen and notebook, my seat and the hall, when the musicians paused in a solemn moment, dripping with the dying echoes from when the last bells struck.

They moved across the stage to take their posi-

tions—before the Japanese rin and spinning Burmese bells—to begin the second movement. “Prayer,” the movement’s title, haunted my thoughts as it unfolded. I found myself drifting somewhere along the line between dreaming and waking. The drugged song of vibrating bells went fleetingly to my brain through the landscape of slight coughs and small shifts of sleepy audience members. This was a meditative lullaby. There was an exhalation, an audible and felt sigh, as the movement drifted into a close.

The third movement found me still drunk off the second one. It picked up. There was a growing edge, a slow aggressiveness, that coalesced into the fourth movement, in which all of the bells across the length of the stage were played, the whole of the Earth’s sphere humming in that one room, to create an energ y that was caffeinated, jittery, and yet still recalled the slow reflections of the piece’s second movement.

At the end, the collar of my shirt beneath my sweater was damp, and I couldn’t be sure if it was from the heavy jog I’d furiously made on the way over, or from the trip I found myself concluding in my seat.

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THE CHICAGO MAROON | SPORTS | February 25, 2014

South Siders try to extinguish Flames, fall just short at UIC Men’s Tennis

Third-year Deepak Sabada prepares to return the ball during practice last September.

COURTESY OF UCHICAGO ATHLETICS

Alexander Sotiropoulos Senior Sports Staff For more than three and a half hours on Saturday, the Maroons experienced what it felt like to be a DI team.

Unfortunately, they also experienced what it felt like to lose a nail-biter.

DI University of Illinois–Chicago (UIC) barely edged out Chicago 4–3 on Saturday. The

Maroons fell to 3–2 on the season while the Flames improved to 2–4.

With UIC up 3–2 and thirdyear Ankur Bhargava along with second-year Gordon Zhang contending at No. 4 and No. 6, respectively, head coach Jay Tee remained optimistic.

“I was excited,” Tee said. “We needed two matches and had two of our best competitors left on the court.”

Although Bhargava ran with the first set 6–3, UIC’s Christopher Cole raised his game in the second and third sets, besting the Chicago third-year 6–2, 6–2 to end the Maroons’ hopes of a comeback.

“Ankur played his heart out, but [Cole] was just a little better that day,” Tee said.

With the dual already clinched, Zhang and Nicolas Aguirre played a 10-point tiebreaker to deter-

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mine the winner at No. 6. Zhang led 8–5 before Aguirre earned two straight points. The Maroon remained composed for the 5–7, 7–5, 1–0 (10–7) win.

“Gordon always battles and always listens to coaching,” Tee said. “He did a great job of implementing a couple of suggestions and then played a super solid tiebreaker.”

Doubles used DI scoring where, unlike DIII, the three matches combined for one point, so the team that won at least two of three doubles matches would take that point.

First-year Max Hawkins along with Bhargava and fourth-year Zsolt Szabo along with first-year Brian Sun lost 8–6 at No. 2 and No. 3, respectively, before thirdyear Deepak Sabada and first-year Sven Kranz won 8–7 at No. 1.

Those results effectively gave the Flames the lone doubles point.

“I challenged the guys to look forward and ask themselves how they will play differently in that same situation,” Tee said. “For the most part, those matches came down to our ‘core three’ in doubles—first serves, first volleys, and returns.”

In singles, Kranz lost in straight sets (6–2, 6–3) to veteran No. 1 singles player, fourth-year Alexander Raa. “As Sven gets more experience at No. 1 and matures a little more, that’s a match he will win. Raa was

just a little more steady and had an answer for Sven’s style,” Tee said.

“We continue to work with Sven to develop with transition and net games, so he can win points in a variety of ways.”

At No. 3, the traditionally solemn Sun showed emotion and vocal energy as he attempted to stage a comeback after going down 6–1 in the first. His run fell short as he lost the second set 6–4.

“At one point during singles, when [Sun] was getting angry, I turned to another player and told him I didn’t even care that [Sun] was getting mad, I was just happy to see him show a little emotion,” Tee said. “But Brian is a young guy, and a guy I really like, so I’m confident he will develop a strong mental game to go along with his physical tools.”

Sabada battled through a second-set tiebreaker for a 6–2, 7–6 (6) victory at No. 2 while Hawkins made adjustments in the second and third sets to take the win at No. 5, 2–6, 6–4, 6–1.

“Max did a good job of making his opponent play more balls and also got to the net as often as he could, allowing him to use his superior volleys,” Tee said. “The more Max plays, I believe, the more confident he will get and the more his game will progress.”

No. 30 Chicago returns to action this Friday in Wisconsin against the No. 24 UW–Whitewater Warhawks.

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THE CHICAGO MAROON | SPORTS | February 25, 2014

When one winning streak ends, another begins Women’s Basketball Adam Freymiller Sports Staff Chicago (15–9, 9–4 UAA) returned to action over the weekend, facing Carnegie Mellon (12–12, 3–10) and Case Western (9–15, 3–10) in two testy conference games with playoff implications. The Maroons had won five straight games entering the weekend.

The Carnegie matchup began haphazardly, as the Tartans did an effective job denying Chicago clean looks in the paint, blocking five shots in the first half. However, Chicago shot the ball from distance extremely effectively, go-

ing 7–14 from three in the first half and scoring a season-high 14 threepointers on the game. Nevertheless, Carnegie would not go away, and Carnegie guard Gabrielle West sunk four three-pointers in rapid succession en route to a 23-point performance that elevated the Tartans’ offensive verve. West and company continued to give the Maroons a taste of their own medicine, as they made a lethal 62.5 percent of their field goals (15–24) in the second half to build a 13-point lead.

The South Siders resolutely fought their way back to tie the game 77–77 with less than a minute to go, in large part through 15

clutch second-half points from second-year guard Paige Womack, but Chicago squandered its final offensive possessions, and the Tartans secured their 84–77 upset from the free-throw line.

Womack, who led Chicago with 21 points off the bench, believes that Chicago lost a huge opportunity to control the game after the interval.

“We came out of halftime very flat and weren’t taking care of the ball like we know how to,” she said.

The Maroons responded positively on Sunday, turning in an industrious performance to vanquish visiting Case in front of the admiring eyes of several family members,

More records broken at final home meet Swimming & Diving Charlotte Franklin Maroon Contributor The Maroons’ regular season came to a close with the Midwest Invitational at Myers-McLoraine Pool this weekend. The women’s team finished in second place with 300 points behind Emory University’s 356, while the men’s team took third place (380 points) behind Emory and Case Western Reserve University.

With countless school, pool, and personal records falling, this season has been one of the best in the history of the Maroons. The Midwest Invitational was the ideal finale to months of triumph.

“For many of us, Midwest was a great end to a great year. There were tons of personal best times, and even a school record by [first-year] Rolland Lee,” second-year Brian Yan said.

Yan, fourth-year Evan Bernard, thirdyear Dave Thomas, and first-year David Tong all contributed to half of the men’s race wins. The relay team led the 200-yard freestyle with a time of 1:31.59. Fourthyear Eric Hallman, who led the 100-yard freestyle in 46.27s, also contributed to the men’s two race wins.

The women swam away with five race wins in a combination of individual and relay events. Second-year Ciara Hu took the victory in the 400-yard IM and 200yard butterfly with times of 4:30.58 and

2:06.26, and fellow second-year Jen Law dominated the 100-yard butterfly with a time of 57.32s. Following her older sister’s example, first-year Michelle Law helped third-year captain Jenny Hill, second-year Jenna Harris, and first-year Maya Scheidl win both the 200-yard freestyle relay and the 200-yard medley.

“The team performed better than ever before. We’re putting up faster records and more national qualifiers. Also, the team’s success has motivated more intense offseason training than ever before,” Thomas said.

This motivation will be crucial in the team’s preparation for the NCAA DIII Championships in several weeks. There is ample excitement surrounding the prospect of more records being smashed at the tournament.

This enthusiasm has led some of the athletes to begin looking ahead to next season. “Next year the team will miss the leadership of [fourth-years] Eric Hallman, Evan Bernard, Cathy Chen, and Vivian Yeun. It was a blast swimming with them,” Yan said. “We look forward to welcoming a new [first-year] class, and expect another record-breaking year in 2015.”

Men’s and Women’s NCAA Diving Zones will be Friday and Saturday, February 28–March 1 in Granville, Ohio.

NCAA Division III Championships will take place March 19 in Indianapolis.

Tee: “I’m looking forward to going...as an underdog” WTENNIS continued from back

Next weekend the Maroons will travel to Greencastle, Indiana, where they will participate in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Indoor Nationals. The Maroons will enter without being ranked as the No. 1 seed for the first time in recent memory.

“I’m looking forward to going into this tournament as an underdog for once. It’s the first time in a few years we haven’t come in seeded No. 1 and I’d like to see the team use that as some motivation,” Tee said.

Last year the Maroons finished third at the ITA Indoor Nationals, and the year be-

fore that, fifth. Their loss last year came against the Johns Hopkins Bluejays, who are the No. 1 seed this year.

With a new training regime and a new cast of players, the Maroons are looking to improve upon last year’s results.

“I’m looking forward to having our hard work from practice pay off, especially in doubles. We’re much stronger at the net now than during preseason, and it should also be a great weekend of team bonding as well,” Chen said.

The No. 2–seeded Maroons will open their match against No. 7 DePauw University (5–0), with the action starting at 3:30 p.m.

@ MaroonSports

who came out for the team’s Parents’ Day. As the game began, both teams turned the ball over several times and struggled to find a rhythm offensively. The Spartans deserve credit for putting up a solid zone defense and closing down on shots, but the Maroons’ futility from three-point range (3–13 in the first half ) made for a less fluid, slower game, which favored Case. However, Chicago made the most of its chances from the free-throw line to see through the 79–68 victory. While it wasn’t the cleanest of victories, Chicago certainly has plenty of positives to take from Sunday’s win.

“It’s always hard to maintain

confidence against a zone when shots aren’t falling. I thought we responded very well, attacking seams and making penetrating passes, which opened up easier shots for us down low in the second half,” said fourth-year guard Maggie Ely. She led Chicago with 16 points.

The Maroons’ loss on Friday means that their chances of selection into the NCAA DIII tournament are slim, but they will nonetheless see Saturday’s home game against the Wash U Bears (22–2, 12–1) as a chance to end their season on a high note and defeat a conference rival. The Bear hunt begins on Saturday at 1 p.m. in Ratner.

In the Chatter’s Box with Sarah Langs Megan Tang is a third-year on the tennis team from Clayton, CA. We chatted with her to get some insider info on the life of a Maroon athlete. the teams we were playing weren’t of a very high level. So it was just more beneficial for me to play on my own.

CM: Do you follow professional tennis?

MT: I don’t follow it enough. I should.

CM: Do you have a favorite player at all, women’s or men’s?

MT: Women’s, I really like Maria Sharapova. Men’s, Federer, I guess. Even though it’s kind of annoying that he wins all the time, but he’s just good to watch.

COURTESY OF UCHICAGO ATHLETICS

Chicago Maroon: When did you start playing tennis?

Megan Tang: I started playing when I was eight years old.

CM: And when did you know you’d want to play in college?

MT: Probably when I was competing in a lot of tournaments, so like, 12, 13 years old.

CM: What did you like about it, at age eight versus now ?

MT: Well, it’s a very individual sport and I like that I can depend on myself for it. And it has a lot of different things you can work on, which keeps it interesting. There are a lot of strategies and strokes, as you probably know. It’s just a complex sport, and I think that’s what’s kept me playing it for so long.

CM: What were the differences between when you were playing in high school and now, with the team here? You’re a thirdyear, so you’ve been on it a while.

MT: Well, in high school, I actually only played for two years, and then I stopped playing high school tennis but I kept playing tennis on my own. Like, national tournaments and stuff. And so, playing tournaments, it’s really individual, like I said. And I didn’t really have anybody to play for, a school or anything. But now that I’m here I think I’ve gotten a lot better, coming to college, just because I have my teammates to play for and the school. That’s definitely a change.

CM: What was the reason you stopped playing on the team in high school?

MT: It was just that my area where I lived,

CM: What’s the process behind preparing for the match? In practice, or the morning of.

MT: Let’s see, well: During the weeks we do drills in the beginning of the week and then when it’s closer to the match days we play practice sets. And then, the day of, we usually just have light warmup and then we just go play.

CM: What do you think about when you’re actually playing? What’s on your mind?

MT: That’s a good question. I think, for me, I try to think about how I’m winning points and how I can play my strengths to my opponent’s weaknesses. And I guess I also, I probably shouldn’t be thinking about it, but I’m also thinking about how my other teammates are doing, because we win as a team and it’s not individual.

CM: How much are you focused on the opponent? How much is about how you’re playing, and how much is about how she’s playing?

MT: I guess it kind of depends. A lot of times my coach says, “Do what you do, and then that will affect how your opponent plays.”

CM: What’s it like to be a part of this team? Here at University of Chicago specifically.

MT: It’s fun, because, again I was never really part of a team much in high school.

We all train really hard together and it’s fun just to see all of our hard work pay off during the matches.

CM: You’re a really small team. Do you feel aware of that?

MT: Yeah, totally. My last two years here, we only had like seven people on the team.

This year it’s a little bigger, like ten. But I think it’s good because then we’re all a lot closer since there’s a smaller number of us.

SPORTS

IN QUOTES “After winter ball, all I did was eat.”

—Seattle Mariners catcher Jesús Montero comments on being 40 pounds heavier at the start of spring training

Buzzer-beater victory sparks second weekend win Men’s Basketball Mary MacLeod Sports Staff Chicago continued its home dominance over the weekend, beating conference rivals Carnegie Mellon (11–13, 4–9 UAA) and Case Western (13–11, 5–8). The two wins, however, will still not be enough to vault them into the conversation of national postseason play.

“At this point in the season we just want to play as well as we can and leave things on a positive note,” said fourth-year forward Charlie Hughes. “We’re out of tournament contention so we’re just playing for pride at this point.”

The Maroons started the winning weekend by playing the Tartans, a team they bested by just one point in the first half of the season, and this game played out similarly. Just as third-year guard Royce Muskeyvalley made the game-winning jumper in the first matchup, he put in a three-pointer with 1.9 seconds left to seal the comeback win on Friday.

The first half saw Carnegie convert 13 second-chance points in the paint, and open up an 18–6 lead to start the game. But the Maroons were able to battle back, largely due to the efforts of fourth-year guard Derrick Davis.

Down 42–28 at the half, Chicago continued to chip away at the lead with Muskeyvalley and Davis scoring the team’s first 15 points of the period. Eventually the Maroons went on a 14–2 run, drawing fouls and causing turnovers, which gave

the South Siders the momentum they needed to capture the win.

The game against Case was not as even, as Chicago dominated from the tip. The home team went on a 17–3 run in the first few minutes, a feat made possible by the Maroons’ gaudy 73-percent mark from the field. Their defense did its part, too, completely shutting down the Spartans in the opening minutes to the tune of a 23-percent field goal percentage to open the game.

“The game plan was simply to come and play with energy. This helped us because we were able to play aggressive and loose,” Muskeyvalley said. “Whenever we approach a Sunday game in this way we have a better chance of winning.”

The home team went into the break up 45–34, a lead built thanks to the Maroons’ aggressive style of play, as they muscled out 16 of their first 25 points from within the paint. However, the South Siders relied more on long-range shooting in the second half, as second-year guard John Steinberg and fourthyear forward Sam Gage poured in threes to keep the lead.

The Maroons coasted to a 15-point win, as they outperformed Case in rebounds, assists, points off turnovers, and points from the bench. This is a performance Chicago hopes to repeat on Saturday, as it faces No. 3 Wash U at home.

“The game plan is to keep the same approach so we can end the conference season with a win,” Muskeyvalley said.

Tip-off at Ratner is scheduled for 3 p.m.

Third-year Royce Muskeyvalley, pictured here at Neon Night last month, hit a buzzer-beater in a game against Carnegie and scored 24 points in a game against Case.

FRANK WANG | THE CHICAGO MAROON

Strong Invite performance good sign for UAAs Maroons sting Hornets Track & Field Isaac Stern Sports Staff The Maroons completed their last regular season meet this past weekend at home, as the women took first and the men took second at the Margaret Bradley Invitational. The meet featured eight event wins for the South Siders and a copious amount of top-five finishers.

This is a promising result considering the conference championships lie less than a week away.

“We did well. We were able to run fast times without burning ourselves out before the conference meet, and that was the goal,” second-year Ben Clark said.

Clark finished first in the 200-meter in 22.93s. The time pushed Clark to third in the conference in the event.

“I feel really good about [the 200],” Clark said. “I got hit by a car three months ago, and I probably tried to come back too soon, but I missed this sport, and I missed getting better. It’s nice to feel fast again.”

Fourth-year Dan Povitsky also came in first and had a solid outing in the mile with his time of

4:17.89. While he currently holds the fourth-best time in conference in the mile, it is far more likely he will compete in the 3,000-meter or 5,000-meter, where he ranks third and first, respectively, at UAAs. Second-year Michael Bennett continued his undefeated season in the pole vault with a vault of 4.71m and looks to top his season best and UAA top-ranked height of 4.90m.

First-year Michelle Dobbs came off of an injury to claim first in the 400-meter run with her time of 59.26s, which ranks fourth in the conference. Dobbs will likely compete at UAAs in the 800-meter where she ranks first with a 2:14.27.

Second-year Brianna Hickey ran the 800-meter and took top spot with a 2:22.83, but she will likely run the mile at conference, where she is ranked first. Second-year Rachael Jackson placed first in the long jump with her leap of 5.28m, four centimeters short of her best of the season and third spot in the conference.

The women’s 4x4 relay also took first with their time of 4:13.43. The group did not include all of the runners from last week’s nationally ranked group.

First-year Jady Tolda took first in the pole vault with her propelled leap of 3.51m. This vault broke the previous school record of 3.40m set

by Moriah Grooms-Garcia (A.B. ’11) in 2011. Tolda currently ranks third in the conference.

“After overcoming an injury that put me out for all of fall quarter, it meant so much to finally be back to where I’d like to be in terms of my vault,” Tolda said. “The team has been so supportive every step of the way.”

The Maroons will now take this week to rest up in preparation for their conference weekend. All season has been about peaking at the conference meet. Each meet has been an opportunity for the Maroons to flex their muscles more and more, and now is the time to pursue their perfect photo finish. This Thursday, Chicago will make their way to Boston to participate in the two-day UAA Championships.

“As our last home meet of the indoor season, everyone was driven to do their absolute best,” Tolda said.

“I think the girls will go to UAAs with the confidence that we have worked hard to be at our peak performance.”

in Kalamazoo Women’s Tennis David Gao Sports Staff This past weekend Chicago (3–1) traveled to Kalamazoo, Michigan and soundly defeated the Kalamazoo Hornets (2–1) with a final match score of 7–2.

Chicago has sustained its momentum since winning a doubleheader two weekends ago, when the Maroons defeated Denison University 7–2 and Kenyon College 9–0. En route to their victory over the Hornets, the Maroons lost one of three doubles matches and one of six singles matches.

Chicago entered the weekend 2–1. Against Kalamazoo, the No. 6 regionally ranked doubles pair of second-year Stephanie Lee and first-year Jordan Appel won a close match 8–6, while the tandem of second-year Sruthi Ramaswami and first-year Tiffany Chen soundly won their match 8–0. In their final doubles matchup, the Maroons lost against the Hornets 9–8.

In singles, Chicago won three

straight matches until thirdyear Megan Tang, ranked No. 1 in the Central Region, lost in a three-set match to No. 16 Sarah Woods. However, the Maroons closed out the remaining two matches strongly, with each Chicago player defeating her opponent in two-set matches.

“While we rely heavily on Megan Tang to provide us with two points nearly every match, there will be times when we won’t always have that luxury and it is important for the team to understand that,” head coach Jay Tee said. “The girls did a wonderful job of focusing on their own court and taking care of business in order to get us the crucial fifth and decisive point. One of our strengths is our depth and I thought that was on display throughout singles and doubles.

Even if we lose near the top, I feel like we continue to come at you in waves, a team might get a couple points on us, but they will always have to earn all five.”

WTENNIS continued on page 11