FRIDAY • OCTOBER 7, 2011
ISSUE 3 • VOLUME 123
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SINCE 1892
CHICAGOMAROON.COM
First-years tie record for College Council bids Student start-up an
insectivore’s delight
Sam Levine Associate News Editor Twenty first-years will vie to represent their class and fill the four open seats in next week’s College Council (CC) election, tying the record size of last fall’s candidate pool. Over the past three years, first-year interest in Student Government (SG) has climbed: Fifteen candidates ran in 2008, 19 in 2009, and 20 in 2010. The growing interest in SG comes as the executive slate has made efforts to reach out to students, and it could potentially transform one of the most visible student groups on campus. SG President and fourthyear Youssef Kalad said that he is committed to finding SG continued on page 4
Joy Crane News Contributor
First-years Raymond Dong (left) and Howard Chiang create a chalk design for Raymond’s Student Government election campaign on the Main Quadrangles Wednesday evening. DARREN LEOW | THE CHICAGO MAROON
Former Obama aide returns to UCMC Matthew Schaefer News Contributor More than two years after leaving Hyde Park for the marbled halls of Washington, D.C., a former administrator at the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC) has returned to advise a president of a different sort. Susan Sher, formerly the UCMC’s vice president for legal and government affairs, was appointed August 1 as Senior Adviser to President Robert Zimmer and as the hospital’s Executive Vice President for Corporate Strategy
and Public Affairs. Sher left her position at the UCMC in January 2009 to serve as Associate Counsel to President Obama. A few months later, First Lady Michelle Obama appointed Sher as her Chief of Staff. A close friend of the Obamas, Sher provided legal advice to the First Lady and worked on health care policy issues for the President. “I stayed two years, which was an understanding we had—that I would come back after two years,” Sher said. “I came back to my home, my husband, my life. It was never intended to be longer than that.”
Sher first met the First Lady when the two worked together at the UCMC, where Obama administrated in different positions. When Sher stepped down in November of last year, Obama called her a “dear friend.” “I have been grateful every day for her leadership and wise counsel in Washington,” Obama said in a November 16 press release. In the same release, President Obama also lauded Sher’s work on health care reform. “Susan has brought tremendous skill and dedication to the First Lady’s office, as well as my Administration’s outreach to the
Osaka prof traces Japan-China rift Stephanie Xiao News Contributor A meaningful accord between China and Japan will require both countries to put aside their economic ambitions and confront the age-old tensions between them, Osaka University Professor Emeritus Nobukuni Koyasu said at a lecture at Swift Hall on Tuesday. “Japan—and China, too—has simply strengthened economic relations while pretending to ignore these fundamental problems,” Koyasu said in the talk. “A real settlement between Japan and China must be an agreement that decides how to build peace in the future of Asia while also reflecting on our historical knowledge of the past.” As this year’s speaker for the annual Tetsuo Najita Distinguished Lecture Series in
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Japanese Studies, Koyasu delivered a nearly two-hour presentation on the history of intellectualism in Japan, focusing on how the perception of China has affected the development of Japanese nationalism, as well as on the impact of Chinese-Japanese relations on the future of East Asia. Early interactions between the two countries continue to shape the characters of the nations today, he explained. “[The] Japanese at the dawn of the modern period were given a static, despotic view of Imperial China from quite early on,” he said, while “Japan’s pursuit of war in China awakened a nationalist consciousness in China on a broad scale and produced an anti-Japanese subjectivity called the Chinese nation.” According to Koyasu, the label “East Asia” JAPAN continued on page 3
Jewish community and our efforts to pass health care reform, and I thank her for her service,” he said. From 1993 to 1997, Sher served as the Corporation Counsel for the City of Chicago, the city’s top lawyer. During this time, she was responsible for representing the Mayor and the city’s various departments, boards, and commissions in all legal matters. Sher said that she considered other opportunities after leaving the White House, but she was drawn back to Chicago. “I felt like I was coming home,” Sher said.
Ever since the advent of Facebook, investors have been looking to college students for the next big startup. And with the coming of Entom Foods, a company that seeks to make insects a more sustainable alternative to meat, the University’s own Mark Zuckerburg moment may have arrived. Having occupied the pages of The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and, most recently, The Huffington Post , the founders of Entom Foods are no strangers to the limelight. However, their product, the common insect, however, remains rooted in its humble beginnings; grasshoppers, water bugs, and baby bees have yet to seduce the U.S. consumer, despite the growing social acceptance of entomophag y—insect consumption—in Europe and Asia. “The crux of what we’re trying to do is to reform the insect, so that it doesn’t have all the really stigmatized elements: the exoskeleton, the eyes, the wings, the shells,” said second-year Mathew Krisiloff, founder of Entom Foods. “That’s really the source of Western trepidation towards insects.” The breadth of Entom Foods’s media exposure reflects the gravity of its un-
derlying business platform: Population expansion and depleting resources mean that by 2050 the demand for meat will have doubled, creating the very real possibility of a global food crisis, according to the January 27, 2008 New York Times article, “Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler.” Spurred on by the U of C’s Chicago Careers In (CCI) Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition last fall quarter, Krisiloff accredits his eureka moment to his Contemporary Global Issues class. “It was so striking realizing for the first time that one of those calamitous issues is going to take place in my lifetime,” he said. “So I went with the idea and it all blew up from there.” Entom Foods, which includes second-years Tommy Wu, Ben Yu, and Irvin Ho, and third-year Chelsey Rice-Davis, went on to win the CCI contest in April and was awarded $10,000 in prize money, in addition to $600 from the Uncommon Fund. Part of the funds went towards Krisiloff ’s research this past summer at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, widely considered the epicenter for entomophag y. “Really I was working directly with the agricultural production of the insects. I was working with raising them on side stream diets, BUGS continued on page 3
Jamba comes to Ratner; Chipotle in talks Harunobu Coryne Associate News Editor Several fast food outlets will set up shop on campus in the coming months, dishing out ramen, yogurt, and 900-calorie chocolate shakes to students weary of Bart Mart cereal bars. This November, smoothie titan Jamba Juice will join popular frozen yogurt chain Red Mango and Hyde Park fusion restaurant Noodles, Etc. as the latest newcomer to the dining system. According to Director of OpFOOD continued on page 3
Students line up to order lunch at the newly opened Noodles, Etc. outlet at Hutchinson Commons earlier this week. DARREN LEOW | THE CHICAGO MAROON
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Removing non-SG members from
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College Council listhost undermines transparency efforts.