102913 Chicago Maroon

TUESDAY • OCTOBER 29, 2013

ISSUE 8 • VOLUME 125

THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SINCE 1892

CHICAGOMAROON.COM

Four shootings near campus span weekend Isaac Stein Maroon Contributor

Senator John McCain spoke regarding the current state of U.S. politics at an Institute of Politics event on Monday.

PETER TANG | THE CHICAGO MAROON

McCain weighs in on GOP, grand bargain Alex Hays Associate News Editor Senator John McCain (RAZ) came to the stomping grounds of his one-time presidential rival for an Institute of Politics event in

Ida Noyes Hall on Monday.

After the event, McCain, who was also in town for an event at the City Club of Chicago, participated in a press conference with student journalists. He first addressed questions on how to unite

the Republican Party after its apparent split over the budget battle and resulting government shutdown. “[Republicans] have got to show the American people that we have a positive agenda,” he said. “They need to give

something to Americans, like the Keystone XL pipeline, tax reform, or less government, that would give them something to be for and not against.”

McCain expressed dismay McCAIN continued on page 3

Over the past five days, multiple shootings have occurred in the Hyde Park and Woodlawn neighborhoods.

The locations of the incidents border the University campus.

According to Chicago Police Department (CPD) spokesman Mike Sullivan, a black male roughly 20 years old was shot at 4:18 p.m. on Saturday in an alley close to the corner of East 61st Street and South Kimbark Avenue.

The man, who sustained several shots to his leg, was in critical condition at Northwestern Memorial Hospital as of Monday afternoon.

Fewer than 30 hours later, at 8:55 p.m. on Sunday, a black male in his 50s was shot at East 54th Street and South Cornell Avenue, as a result of a previous altercation. The man, who sustained gunshots to the face, is also currently in critical condition at Northwestern Memorial.

While the CPD’s investigations of the shootings

are pending, Sullivan said that he believes the incidents are unrelated to each other and that the victims in both cases are not connected to the University of Chicago.

“At this point, these shootings just seem random.

Regarding those two incidents, we have no suspects in custody.

We also do not know of any possible motive [for the shootings],” Sullivan said.

As of press time, the CPD has not detained any suspected perpetrators of the shootings.

However, according to the UChicago Crime Feed Twitter, the CPD is searching for an “old, four-door white or silver car with [a] loud muffler,” which may be connected to Sunday’s shooting.

The locations of both shootings fall within the patrol area of the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD), which extends from East 37th to 65th Streets and South Cottage Grove Avenue to Lake Shore Drive.

According to both Sullivan and UCPD CRIME continued on page 2

Student Health Series Cuckoo for Kuko, the man behind the omelet Part 1: A U-SHIP primer Harini Jaganathan Associate News Editor With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and changes to Student Health and Counseling Services, health care is in a dynamic state both nationally and right here on campus. In a quarter long series, the Maroon will take a look

at the clinical services, counseling, and mental health services, as well as the efficacy of preventative services provided to students.

The University is currently entering a “bid year,” in which the Student Health Advisory Board will reevaluate the current student insurance plan, U-SHIP, and consider other

Thomas Choi Associate News Editor & Sindhu Gnanasambandan News Staff

Beloved Cathey Dining Commons cook Refugio Cortes may not have had formal culinary training but, to 15 years

of UChicago students, he’s an “eggspert” chef.

Cortes, known as Kuko, was born in Mexico and grew up with nine brothers and six sisters, before he moved to the South Side, where he currently resides with his wife and five children.

Cortes’s siblings have had a large

influence on the career path that led him to Cathey Dining Commons. Initially working as a landscaper, he began to cook in 1992, when one of his brothers, who worked at a family-style deli in South Shore, invited Kuko to work with him. Kuko said he has never taken a KUKO continued on page 3

SHS continued on page 2

Center in Delhi to open March 2014 Stephanie Xiao Associate News Editor Delhi, India will house a major UChicago academic center next spring, University officials announced Monday in a live webcast from India’s capital.

University President Robert Zimmer emphasized that the Center was meant to foster

research in South Asia and would host both University and Indian researchers.

“The Center will...prepare our students with a much greater understanding of India, South Asia, and global issues, and contribute to intellectual discourse in and with India,” Zimmer said.

INDIA continued on page 3

Students wait for omelets made by Chef Kuko (Refugio Cortez) at Arley D. Cathey Dining Commons in 2011.

JAMIE MANLEY | THE CHICAGO MAROON

IN VIEWPOINTS

IN ARTS

IN SPORTS

Fixing a broken record » Page 4

With new score, silent film wins the golden ticket » Page 6

Last-second equalizer salvages tie against Warhawks » Back Page

Eggers’s latest novel more structure than substance » Page 8

Where are all the female sportswriters? »

Great expectations » Page 5

Page 11

THE CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | October 29, 2013

2

Mason: “If you’re going to a place where somebody recently got shot in an alley, that speaks for itself ” CRIME continued from front

spokesman Bob Mason, it is not known whether UCPD or CPD was first on scene.

Although UCPD has recently become a “full service” police force, with broader ability to detain and process suspects within its patrol area, Mason stated that investigations of shootings remain under the exclusive jurisdiction of the CPD. While he could not comment on the two pending investigations, Mason suggested that many similar incidents are gang-related.

“The majority of shootings in this area are connected to local gangs. They also tend not to be ‘random,’ but rather premeditated targets,” Mason said.

University students did not receive a campus security alert about the incidents because they did not fall under the UCPD’s guidelines for issuing the alerts, according to University spokesman Jeremy Manier.

“None of them occurred on campus, in a non-campus building as described in the guidelines, or ‘in the area immediately contiguous to such University property including the

adjacent street and the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street,’” he wrote in an e-mail.

Manier added that certain crimes that deviate from the guidelines may merit a security alert.

“Beyond considerations of location, security alerts may be issued when a crime is considered to be a continuing threat to students or other members of the University community. That can be the case when a crime is part of a pattern, or if it was a random act and there is reason to believe that others might be targeted. In [these two cases], there was no information suggesting that others in the community might be targeted,” he said.

The security alert guidelines do not state explicitly the designation of oncampus versus off-campus crimes, but Mason told the Maroon in April that UCPD considers “the south curve of 55th Street” the northern boundary of campus.

In light of the recent incidents, Mason advised students and faculty to be highly aware of their surroundings.

“If you’re going to a place where somebody recently got shot in an alley, that speaks for itself. Nobody needs to

WEEKEND SHOOTINGS

Between East 64th and 65th Streets and South University Avenue. No injuries reported.

East 61st Street and South Kimbark Avenue Victim shot in leg.

East 63rd Street near South Drexel Avenue.

Victim shot in leg.

be paranoid, but everybody should be aware that incidents like this do occur,” Mason said.

According to the UCPD Incident Reports, two additional shootings occurred within UCPD patrol area this weekend. One occurred Friday at

3:45 p.m. on South University Avenue between East 64th and 65th Streets.

It involved a person firing a handgun on the street during a disturbance. No injuries or damage were reported, and CPD later recovered the gun from a trash can.

East 54th Street and South Cornell Avenue.

Victim shot in face.

Another shooting occurred on Saturday at 5:52 p.m., on East 63rd Street near South Drexel Avenue. The victim was wounded in the leg.

—Additional reporting by Marina Fang & Ankit Jain

Approximately half of all University students are enrolled in U-SHIP SHS continued from front

plans. The University bids every three to four years.

In 2009, the University switched from its old provider Aetna to Student Resources, a provider under the UnitedHealthcare network. At that time, the premium, or upfront cost, of U-SHIP was $2,025 per year. Last year, the premium was $2,757. It is $3,021 for the current academic year—a nine-percent increase from last year. In a survey released in August by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average annual premium for an individual who purchased through an employer increased by five percent. “[The rise in cost] does go with the rise in the [general] cost of health care,” said Executive Administrator of Student Health and Counseling Services Melva Hardy.

The plan Students are automatically

enrolled in U-SHIP but can waive the plan if their health care coverage meets certain guidelines, such as at least coverage of 80 percent of most costs and a $1,000,000 policy maximum.

According to Hardy, about half of the student population, or 6,500 students, are enrolled in U-SHIP this year, and 6,700 were enrolled last year.

U-SHIP is a PPO, or preferred provider organization, meaning that students have access to a network of hospitals and health care providers across the country, including the University of Chicago hospitals and 35 other providers in Chicago.

The plan covers students for a full year from September 1, 2013 to August 31, 2014.

U-SHIP is a co-insurance plan, meaning students pay for a percentage of costs rather than flat-rate fees for particular services. After meeting a $200 deductible, U-SHIP covers 90 percent of most costs for hospitals in the preferred

network, leaving students left to pay the remaining 10 percent—though a student will not pay more than $1,500 per year. Peer institutions Northwestern University and Columbia University offer similar plans, with premiums around $3,000 and 80 or 90 percent of costs covered.

Understanding U-SHIP Student Health and Counseling Services (SHCS) serves as a first point of contact for students enrolled in U-SHIP on campus.

Students must go to SHCS for outpatient services first before going to other health care providers. All students, whether on U-SHIP or not, have access to services provided by SHCS through the mandatory Student Life Fee. Before seeking treatment from another provider, students must obtain a referral from Student Health Services and are subject to a $50 deductible per service if they

NEWS IN BRIEF ITS to move to Harper Court this weekend Starting November 7, administrative personnel from Information Technology Services (ITS), 250 staff members from Alumni Relations and Development, and 100 staff members from Facilities Services will be moving from their existing offices in Hyde Park and downtown Chicago to a new location at 5235 South Harper Court.

The move-in process will be complete by mid-December.

The moves are part of a broader effort by

the University to spur economic development along East 53rd Street, as well as to bring together its employees to a central location, according to ITS’s Assistant Director for Operational Delivery Marlyn Llorens.

“It was an opportunity.

There was a lot of movement going around on campus, not just with ITS, but with groups around campus. When this opportunity came up and we were asked if we would

be interested in moving to 53rd Street, the answer was ‘yes,’” Llorens said.

“The space is absolutely beautiful, and to be right... in Hyde Park—there are a lot of amenities.”

To facilitate transportation to and from the new East 53rd Street location, the University will start running a East 53rd Street express shuttle, which begins operation Monday, November 4.

—Raymond Fang

fail to obtain a referral first.

Students trying to understand the details of their insurance have two main sources to go to for their questions. As a part of the University’s contract with UnitedHealthcare, two representatives from United are required to be present on campus. The current representative is Sue Williams; the second coordinator has yet to be announced. In addition, in June, Marcy Hochberg was appointed as the University’s Student Health Insurance Coordinator as a resource for students who want guidance from someone not affiliated with an insurance company.

“If there’s been an issue with claims being denied, or [if students have] gone through an appeals process and they feel frustrated by how they’ve been dealt with by the UnitedHealthcare representatives, I’m here to serve as an advocate to assist them in working with our insurance company,” Hochberg said.

Hochberg also serves as a general point person for questions about health insurance.

“This isn’t student-specific, but in a lot of cases, most of us don’t look at our policy guide until we’re in a position of utilizing our insurance, and then we start to look at what’s actually covered, so I think there’s always a need for better education, better outreach in a topic like this,” she said.

ACA changes The Affordable Care Act will ultimately prevent policies from having policy maximums or annual limits. U-SHIP currently does not have a policy maximum but has an annual limit of $1,000,000.

As a part of the ACA, the federal government created the health insurance marketplace, which aims to help the uninsured find health coverage. The law requires most people to have health insurance by 2014 or pay a fee, but the University already

requires students to have insurance.

Social Service Administration professor Colleen Grogan, who researches health policy and health politics, believes that students should look at plans offered in the marketplace as an alternative to U-SHIP. “I think it is important for students and all citizens to understand what’s being offered on the exchange,” she said. “Rather than just taking the student health insurance, it is a good idea to look on the exchange and see whether that’s something they should advocate for.”

This is the first installment of a quarter-long series on student health care, the second of which will be published November 4. The Maroon is committed to understanding all aspects of student health care. If you or someone you know has experiences relating to health care on campus, please contact harinijaganathan@ uchicago.edu.

THE CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | October 29, 2013

Group to detail impact of energy divestment Nathan Peereboom News Staff After students last year voted overwhelmingly in favor of divestment, Stop Funding Climate Change (SFCC) plans to release a white paper by eighth week to prove divesting from fossil fuel industries is financially prudent. While the group does not claim divestment will decrease fossil fuel usage directly, it hopes the University will divest for reasons of principle.

A movement organized by the UChicago Action Network (UCAN), for the past year, SFCC has been urging the University to stop investing in fossil fuel companies and commit to a divestment of current holdings over five years. The University currently invests three to four percent of its portfolio in natural resources, particularly coal and other non-sustainable energies, Chief Investment Officer Mark Schmid said at a forum last week.

SFCC’s efforts prompted

a SG referendum last May, in which 70 percent of voters favored divestment. In response to the referendum, Zimmer said at an informal Q&A with SG that the University needed more concrete information before it could consider the issue.

The 30–40 page document will present the financial argument for these changes to members of the University’s Board of Trustees and investment managers.

“Divestment from any industry is a huge decision that the University would make, and it’s totally reasonable—and we would hope, actually—that they would look at the the evidence and the ramifications very carefully before making any kind of decision like that,” fourth-year Paul Kim, one of the authors of the white paper, said.

The paper will attempt to prove that the threats of climate change will induce national governments to regulate fossil fuel consumption, devastating fossil fuel equity holdings. It also argues that immediate

divestment would have a neutral effect on the University’s short-term returns but will be extremely beneficial in the longterm, due to the alleged risk of overvalued fossil fuel stock.

Kim pointed to index funds and research by Aperio Group, an investment management firm, as evidence that portfolios without fossil fuel holdings make returns just as high, if not higher than their competition. He admits that portfolios without fossil fuel holdings are slightly more volatile, but only by about a tenth of a percent of return.

Given the financial neutrality of divestment, SFCC firmly believes that divestment is, as Kim said, “an effective way for an institution like the University to show that [a fossil-fuel based society is] a deeply irrational and...shortsighted way of life.”

However, both Kim and UCAN co-director and secondyear Kylah Johnston said that the effect of the movement will not dramatically harm fossil fuel companies from a financial standpoint.

In the long run, the impact of divestment is contingent on thousands of other organizations also pulling billions of dollars from the fossil fuel market, energy stock prices might dip. But even that, Kim said, won’t slow production of the oil and gas that UCAN opposes.

“Is every little bit of money that individual Universities and groups are taking out… going to hurt the fossil fuel industries directly? No, not directly. As the movement grows? Maybe eventually,” Johnston said.

By neutralizing the argument that the University would lose money if it divested from fossil fuels, SFCC hopes to be able to frame the decision to invest or divest from fossil fuels as a singularly moral decision.

“What we’re trying to do is assuage as many... fears as possible and show that this is the reasonable, cautious and ultimately this is going to be historically right and its going to be financially right,” Kim said.

3

McCain: “Too many ‘gangs’” McCAIN continued from front

that the recent loss of faith in the government has led some to question the very form of America’s democratic system.

While he does not believe that sort of change will happen in America, McCain said he is concerned about Congress’s low popularity.

“We should be alarmed when the overall approval rating of Congress is at 12 percent,” McCain said. “You can’t blame people for that.…

[The shutdown] has harmed a lot of people’s lives and made a lot of people angry with government, and that part of it is understandable.”

The legislation ending the shutdown created a committee charged with reaching a compromise on next year’s budget, leading some to float the idea of a “grand bargain” on taxes and entitlement spending between the House and the Senate. When asked about the idea, McCain dismissed it, saying that there is a chance for something he called a “small bargain,” where

there would be small changes in reductions and spending and possibly in the tax code.

“We’ve just failed too many times. We’ve had too many gangs,’” he said about the notion of a grand bargain, referring specifically to the Gang of Eight that issued a failed budget proposal last year.

Regarding campaign finance, McCain was asked whether he thought it was possible to weaken the influence of money in politics in light of the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court decision in 2010.

“The biggest mistake I think that the Supreme Court has made in my lifetime is the Citizens United decision,” he said. “It will lead to corruption and there will be scandal.… I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that [the Supreme Court] said money is now free speech. Well, if money is speech, then the wealthiest people speak the loudest.”

Delhi Center will cost $3.45 million INDIA continued from front

The announcement comes three years after a committee of faculty members submitted a proposal to the president and provost recommending the establishment of a center in Delhi. Construction on the Center, in Connaught Place, a business district in Delhi, has already begun.

The 17,000-square-foot site will offer space for conferences and seminars; faculty offices; and study areas, with a $3.45 million price tag, according to the Chicago Tribune. It will officially open in a weekend-long ceremony on March 28 and 29, 2014.

South Asian languages

and civilizations professor Gary Tubb has been appointed the Center’s faculty director.

He said that the Center will support members all of the University’s graduate divisions, the six professional schools, the College, and the affiliated laboratories, including Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

While the Center will not grant degrees, the University hopes that its presence will facilitate collaboration between UChicago and Indian academics. For instance, an HIV transmission research

team, led by health studies professor John Schneider, interviewed truck drivers about their networking habits in 2001. Because India was more advanced in digital technology than Schneider expected, he realized the need to study virtual communication methods as well, like text messages. Due to the success of this tactic, Schneider’s team expanded the research methodology and brought it back to the South Side of Chicago to aid the fight against HIV here.

The Center in Delhi will join existing UChicago Centers in Paris and Beijing, though the University did not elaborate on whether

Kuko on his specialty and favorite dishes KUKO continued from front

culinary course in his life.

“My brother was working, and he wanted me to work with him, behind him, and he taught me how to cook,” Cortes said. “He taught me to make special omelettes. All kinds of breakfasts. We used to do all breakfasts and lunch and dinner.

We used to do it all.”

Cortes came to the University through another older brother, who was working at the University. Cortes filled out an application for an open position, and the rest is history. He worked in Burton-Judson Dining Commons until the opening of what is nowCathey Dining Commons in 2009. He is joined in Cathey by two of his brothers, who work in the dish room and the kitchen.

Cortes’s claim to fame has always been his celebrated burritos. He says there are no

special ingredients in his recipe.

“I am just making, like, simple burritos,” Cortes said. “When we make burritos, we try to make it like we used to do in Mexico, you know? Like a real burrito. One of my brothers has a place in Texas, and it’s a burrito place, so he specialized in burritos. So when I go there and see, I try to learn anything that he is putting in.”

When asked if his job was tiring or if there was anything that bothered him, he responded with a resounding no, expressing an unparalleled love for his job.

“Oh no no, it’s not a problem.

If you like your job, you love everything, and I love my job,” Kuko said. “I usually make around 200 omelets a day but well, when I get less than 150, I get worried because there are no people. I like to keep busy all the time you know, that is what I like to do. We work to serve you guys.

We try to do the best we can.”

Kuko said he has definitely appreciated the extra attention and love from the students.

“When we used to work at B-J, I served the same thing, but now the students I am serving… everyone knows me. They all know my name. The new ones too, the freshmen, when they know my name, I say ‘how do you know my name?’” said Kuko, “I feel very good. They know me!”

Kuko’s culinary skills are not restricted to his famous burritos.

As a seafood lover, Kuko claims that “Shrimp a la diabla” is the best dish he can cook, and that he is especially good at making pasta and salad, which he makes a lot at home with his wife for his family.

But most importantly, for fans of Kuko’s omelettes, Kuko’s own favorite omelette is a classic.

“Mmm...Cheese, mushrooms, onions, and spinach. That’s it,” Kuko said.

The University announced a new academic center in Delhi on Monday. The center will support the University’s research and scholarship in India.

COURTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO NEWS OFFICE

any study abroad programs would be hosted out of the Delhi center. Another University facility being

built in Hong Kong will house the Booth School’s Executive MBA program, which is being moved

from the current campus in Singapore. The Oriental Institute also has an establishment in Egypt.

Researchers shine light on knotty optics equations Emily Conover Maroon Contributor Knotted structures of light could become a reality, according to a new study by University researchers.

Using pens, papers, computers, and math, fifthyear physics graduate student Hridesh Kedia and his team discovered new solutions to the famous Maxwell’s equations that have tied up scientists for 150 years.

The equations, named after 19th century physicist James Maxwells, describe light as made up of oscillating electric and magnetic fields, which twist around each other as the light propagates through space.

These fields are described by field lines, which follow the

direction of the field. Now, the physicists have found a way to shape these field lines into complicated, knotted structures that persist.

“People have been able to find solutions in which the field lines form such knots at an instant in time, but they would unravel,” said Kedia.

Kedia’s knots, meanwhile, are long-enduring, smooth, and contain no discontinuities that otherwise might make them impossible to produce in the real world.

“These are things that could be made in the lab, in principle,” he said.

The study of knots has historically been the domain of mathematicians, but now scientists are bringing knots into real-world materials.

Other recent work from the lab that Kedia works at include the production of a knotted vortex in water through 3D printing, and a paper proposing possible methods scientists could use to generate knotted light in the lab. Physicists could also use knotted light to induce knottiness in more exotic materials, like plasmas, which could have interesting properties when knotted such as possibly being engineered to produce energy.

“People have thought about knots in physics for a long time, but only now we have the technolog y to start making them. So now people are starting to look at them in both theory and experiment,” Kedia said.

VIEWPOINTS

Editorial & Op-Ed OCTOBER 29, 2013

Fixing a broken record Leadership Conversations should respond to student concerns and build upon one another The student newspaper of the University of Chicago since 1892 REBECCA GUTERMAN Editor-in-Chief SAM LEVINE Editor-in-Chief EMILY WANG Managing Editor

CELIA BEVER Senior Editor VICENTE FERNANDEZ Senior Editor MATTHEW SCHAEFER Senior Editor MADHU SRIKANTHA Senior Editor MARINA FANG News Editor ANKIT JAIN News Editor LINDA QIU News Editor KRISTIN LIN Viewpoints Editor EMMA BRODER Arts Editor WILL DART Arts Editor LAUREN GURLEY Arts Editor SARAH LANGS Sports Editor JAKE WALERIUS Sports Editor SONIA DHAWAN Head Designer KEVIN WANG Online Editor MARA MCCOLLOM Social Media Editor CONNOR CUNNINGHAM Head Copy Editor SHERRY HE Head Copy Editor JEN XIA Head Copy Editor BEN ZIGTERMAN Head Copy Editor JAMIE MANLEY Photo Editor TIFFANY TAN Photo Editor COLIN BRADLEY Grey City Editor JOY CRANE Grey City Editor THOMAS CHOI Assoc. News Editor ALEX HAYS Assoc. News Editor HARINI JAGANATHAN Assoc. News Editor STEPHANIE XIAO Assoc. News Editor ELEANOR HYUN Assoc. Viewpoints Editor

Last Thursday, Student Government (SG) hosted a Leadership Conversation with Chief Financial Officer Nim Chinniah and Chief Investment Officer Mark Schmid about the University’s finances and investments. The forum, which last winter replaced “Coffee and Donuts with President Robert Zimmer,” focuses on a designated topic and features the administrators corresponding to that field. The change in format was initiated to ensure that students could get specific answers to specific questions about how the University works. SG and administrators are clearly investing time and energy into maintaining the Leadership Conversations, so it is in their best interest to make the information presented there as useful and accessible as possible.

Chinniah also spoke about University finances at an earlier Leadership Conversation held in April. At that meeting, some

students asked for specifics about the investments the University makes and the breakdown of those numbers, particularly with regard to investments in energy. In response, Chinniah said that the investment of the endowment was a question for Schmid. As a result, Schmid was featured at this year’s event. That the event organizers not only continued with the new format this year, but also accommodated student curiosity, shows that their goal—to enable useful communication between students and administrators—is genuine.

While Schmid’s added presence marks a positive adaptation to students’ interests, SG and the administration need to make sure these continue to be conversations that build on one another, rather than static ones. For example, this year, students had to ask again about energy investments, instead of having them explained in the presentation. In the future,

administrators could work to incorporate previous questions into the presentation itself, which would leave more time in the Q&A for new questions.

Furthermore, to better tailor the presentation to student interests, the administrators could also ask for questions beforehand, as they did for the trustee luncheons last year, in addition to the existing Q&A period. That way, the presentation would be dynamic in favor of student needs, while at the same time decreasing the chances that administrators are caught off-guard.

In order to keep administrators accountable to the student body currently and in the future, SG and the administration should also record the conversations.

Recording could be in the form of, at a minimum, meeting minutes— which has been done at times in the past—or presentation slides online in one place. It would be even more ideal to have a live video broadcast

that is kept online for future viewing. If there is information not suitable for a broad audience, the record could be edited to omit that information with an explanation of why it needs to be kept within the University community. With constant student turnover, it is vital to have a record to ensure long-term progress.

The Editorial Board has often criticized the administration for only offering shallow dialogue— creating forums that let students air concerns, but which do not yield progress. The Leadership Conversations show much promise to contradict that trend, already responding to student inquiries by adding relevant administrators to the events. By facilitating a dialogue that grows over time, the University can go even further to communicate authentically with students.

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

Contextualizing curriculum Economics classes need to incorporate the reality behind abstract concepts

LIAM LEDDY Assoc. Viewpoints Editor ANNA HILL Assoc. Arts Editor TATIANA FIELDS Assoc. Sports Editor SAM ZACHER Assoc. Sports Editor PETER TANG Assoc. Photo Editor FRANK YAN Assoc. Photo Editor

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The Chicago Maroon is published twice weekly during autumn, winter, and spring quarters Circulation: 5,500.

The opinions expressed in the Viewpoints section are not necessarily those of the Maroon. © 2013 The Chicago Maroon, Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 East 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 Editor-in-Chief Phone: 773.834.1611 Newsroom Phone: 773.702.1403 Business Phone: 773.702.9555 Fax: 773.702.3032 CONTACT News: News@ChicagoMaroon.com Viewpoints: Viewpoints@ChicagoMaroon.com Arts: Arts@ChicagoMaroon.com Sports: Sports@ChicagoMaroon.com Photography: Photo@ChicagoMaroon.com Design: Design@ChicagoMaroon.com Copy: CopyEditors@ChicagoMaroon.com Advertising: Ads@ChicagoMaroon.com

By Anastasia Golovashkina Viewpoints Columnist Most college students who take an introductory economics course will not take another course on the subject ever again—and, perhaps more importantly, they’ll leave said course with a more negative view of economics than when they entered. As Charles Wheelan wrote in his 2002 bestseller Naked Economics, “most bright, intellectually curious college students suffer through Econ 101, are happy to pass, and then wave goodbye to the subject forever.”

It’s no secret—and thus an even bigger shame—that the greatest opportunity students have to gain some basic knowledge of this indispensable topic is wasted on teaching models and theories in an incomplete, out-of-context, and ultimately inadequate way.

Let’s consider some examples.

The model of a “perfectly competitive” market is a valuable model to be sure, but introductory economics courses have a tendency to only tell half the story. For some, that means introducing the concept with the example

of a farmer, leaving out the fact that the majority of today’s agriculture is subsidized by governments across the globe. (The U.S. spent approximately $20 billion on farmer subsidies in 2012, the E.U. paid out about $53.85 billion in 2010, and Japan has been paying its farmers nearly $50 billion every year since 2009.)

For others, that means a flawed introduction of “the market” itself. Most present “the market” as being the essential—indeed, only— venue for all economic transactions, implying that businesses are responsible for the near-entirety (if not all) of our country’s commodity and employee demand.

Senator Ted Cruz recently capitalized on this kind of thinking in his criticism of a recent NBC/WSJ poll, which reported a record-setting low in GOP approval ratings.

In his critique, Cruz argued that the poll was obviously skewed, since “20 percent of the people polled were government workers,” and of course “the people who work for the government” would be upset with something like, you know, a government shutdown. But since they were overrepresented in the poll, these figures were clearly not reflective of the country’s true sentiment.

It’s a fairly compelling argument, until you realize that approximately 17 percent of working people are in fact employed by the government.

But you’d never know that

from Econ 101.

Then there are price floors like the minimum wage. The minimum wage is necessarily bad for the economy, the curriculum generally implies, because it’s higher than the “equilibrium wage,” and therefore causes a surplus of workers to enter the market yet be left unemployed. It suggests that the minimum wage is too high and that, indeed, shouldn’t exist at all, because “the market” can produce a far better decision than legislators can.

It would therefore seem like raising the minimum wage to $10 or $12–a move that many state, local, and even our federal government are now seriously considering – would be a terrible idea, as it would cause unemployment to rise and business to fall.

But as recently as this year, UChicago’s Booth School of Business found that approximately 40 percent of the world’s leading economists don’t actually believe that would happen, with another 22 percent saying they’re “uncertain.”

More than that, these experts agreed by a nearly four-toone margin that the benefits of raising and indexing the minimum wage would outweigh the costs.

Likewise, the Laffer curve, which illustrates the relationship between taxation and government revenue, was the darling—perhaps even defining—arc of the Reagan administration.

Despite having both theoretical and

practical applicability, it’s also heavily disputed and taught in a vacuum in most (if not all) introductory economics courses.

I find it exceptionally challenging to think of a single other discipline eager to teach such controversial concepts to impressionable, first-time (and far too often, “lasttime”) students, particularly without the context necessary for students to fully grasp the real-world applicability of what they’re learning.

To be sure, the modeling that goes into understanding price floors and ceilings and taxes all carry great educational value, and should by no means be stripped from introductory courses. But much as we should expect from any other models of comparable controversy, they should never be taught in a vacuum as they are, for the most part, today—the sorts of vacuums that imply these models are facts simply because no information has been introduced to suggest otherwise.

Instead of preparing students with a comparative and inclusive discussion that compares the minimum wage to inflation and other important metrics, today’s approach tends to perpetuate totally false ideas about how our economy works. It does the exact opposite of what such courses should, at least in part, aspire to do: prepare students to understand and accurately discuss the major policy issues of our day.

It’s true that some courses—including those at our school—already do this.

But even they generally do not do it enough. Especially in an introductory course, reality should not be relegated to a once-in-ablue-moon, if-you-want-tolearn-more supplementary reading—it should, I think, be placed right next to the models, front and center.

Most people who take these kinds of courses do not go on to seek out more information about issues like the minimum wage, yet complete them feeling as though they have a thorough grasp of what’s at stake.

Instead of fueling the fire of destructive, widespread ignorance (and a next generation of angry activists, fired up about issues they’re devastatingly misinformed about), let’s cultivate a society of economically informed citizens.

Because here’s the thing: Different sets of information from different points in economic history can be used to support and refute a number of economic concepts, and it’s important to prepare students to interpret the kinds of evidence and arguments they’ll inevitably encounter throughout their lives.

Let’s start teaching more than models—let’s teach reality.

Anastasia Golovashkina is is a third-year in the College majoring in economics.

THE CHICAGO MAROON | VIEWPOINTS | October 29, 2013

5

Free to fail While high-stakes American exams put pressure on students to succeed in one sitting, the Italian alternative is worse

By Noelle Turtur Viewpoints Columnist We have now left that nice, fun period at the beginning of the quarter and are entering those dark weeks when midterms and papers are due, and even more important exams and papers are looming menacingly on the horizon.

It’s getting to the point where we can’t pretend that those are “future-me problems,” as they would say in How I Met Your Mother. They are present problems, and, oh dear god, what have I spent the last three weeks doing!

But despite how terrible this feels right now (for me and everybody else), be thankful for our stressful

university. In the end, there are some real benefits to this loss of sleep when compared to the Italian exam system.

First, in Italian university, one can take an exam multiple times. A student can fail an exam, get an unwanted grade, or decide to not even take the exam. Unless a student decides to accept the grade on an exam, there will be no record of it. After taking a course, a student has three years to take the exam as a many times as it is offered (sometimes there is a requirement that students wait a certain amount of time between exams).

This sounds great in theory.

But in practice? Not so much.

For example, a student could be stuck taking biochem exams for three years rather than just finishing the course sequence in two or three quarters. Three years of continuing agony and struggle! This could prove particularly problematic for the students among us

who feel the need to meet certain minimums. With the opportunity to retake exams, some of us would get stuck in the cycle of taking an exam over, and over again waiting to get that elusive A. But even for those of us who are satisfied with a passing grade, this system still proves problematic.

Giving students the opportunity to take an exam multiple times removes the pressure to study and pass on the first one. No matter how motivated a student is, not having to pass the exam on the first try completely changes the psychology of studying for and taking tests. There is always going to be that one exam that a student doesn’t study for because she decides to go out for a friend’s birthday or because she simply wants see what the exam is like before taking it.

This raises a third problem: Students typically take much

longer to graduate in Italy than they do in the U.S. I remember my roommate in Italy being completely shocked that I knew the exact day I was going to graduate—barring unforeseen circumstances—the day I entered college. The fact that students are identified as the class of 2014 or the class of 2017 means that the University is sure that the majority of us will graduate in four years. And most of us do graduate in four years—or even fewer.

But in Italy, this is not the expectation. The ability to delay exams and courses means that students are frequently fuori corso—not on track to graduate on time.

Because it is so common, students at times even plan to be fuori corso during their first year. Imagine being stuck in college for seven or more years!

In fact, no matter how hard this is to believe, our

Great expectations It doesn’t take a jaded fourth-year to tell you that UChicago isn’t what it looks like in brochures, nor does it take a shell-shocked first year to tell you that UChicago isn’t what she expected. We form, almost accidentally, expectations for our time here—expectations that are rarely more than partially correct.

I started out with an image of this school that was contradictory in its definition and unrealistic in its execution. The University of Chicago was an ideal in every sense: It was where fun might or might not go to die, where discussions of Marx usurped frat parties and students strode along cobbled paths between neo-Gothic buildings covered with ivy.

Populated by mature, engaging, welcoming, and peculiar individuals who somehow had both stellar grades and free time, it was just about perfect.

Though I didn’t realize it at the time, the wisest thing anyone said to me in the college lead-up came from my elderly French horn teacher. After actually recognizing the school name and offering his congratulations, he said, “College is a lot of fun. But there are going to be days when you’re miserable, and you’ll want to quit. That’s part of it.” I don’t believe he meant that college is miserable—far from it. But he recognized the depth and variety of emotion I would experience as I adjusted to campus life—a recognition that my expectations lacked.

Acclimating to the true nuances of campus life was something of a jolt. Already struggling to cope with new social bonds and academic goals, I found that my expectations were tethering me to a vision of a school that didn’t really exist.

Fixated on that image, I was missing the actual school going on all around me.

Now, as the year has really gotten started, I’ve realized that my initial expectations weren’t completely wrong. Sure, my former naïveté is bewildering in hindsight, but with the dizzying amount of lead-up in the last months and years, I’m not surprised that my perceptions were so incomplete.

The admissions office employs a staff of over three dozen individuals to find and recruit the incoming class of students. They send out, as

anyone who’s ever applied to college knows, a colossal amount of mail touting the advantages of this particular school. The image they create is a top-down version of the University of Chicago as it would like to be, Gothic font and all. Add to this the masses of opinionated people on the Internet, actual students, and anyone even indirectly affiliated with the College, and you have more definitions of the school than anyone can process.

So then, if incorrect expectations are unavoidable, how can the jolt of starting over in a place that wasn’t what you expected be minimized? How can tethering yourself to a set outlook be avoided? The answer, I think, lies in something that is both intrinsic and opposite to the UChicago spirit: suspension of judgment.

For the sake of intellectual inquiry, we’re asked to put aside our prejudices and look directly at the information in front of us, whether that’s Ovid’s Metamorphoses or a new advanced calculus proof. We are expected, essentially, to approach our education like a scientific experiment, forming judgments from observation instead of the other way around.

On the other hand, or perhaps further on the same one, it’s not hard to find a prominent vein of cynicism amongst the student body. Asked by an older student during second week what I thought of the school, I responded that I liked it so far. The third-year laughed and replied darkly, “That’s what I thought too.” There’s no denying that the Chicago academic system is rigorous, sometimes overwhelmingly so, but when we build from an assumption of dissatisfaction, we interpret our experiences more negatively than is necessary.

Expectations, ultimately, can never be wholly correct, and maybe we’re better off not defining the future at all. Unless we want to limit our experience to the narrow confines of our own minds, we need to suspend judgment and take things as they come. Even with O-Week over and midterms already fading, that reminder still holds value. I can’t deny that I’ve already formed expectations for my remaining 11 quarters. But at least I’ve given up on pretending that my expectations have any bearing on what shape the future will take.

Ellen Wiese is a first-year in the College.

on one exam or one paper.

Oftentimes, there are problem sets to monitor students’ progress, ensure that they understand the material, and give them credit. There are midterms that periodically check understanding of the material, expose students to the testing methods, and count for part of our grade. Sometimes, we even get credit for class participation! For particularly difficult courses, there are TAs, discussion groups, midterm review sessions, meetings with professors, study groups, and more. These are all ways that the University ensures that we will not reach that final exam and fail.

So although it may seem as if you are destined for doom, fear not. Because here, many people and institutional mechanisms have a vested interest in helping you succeed.

Noelle Turtur is a fourth-year in the College majoring in history.

SUBMISSIONS

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Students should shift their focus from existing prejudices to open-minded exploration to get the most out of their four years Ellen Wiese Viewpoints Staff

crazy, stressful university system affords students some protections.

The administration and individual professors have a vested interest in students passing their courses. An American professor can make the exam average a C, but the professor cannot fail every person in the course. American professors curve their exams to make sure that the majority of students pass. This system does not exist in Italy. A professor can fail each and every one of her students when she offers the exam. During my time in Italy, I heard of some instances when only a handful of students, perhaps five out of a hundred, passed an exam. Sometimes, no matter how hard a student studies, the professor creates expectations that students are unable to meet.

Another protection given students at American universities is in the grading.

There are few courses where the entire grade depends

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JOIN THE WINNING WORDS INITIATIVE AND

PHILOSOPHIZE WITH YOUNG PEOPLE! Join leading philosophers and educators from around the country for a day of talks, panel discussions and demonstrations highlighting the importance of fostering philosophy at the K–12 level. Participants will learn about the state of pre-collegiate philosophy in the United States, with representatives from various pre-collegiate philosophy programs discussing their work, and they will learn how philosophizing with young people can be a deeply meaningful form of community engagement.

Presenters will include C. D. C. Reeve, the Delta Kappa Epsilon Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Jana Mohr Lone, director of the University of Washington Center for Philosophy for Children; Dave Magill, director of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools; Sara Stoelinga, senior director of the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute; Darryl Heller, Illinois Humanities Council/Odyssey Project, Bart Schultz, executive director of the Civic Knowledge Project and senior lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Chicago, and Steve Goldberg, Oak Park/River Forest H.S. For a complete list of presenters and to RSVP, please visit http://civicknowledge.uchicago.edu/wwinitiative.shtml and hit the RSVP link, or email rschultz@uchicago.edu or call 773-702-6007 .

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2013 9:00 A.M. TO 4:30 P.M. MANDEL HALL, REYNOLDS CLUB, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 1131 EAST 57TH STREET, CHICAGO, IL 60637

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ARTS

Heartlandia OCTOBER 29, 2013

With new score, silent film wins the golden ticket Jon Catlin Maroon Contributor While the Logan Center stands as an icon for everything forward-looking in the arts, its performance hall was also used Saturday night in a presentation of an antiquated but remarkably vibrant art form: silent film with live musical accompaniment.

From silent film’s very beginning, said film professor Tom Gunning in the Q&A session that followed the performance, “The cliché is that it was never silent. It was accompanied by music and also, often, by sound effects.” Gunning quoted the German philosopher Theodor Adorno: “Music came into silent film playing very much the same role as children whistling when they go past a graveyard on Halloween. In other words, it dispelled the almost ghostly nature of the films, which were black and white and silent.” But that audio was rarely recorded and thus ephemeral.

The Yellow Ticket (Der Gelbe Schein) of 1918 is an early work of the great silent film actress Pola Negri (born Apolonia

Chałupiec), the first European actress to become a Hollywood star. Born in a small Polish town in 1894, she made it to the theater stages of Warsaw and then starred in several German films before she went to Hollywood, where she had love affairs with Charlie Chaplin and Rudolf Valentino.

The film was produced by German directors Vicor Janson and Eugen Illés and was filmed in Nalewki, the Jewish quarter of pre-WWII Warsaw, which was completely flattened during the war and of which little footage remains. The film’s opening shot of a turn-of-century home is in itself a testament to lost Jewish history. Produced for German and Jewish audiences alike, the film is a commentary on the anti-Semitism of tsarist Russia, then Germany’s enemy in World War I, as compared to Germany, where Jews were then fully emancipated. During a reversal of German policy toward Jews under the Nazis, most copies of the film were destroyed, and it was largely forgotten until a copy was found in Berlin and digitally restored in 2012.

Negri plays Lea Rabb, a Jewish

Klezmer musician Alicia Svigels performs The Yellow Ticket in Vancouver. The program came to Logan Saturday.

COURTESY OF FILM STUDIES CENTER

woman who yearns to become a doctor to heal her ailing father.

When he passes away, she travels to Saint Petersburg to begin her

studies at the university. In order to enter Petersburg as a Jewish woman, however, Lea is forced to register for a “yellow ticket,”

New assistant organist to perform at weekly show MJ Chen Maroon Contributor Think of the pipe organ as one huge wind instrument. Air flows through a pipe, producing sound, and notes are sustained by continuous breath. Think of thousands on thousands of pipes, ordered by pitch and separated by tone colors, never out of breath—this is the pipe organ.

The modern pipe organ, with its motorized air compressors, is a recent innovation. Early instruments were a bit more tedious to sound: Bellows workers in the back pumped air to keep hymns playing in the front. As one story goes, Notre Dame (the cathedral) hired drunks to pump the grand organ on Sundays, and paid them in wine.

LUNCH WITH MR. SKINNER Rockefeller Chapel Wednesdays at noon

Phillip Kloeckner takes care to play both classics and throbbing club hits during his concerts.

COURTESY OF CHERYL MANN

When the drinking age was raised to 21 in 1980, the University of Chicago adopted mechanical pumps to avoid the labor crunch.

It currently hosts two weekly minirecital series to showcase the two organs on campus. The first is Tea and Pipes every Tuesday at Bond Chapel, with the intimate, Baroque-style Reneker organ. Rockefeller hosts Lunch with Mr. Skinner every Wednesday at 12:30—it’s a chance to hear the tremendous Romantic Skinner organ in concert. University Organist Tom Weisflog begins each 30-minute

recital by introducing the program, helpfully pointing out what to listen for in the music and explaining the pipes used in performance. By doing so, he gives us a chance to explore the music and the instrument with our own ears. “8565 pipes and a little ecstasy,” reads the tagline, and it means every word.

This Wednesday’s Lunch with Mr. Skinner is a celebration. It honors Elizabeth Davenport’s (A.M. ’78) birthday and fifth year as dean of Rockefeller Chapel, and debuts Phillip Kloeckner, the University’s new assistant organist. Alexandre Guilmant’s Grand Chœur in D (in the style of Handel) will open the concert, a rousing, brilliant, joyful fanfare for the organ. Expect to hear some of the Skinner’s biggest pipes, its thundering basses and glowing clarion calls. The sound is so powerful it seems to shake the building—a blissful and visceral experience.

In contrast, César Franck’s Cantabile is warmer and more lyrical.

Cantabile means song-like in Italian, and this one sings a wonderfully dreamy melody. Listen for the nasal, oboe-like sound of the organ’s reed pipes and the low-strings quality of its bass part. It’s a rich, secure sound.

As in jazz, the organ tradition calls for the artist to improvise, be it a phrase or two introducing a hymn or a merciless Fuga ad lib in Handel’s concertos. Kloeckner will finish the concert with an improvisation on “Happy Birthday” and a theme of his own creation: The audience is invited to choose between two melodies transcribed from Davenport’s first name, Elizabeth. Expect brilliance.

the blanket designation for all undesirables, notably prostitutes.

Taken in by a brothel owner, Lea TICKET continued on page 8

Reg exhibit sees color in commodity Anna Hill Associate Arts Editor When making your book-laden, hurried way into Mansueto, you might be a bit surprised to suddenly notice the quiet gallery space nestled into the hallway on your left. You might be shocked when, upon peering into the Special Collections exhibition gallery, you observe the spread of glaringly racialized images depicting everything from Aunt Jemima and hair products to Chief Keef and jazz trios. You might even be surprised by the signs that hang calmly in the brightly-lit space, blatantly addressing “The Blackface Industry,” the “Training of White Americans,” and “High Class Design and Low Down Rags.”

However, you should not be surprised to learn that the new show, Race and the Design of American Life: African Americans in Twentieth-Century Commercial Art, extends its reach far beyond a simple exploration of racial tensions. Curated by Chris Dingwall, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of history, the exhibition turns its attention toward the commercial industry and the ways in which it has influenced—and been highly influenced by—black artists and consumers.

Through this lens of mutual influence, the exhibit admirably tackles an incredibly wide array of media, ranging from books, music, and theater productions to cleaning products and cooking ingredients. The exhibition opens with a rare copy of W.E.B. Du REG continued on page 7

THE CHICAGO MAROON | ARTS | October 29, 2013

7

Show revisits “vexed histories” Twilight saga director censors WikiLeaks REG continued from page 6 Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, which, according to Dingwall’s curatorial notes, “serves as a touchstone for the questions facing African Americans in commercial art in the twentieth century.” He intelligently guides: “As a text, Du Bois defended the inalienable human soul of black folk against the commercial exploitation that rendered black bodies and black culture into things for sale. As an object of design, however, the book reflected Du Bois’s own savvy attitude toward the powers of the consumer marketplace to stake a claim for African Americans in the nation’s culture.”

In that sense, although Race and the Design of American Life certainly casts a critical and chastising eye toward the products and movements that historically—and, in some cases, currently—have simplified and appropriated entire cultures in the name of commodification, the show does not present black artists as victims. Instead, the works in the exhibition— most notably the inventive abstractions depicted on the vast assortment of jazz records, magazines, and print blocks— celebrate the cleverness and skill of such artists, who manipulate and re-work many of the most offensive images in order to create complex pieces that stand alone.

For example, a tin can of Murray’s pomade, an “early black beauty product,” depicts a man and a woman rendered very stylistically. The race of the figures is largely (and intentionally) ambiguous, their expressions both congenial and lifeless. Then, in another

section of the exhibition, a similar can depicts the same scene, but the artist makes a bold change: the text that previously read “Murray’s Superior” now advertises “Murray’s for Obama,” and Barack and Michelle Obama smile up from the jar in place of the anonymous figures featured on the original. This shift not only carries with it many political and cultural messages, but also speaks to the power of the black artist in drawing from a complicated group history in order to produce emotionally and visually engaging pieces.

Similarly, the juxtaposition poses a commentary on the very nature of artistic production as considered through the lens of racially-conscious commercial art: The Murray’s company created both the original design and its presidential reiteration as a marketing tool for use as decoration on a commonly-used product (the Murray’s website advertises the latter simply as “Murray’s Original Pomade Special Edition Obama Can”).

Pieces such as this emphasize the dual nature of commercial art as considered in terms of black producers and consumers.

Just as the works act as tools for the commodification of black culture, they serve as tools for artistic liberation; just as the products are functional, they possess an inherent aesthetic power. Similarly, just as Race and the Design of American Life applauds the creativity of many black artists who use the vexed past to produce poignant art, the show also highlights the tensions and complexities that still affect today’s commercial arena. The show asks the viewer to condemn and to appreciate, but above all, to question.

Angela Qian Arts Staff Considering it’s a movie about an organization dedicated to unbiased and open journalism, it is unfortunate that The Fifth Estate exemplifies the worst in sensational storytelling, manufacturing heavily-biased drama for the sake of cheap narrative thrill.

Neither subtle nor surprising, this attempt at a journalistic and political thriller is instead clunky and clumsy, throwing in fancy camera shots and special effects in place of proper narrative development.

The story is angled from the point of view of Daniel Domscheit-Berg, an impressionable young German computer whiz who meets Julian Assange, mysterious white-haired champion of open news and founder of WikiLeaks. Domscheit-Berg quickly becomes Assange’s dedicated follower, going on assignments to meet with the sources of leaks and managing the website and servers under Assange’s direction. Together, the two expose corruption in large banks and, in their biggest scoop by far, leak videos of civilians being killed in the Middle East and thousands of Afghan war logs. The site gains more and more publicity and popularity, but Domscheit-Berg’s hero worship quickly dissolves as he comes to realize that Assange is dangerous, manipulative, and out of control.

As the movie progresses, Assange’s pathological and controlling personality reveals itself through his paranoia, muttered comments about not wanting people who think for themselves, lying about the size of the WikiLeaks organization, suspicion of any potential movement to usurp his authority, and constantly shifting stories about how

Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate.

COURTESY OF DREAMWORKS STUDIOS

his hair turned white. Meanwhile, Domscheit-Berg is portrayed as dedicated and clear-thinking— someone who can distinguish fact from fiction and moral from immoral.

THE FIFTH ESTATE Bill Condon AMC River East

One of the film’s largest draws is Benedict Cumberbatch acting as Assange, and he does not disappoint: sporting blue contact lenses and a white wig, Cumberbatch coolly pulls off Assange’s driven, idealistic, and awkward—yet charismatic and intense—personality.

Daniel Brühl, playing the heroworshipping sidekick, does a good job of making Domscheit-Berg a likable and relatable character, naïve and willfully blind to the flaws of his mentor and idol. However, good acting can’t make up for the rigidity of the script, and more time is spent on fancy editing than on rounding out characters.

Max Palevsky Resident Masters Kris and David Wray present

The Autumn 2013 Wirszup Lecture

Organizationally, the film follows one obvious theme—instead of cooperating with Assange, Domscheit-Berg must question the morality of WikiLeaks and his blind obedience to its leader.

At the same time, there are too many unexplained segments and plot developments that go nowhere. The Fifth Estate is guilty of cramming: It throws in new characters, settings, romantic arcs, WikiLeaks developments, and news from the White House wholesale at the audience, with little to no context. For those who did not remain up-to-date with the WikiLeaks news a few years ago, the movie is a confusing mash-up of events and clips from CNN and Fox that sound ominous but give little clarity. Because of this, the movie drags. In a little over two hours, there are innumerable scenes of huddled conversations and small bits of piecemeal drama that arrive unannounced.

While U.S. state officials and the newspaper reporters from The Guardian come off as earnest and genuinely trying to work for

Matthew Brady Department of Medicine, Section of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism Committee on Molecular Metabolism and Nutrition Committee on Molecular Medicine/MPMM Committee on Cell Physiology

Causes and Consequences of Human Obesity

Monday Nov. 4th at 7pm (Reception to follow)

Free and open to the public

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what they believe is best, the perversions of Assange’s character are cast against Domscheit-Berg in a stark, black-and-white distinction. There is little ambiguity; it’s clear whom we’re supposed to like and whom we’re supposed to hate.

Domscheit-Berg’s moral dilemma is similarly weak. It’s obvious what he’s supposed to do, ethically, to protect innocents from the ramifications of WikiLeaks’ open sources, and so—spoiler alert—he does it.

Though the end of the movie has a rueful shot of WikiLeaks supporters, it isn’t enough.

Rather than leaving the audience to judge the culpability of the conflicting parties in the movie, The Fifth Estate heavily emphasizes the extremes of Assange’s character. Its pretentions to documentary seem to instead advance an ideological agenda. In trying heavyhandedly to show the negative side of Assange’s work with WikiLeaks, the movie fails to convince us of anything except its own eerie resemblance to propaganda.

TH HE CHIC C IC CAGO MAROON N | ART TS | Oc ctober 29, 20 013

8

Eggers’s latest novel more structure than substance James Mackenzie Maroon Contributor

A different kind of campus: In The Circle, it’s the site of an allpowerful social media organization.

COURTESY OF KNOPF PUBLISHING

The Circle, a new novel

by Dave Eggers, is a work of speculative fiction about the implications of social media on modern society. The novel follows Mae Holland, a new employee of the Circle, which is Eggers’ fictional interpretation of contemporary Internet-based businesses like Facebook or Google. Instead of an office, the Circle’s headquarters is called a “campus” and is staffed mostly by social media–savvy computer programmers in their 20s and 30s. Mae gets a job there from her old college roommate, Annie, and slowly rises through the ranks of the company as her talent becomes more apparent and in demand.

The Circle sets its sights on some of the classic “cautionary tale” novels of the 20th century, with works such as George Orwell’s 1984 and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 evoked subtly but surely. The driving force behind the success of these past novels was the way in which their authors constructed unsettling , but believable, worlds based on the ideologies and practices

they were warning against.

In this aspect, Eggers does an excellent job in emulating his predecessors. The campus embodies many of the real-world concerns about social media that have been surfacing in recent years, including the invasion of privacy, sensory overload, and obligatory participation.

This world also feels much closer to today’s society than most similar stories have.

These characters’ smartphones may have more features, the connections between their real and virtual lives more profound, but it is not inconceivable that something similar to the Circle’s unified social media platform might exist within the next 10 to 20 years.

But while exploring this world proves to be a rewarding experience, the book often falls short when it tries to fill its interesting and well-crafted background with the substance needed to complete the image. As a protagonist, Mae is sympathetic but confusing. Her arc often alternates between two different story lines: Mae starting as a devotee and awakening to the true nature of her surroundings, and Mae starting as a skeptic

and being indoctrinated into the strange world in which she has found herself.

Either kind of arc works very well for a story focusing on the setting and its moral implications, but Eggers does not seem able to make up his mind about who Mae should be.

In one scene, Mae is extremely disconcerted and alienated by her coworker’s overreaction to a perceived social media snub, but in the next, she passionately argues the benefits of extreme social media with an old friend.

It doesn’t help that the supporting cast is rarely developed and mostly consists of a set of caricatures meant to illustrate Eggers’s points more than contribute to the plot. They lack personality, they rarely learn or change, and for the most part do not advance the story in a meaningful way. This may be intentional on Eggers’s part, since his argument is essentially that too much social media will lead us to be superficial and unable to judge our own self-worth without the approval of others.

However, it is hard to execute such a human theme when his characters lack the humanity he was trying to explore.

CIFF finale: Pepper Land wins Gold Hugo Silent film “bucks pantomimed overacting”

Robert Sorrell Arts Staff

The 49th Annual Chicago International Film Festival (CIFF) wrapped up last Thursday night at the Chicago Theatre with a screening of Joel and Ethan Coen’s newest film, Inside Llewyn Davis, which won the prestigious Grand Prix at Cannes this summer. Over 4,000 miles away from the French Riviera, after two frenzied autumn weeks of screenings, the Chicago International Film Festival had a few awards of its own to present.

The Festival’s highest prize, the Gold Hugo for Best Film, went to My Sweet Pepper Land, a film set in the Kurdistan region of Iraq that turns a playful eye to mavericks who fight against stifling social norms.

The film, which also garnered a nod in the Un Certain Regard competition section at Cannes, struck critics due to its stark beauty and inventive play on genres, turning the American “Western” on its head.

The Verdict ( Jan Verheyen) and Just a Sigh ( Jérome Bonnell) scored the Silver Hugo Special Jury Prize and Best Director, respectively. Films from around the world made strong showings in the competition as well, as works from Mexico, Poland, China, Brazil, Kenya, and Israel nabbed prizes.

The winner of the Docufest

Competition, and my favorite film, was the enigmatic, playful Trucker and The Fox (Arash Lahooti, Iran).

Clocking in at only 78 minutes, this documentary punches above its weight class, balancing humor and solemnity to craft a surprisingly affecting portrait of filmmaker, trucker, and animal lover Mahmood Kiyani Falavarjani.

New to the festival this year was the Q Hugo, an award for films in the OUT-Look competition section focusing on LGBTQ themes. It is unclear what place the new category will take in the festival, and also what it will mean for Reeling: The Chicago LGBT International Film Festival, which after a hiatus in 2012 will run its 31st festival November 7–14. Reeling is currently the second longest–running LGBT festival in the world, and this year will showcase over 40 films at seven different venues throughout the city including the Music Box Theatre, Block Cinema, and the DuSable Museum of African American History.

The CIFF has also been around the block a couple times. At 49, it is the longest-running film festival in North America, yet many Chicagoans aren’t aware of the Chicago International Film Festival’s place in film lore. In 1967, the festival famously introduced the world to an unknown New York

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director, Martin Scorsese, whose first film I Call First (now entitled Who’s That Knocking at My Door), won top prize among the festival’s lineup of around 60 international films. Other notable finds include Wim Wenders (of Paris, Texas and Buena Vista Social Club fame), whose 1974 film Alice in der Städten was nominated for the Gold Hugo. Wenders went on to garner nominations for the Gold Hugo in 1975 and 1976, when he won for Im Lauf der Zeit. And the festival hasn’t been idle since, as it has expanded yearly and found a base at AMC River East.

So far, there hasn’t been much chatter about next year’s festival, but as the CIFF turns 50 and Chicago’s film status still rides high on the shoulders of cinema giant Roger Ebert (X ’70), film lovers will definitely be in for a treat next fall.

Though the festival has almost gone under many times, most notably in 1973 when the University of Chicago stepped in and held festival screenings on campus, the CIFF of 2013 has friends in high places and a stability only afforded to the world’s elite art festivals. And if there’s one thing that the film industry does quite well, it’s throw a party. Next fall, show up early for tickets, but pack your dancing shoes; you’ll need something more than a $7 Coke to celebrate 50 years with the CIFF.

TICKET continued from page 6 is pressured to entertain men to pay her rent, but remains true to her character and is repulsed by them. Jews were also not admitted to the university, so Lea must use a birth certificate she discovers to register for classes under a non-Jewish name. Despite her challenges, she retains a passion for her studies, earning an award at the university.

Bucking the pantomimed overacting one expects from silent films, Negri is powerful but subtle throughout in conveying the uneasiness of Lea’s dual identity. With her heavy black eye makeup and mysterious features, one can see why she was often cast as exotic characters in her Hollywood films, such as a gypsy in a film adaptation of Carmen.

When a man at the brothel recognizes Lea from the university, he exposes her true identity to her would-be Russian lover Dmitri, who abandons her. Fearing that her future as a student is doomed, Lea breaks down and leaps from a window in a suicide attempt. In that climactic scene, an extremely long take by today’s standards, Lea’s expression slowly and subtly changes from desperation to madness, her gestures shifting from those of helpless collapse to demonic possession.

It is around then that Lea’s professor discovers that she is actually his daughter from a woman he met while he was a student years earlier, and he heals her injuries. The film can be read as having a Hollywood happy ending, with Lea reunited with her true father and Dmitri due to the happy realization that she is not Jewish. But this is not so

clear: Why did the professor not marry Lea’s mother, and why did she drop Lea off at a doorstep in the Jewish ghetto? We are left wondering whether Lea could be a Jew after all.

The performance featured live accompaniment from Grammywinner Alicia Svigals, one of the world’s foremost klezmer fiddlers and a founder of Klezmatics, with Marilyn Lerner on piano.

Svigals wrote an original score for the film that draws from klezmer, music of Eastern Europe’s pre-war Jewry, and evokes instruments such as the shofar, a horn used in Jewish religious practices. In one scene, she makes a beat box– like panting sound to evoke the ghosts of the destroyed Jewish community, as she said after the film. At one crushing moment in the film, she produces wailing evocative of Eastern European folk music.

Svigals’s nuanced violin variations and soaring melodies are matched in intensity by Lerner’s dynamic chords.

Together, the two follow the film’s cuts through optimistic moments and scenes of despair.

While this was Svigals’s first experience composing and performing for silent film, she was in a way returning to a long lost tradition. “My grandfather made a living for a time playing piano for silent films a block away from where I live now,” she said.

Svigals and Lerner are touring the country on a grant from the Foundation for Jewish Culture.

This screening was sponsored by the Logan Center for the Arts, the Center for Jewish Studies, the Film Studies Center, and film professor Tom Gunning.

9

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THE CHICAGO MAROON | SPORTS | October 29, 2013

South Siders shut out Alma, shut out by Elmhurst on Senior Night Volleyball

Second-year Maren Loe spikes the ball during the senior night match against Elmhurst last Friday night.

STEPHANIE KOCH | MAROON CONTRIBUTOR

Noah Hellermann Maroon Contributor On Friday, No. 18 Chicago (20– 9, 6–1 UAA) went 1–1 in their last two home games of the season. It was Senior Night and the Morgan Buerkett Memorial for the women’s volleyball team. The team honored its four current seniors, as well as a member of the senior class, Morgan Buerkett, who passed away in 2011

after her first year at the school and with the team.

The first match on Friday took place in the afternoon against Alma College (12–13). Although Chicago won in straight sets, they did not dominate the entire match.

In the first set, the Maroons never lost the lead, even though Alma surged to keep the final score within three points, 25–22.

In the second set, however,

Chicago won by an impressive margin of 25–15 after a few key blocks. The third set was much more competitive, as the South Siders barely held on to a 25–22 victory to close out the match.

While happy with the results, the Maroons were not completely satisfied with their level of play.

“We let Alma go on too many runs,” said first-year setter and right-side hitter Erin Risk.

Where are all the female sportswriters?

Sarah Langs Sports Editor Another school year has begun, and here we are already in fifth week. As a maroon sports editor, I find myself constantly hoping to find more writers in new places.

Yet, the pattern is pretty much always the same. A bunch of firstyears are interested in the first RSO fair, a few at the second, and by winter quarter, we have about three new writers who contribute consistently. People are busy, so it’s hard to get them to commit. I have nothing against them; I understand how this school can completely jeopardize one’s time. I’m not here to complain about a fluctuating writer base or feeling as if my section doesn’t have enough fresh faces. It’s just there’s one group of potential scribes that we have yet to draw from this year, and it’s making me worried.

We have no new female writers.

This is only my third year here, but I can attest to the fact that we have had at least one, if not multiple, women interested in writing for maroon Sports in the early weeks of school in the last two years. This year, not a single one. Not even one email address at either of the RSO fairs.

As one of maroon Sports’s two female editors, and the upper one in the hierarchy—the other is an associate—I’m worried. Maybe the problem is that girls just don’t know

enough about sports to write about them. I know that to be untrue, though. Any athlete at this school could write about the male team for her corresponding sport, and a lot more girls on this campus follow sports than you might realize. The number of conversations I had at the Panhellenic formal sorority recruitment about sports can attest to this.

So why, then, do we not have women writers? I know that a lot of what I’ve said so far is stereotyping, and I hope that won’t turn anyone off to our section. We’re a great group of open-minded people.

And while my male co-editors may not have realized it, it has become increasingly clear to me in the past few weeks that we just don’t have that interest from first-year women this year.

I really don’t have any answers here, but I have a litany of questions.

Why is this year different from any other year? Why don’t girls express interest in writing about sports?

We know there are female sports fans, and we know there are female writers, so why do these groups not intersect?

Perhaps the interest in sports is more confined to athletes themselves than we realize– especially among women; one of my male co-editors is a varsity athlete, and the other two are both involved on a club level. Maybe I’m the aberration. Being a varsity or club athlete comes with a whole

host of responsibilities, and being in Ida Noyes twice a week for a huge chunk of time just might not be something they can commit to, completely understandably so. We need them to keep playing, so we keep getting content to write about.

So carry on. But I still think the absence of female writers this year is worth thinking about.

I want more women writers because I want to be a real, non-maroon, 7-days-a-week sportswriter one day. And I want others to have this dream, too. I want the maroon to come across a girl who agrees to write one volleyball article because she has a friend on the team, and ends up loving the format and coming back for more. I want us to be able to show girls that writing about sports is like writing about news, but less depressing and requiring a lot more creativity. Nobody seems to realize how much brainpower the sports section entails. The fact is, these teams do the same basic things each week: either they win, or they lose.

Coming up with new headlines week after week to denote wins and losses, to the same general group of teams because we are in the UAA, is not an easy task. And it isn’t exactly a honeymoon for our writers, either, coming up with new and exciting leads when it’s a team’s second or third game against Wash U in the season. But we do it, and it makes us better thinkers, writers, and editors.

And I want some women on board.

The next match of the evening came against a much stronger opponent. Chicago played No. 5 Elmhurst (27–4) and had high hopes going into the match. It was the highest attended home game this season for the volleyball team.

“Everyone was very excited for the Elmhurst game because it would have been a huge win for us,” Risk said.

Though the Maroons lost in

straight sets, the points didn’t all fall on the same side of the net. Chicago led by as many as four points early on in the match. After tying at 11, Elmhurst pulled away and held the lead with a final score of 25–23.

In the second set, the South Siders could not pick up any momentum and ended up falling short 25–13. Throughout the third set, the Bluejays and the Maroons played neck and neck. The game was tied at 16, but Elmhurst ended up winning the set, and the match, by a score of 25–22.

Chicago was disappointed after their 3–0 loss.

“We definitely had an opportunity to win a big regional match against a ranked opponent, and we didn’t take it,” said fourthyear setter Nikki DelZenero.

In the match against Alma, Chicago collected 44 kills. Fourthyear middle blocker Maggie Vaughn led the Maroons with 12 kills. Against Elmhurst, however, the South Siders were only able to muster 28 kills.

“We didn’t do as well as we could have,” DelZenero said.

Coming off the loss against Elmhurst, Chicago is looking to finish its season strong at the Benedictine Tournament.

“Next weekend, we need to refocus so that we can come together and play as a team,” Risk said.

The Maroons kick off the Benedictine Tournament against North Central College on Friday afternoon on the road in Lisle, Illinois.

In the Chatter’s Box with Sarah Langs Jorge Sanchez-Cummings is a third-year defender from Mexico City.

We chatted with him to get some insider info on the life of a Maroon athlete.

COURTESY OF JOHN BOOZ

CM: For how long have you been playing soccer?

JSC: I have been playing soccer since I was three years old. It is the one sport all boys begin to play when they are young in Mexico, and I stuck with it ever since.

CM: Did you always know you’d play in college? How did you approach the recruitment process as an international student?

JSC: I did not even think about playing soccer in college until I was 16. Unfortunately, back in Mexico, it is difficult to pursue a successful academic and athletic career. Most of the times you

do either one or the other, but I never felt comfortable making that decision. I knew I wanted to play and I knew I wanted to study, so I started looking for options somewhere else. I attended a couple of recruiting camps here in the U.S. and got exposed to the student-athlete model, which was very congruent with what I wanted.

CM: What are the differences between soccer in Mexico and the soccer in the U.S.? What was the transition like?

JSC: The game is certainly different. I would say that—again, generally—in the U.S. you find better athletes than in Mexico, but in Mexico you find better soccer players than in the U.S. I grew up, and most of my teammates back home grew up, only playing soccer, therefore our set of athletic skills is limited to a single sport.

Here, because my teammates grew up playing basketball, football, baseball, lacrosse, etc., they also have a set of skills that, although is not specific to soccer, it certainly helps in terms of being stronger and faster. This difference shows in games. The game here is much more physical, and in Mexico it is much more technical. The tactical aspects seems to be what both have in common.

SPORTS

IN QUOTES “So I’m on the line, and everyone in the stadium thinks I’m spiking it, and that was the plan. The other ten guys [on offense] thought I was too. I thought I was.”

—Detroit Lions QB Matthew Stafford on his game-winning touchdown against the Dallas Cowboys

Last-second equalizer salvages tie against Warhawks Men’s Soccer David Gao Maroon Contributor Chicago (7–4–2) started the weekend on Saturday with a lastsecond goal that sent the South Side supporters jumping for joy in a hard-fought match against UW–Whitewater (14–4–1) and engineered history by setting a school record in a 15–0 victory against Rockford (0–17).

Coming off a 0–4 loss to Case Western (6–4–4), the Maroons had to bring their all against Whitewater, a 14-win team. The first half featured even play, with both teams firing off two corner kicks and a similar number of shots. The Warhawks got on the scoreboard in the 66th minute off a free kick 35 yards out. As time started ticking down, the Maroons looked for a way to get the ball in the box, outshooting Whitewater 10–3 in the second half, until a series of events that would prove fatal for the visitors.

“With 40 seconds left, they had the ball and were going at our goal.

They mismanaged it by trying to kick it through, which allowed us just one more shot at the box.

With the clock ticking down, you get more and more desperate. I

think it was six to seven seconds when [third-year midfielder Nick Codispoti] hit the ball in,” head coach Mike Babst said. “At that point in a game, you weren’t able to generate a whole lot of shots on goal and not feeling all that optimistic about that particular play going in. But Choquette was composed in putting it in the goal, and it was a pretty dramatic moment and a really big result for us as far as being in the NCAA tournament.”

The Maroons celebrated. The visitors looked shocked.

“It was the most rewarding feeling to finally put one in and with only a second left, we couldn’t control how happy we were and we all just dog-piled on Mike [Choquette]. It was a great experience,” said first-year forward Brenton-Neal Desai.

Both teams entered overtime with their respective mindsets.

“We brought a lot of energ y into OT. We started OT going for the win, but we weren’t really able to capitalize on the momentum.

They did a good job of settling down and not rushing out there.

We had one or two half-chances, but other than that it wasn’t our best day as far as being sharp on the attack,” Babst said.

With both teams unable to find chances to score, the hardfought match ended in a 1–1 tie.

Against Rockford, the Maroons dominated throughout the entire game, recording 15 goals and breaking a school record that had stood since 1971 for most goals in a game. Eleven players scored for the South Siders, with first-year forward Victor Raber accumulating four.

Chicago kicks off the weekend traveling to New York to play the NYU Bobcats (6–5–3) Friday at 11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time and will head to Massachusetts on Sunday to play Brandeis (11–4), with kickoff at 11 a.m.

EST. With three games left in the season, the Maroons are putting all of their energ y in to close out the season and play in the NCAA tournament.

“Performance-wise we’re g etting to the point in the season where it needs to be our best soccer, and ever y g ame we play is becoming more urg ent to find that level for us where we feel like the g ame is g oing to be defined on our terms and us playing our best. We’ve g otten to be ver y healthy and have a full roster of g uys,” Babst said.

Second-year Jorge Bilbao rushes to the ball in a game against Rochester earlier this season.

FRANK WANG | THE CHICAGO MAROON

St. Thomas Relays jumpPacific hands Chicago second loss start team for regular season Football

Sam Zacher Associate Sports Editor

Swimming Tatiana Fields Associate Sports Editor The Maroons competed in their first meet of the school year this past Saturday at the St. Thomas Relays in Minneapolis, MN. The meet came before the team’s preseason, and was an opportunity for members to start preparing for their winter competition season.

Because the team has been practicing consistently since the beginning of the quarter, getting the chance to actually compete and practice racing was heavily anticipated.

“Our team has been training for the past month, and we finally got the chance to show off our work in Minnesota,” said third-year breaststroker Andrew Angeles.

The St. Thomas Relays allowed the Maroons to kick off competition with a fun, rather unconventional meet. In a sport that is mostly focused on individual performance, relays allow teammates to compete collectively and support each other. Besides diving events, all of the races at the meet were relays, giving the South Siders a chance to race in a relatively relaxed atmosphere. Another interesting aspect of this meet was that it wasn’t scored, easing pressure even more.

Head coach Jason Weber specifically chose this meet to start the season because of all the relays.

“A relay meet is generally viewed as a fun meet since most events are not common, and that’s the reason why I chose to attend this meet,” Weber said. “We’ve never been

to a relay meet before, and I knew our swimmers would be excited to compete in one. Plus, we never get a chance to compete against the Minnesota schools during the season.”

Angeles appreciated the way the relay meet highlighted teamwork.

“Because the whole meet was made of relays, we had to come together as a team and rely on each other,” he said.

Out of 17 relay events, six were events found at regular meets, and 11 were relay races unique to this particular meet. Some unusual races were mixed or coed relays, as well as “animal” relays that consisted of mixed strokes or longer distances.

“The unusual style of the races was a fun way to start our season, especially as a lowpressure atmosphere for our freshmen’s first college meet ever,” Angeles said. “We are excited for the rest of our season.”

Despite the relaxed nature of the meet, the Maroons took their racing seriously and put on a good showing for their first competition of the school year. The men’s and women’s squads won six events each to combine for a total of 12 events out of 21 events at the entire meet. The South Siders also set seven meet records over the course of the day.

With their preseason about to start, this meet was a good way for the Maroons to ease back into competition mode and start to focus on the meets ahead. As their official preseason starts, the South Siders will take on Wheaton next weekend in an away meet.

The house cat might have been a more appropriate mascot for Chicago on Saturday.

After traveling 1,800 miles across the country to Forest Grove, Oregon, the Maroons (5–2) fell to Pacific (6–1) by a score of 21–6.

Imagine a cat (the South Siders) lying on its back, watching a toy swing down in front of its face, batting at it each time, only to come up empty.

By the numbers, Chicago kept up with the Boxers. They actually outgained the home team in total offense with 302 yards to Pacific’s 284.

“Overall, I thought we played well,” said fourth-year quarterback Vincent Cortina.

“We were able to move the ball effectively and control the clock.”

However, the South Siders drove down the field time and time again, only to be stopped on downs before reaching the end zone. After the first quarter, the score was still 0–0. Pacific realized the Maroons weren’t going to score any time soon and took the initiative, going up 7–0 in the second quarter.

In the third, the Boxers drove down the field again to take a 14–0 lead. Unsatisfied with its offensive play, Chicago responded with its only touchdown drive of the day, traveling 90 yards in 10:34 for six points.

Third-year running back Zak Ross-Nash punched the ball in for the Maroons.

Unfortunately, the South Siders’ special teams play hasn’t been too sharp this season, as there have been missed extra points in each of the last four games. And

in a 41–34 loss to Rhodes on October 5, Chicago’s special teams allowed multiple blocked punts. Following the Maroons’ only touchdown against Pacific, the extra point was missed, leaving the score at 14–6.

Chicago also went 0–1 on field goals.

“I think we played with great effort, but in terms of technique, there’s a lot of room to improve,” said second-year defensive back Vincent Beltrano.

Pacific scored a third touchdown in the fourth quarter, increasing its lead to 21–6, and that score stood for the remainder of the game.

Cortina and the South Siders were left with a sour taste in their mouths.

“I don’t think they did anything special on defense to prevent us from scoring,” Cortina said. “ I think we stopped ourselves and needed to focus throughout our drives.

Field position didn’t help us either—we always had long fields to work with, and that decreases your chances of scoring.”

The most remarkable statistic of the day was the time of possession. Chicago controlled the ball for 39:51 to Pacific’s 20:09. That implies a rate of roughly one point per minute of possession for the Boxers and 0.15 points per minute for the South Siders.

Although the Maroons didn’t play poorly, there are certainly glaring issues to fix: the kicking game and scoring in enemy territory.

“I think the number one thing we need to work on is finishing drives and putting points on the board. We need to form a greater sense of urgency,” Cortina said.

In its final three games of the season—all against UAA opponents—Chicago hopes to drive down the field more like aggressive lions than playful house cats.