FRIDAY • OCTOBER 12, 2012
CHICAGOMAROON.COM
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SINCE 1892
INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
Part I: Where Are We Now? Sexual assault at the U of C Joy Crane Associate News Editor & Hannah Nyhart Special Contributor At least one in five college-age women and one in ten men are victims of sexual assault, according to published estimates. After a flurry of campus action and awareness from 2007 to 2010, demands to update the U of C sexual assault policy have all but disappeared from campus consciousness. Sexual assault, according to an abbreviated version of the University’s official definition, is a non-gender-specific act of sexual penetration or sexual conduct in which a victim does not or cannot give consent. In this quarter-long series, the Maroon will be investigating response, awareness, and prevention with the aim of providing a fuller picture of sexual assault on campus. In 2010 the University of Chicago student body voted on a referendum to reform the University’s
sexual assault policy, a culmination of a more than two-year long advocacy for three major changes to the existing disciplinary procedures and sexual assault policy, which was first established in May 2007. The Working Group for Sexual Assault Policy (WGSAP), a primary student force behind this referendum, argued first that the existing composition of hearing boards, which drew faculty from the department of the accused, posed issues of potential bias. Second, procedures to that point had allowed exclusively for the accused to read the accuser’s opening statement, and the same right was not offered to the accuser. Third, motivated by the experiences of past victims, the group also called for sensitivity training for those involved in disciplinary proceedings. In April 2010, the referendum was put to the student body, and passed with a vote of 78 percent in favor of the suggested changes. In response ASSAULT continued on page 2
ISSUE 3 • VOLUME 124
Activist “comes out” for civil rights
In celebration of National Coming Out Day, LGBTQ hosts author and influential television and campaign presence Keith Boykin to discuss the challenges he has faced as a gay man. IVY ZHANG | THE CHICAGO MAROON
Maira Khwaja News Contributor Keith Boykin, the highest-ranking openly gay person in the Clinton White House, spoke about his own journey of coming out at a lecture in Hyde Park Union Church
on Thursday night. Now a political commentator and author, Boykin shines light on issues facing minorities in the LGBT community. He focused specifically on comparing prejudices toward the LGBT to the African American community during the
civil rights movement, urging that people learn from racism. Boykin spoke on National Coming Out Day about his coming out at age 25 in law school, only a day after confronting his sudden confusion for the first time. He realBOYKIN continued on page 3
Re-launch of local craft beer brews up history Nussbaum urges tolerance Madhu Srikantha Associate News Editor
Jon Catlin Senior News Staff
When Rob Sama (A.B. ’93) and Joe Berwanger finally revived Chicago-brewed Baderbräu Brewing Company, they found that they weren’t the only ones who had pined for the pale lager since its 1997 retirement. Fans of the beer flocked downtown this past May to the Chicago Craft Beer Festival, when Baderbräu poured out the taps for the first time in more than decade. “[One guy] came with a bubblewrapped stemmed Baderbräu beer glass and he refused to get served with anything but that glass,” Berwanger said. When the waitress picked up his glass to fill it up with the brew to which he was so loyal, he refused. “He had to bring it up to the tap himself to fill it up.” Since May, Sama and Berwanger have seen great success, selling 3,000 cases to Binny’s Beverage Depots across Chicago before the first brew, a testament to the the pilsener that was and remains a Chicago favorite. “When I was in college, Baderbräu was more or less the craft beer of the time,” Sama said. In the ’90s, Baderbräu held its own within city limits. Sama
Martha Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the Law School, spoke on her latest book, The New Religious Intolerance, which surveys recent cases of social and legal discrimination against Muslims, to a packed auditorium Tuesday evening at I-House.
University of Chicago alumnus Rob Sama (left) and his partner Joe Berwanger resurrect the beloved Baderbräu Chicago Pilsener after the lager went bankrupt in 1997.
America” and served at Oprah Winfrey’s restaurant, The Eccentric. But then in 1997, Pavichevich Brewing Company, the Elmhurst, Illinois–based brewery that created the Baderbräu trademark, went bankrupt. Twelve years later, the journey of rediscovery began with a simple question. “Whatever happened to Baderbräu?” Sama asked, amidst regaling tales with one of his old college roommates. The question BEER continued on page 4
NUSSBAUM continued on page 4
Students help plan Pierce replacement Marina Fang Associate News Editor
COURTESY OF JOE BERWANGER
recalls attending the Taste of Chicago, where there were always three beer tents: two powerhouses of domestic beer, Miller and Budweiser, and then Baderbräu. Back in its heyday, those who swore by Baderbräu included the German embassy of Chicago, former President George H.W Bush, and the eponymous alcoholic in the black comedy Shakes the Clown. Even among foodie circles, Baderbräu had a following, hailed by beer critic Michael Jackson as the “best pilsener [he] ever tasted in
Nussbaum’s discussion ranged from bans on headscarves and minarets in Europe to efforts to prevent the construction of Park51, the Islamic center several blocks from Ground Zero in New York City. “Once, not very long ago, Americans and Europeans prided themselves on their enlightened attitudes of religious toleration and understanding,” Nussbaum said.
Students and housing staff discussed plans for a new residence hall to replace Pierce Tower with Assistant Vice President for Campus Life Katie CallowWright and an architect in Max Palevsky East Commons on Wednesday night. The open meeting, part of what Callow-Wright described as the “programming phase” for the new dormitory, was intended for students and staff to verify the findings from a series of focus groups that had been held throughout the spring and summer. In an interview, Callow-Wright said that the earliest the new dormitory would open was the 2016-2017 academic year.
Jane Wright, an architect hired by the University to help design the new residence hall, summarized the findings of the focus groups at the Wednesday meeting, saying that students paid particular attention to the design of house lounges, indicating that they “should feel more like a living room and less like an airport.” In addition, students also stressed the importance of the proximity of house lounges to their rooms. According to Wright, focus group members have emphasized that the spaces within the residence hall should promote a sense of community. “We heard students say that it’s not so much about sizing, it’s about how [the students] are connected together,” she said. “It creates an identity within the DORM continued on page 3
IN VIEWPOINTS
IN ARTS
IN SPORTS
Turning over a new page » Page 5
East blends with West in Smart Musesum’s palette of prints » Page 8
UAA contention on the line as Brandeis, NYU arrive in Hyde Park » Back Page
Hunger Strike: Belly Flop » Page 9
Eye on the Tigers: At Stagg Field, Wittenberg the prey » Page 11
A course in crisis management » Page 5
THE CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | October 12, 2012
2
Student concerns for sexual assault policies are left unanswered after discussions and referendums ASSAULT continued from front
to the proposed referendum, Provost Thomas Rosenbaum appointed a small committee composed of faculty, staff, an undergraduate, and a graduate student. Though the committee did not publicize a timeline for implementing changes, mandated sensitivity training was introduced by summer of 2010, and an altered disciplinary policy set composition of sexual assault hearing boards to include faculty outside of the accused’s academic department. Responding to these changes in a 2011 Maroon article, Michelle Boyd (A.B. ’12), a member of WGSAP, described the updates as “a success story.” But according to the University’s official sexual assault
and disciplinary policies as of 2012, significant aspects of the movement’s demands remain fundamentally unresolved. Although sexual assault hearing boards now include a faculty member and student representative unaffiliated with the division of either the accuser or accused, they still include, at minimum, two members of the accused’s academic department. Although an accuser is now granted access to the statements of the accused and witnesses, they must obtain explicit author consent—a policy that the administration has argued is necessary under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, (FERPA), which guarantees student rights to privacy.
Sensitivity training for those involved with hearings was implemented, overseen by Associate Dean of Students in the University for Student Affairs Belinda Vasquez. But those who are often the first to hear of sexual assaults, such as RHs and Advisers, receive less comprehensive training than those in the hearings or the 56 hours of instruction that has always been mandated for Sexual Assault Deans on Call. For these first points of contact, a uniform, mandated response in which victims are informed of their options does not always occur, according to victims of assault. This disconnect between informal confidants and the formal response ap-
paratus has left some victims ill-informed of their response options and their cases undocumented. Due to this possible lack of proper documentation and reporting of assaults, the dialogue of sexual assault occurrence on this campus is skewed. Given the scope of this issue, University disciplinary policy is not the full picture. Prevention efforts in the form of sexual assault awareness and consent education take place most visibly during Orientation Week. Additional education is available, but not mandated, from organizations like University-run Resources for Sexual Violence Prevention (RSVP) which brings information sessions to dorm houses and other campus
groups upon request. Two years after the student-led referendum, the spotlight on sexual assault has dimmed. Federal law and guidelines, the relationship between inebriation and consent and their respective definitions, and the University’s duty to both accuser and accused further complicate how best to tackle sexual assault prevention and response. But the tangled and multifaceted nature of the issue only accentuates the need for wider campus understanding and dialogue. Early this past Sunday morning, a woman reported a sexual assault by an acquaintance in a university residential area. The image of sexual assault as limited to a stranger
in a dark alley provides a skewed depiction of a crime that takes place in our dorms, in our apartments, and in our fraternities. This series, to be continued on Oct. 23, intends to re-launch a constructive and informed dialogue about prevention, response, and student awareness of sexual assault on this campus. The Maroon is committed to achieving as thorough knowledge as possible of all aspects of this issue. If you have information on the history of U of C’s policies with regard to sexual assault, or if you or someone you know has experiences relating to sexual assault and/or subsequent hearings, please contact us. hannah.nyhart@ gmail.com or joycrane7@ gmail.com.
HISTORY OF THE U OF C’S SEXUAL ASSAULT POLICY APRIL 2007 University enacts explicit sexual assault policy, independent of sexual harassment policy.
SPRING 2008 The Working Group for Sexual Assault Policy (WGSAP), a student organization, forms to advocate for policy reform.
JANUARY 22, 2009 Student Government Resolution to support and endorse WGSAP student-wide petition for sexual assault policy reform. Circulated in Winter quarter 2009, the petition garners 20 club endorsements and over 1,000 signatures.
APRIL 22, 2010 A referendum to reconfigure the composition of sexual assault hearing boards passes with 78 percent of the student vote.
SPRING 2010 Sensitivity training for those involved in sexual assault hearings instituted; Provost’s committee pledges to explore other reforms.
Former Hillel leader starts new Jewish group
OCTOBER 2010 Changes to policy announced: conditional access to accused’s testimony is granted to accuser, and hearing boards diversified, but retain potential bias.
OCTOBER 27, 2011 In a meeting with student activists, administrators review progress on sexual assault policy, acknowledging that ambiguities remain.
Free printing offered by student start-up Ben Pokross Associate News Editor
Kitt Healy, part of the KAM Isaiah Isreal Social Justice gardening group, harvests sweet potatoes beside the Church of St. Paul and the Redeemer this Sunday. All food goes to local soup kitchens and shelters. jUChicago joined them. SYDNEY COMBS | THE CHICAGO MAROON
Lina Li Senior News Staff After a tumultuous last year as Hillel Director, Dan Libenson has turned his attention to the new RSO jUChicago (jU), attempting to bring together students of different Jewish backgrounds and identities. According to Libenson, jU programming “focuses, though not exclusively, on a niche of students who are exploring Jewish ideas, possibly for the first time, possibly after having been turned off by Jewish ideas in the past.” Libenson said that his plans for jU are a continuation of some of what he tried to do at Hillel. He said that the demands of running the organization “[put] lim-
its on the time and bandwidth that we could devote to the work jU is now doing.” “There is a real lack of Jewish events...that don’t require a lot of knowledge to participate in,” jU Senior Intern third-year Rachel Gittleman said. “[jU] is meant to fill a void that we feel is there—a void different from the voids Hillel and Chabad fill.” Notable jU offerings have included an inclusive and widely accessible Sukkah to celebrate the fall harvest on the Quads, an events and community building internship, a graduate and professional student organization, and a Jew-house, which is an apartment of four Jewish students who have agreed to commit to help with jU programming.
Hillel O-Week programming included a 75-person dinner. During Friday of first week, Hillel also hosted 50 people for Sukkot. jU hosted a separate Sukkot event, which Libenson estimated got hundreds of attendees over four days. Despite Libenson’s departure, Interim Director Andrea Hoffman said the Hillel’s “strategic goals remain the same.” Hoffman noted that even though Hillel offers a different approach, she predicted that collaborations between Hillel and jU “will come about because of student leadership and students working together, which is how it should be.” Elizabeth Davenport, dean of Rockefeller Chapel, also ac-
knowledged the benefits of the two organizations existing in tandem. “While last year’s transition at Hillel was unquestionably difficult, it has in fact resulted in an even greater diversity of Jewish programming at the University,” she said in a statement. “jUChicago, Hillel, JewSA, and the Jewish Students Assembly [a student board formed in response to Libenson’s departure] are all trying to find their niche in the Jewish community,” JewSA former president and co-founder, and third-year Jessica Green said. “Student leaders at [jUChicago, Hillel, and the Jewish Student Assembly] have been in cooperation with each other to make sure the change goes over smoothly.”
A new U of C start-up, Freenters, is bringing free printing to students, from students. Launched on October 1 by third-years Hye-Sung Kim and Rho Kook, Freenters currently permits users to print up to 100 pages a month for free. To fund the printing, Freenters places banner advertisements in the bottom margin of each page, similar to banners that appear on Web sites. So far 435 students have registered to use the service and over 6,400 pages have been printed. Users are required to enter their name, year in the College, gender, and major in order to use the service from their personal computers or at the printing stations. According to Kim, Freenters then uses that information to target ads at specific students. Advertisers currently include businesses in Hyde Park such as Edwardo’s Natural Pizza and Cedars as well as other companies looking to target a college audience, such as insurance company Country Financial and wig-maker NYhairmall. Kim said that free printing not only provides an important service to students, but could also be a way to build community, informing students about campus events and businesses in Hyde Park. “Our business plan helps the campus to be tied in more,” Kim said. Kim added that he doesn’t believe that having ads on printers will encroach on academia. “People have choice,” he said. “If people think that it’s distract-
ing to academics, they can go use the library printing.” There are currently four Freenters stations at locations throughout campus: the fourth floor of the BSLC, Kent Chemical Laboratory, the student lounge in the basement of Swift Hall, and Eckhart 131. The printers are meant to be easily accessible from anywhere on campus, but some locations are not as convenient as Kim had hoped—the student lounge in Swift is technically for Divinity School students only. The University limited where Freenters could install their stations, preventing them from using space in the Regenstein Library or any of the residence halls. “We’re not allowed to place printers in certain areas where there are already library printers,” said fourth-year Paul Park, marketing chair for Freenters. Although they resolved an initial rash of problems that occurred during the launch, printing times continue to lag at all four machines, an issue Freenters is trying to resolve, according to Kim. In addition, on Thursday afternoon at the BSLC station several people couldn’t get the printer to work, including first-year Dominic Chiu. However, he remained positive about the company. “It’s good if it’s efficient,” he said. “The problem I had the first time was that it was slow.” Third-year Ritu Prasad has not yet used the service, but doest not mind the banner ads. “I’m used to my printer messing up,” she said.
THE CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | October 12, 2012
Argentinian diplomat on island dispute Amos Gewirtz News Contributor Argentinean Ambassador Jorge Argüello discussed his country’s territorial dispute with Britain over an archipelago off the Argentine coast over lunch with students and faculty in International House on Tuesday. Opening with an account of Argentina’s recent economic history, Arguello went on to outline several topics central to both Argentine domestic and foreign policy. His talk focused, however, on the territorial dispute between Britain and Argentina surrounding Las Malvinas (the Falkland Islands), a sparsely populated archipelago off the Argentine
coast that has been under British rule since 1833. After roughly outlining the conflict as a “top diplomatic priority,” Argüello highlighted several important actions that Argentina has taken in its dealings with the Falklands. “We need political will on both sides to move forward. We are doing our best. We are displaying a diplomatic strategy in every capital in the world where we have representation. We are having informal conversations with both capitals.” Argüello later said, “We are not asking you to return the Islands, just for a return to dialogue, because that is the only mechanism we see to find a final solution.” Although advocating a peaceful so-
Home is where your House lounge is
lution, his opinion regarding the conflict remained clear. “The Malvinas Islands are located in the South Atlantic. They are only 348 miles away from Argentina and they are 8,700 miles away from London. 8,700 miles,” he quipped. With the 180th anniversary of British control over the Falklands in close sight, the territorial dispute between Argentina and the United Kingdom remains tense. Despite stressing the importance of the Falklands’ right to self-determination (mentioned in a clause in the revised 1994 Argentine Constitution), Argüello asserted that in this embittered dispute over the Falkland Islands, his country ultimately deserves full custody.
LGBT social fight could learn from civil rights movement BOYKIN continued from front
ized that he didn’t like the process of coming out, so he decided to just “be out” by being open and “treating one’s sexual identity like any other part of one’s identity.” At Harvard, Boykin, along with classmate Barack Obama, led a campaign and lawsuit to diversify Harvard Law School staff. By describing his family’s disapproval and confusion over his identity and taking jobs with multiple failed campaigns, including with Michael Dukakis, Boykin urged that people follow the path they believe is right. Boykin’s work on campaigns led him to a position as special assistant to President Clinton, where he
was suddenly faced with an issue he had never considered: gays in the military. He was shocked to see the right wing fight Clinton’s lift on the ban with the same language used by the right wing in 1948, when President Truman outlawed racial segregation of the military. The same three arguments were used in both situations: The military is not the place for social experimentation; religion teaches us that we should not mix the groups, and integration would disrupt “unit cohesion.” More shocking to Boykin was the way African Americans distanced themselves from the debate: Many African Americans, including Gen. Colin Powell, said one couldn’t compare both issues,
because orientation is most fundamental to a person’s behavior, while race is not. Boykin dissented, saying this debate was creating a “hierarchy of oppression.” “They think ‘compare’ is the same as ‘equate’,” Boykin said. While the situations are not identical, “the language used to oppress was the same.” He urges people to not think of African American and LGBT as “monolithic identities,” as there were gay African-American activists who struggled in the civil rights movement and are people who exist in both communities today. “Let us stop focusing on the hierarchy and start focusing on the oppression.”
The Lumen Christi Institute
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DORM continued from front
houses,” she said. When students and housing staff at the Wednesday meeting were asked to provide their feedback, they seemed to reiterate many of the findings. “Students [in Pierce] have to pass through the lounge to get to their rooms…in the midst of that, you meet 30 students that live in your House. The way that the space is constructed and how it draws people into that space is important,” said Shorey House Resident Head Tricia Kuehn. Laura Stern, Resident Master of International House, observed that the I-House lounges seem imposing to students and wanted residential spaces to be both functional and familiar. “[Spaces] don’t have to be grandiose or beautiful to look at. They should be fun… and students can make it their own,” she said. Students also stressed that each house should adopt a unique look, as opposed to the more uniform layout of South Campus. “In Pierce, there is definitely a distinction between the houses. Houses should not look identical,” said Natalie David, a second-year from Shorey. Callow-Wright said that administrators will continue to meet with students in a process similar to the one used last spring after Pierce residents complained about unacceptable living conditions. She hopes to complete this first phase by the end of this quarter, after which student input will be compiled into a program study that will form the basis for the residence hall’s design. From there, the project team will make more definite plans for the residence hall’s location, timing, and structural components and will
Jane Wright, an architect with Hanbury Evans Wright Vlattas Architects, gauges student reactions to design options for a future dormitory. JOHNNY HUNG | THE CHICAGO MAROON
once again seek student feedback. Despite the lack of conclusive plans for the new residence hall, CallowWright asserted that housing would definitely multiply in the near future, in hopes that 70 percent of students in the College will live on campus. To attract upper-classmen, Wright indicated during the meeting that the new building might include some apartment-style rooms with individual kitchens instead of communal ones. “It is our goal to have a new residence hall and dining commons in our system—and not just one, but down the road, more than one—to improve the quality of life for students in the House system, to expand options, [and] to be able to accommodate more students in high-quality facilities close to the center of campus,” Callow-Wright said. Pierce has housed students in the College for the last 52 years.
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“Gregorian Chant as Splendor Formae of the Liturgy” Friday, October 19, 4PM Classics 110 1010 East 59th Street
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THE CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | October 12, 2012
University alum brings the “best pilsener in America” back to Chicago, Hyde Park taps BEER continued from front
piqued his entrepreneurial nature, and he pursued it further. Initially working alone, Sama found that the Baderbräu trademark had just recently expired, so he bought it up with barely any hesitation. Then, he enlisted Berwanger, a Southside native and Sama’s former coworker at a New York venture capitalist firm. “He gave me a call and said, ‘I just acquired the trademark of my favorite beer and I don’t know what to do with it,’” said Berwanger. So Berwanger first created a paid survey for 350 Chicago beer drinkers to test out the potential for a market, and found that 40 percent remembered and missed the brew. With this knowledge, the pair began to set things in motion. First, they had to recreate the brew to live up to Baderbräu’s reputation. After hours investigating and researching,
Sama found and contacted Douglas Babcook, the creator of the pilsener. Babcook not only sent Sama the recipe, but the original yeast strain, which had been cryofrozen in a lab. Brewing and testing finally began and, during the process, Sama and Babcook exchanged samples, until they both believed the brew to be perfect. “It’s a Czech lager, so it’s got a little bit of a bite in the front, a kind of caramel-y flavor in the middle, and a dry finish,” Berwanger said. “It’s a really nice drinking beer.” Sama and Berwanger then began producing in larger quantities in the Southside brewery Argus. Afterward came retail, and the reception was “pretty fanatical,” Berwanger said. “When Baderbräu went out of business, a lot of fans bought a six-pack and kept it on their shelves,” Sama said. Earlier in the relaunch process, beer lovers had started posting pictures on the Baderbräu Twitter feed of their own stocks.
“It warms my heart. It is like bringing back a piece of history that is almost gone. We’ve resurrected it,” Berwanger said. For Sama, who used to buy the beer in Kimbark Liquors, his history with Baderbräu is more personal. “There’s a lot of school pride in [the beer’s heritage] in my opinion,” Sama said. Not only have they received requests from the alumni hub, the Quadrangle Club, but the two will be providing Baderbräu to Homecoming and his class’ upcoming reunion in 2013. “We called the University to see if we could make it the official beer of the U of C,” said Sama. With the beer’s Phoenix logo, the angle would certainly make sense. But, said Sama, the University is already committed to another beer brewed by another alum, Great Lakes. Even without the University, the beer will also have a presence in Hyde Park. On October 19, The Cove Lounge on East
55th Street will be hosting a Baderbrau tasting, when they will officially begin serving it on tap. But the journey isn’t over. Sama and Berwanger hope to own a brewery in the coming years and are already successfully finding private investors. Berwanger pointed out that the pilsener’s resurrection is only the beginning. “Part of our brand is how the city of Chicago burned up and came from the ashes. So did the University of Chicago. So did the beer.”
CORRECTIONS The Oct. 9 article “Booth architect draws new hospital design” misstated the size of the 31- by 18-foot modules used to build the Center for Care and Discovery. It also misstated which hospital has small rooms—those other than the Center. Both mistakes were due to editing errors.
European ban on headscarves is discrimination, according to renowned professor of law and ethics
for the Maroon!
contact design@chicagomaroon.com
Here are this week’s notables:
Since Sept. 24
Oct. 4 Oct. 11
1
0
Robbery
0
0
Attempted robbery
» Saturday, Delta Upsilon fraternity, 12:45 to 12:55 a.m.—A male was struck by an acquaintance whom he refused to name and turned down medical attention. » Sunday, 1200 E. 60th Street, 1:47 a.m.—UCPD transported an underage male back to his residence after finding him sleeping on a bus stop bench. He had been consuming alcoholic beverages but did not want medical attention.
Source: UCPD Incident Reports
1
1
Battery
2
0
Burglary
0
0
Criminal trespass to vehicle
2
1
Damage to property
33
7
Other report
1
1
Simple assault
17
2
Theft
0
0
Trespass to property
19
16
Arrest
47th
» Sunday, S. Harper Avenue between E. 53rd and 54th Streets, 3:00 a.m.—Chicago Police are continuing an investigation into a reported criminal sexual assault. The victim reported that an acquaintance assaulted her and both the victim and suspect were interviewed. » Sunday, S. Blackstone Avenue and E. 56th Street, 7:40 p.m.—Four males were arrested for aggravated robbery after implying they had handguns to steal a backpack and cell phone from a man walking on the street off campus.
Type of Crime
S. Hyde Park
53rd
55th
S. Lake Shore
51st
57th
59th 60th
62nd
Cornell
DESIGN
This is a series the Maroon publishes summarizing instances of campus crime. Each week details a few notable crimes, in addition to keeping a running count from September 24. The focus is on crimes within the UCPD patrol area, which runs from East 39th to 64th Streets and South Cottage Grove to Lake Shore Drive.
Stony Island
Three pro-Palestine activists discussed their efforts to put pressure on companies that they claim profit from Israel’s military presence in Palestine using a strateg y called Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) during a discussion sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) in Stuart Hall on Wednesday evening. The panel was put on in collaboration with Chicago Divests, an organization that encourages the financial services group TIAA-CREF to divest from companies that activists claim benefit from the Israeli military. TIAA-CREF provides many universities and hospitals, including the U of C, with pension fund plans. Dalit Baum, an Israeli, pro-Palestine activist for Global Exchange, introduced the main companies that she had found explicitly profit from Israeli military presence in Palestine, drawing from the research project she conducted with the Coalition of Women for Peace in Israel. According to her research, the offenders included companies such as Caterpillar, which sells armed bulldozers to Israel, and Motorola, the radar and security system provider of the Israeli settlements in Palestine. Baum added that Hewlett-Packard, a computer company likely used by numerous students, developed a biometric identification system that will be used to control movement on the ground in Palestine. Sandra Tamari, an organizer of the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee who this June made national news for being denied entry into Israel after she refused to share her personal e-mails with Israeli security officials, defended the economic implications of BDS.
“Palestinians may suffer economically in the short term, but the Palestinians are asking for [BDS],” she explained. She added that strategies such as positive investment and humanitarian aid are not only insufficient, but not what the people of Palestine want. What makes BDS so powerful compared to positive investment, she argued, is the attention it brings to the conflict. “BDS accelerates the conversation,” she said. “BDS is not a punitive movement. We are targeting the Israeli economy, not Israelis.” Sydney Levy, director of advocacy for Jewish Voice for Peace, a group that works to secure the region, encouraged students to organize their professors to complain to TIAA-CREF for its affiliation to the invested companies. “The moment you are working with professors,” Levy said, “TIAA-CREF will listen to you.” In an e-mail, SJP President and fourthyear Sami Kishawi said that SJP had already been working with Chicago Divests and was planning a broad campaign to get students more engaged with the IsraelPalestine conflict. “One major goal of our campaigns is to get the campus talking. Too many students and faculty members think that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is too controversial or complicated of an issue to discuss, or that it doesn’t concern them. But it does,” Kishawi wrote.
Weekly Crime Report
By Rebecca Guterman
Blackstone
Jennifer Standish Associate News Editor
equal respect for human dignity to all groups, including Muslims. She also stressed the need for societies to undergo “Socratic critical selfexamination and exercise of the imagination in order to understand others’ points of view.” It is the latter suggestion that distinguishes Nussbaum from many other legal scholars, for whom equal laws are sufficient. “Even if we had good laws, in addition we would need the cultivation of curiosity about different people in order to overcome intolerance,” she said. The talk was sponsored by the Center for International Studies as part of its series “The World Beyond the Headlines.”
University
Palestinian advocates encourage action against U of C pension company
the removal of liberty.” Furthermore, Nussbaum held that for most Muslim women, wearing a headscarf is a private religious choice that rarely involves coercion by men. Nussbaum compared the plight of Muslims in Europe today to the persecution of Jews throughout European history, which culminated in genocide at the hands of Nazi Germany. “But, while we see obvious wrongs in the case of Jews, many are unable to see the strong connection to the case of Muslims today,” she said. Nussbaum’s remedy for discrimination entails extending democratic principles such as
Ellis
Nussbaum also dismissed security, transparency, and identification arguments used to justify the European ban on headscarves. She rejected them all as “inconsistently applied” and “failing to uphold equal respect for all.” Similarly, Nussbaum argued, the claim that the burqa is a unique symbol of patriarchy and male domination fails under scrutiny, since women in Western cultures are also legally objectified in pornography and pressured to, for example, wear revealing clothing and get cosmetic surgery. However problematic, Nussbaum stressed that the objectification of women “should be addressed by persuasion and example, not by
Cottage Grove
NUSSBAUM continued from front
“Today we have many reasons to doubt this complacent self-assessment. Our situation calls urgently for searching critical self-examination, as we try to uncover the roots of ugly fears and suspicions that currently disfigure all Western societies.” As indicated by the subtitle of her book— “Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age”—Nussbaum discussed how political anxiety and widespread fear of Muslims motivated laws such as the bans on the Muslim burqa and hijab that have been passed in many European nations, arguing for the repeal of such laws.
*Locations of reports approximate
VIEWPOINTS
Editorial & Op-Ed OCTOBER 12, 2012
Turning over a new page With University’s increased arts emphasis, Creative Writing program should be a priority The student newspaper of the University of Chicago since 1892 JORDAN LARSON Editor-in-Chief SHARAN SHETTY Editor-in-Chief COLIN BRADLEY Managing Editor
HARUNOBU CORYNE Senior Editor DOUGLAS EVERSON, JR Senior Editor SAM LEVINE Senior Editor CELIA BEVER News Editor REBECCA GUTERMAN News Editor LINDA QIU News Editor AJAY BATRA Viewpoints Editor DAVID KANER Viewpoints Editor EMILY WANG Viewpoints Editor EMMA BRODER Arts Editor HANNAH GOLD Arts Editor DANIEL RIVERA Arts Editor DANIEL LEWIS Sports Editor VICENTE FERNANDEZ Sports Editor MATTHEW SCHAEFER Sports Editor SONIA DHAWAN Head Designer BELLA WU Head Designer KEVIN WANG Online Editor
This weekend marks the official opening of the Logan Arts Center, the centerpiece of the University’s efforts to enhance and expand the arts on campus. The building has been touted as a hub for arts activity and as a means to advance inquiry, study, and creativity. Last year also saw the creation of the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry and the Mellon Residential Fellowship Program, which have already brought several distinguished artists to campus, among them Alison Bechdel, Tony Kushner, and Daniel Tucker. Though the University has shown its commitment to the arts in its recent events programming, some parts of the College’s curricula still lag behind. Creative writing classes, in particular, could greatly benefit from the attention the University has shown other aspects of the campus’s arts offerings. Classes offered by the Commit-
tee on Creative Writing are among the most difficult to get into, with only a handful of classes offered each quarter and class sizes often capped at 12 people. Beginning level classes fill up quickly, with waitlists often reaching into the double digits. While it’s understandable that offering more classes for fewer people would be costprohibitive, there is a far higher student demand than can be met by the current offerings. In addition to offering more classes, the Committee on Creative Writing would do well to expand its faculty. Though the Committee counts 16 graduate students and professors among its faculty, few of them teach creative writing exclusively, often also teaching classes in the English department. The class selection also tends to focus more on fiction and poetry writing, which account for nine of the 15 classes
offered this quarter. In contrast, there is only one journalism course offered, and only two creative nonfiction classes, both of them at the beginning level. Expanding the faculty would allow more classes to be offered and ensure that other disciplines receive more attention. Furthermore, the University should consider offering a creative writing major, and more creative writing classes should count toward the Core arts requirement. Though it is possible to minor in English and Creative Writing, a creative writing major does not exist, and only certain creative writing classes count either toward an English degree or for the arts requirement. For example, it’s unclear why a class such as Intro to Genres: Wizards fulfills an arts requirement, while a beginning fiction-writing course does not. Most creative writing courses,
rather than an arbitrary selection of them, should count toward the arts requirement. If not, there should be an explanation of the rationale behind the University’s criteria for granting arts requirement credit. With the opening of the Logan Center, student groups and the arts have gained new performance spaces, more visibility, and far more events on campus than ever before. As part of the official launch of the Logan Center this weekend, four students writing creative projects for their BA’s will read from their work in commemoration of the event. If more are to follow in their footsteps, it’s necessary that the University emphasize the arts within the classroom as much as outside it.
The Editorial Board consists of the Editors-in-Chief and the Viewpoints Editors.
ALICE BLACKWOOD Head Copy Editor DON HO Head Copy Editor BEN ZIGTERMAN Head Copy Editor JAMIE MANLEY Photo Editor SYDNEY COMBS Photo Editor JOY CRANE Assoc. News Editor
A course in crisis management When an “emergency” follows you to campus, there is no answer key
MARINA FANG Assoc. News Editor BEN POKROSS Assoc. News Editor MADHU SRIKANTHA Assoc. News Editor JENNIFER STANDISH Assoc. News Editor ALICE BUCKNELL Assoc. Arts Editor SCOTTY CAMPBELL Assoc. Arts Editor SARAH LANGS Assoc. Sports Editor DEREK TSANG Assoc. Sports Editor JAKE WALERIUS Assoc. Sports Editor JULIA REINITZ Assoc. Photo Editor
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By David Kaner Viewpoints Editor
VINCENT MCGILL Delivery Coordinator HYEONG-SUN CHO Designer ANDREW GREEN Designer AUTUMN NI Designer KELSIE ANDERSON Copy Editor CATIE ARBONA Copy Editor AMISHI BAJAJ Copy Editor
The Core curriculum did not prepare me to face the prospect of death. Not in an obvious manner, anyway. Marx and Socrates were far
from my mind in late September, when I came back home from abroad for just two days before flying to Chicago. Instead of focusing on the upcoming school year, all my thoughts were turned to a family member, one I’ve always been extremely close to, who’d grown dangerously ill in my absence. I can say this much with conviction, based on my 48 hours as an on-and-off visitor to an intensive care unit: There are some things that no education, however rigorous or sweeping, can prepare you for. If Core Bio meant there were a few more technical terms I could understand without an explana-
tion, it didn’t prevent my throat from tightening as I heard them applied to someone I love. First-year Hum left me versed in what “the uncanny” means. It did not make the sight of a ventilator pushing air into lungs unwilling to breathe any less unnerving. And if I had had on hand every note I’ve ever taken on rhetoric and dialectic in Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, I don’t think it would have made formulating what I wanted to say—not knowing if it was my last chance to say it—any easier. This is what the “Absences” sections of our syllabi euphemistically refer to as a “family emergency.” I suspect the language of ur-
gency is used because it implies an event with a neat, quick resolution—the kind professors find easy to take into account. A moment of pain, a day or two of extensions on assignments, before things return to paper-writing, Reg-going, beer-swilling normal. But this is not an emergency. Emergencies don’t leave themselves unresolved as you let go of a hand in a hospital room, board a flight to Midway, and restart life as a college student. They don’t require day after day of clipped conversations with your parents about cell counts and sedatives. None of my classes have a policy that covers that. CRISIS continued on page 6
MARTIA BRADLEY Copy Editor SHANICE CASIMIRO Copy Editor LISA FAN Copy Editor ALAN HASSLER Copy Editor NISHANTH IYENGAR Copy Editor MICHELLE LEE Copy Editor ZSOFI VALYI-NAGY Copy Editor
Building the French connection Cultural run-ins abroad can lead to thoughtful consideration of stereotypes, preconceptions
ESTHER YU Copy Editor
The Chicago Maroon is published twice weekly during autumn, winter, and spring quarters Circulation: 5,500. The opinions expressed in the Viewpoints section are not necessarily those of the Maroon.
By Maya Fraser Viewpoints Columnist
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“Pourquoi les Américains n’aiment pas les musulmans?” he asked. Why don’t Americans like Muslims? It was a week after riots broke out across the Middle East in response to the “Innocence of Muslims” video. I was sitting with some of my friends on the bank of the Seine near Notre Dame having a disgustingly stereotypi-
cal French picnic. A cheerfully drunken man sat down next to us and began alternating between asking why Americans hate Muslims, professing his own universal acceptance of people of all nations and creeds, and trying to convince me to give him my number. Through the course of the conversation, we found out he was a young French-Tunisian named Faez whose claims to universal tolerance were made somewhat doubtful by his insistence that blacks were untrustworthy and that a Jewish conspiracy was running the U.S. government. Left to the near impossible task of convincing a man bigoted against the world that all Americans were not bigoted against him, we ended up sounding like over-eager middle school students giving presentations about diversity in America: People in the United States don’t hate Muslims. We tolerate and accept all different kinds of people, and that’s what makes America a great
country. I described the United States as a boiled-down version of what I wished it were, because there is no simple description that can encapsulate a nation of 300 million people. At a time when Americans are taking great care to emphasize their differences, it is sometimes difficult for me to grapple with being immediately categorized, placed into a box with a stamp reading “Américaine.” Being an American in a foreign country always carries with it cultural or political significance, and being the oft-clichéd ‘American in Paris’ is no exception. You carry on your back the weight of the French identity crisis, as many Parisians continue to struggle with the decades-old inundation of American stores, culture, and politics. (My favorite example of the French coverage of American politics was a magazine cover with a picture of Romney and the legend “Romney l’extraterrestre,” Romney, alien, though whether it was political
commentary or Enquirer-esque pulp remains unknown.) The French have a love–hate relationship with American culture: They may look down upon it, but someone —ok, make that many someones—must be eating at the country’s 857 McDonalds. Americans must also contend with the legacy of the millions of American tourists who came before us. Most American tourists are nice people, but most visible are those who become loudly and embarrassingly drunk in public or expect everyone in France to speak English. Americans, too, make dangerous assumptions about the French and about Paris. The Paris that many Americans imagine is grossly idealized, closer to the Epcot version than the actual thing. Though I loved Midnight in Paris, the recent Woody Allen film about a man whose life is changed by visiting 1920s Paris, it only perpetuated the view of ParABROAD continued on page 6
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THE CHICAGO MAROON | VIEWPOINTS | October 12, 2012
Promotional considerations New applicants may be playing the name game, but popularity won’t necessarily hurt the U of C
By Jane Huang Viewpoints Columnist I heard of the University of Chicago before it went mainstream. Okay, not really. Yet, judging by the annoyed comments you’ll hear from alumni and students every time admissions numbers or new U.S. News rankings come out, you’d think that the University of Chicago was some kind of underground indie band that totally sold out some time in the last five years. Since my college experience has fewer Core requirements and more places named after Arley D. Cathey than those of previous classes, I guess I am missing out on the One True Experience of the U of C. Sometimes I feel a little bit like Pip in Great Expectations, striving to disprove accusations of being nothing but common. The prevailing narrative seems to be that, whereas students used to be drawn to the University because they were refreshingly unique individuals, they are now drawn by its name recognition. I cringe
when students admit that University of Chicago didn’t become a viable option for them until it cracked the top five in the U.S. News rankings. Our inner hipster tells us to condemn applicants whom we perceive to be jumping onto a bandwagon. However, as much as I think that the rankings’ influence on colleges and applicants is excessive, I can’t really fault people for choosing to apply to schools that have become popular. The marketing resources of universities like ours far exceed the research resources of the typical applicant. As a result, although applicants are told to find schools that are a good “fit,” the number of schools that seem to meet that criterion at the time of application is bound to exceed the number of schools to which one can reasonably apply, in most cases. Schools are interested in accepting students whom they believe to be a good match, but that does not mean they will try very hard to dissuade others from applying. When I was in high school, the promotional materials I received from colleges followed a similar pattern: Photographs of the most impressive campus buildings, a “serious” shot of students studying, another shot of students having fun, a few pictures showing off the surrounding area, a page about sports, a page about available majors, and a page about how surprisingly affordable the university is despite the $50,000 per year sticker price. Unless you truly despise pretty buildings or the idea of people
having fun, the only dealbreaker you’d hear from the university itself might be that it did not offer your desired major or varsity sport. Sure, colleges try to position themselves as unique in their promotional materials, but not always as a way of filtering the applicant pool. For example, the U of C (understandably) touts its large number of Nobel laureates. However, this detail is more of a fun fact to pull out when you’re bragging about your school to your friends than something that plays a central role in the average undergraduate experience. There are always a lot of questions we want answered about the universities we’re interested in, but some of those questions will never receive a fully honest response from someone whose job is to pitch the college to us. Outside of the resources supplied by the universities themselves, my main sources of information about college were former classmates, family, and teachers. Many of those people had attended medium-sized private research universities around Chicago or in the Northeast. Though it didn’t occur to me at the time, it is probably no coincidence that the majority of the schools I applied to also fell on that spectrum. However, I was still fortunate to know people familiar with schools that piqued my interest. Others’ main source of information may be the media and pop culture, which often pay a disproportionate amount of attention to a relatively small set of schools. Even popular college guidebooks (e.g., Fiske’s or
Princeton Review), which try to give balanced coverage to a variety of schools, feature hundreds of institutions. Pages containing familiar names will probably be the ones that catch the reader’s eye anyway. If someone applied to this school simply based on name recognition and found the school to be completely wrong for her, then it’s clear popularity played too large a role in her decision. But if someone decided to take a closer look at this university after hearing it mentioned a few times and wound up liking what she saw, I would not be so churlish as to complain that she made a good choice in the ‘wrong’ manner. Though college admissions shouldn’t be a popularity contest, I doubt that we have the perspective to ascertain at this time whether the changes we see are in fact bad for this university. The real test of whether the University of Chicago’s identity has remained intact ought to come years from now, when we see what kind of commitment future alumni have to thinking and learning long after graduation. After all, what people take away from the University is more important than why they come here. And maybe being mainstream won’t be such a bad thing—that is, if we eventually convince everyone else that they too should be building “That Kid” action figures in their spare time. Jane Huang is a third-year in the College.
Paris: No more inhospitable than New York
In trying times, having people to turn to is vital
ABROAD continued from page 5 is as a magical city that will fix your problems. Paris is not a magical city, and chances are that if you come to Paris with problems, you will leave with them. In fact, being in a foreign country can often exacerbate these pre-existing conditions. My sense of self-confidence has certainly not been helped by my occasional inability to communicate in a language I have been studying for eight years. Such blows to my ego often occur in the morning as I stumble into a coffee shop, bleary-eyed and caffeine deprived, only to have the cashier open her mouth and emit a series of incomprehensible syllables that I can only suppose are French. This can be frustrating, but c’est la vie, n’est-ce pas? On the bright side, Paris has many charms, which, at times, even include the people who live there. The famed rudeness of Frenchmen is exaggerated; they are really no more toxic than New Yorkers. Though I have met my fair share of snobby people who sneer at my American accent, I have also met very kind ones, eager to include me in their activities. A man at the information desk in Chambord went above and beyond the call of duty in helping my friend and I get back to Blois. His kindness was only outstripped by the motherly restaurant owner who told my group that we reminded her of her adult children and gave us dessert on the house. Even Faez and his friends seemed like well-meaning people, albeit people with a world-
CRISIS continued from page 5 As I settle back into the routine of lectures and seminars, I’ve found it hard to reconcile the life of the mind with the realities awaiting me outside the confines of Cobb. I face my books, newly restored to my shelves, with a degree of ambivalence. I wonder if there is anything in them that could prove illuminating in this situation. If a liberal arts education is, in a certain sense, a means to examine existence, shouldn’t it be able to tell me something helpful about mortality? Ultimately, I haven’t cracked open any of them in the hope of finding answers. In my mental inventory, I can recall writers dealing with death and dying as ritual, as biological process, as ethical dilemma… but none who satisfactorily discussed how to confront it. Perhaps that work lies somewhere, and I haven’t come across it. More likely is the possibility that there’s nothing that could make this experience all that much easier. It’s not the fault of literature or philosophy. It’s just a deeply individual thing, staring into the unknowable—a clichéd observation, I’m sure, but sometimes it seems impossible to talk about it any other way. What has helped, as much as anything could, is being surrounded by people who truly, deeply care. When my girlfriend unfailingly messages or calls just to check that I’ve have a good day, every day, from all the way in London; when I get a long, thoughtful email from a friend who could have been spending that time strolling the ChampsÉlysées; how my roommates are always happy to stay awake, long past a reasonable hour, well after our fingers have turned numb with cold, just to sit out on our back deck and talk and laugh and elevate “you asshole!” to a term of highest endearment: These things add up to more than the sum of their parts. Someday, the phone call I’m dreading daily will come. I hope it’s not this week, or this year, or anytime soon. But it will
view that fundamentally conflicted with my own. Though I had about as much success convincing Faez that Americans don’t hate Muslims as he did convincing me that the U.S. government was responsible for the “Innocence of Muslims” video, the encounter was informative for me, and hopefully for Faez as well. I was surprised that I generally liked him and his friends, despite their general bigotry and views about Americans. It was Muslim anti-American sentiment in a context where there were no riots or attacks, only people whose names I knew and who had nothing but goodwill for me personally. Such experiences are a powerful incentive to go abroad. Furthermore, being forced to confront negative stereotypes of ourselves, to have to defend where we come from and who we are, is not necessarily a bad thing; nor is going somewhere and not always liking what you see. Our presence gives America— a looming cultural and political force in France and elsewhere—human faces. (Whether this is a good or bad thing probably depends upon how much you fit the stereotype of a drunken American college student.) Reality is often more complicated and more interesting than our preconceptions, and France, with its racial tensions, American stores, and socialism, is no exception. Maya Fraser is a third-year in the College majoring in sociology.
come. And there will be other ones that follow. I will graduate, hopefully, and read the books on my shelf I haven’t gotten to yet, and many more besides, and take away from the good ones, if not the simplest answers to the profoundest of questions, at least ideas that will shape who I am and how I see the world, perhaps in ways too subtle for me to pinpoint. I expect the people in my life—influenced, too, by treatises and novels, and many other things—will shape me even more. One day, someone will get a phone call about me. But, until that day comes, all I can hope is that I will still have the people, friends, and family—those who call, who write, who can look me in the eyes and not have to say anything at all, because we both know what the other was thinking. As long as I have them, I will always know where to turn in a crisis. I am, if nothing else, extremely fortunate. David Kaner is a third-year in the College majoring in Law, Letters and Society.
SUBMISSIONS The Chicago Maroon welcomes opinions and responses from its readers. Send op-ed submissions and letters to: The Chicago Maroon attn: Viewpoints 1212 East 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 E-mail: Viewpoints@ ChicagoMaroon.com The editors reserve the right to edit materials for clarity and space. Letters to the editor should be limited to 400 words. Op-ed submissions, 800 words.
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ARTS
Trivial Pursuits OCTOBER 12, 2012
East blends with West in Smart Museum’s palette of prints Scotty Campbell Associate Arts Editor It seems that we’re still obsessed with the divide between the Orient and the Occident—a divide created by centuries of people on both sides of the globe who made claims about differences in art, culture, and political views between these two ways of being. The recent exhibit at the Smart Museum of Art, Awash in Color: French and Japanese Prints, tries to make its own claims about the relationship between East and West.
AWASH IN COLOR: FRENCH AND JAPANESE PRINTS Smart Museum of Art Through January 20
The exhibit occupies one large area of the museum and is divided among several galleries. It presents both chronologically and stylistically a series of prints from the two countries. These are contrasted with additional prints from America. Most of the prints were created by well-known artists, although this fame is relative depending on one’s cultural vantage point—while names like Manet and Cassatt may ring a bell in the West, printmakers like Hokusai and Masanobu, mainstays of Japanese art, won’t inspire the same sense of familiarity. For the most part, French and Japanese pieces are kept separate. Traditional French prints from the advent of etching and aquatint in the 1780s snake along the wall, their
chiaroscuro effects painstakingly rendered in the figures and scenes. The meticulousness of the French technique continues with examples from Manet, who is usually better known for his paintings. Though Manet’s prints are fairly obscure, he produces the same color-blocking effect in them as in his paintings, so that the difference between the two genres is hardly noticeable. Only the prints of French artist Anne Allen show Eastern influence: the human figures are rendered more flat than the preferred three-dimensional effect of her compatriots. The Japanese prints on the opposite wall are different. As the informational placards throughout the exhibit are eager to convey, printmaking in Japan was a confluence of “high” and “low” art. The subjects of the pieces vary widely from members of the Imperial family to prostitutes. Masanobu’s mid18th century works depict summer rainstorms in which the colorless, twodimensional women struggle to keep their kimonos from falling off their breasts. All Masanobu’s subjects are presented with the same meticulousness that marked the French artists’ scenes of proper luncheons. The prints were divided according to the nationality of the artists. Some of the most engaging works were those created out of the influence of one culture on another. This type of influence was felt in the Japanese “Berlin blue” prints and French seascapes. Hokusai’s famous “36 Views of Mt. Fuji,” printed in exquisite hues to evoke weightlessness, sit beside the comparatively blocky and awkward efforts of French printmakers like Henri Rivière. Rivière, who attempted Japanese techniques of multiple
Henri Rivière’s “Vegetable Garden at Ville-Hue (Saint-Briac),” circa 1890, depicting the tilling of a Breton landscape, is printed on 18th-century Japanese laid paper. COURTESY OF THE SMART MUSEUM OF ART
perspectives and striking contrasts, even signed his pieces in a style that evoked Japanese characters, with his initials stamped vertically in a red rectangle. Rivière’s imitation comes off as vaguely disrespectful. One gets the impression of a Westerner fascinated more by the foreignness of the Japanese prints than by the skill involved. The French influence on Japanese prints is presented through the juxtaposition of flower prints by Pierre-Joseph Redoute and Katsushika Hokusai’s attempts at depicting the same subject. Unlike the French prints in the Japanese style, the two artists’
renderings are dramatically different. Hokusai does not give up the Japanese preference for shadowless, flat figures even in his “French-style” flowers, so that his works are reminiscent of Ellsworth Kelly’s plant drawings. In one print by Chikanobu, “The Illustrious Nobility of the Empire,” figures blend into a flattened-out background. The members of the Imperial family of Japan are presented as Western figures of decadence. The Emperor and his wife and children wear Western-style clothing, garish in contrast to their ancestral garb. Their faces look almost greedy. This
impression may have been exacerbated by the way the subjects are presented— they are surrounded by wealth and garbed in fine fabric. France may have jumped at the influx of Japanese art and influence, but the people of Japan did not accept the West’s influence with open arms. This is best shown in the Japanese artists’ faithfulness to their style; they rarely attempt to reproduce Western art the way the Europeans copied the Japanese. Worlds collided, but not equally, and the Smart’s exhibit suggests that Western culture may have borrowed more than it gave back.
Time gets thrown for a loop in Johnson’s smart sci-fi thriller
If Joe (Bruce Willis) is from the future, then why can’t he just destroy things with his mind? COURTESY OF TRISTAR PICTURES, FILM DISTRICT, AND END GAME ENTERTAINMENT
Angela Qian Arts Staff Looper starts with a bang, interrupting the post-trailer abyss with a jarring shot of adrenaline. It ends similarly—another jolt aptly closes the ‘loop’ and brings Rian Johnson’s first foray into the sci-fi thriller genre full circle. Jam-packed with energ y, Looper brutally hurls action sequences at an audience kept continually on the edge of their seats. The film clearly aims to leave the viewer breathless and in this
venture it certainly succeeds. Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Joe, a young , street-smart, and cynical guy who works as a looper—a term given to assassins working for criminal syndicates who specialize in taking down targets sent back from the future. By then, time travel will have been invented and subsequently outlawed, but on the black market time travel is still a foolproof method of assassination. The plot grows confusing, but the movie doesn’t give you time to dwell on details; the camera
moves frantically through shots of a dazzling world filled with parties, drugs, girls, and money. Time is a-ticking as Joe shares in the reckless live-for-themoment lifestyle of his friends, though he scornfully observes through a detached eye the futility of his existence. After all, loopers are loose ends, and eventually they are required to shoot their future selves. They close their loop when they have thirty years left to live. The plot is set in motion when some loops begin to close. A criminal overlord, the Rainmaker, is behind it, and all the young loopers, high on life, start getting reminders of their own expiration date. When Joe meets his future self, played by Bruce Willis, and is unable to kill him, trouble ensues. Joe is driven from the city and led to question the fundamentals of what he took for granted. Apart from Gordon-Levitt and Willis, other major players include Emily Blunt, who acts in the role of Sara, an ex-partygirl-turned-devoted-mother living a selfsufficient life on a farm with her young son Cid (Pierce Gagnon). Despite Blunt’s attempts to humanize Sara and make her more appealing, she remains an aloof, cold, wooden character. Her romance with Joe springs seemingly out of nowhere. Less believable still is Sara’s downright creepy son, Cid, whose temper tantrums literally bring down walls. And while Joseph Gordon-Levitt delivers a great performance, slowly softening towards both Sara and Cid as he evaluates his
past life in the city, the attachment he develops towards Cid is difficult to believe in because Cid is an incomparably frightening child, exhibiting almost no traits that would arouse protective feelings.
LOOPER Rian Johnson AMC River East
Willis and Gordon-Levitt (who sports prosthetic makeup to more closely resemble his older self ) interact well, delivering realistic moments. The motivations driving Willis’s actions, his attempts to guide and protect Gordon-Levitt, and Gordon-Levitt’s struggle against knowing his future, are all elements that give the action, gore, and intense fight scenes in Looper a grittier, deeper emotional draw. What Looper does well that thrillers don’t do in general is develop the relationships between its characters: mother and son, husband and wife, father figures and their protégées, and the peculiar intimacy between young and old Joe. In conjunction with its steadily-building intensity, Looper exposes the vicious sides of human nature—what people will do to survive, to protect those they love, and attempt to escape the stranglehold of fate.
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THE CHICAGO MAROON | ARTS | October 12, 2012
For artist Peter Karklins, controlled chaos comes naturally Anna Hill Arts Staff Tucked into a narrow hallway in the DePaul Art Museum, a truly breathtaking collection of drawings hangs in a bare, ominous silence. This hollow corridor could not present a feeling more in contrast to that evoked by the works themselves, which seem to depict the very essence of fluid life. The pieces presented in the exhibit, The Nature Drawings of Peter Karklins, are filled with forms that emerge from and dissolve into one another. They drip, ooze, and swell, as breasts lengthen into sperm, which bleed into waterfalls, which cascade into lumps of slate. The tiny drawings are grotesque. They are manic, chaotic, even horrifying. However, beneath this ugliness pulses something so beautiful that it is almost sublime. The drawings, none of which measure more than seven inches in length, confront the viewer with an intricacy and imagination that, to be quite honest, I have rarely seen in another work of visual art. Each drawing is a ghastly microcosm in which the audience recognizes, both greedily and shamefully, its own image.
THE NATURE DRAWINGS OF PETER KARKLINS DePaul Art Museum Through November 18
I spent more than an hour in this tiny hallway, which seemed, as I moved from piece to piece, to deepen and expand. I suddenly felt strangely helpless, but not because the drawings seemed out of control. On the contrary, one of the first things that struck me about the show was Karklins’s
incredible capacity to control the movement and structure of his work. This obsession with control was manifest in Karklins’s habit of documenting on each piece the times and locations at which he created the drawing, and sometimes even the music he was listening to. I felt vulnerable because of the way the pieces de-categorize life and even render it anonymous. There is no distinction between man and woman, between human and animal, between animal and nature. There is no sense of depth or background, but, instead, a boundlessness that seems to extend past the worn edges of the pages. Karklins’s drawings, largely created during his night shifts as a security guard, captured the attention of both DePaul philosophy professors and the University of Chicago Press, which recently published a book bearing the same title as the exhibit. I got to sit down with the artist to discuss his work. Anna Hill: I’m wondering about the process—how did each drawing come about? That is, did you have any idea what the finished products would look like, or did they just sort of develop over time? Peter Karklins: Oh, god no. Oh, god no. Oh, I have no idea. I start by scribbling. And then usually it looks like a human figure, of a sexual nature, that turns into a landscape. And then out of this figure grow all kinds of things, that turn out to be forests or maybe little indications of animals and you can’t tell whether those are the tears of God, or if they’re seminal fluids, or if they’re rain, or heavenly water fructifying the earth.... I don’t start with symbolic ideas, or intellectual concepts. They happen to me. I start by drawing, and then I react to my little compositions physically—I squirm and I move and I growl and I groan. Thank God I’m doing this in the middle of the night when nobody can see me; they’d think I’m
totally nuts.... I don’t do the compositions intellectually, I do it bodily. I squirm and I worm and I move my body—this thing now has movement, this line moved me that way, so I go to the right and then I go back to the left and I bob up and down like a boxer in a ring. The ideas are just incidental; I’m basically concerned with getting the composition to sit right on the little piece of paper. AH: That actually sort of leads me to my next question: the drawings are remarkable for many reasons, but most notable is their scale—why did you draw on such small surfaces? PK: I found a beautiful young lady and had three beautiful daughters and I got a building, and then I went out of business and lost my marriage and my wife took my children away. I ended up unemployed, I was dirt poor, and I had no money. So I went to the Jewel-Osco, got a little scratch pad, and I started making these little drawings. And then, I was kind of homeless—kind of borderline homeless....A friend of mine...said he had a spare bedroom, so I moved in there with my dog and my two cats; slept on the floor with my dog and worked on my little artwork. So, I was in a confined space. And then, of course, to pay child support, I got a job as a security officer on the night shift. And then I sat in my little corner, I carried my artwork around in my pocket, and I would draw on the train and I would draw on my security post. And most of the work was done at night on trains or railroads maybe, sometimes standing guard duty in front of a building, holding the paper in my hand and just drawing as if I were drawing on my own hand... I was fascinated by Freud and Jung because of the subconscious. In other words, another world other than the one that was in front of me, which I hated very much.
So I turned to the subconscious, I loved the surrealists, and I took the surrealists seriously and lost my sanity and ended up in a hospital. And it was good for me; it was a growing thing. And that way I got to know a great psychiatrist. I would take my artwork to him and then point to these things... and he said, “Yes, Peter, it’s there,” but he wouldn’t dwell on it—he stayed away from it. He wouldn’t touch it... I always was a great hater of the world. A great lover of creation, but hater of this world. AH: The passage of time seems to be an extremely important idea in your drawings. Why did you document your work time so meticulously? PK: It’s not meticulously, it’s compulsively.... Several reasons, and one obvious reason, which would be the most immediate one. I was working at a security post, so date and time—you always write down. Date, time. Always, you know, date, time, what’s going on. It’s called your DAR, Daily Activity Report. And it’s nothing...I was born January 27, 1945. That’s important to me. It also happens to be Mozart’s birthday. That also happens to be, almost to the hour of my birth, when the Red Army liberated Auschwitz. January 27, 1945.... So dates and times are somehow important to me, maybe for reasons I don’t understand myself. And then I had heard that in the Christmas battles of World War I, several Latvian regiments stopped the German army while the Russian army ran. The earth was frozen.... They mounted granite pillars at the location that the regiments went into action, and there were dates and times on there. To me, art is war. It is a conquest of consciences. So I don’t think that my date and time, and relating it to all the regiments going into action, is just a silly fiction in my head. No, not at all.
The Lumen Christi Institute presents a non-credit course on
HUNGER STRIKE
The Book of Psalms
Belly flop Iliya Gutin Senior Arts Staff Bill Kim is movin’ on up, to the Near West Side, to a deluxe restaurant in the sky. Well, it’s not quite the sky, but a lucrative Randolph Street address is about as close as you can get to Chicago’s culinary heavens. Once the domain of Oprah’s studio-cum-car dealership, it’s now the officially unofficial Restaurant Row where the likes of Graham Elliot, Stephanie Izard, and Paul Kahan build their golden shrines to food. So with the addition of Belly Q, the latest in the Belly empire, I can certainly understand Chef Kim’s desire to secure a place in this Meatpacking Porkthenon of cooking gods. But sometimes the hunger to succeed can become hubris. With Belly Q, Kim has cooked a bit too close to the sun, and the food drowned in the sea of meh.
BELLY Q 1400 West Randolph Street Through November 20 Average main course: $18
Considering that the other two Belly restaurants are located under an El station and next to a laundromat, Belly Q’s sleek, stylish and spacious design lets you know that with this latest venture Bill means business. No more graffiti on the walls or pouring your own water; Belly Q has an actual wait staff, table settings, and designated seating. In fact, the allusions
with Paul Mankowski, S.J. to grandeur are evident from the moment you step inside right up until you look at the total on your check. Plush gray leather chairs, a posh full-service bar front and center, and padded sliding walls allegedly conceal private rooms and a soundproof karaoke lounge. Patrons are handed an ornate origami menu that is sparse and frustrating, like an Ikea instruction manual. The food, however, has nothing to do with Swedish products— the waiter was pretty keen to explicate the vision for the space as something along the lines of a communal quasi-authentic Korean dining experience with a twist. There is a large open kitchen in the back, and courses are actually thoughtfully paced depending on what you order, which, given the chaotic onslaught of dishes getting cranked out of most contemporary “small plates” kitchens in this city, comes across as a revelation in food service. Unfortunately, the dishes are not the kind of unique and creative dishes I’ve come to expect from the Belly brand. The food, in the most disappointing sense, reflects that same maturity and formality of the restaurant’s chic digs. Where’s the good-natured, belly-laugh inducing fun? That sense of grunge-y late-night poor decision-making? As with previous Belly incarnations, the appetizers and side dishes are a great way to ease into a meal. Think of it as a choose-your-own banchan adventure. Straightforward coleslaw gets some heat from the nuoc cham sauce and manages to be refreshing enough to prime your palate. The chilly, oil-poached shrimp HUNGER SRIKE continued on page 10
Tuesday, October 16 The Prayer Book of Jesus Tuesday, October 23 Songs of Wrath Tuesday, October 30 Songs of Joy Tuesday, November 6 Songs of Entreaty & Assent Tuesday, November 13 Songs of Pain Tuesday, November20 Songs of Praise Gavin House, 1220 East 58th Street Dinner 6:30 pm, Lecture 7:00 pm Intended for University students, faculty, and recent graduates. Others interested in attending, please contact info@lumenchristi.org. Please visit www.lumenchristi.org for more information.
THE CHICAGO MAROON | ARTS | October 12, 2012
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Saturday | October 13
Sometimes it’s good to be left in the dark. The 48th Annual Chicago International Film Festival, which premiered yesterday and will run through the 25th, displays an array of the best the cinematic world has to offer in the sure-to-be-packed AMC River East Theatre. Today you can watch Franck Khalfoun’s remake of the 1980s cult classic Maniac, in which Elijah Wood steps into the role of psychotic loner and chronic womanizer/scalper. Or why not check out Tae-kyeong Kim’s Don’t Click, which explores the sinister side of the dot-com generation. 322 East Illinois Street. Screenings from 3–11:15 p.m., $11 regular ticket for students. The Logan Arts Center has never been shy about openings—new plays, art exhibits, and apocalypses (its inaugural kickoff last spring)— but the Logan Launch Festival may prove to be the most jam-packed to date. Bay-area based band Los Cenzontles will begin the festival at noon with their special blend of contemporary and traditional Mexican music with Los Lobos frontman David Hidalgo. After that the day will turn to a frenzy of arts and then to night. Expect performances by the New Budapest Orpheum Society, UBallet, and the Creative Writing department; talks and Q&As with playwright David Auburn, Artistic Director of Court Theatre Charles Newell, poet Tom Raworth, and architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, who, you know, designed the Center. 915 East 60th Street. 12–11 p.m., free.
Bike for something nobler than Gatorade. Death’s Door Spirits hosts the Will Bike for Booze ride, a 12-mile-long bar hop on wheels and superior option for the health-conscious day-drinker. Participants start at Little Italy neighborhood hang-out Three Aces and wind up at the Boiler Room in Logan Square. There they can lay claim to a commemorative Death’s Door t-shirt and complimentary cocktail. Leaves from 1321 West Taylor Street. 2–4 p.m., $10 (ride limited to 40 people, reserve in advance!). The Chicago Architecture Foundation presents its second annual Open House Chicago in which 150 buildings throughout the city will be free and open to the public all day. The Wit Hotel is sharing its exclusive rooftop and screening rooms with locals, while the Google building is welcoming visitors to its 13th floor reception area and apparently extant 1920s speakeasy. Several buildings in our own Hyde Park are also participating, including the Hyde Park Historical Society, the Oriental Institute, and Bartlett Hall (no word yet on what that means for the stability of flex dollars). Citywide. Typically 9 a.m.–5 p.m., (double-check hours of building before heading over), free. Sunday | October 14 It’s time to get your monthly dose of what every doctor is bound to order: fashion, food,
and minutia. The October edition of Dose Market is a real stunner, offering free pumpkin ale from Greenbush Brewing, salty honey pie baked by the Sugar Path, Silver Moon Vintage wares (Halloween costume?), and tree-ring cutting boards courtesy of Greta de Perry. All this and so much more whiskey is waiting for you at the River East Art Center. 435 East Illinois Street. 10 a.m.–4 p.m., $8 in advance, $10 at the door. Sandra Lee revolutionized the sphere of DIY food prep with her concept of “semi-homemadeâ€? cooking, wherein 30 percent fresh ingredients are combined with another 70 percent pre-packaged ingredients. Now she’s back with two new shows, the first of which, Restaurant Remakes, promising to reveal some of the most famous dishes of even more famous chefs, premieres tonight. Wolfgang Puck’s “Shanghai Lobsterâ€? may make an appearance. Food Network (Your TV). 9 a.m. Chris Ware—who you might know from his contributions to The New Yorker and This American Life—will discuss and sign his new graphic novel Building Stories at Quimby’s in Wicker Park. The book introduces to the reader a strange and fanciful premise—three households peacefully coexisting in a three-story Chicago apartment building. The landlord lives in one of those apartments. Still not impressed? J.J. Abrams says of Building Stories, â€œâ€Śthe only regret you will have in starting it is knowing that it will end.â€? Too bad the same can’t be said for Lost. 1854 West North Avenue. 5 p.m., free.
Kim makes too many amends for his deliciously greasy past HUNGER STRIKE continued from page 9 over soba carries a clean, if unremarkable flavor, despite a messy presentation. There was also a faux-creamed spinach dish with quinoa. Note to chefs everywhere: quinoa might actually be the hardest thing in the world to eat with chopsticks, short of marbles. Or M&Ms. But with the Thai fried chicken, I found myself lured to mediocrity by the siren’s call of a killer menu description: Two chicken strips (for $8 I may add) in a Thai-esque take on a chimichurri sauce that is the hallmark of the Kim flava wheel. Sure, the sauce is amazing, whereas paying that kind of money, in that kind of setting, for a piece of breaded chicken is not. That may sound harsh, but it’s just too easy to prime my palate for excitement. And I don’t like having my emotions toyed with like that. There was something apologetic, and not necessarily pretentious, about the experience: from the waiter’s treatise on the nature of Belly Q’s cuisine as not quite authentic but not quite avant-garde, to the daintiness of the dishes that all too often bordered on the kind of contemporary “health� food you find at assembly-line lunch places downtown. It’s like Kim is trying to make amends for all the gorgeously-greasy gutbombs he’s made in the past, and appeal to the upmarket scenesters. But glitz, glam and Instagram a meal do not make. And there’s more than enough of that crap in Chicago as it is, let alone on Randolph Street. So, hear me out Kim, it’s not that it’s too late to apologize (ft. Timbaland), rather there’s no need to apologize in the first place.
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a conversation with
Wesley and Brad Sun The graphic novel Chinatown is a surreal haunted house story, set on the lonely streets of a forgotten town, and inspired by Hong Kong movies and monster icks. Join us for dinner and a discussion of the emerging theology of Chinatown with the authors. Your RSVP will help us plan.
EVERYTHING HAS A BREAKING POINT
Wednesday, October 17, 6:00 pm For more information contact us at: 773-947-8744, ofďŹ ce@brenthouse.org, or the Facebook event.
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BRENT House:
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THE CHICAGO MAROON | SPORTS | October 12, 2012
Eye on the Tigers: At Stagg Field, Wittenberg the prey Football Maddie Pisani Sports Contributor Can our boys keep it up? After their stunning shutout against Allegheny last weekend the Monsters of the Midway have set the bar high for their upcoming game against Wittenberg. The recent shutout was Chicago’s first in six years, giving the team a 3–2 record going into its next game. While it was a low-scoring game, the relentlessness of the defense gave the team a significant moral boost. “Last weekend the defense played great in their shutout against Allegheny. The defense’s morale was high and it has shown this week in preparation for Wittenberg,” fourth-year offensive lineman John Tabash said. “If they stay confident and play as well as they did against Allegheny,
I think we’ll have a great chance to pull off a win against Wittenberg.” Chicago and Wittenberg have never met before in an official season matchup. Wittenberg plays in the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC), which has a five-year scheduling agreement with the UAA allowing the two teams to play one another. The South Siders don’t start conference play until October 27 when the three-game sequence for the UAA conference title begins. “I don’t think the fact we have never played Wittenberg affects our preparation for the game,” thirdyear quarterback Vincent Cortina said. “We are preparing the same way we do every week. We are watching a lot of game film on them and finding where we can attack them.”
The South Siders will have to target Wittenberg’s thirdyear quarterback Reed Florence. Florence has guided the Tigers to several highscoring wins this season, including a 44–17 victory over Capital in his first game as starting quarterback. Additionally, the Maroon offensive linemen should be looking to protect Cortina from Wittenberg’s fourthyear defensive end Jon Daniels. Daniels recorded four tackles and two forced fumbles in the Tigers’ September 22 game against Wooster and recovered a third-quarter fumble on the Wooster five-yard line, leading to an easy touchdown for the Tigers. Wittenberg is a strong team, but the Maroons are confident. Chicago must exploit the Tigers’ errors and show some consistency on offense and defense.
The Maroons line up on defense during Saturday’s home game against Allegheny. THE CHICAGO MAROON | AUMER SHUGHOURY
“Wittenberg is a good football team,” Cortina said. “Their strength is they have good players who are athletic.
“Our plan is to come up with plays that attack soft spots in their defense. We are really focusing on not turning the ball over, winning
the field position battle, and executing our plays when the opportunity presents itself.” Kickoff is set for 1 p.m. this Saturday at Stagg Field.
At Brooks Invite, squad looks to stay the course
Time to tango—With season on the line, South Siders to put “best foot forward”
Men’s XC
Women’s Soccer
Isaac Stern Sports Staff The Maroons travel to Oshkosh, Wisconsin this weekend for the UW–Oshkosh Brooks Invitational. This will be the first time they return to action since late September when they placed an impressive fifth at the Loyola Lakefront Invitational. In the Loyola Lakefront Invitational, the men’s team competed against numerous high-caliber opponents, including Division I teams Wisconsin and Purdue. The success of the men’s squad this season has led to it being ranked 19th in the nation and seventh in the Midwest region. In order to qualify for Nationals, however, the team needs to place fifth in the regional race on November 10. Of the six squads ahead of the Maroons in the regional rankings, five will compete this Saturday in Wisconsin. The regional race will be run on the same course as the Invite, which helps explain why there will be such a heavy regional turnout. “The Oshkosh meet presents an excellent opportunity to re-acquaint ourselves with the ins-andouts of the course and to learn the best racing strategy for it,” third– year Daniel Povitsky said. This race will also allow for the South Siders to see where they truly stand in reference to their biggest competition. “We have the opportunity to match up against some of the best NCAA-ranked teams, like #1 North Central College,” Povitsky said. “The majority of our top-7 men have run the NCAA regional meet and Oshkosh meet multiple times, so are well-equipped to handle the large meet with the added pressure of other great teams being present.” Augustana College, currently
ranked fifth in the region, faced Chicago earlier this year at the Illinois Intercollegiates where they beat the Maroons, who placed fourth, by a mere 11 points. For those unfamiliar with the point system in cross country, this means that Augustana’s five best runners finished a total of 11 individual spots ahead of the Maroons’ five best runners. Realistically, this difference is a matter of seconds. It therefore seems like the Maroons have not only the opportunity to see where they stand this weekend, but also the ability to shake up the rankings in the Midwest region. An added bonus for the Maroons is that their rival, Wash U, currently ranked second in the region and third in the nation, will also be attending the invitational. This race will give the Maroons a chance to get a feel for the defending UAA champions and provide a great warm-up for the conference championship, which is only two weeks after the Invite. “Should we achieve our goals and run well head-to-head against the top-10 ranked teams in the country,” Povitsky said, “we will certainly gain great confidence heading into UAAs and look to qualify [for] the National Championship.” On an individual level, top performances can be expected from fourth-year Billy Whitmore and second-year Renat Zalov, as they finished 19th and 25th respectively two weeks ago against Division I runners. Maroons fans should also keep an eager eye out for fourthyear Isaac Dalke, who placed 34th in the same meet, and Povitsky, who was out last meet due to hip issues, but will be back on the course this weekend. The race is set to begin at 10:30 a.m. at the Lake Breeze Golf Course in Winneconne, Wisconsin.
Leah Von Essen Sports Contributor The South Siders are ready to take control. After consecutive 2–1 losses against Emory and Carnegie Mellon, the Maroons (7–4, 0–2) are preparing to defend their home turf against conference leader Brandeis (10–1–1, 1–0–1). The Maroons’ most recent game against Carnegie was particularly disappointing. Chicago fell to a 2–1 defeat after failing to convert a host of first half chances. “We could’ve played harder than we did,” head coach Amy Reifert said. “We’ve worked super hard in practice all week trying to become a better team, focusing on winning individual battles and trying to become the best team on the field.” The Maroons will need all of that spirit against Brandeis, which currently boasts the best record in the UAA. The Judges’ record of 10 clean sheets in their last 12 games is particularly intimidating, but first-year forward
Mary Bittner says that Chicago’s offense is more than ready to face off against Brandeis’s strong back line. “Basically we are going to do everything in our power to get a victory,” she said, “so we are going to be composed and finish every possible opportunity we’ve got.” Led by fourth-year Brigette Kragie, recently named Player of the Week by the UAA, and second-year Sara Kwan, scorer of seven goals already this season, the Maroons’ offense certainly should be able to crack Brandeis’ defense. Brandeis, however, is not short on attacking options of its own, with second-year Dara Spital the standout. Six of her eight goals this year have been game-winners. “Their top three up top are very dangerous,” Reifert said. “Their top three strikers, including #33 (Spital), are very talented and work well together, so we need to be organized, communicate well, and work to win one v. one battles with those kids that go to goal.” The Maroons will have to recover
quickly—whatever the result this afternoon—as they face NYU on Sunday. The Violets, who play at Wash U today before coming to Chicago, have had a rough time with their St. LouisChicago doubleheader in the past. Even so, NYU is currently the highest scoring team in the UAA, averaging four goals a game. Every goal matters to the Maroons now, whose current point tally places them second-to-last in the conference. The games against Brandeis and NYU will have a serious impact on their UAA aspirations. “Our only chance to even compete is to win the rest of our games,” Reifert said. “For us it really is a do-or-die situation, so we have to perform.” “We’ve got to win, and that’s pretty much the only thing we’re focusing on,” Bittner said. “We’re going to put our best foot forward.” The Maroons kick off against the Judges today at 3 p.m. at Stagg Field. Their game against NYU will start at 10:30 a.m. at the same location on Saturday.
Head coach Chris Hall: “[T]his is a different type of competition” XC continued from back
three weeks after that, this couldn’t be a better time for the Maroons to familiarize themselves with the level of competition they’ll be facing down the road. “It is interesting always to look at our schedule and see the different things we’re going to be competing against,” fourth-year Julia Sizek said. “This weekend at Oshkosh really is the cream of the crop in terms of competition in DIII and although we’ve been competing against a lot of big schools, that doesn’t mean they’re the most competitive big schools out there.” This weekend’s meet will be the
Maroons’ first in two weeks, and confidence will be high after a strong showing their last time out at the Loyola Lakefront Invitational. Chicago finished 10th out of 51 teams behind stand-out performances by third-year Michaela Whitelaw, who finished 74th in the 514-woman field, first-year Maggie Cornelius, who was 78th, and Sizek, who finished a very impressive 28th. While this success could potentially put unwanted pressure on his team, Hall is confident that his athletes will respond in the right way. “I don’t think that the rest of our team feels pressured to run better because of what Julia is accom-
plishing,” he said. “To be perfectly honest with you, I hope that Julia is feeling pressure this weekend to challenge herself at a higher level as well. I think all of our kids should go into this meet feeling like this is a different type of competition.” There will even be a little extra time to focus, as the Maroons leave tonight before racing on Saturday. “Because we’ll be out of town, I think that will really give everyone an extra little bit of time to center before the race and focus on the race,” Sizek said. The UW-Oshkosh Invitational is set to begin at 11:15 a.m. tomorrow morning.
SPORTS
IN QUOTES
“I tell Steve [Nash], you won MVP but I was playing with Smush Parker. He’s playing with [Leandro] Barbosa. I’m playing with Smush and Kwame. My goodness.” —Lakers guard Kobe Bryant reflecting on the 2005 NBA season.
UAA contention on the line as Brandeis, NYU arrive in Hyde Park Men’s Soccer
Third-year Alexis Onfroy dribbles the ball down the field during a home game against Wheaton on September 11. COURTESY OF JOHN BOOZ
Derek Tsang Associate Sports Editor The Maroons host ninthranked Brandeis and 20thranked NYU this weekend in a pair of crucial home fixtures that could either thrust
them to the front of their conference and into postseason contention, or see them consigned to the bottom of the UAA table. “If you’re on the bubble at the end of the season , having wins against teams
like [Brandeis and NYU] can really put you over the top,” fourth-year defender Garrett Laird said. “And finishing in the top of the UAA would look really good this season.” In their two conference
At Round Robin, #12 Maroons face #1 Bears, conference rivals
games so far, the South Siders have seen plenty of drama, coming back from three goals down against Emory in a 3–4 loss and going ahead 2–0 before tying Carnegie— then ranked fourth nationally—in double overtime.
But with only one point to show for their efforts so far, Chicago (6–2–3) currently stands seventh out of eight in the UAA standings. After the Maroons’ positive result against Carnegie—their third straight game in extra-time and a reminder that Chicago can certainly hang with the best teams in DIII—they played an outmatched Lakeland squad on Monday, cruising to a 5–0 victory to break their three-game winless streak. “It’s always nice to get a comfortable win to get your confidence back,” Laird said. “We know we can play with anybody in the country, and beat anybody in the country.” Brandeis (11–0–1) is unbeaten in its last 17 games stretching back to last season, and is tied atop the UAA. The Judges’ stingy defense, having allowed only nine goals all season, is anchored by fourth-year Joe Eisenbies and third-year Ben Applefield. Up front, they’re led by fourth-year forward Lee Russo, who’s tied for the most goals in the UAA, with nine.
“Most of the teams we play are usually bigger than us, physically,” Laird said. “Brandeis is more similar to us in their style; they’re a smaller, quicker team that runs off the ball really well. A lot of the time we’re worried about set pieces and goals off of corner kicks, but Brandeis is more dangerous in open play.” Last season, the Maroons faced Brandeis and NYU away from Stagg, suffering a pair of 1–2 losses to cap off a five-game mid-season losing streak. This season, Chicago will enjoy the comfort of playing at home, where they have outscored opponents 16-4 on the season for a 4-1-2 record. After their Friday game against Brandeis, the South Siders will host NYU on Sunday afternoon. Coming off of a scoreless tie with Rochester, the Violets are led by senior striker Kyle Green, who has nine goals and three assists on the season. The Maroons’ game against Brandeis kicks off at Stagg at 5:30 p.m. today; their game against NYU is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. on Sunday.
In Wisconsin, Chicago to face “cream of the crop” Women’s XC
Volleyball Christina Schaver Sports Contributor On Saturday at the end of OWeek, incoming and returning students alike turned out at Ratner to watch the Maroons coast to victories over Carnegie Mellon and NYU in the first round of the UAA Round Robin tournament. Chicago was unable to secure a perfect weekend, however, as they fell to Emory 3–0 the following day. This weekend, Carnegie Mellon is hosting the second round of the tournament, which will seed the UAA for its conference tournament at the end of the season. The Maroons will face Wash U and Brandeis on Saturday, and Rochester and Case Western on Sunday. All of the games this weekend are expected to be competitive, especially the Maroons’ matchup against the Wash U Bears, who are currently ranked first in the country. “It would be awesome to give them another loss this year and I honestly think that they are beatable,” head coach Vanessa Walby said. “If we play well we can make that happen.” Fourth-year middle blocker Katie Trela also expressed confidence about the upcoming games.
“This weekend should be golden,” she said. “As long as every girl on the team comes in with the mindset that we’re taking down the top-ranked team in Division III, then we will.” Brandeis, 0–3 so far in the tournament, is also expected to put up a good fight. “[They] always surprise teams with good matches,” Trela said. Walby addressed the home loss to Emory, admitting that it was a disappointing outcome while remaining optimistic about the lessons learned from the match. “Hopefully we can take something from that match,” Walby said, “and transfer it into the matches this weekend.” The Maroons’ conference record thus far in the season is 16– 6, further reflecting on the team’s improvement over the past few years under Walby, who arrived in the spring of 2008. In the two years prior to her arrival, the Maroons had only won 13 matches. But in 2010, Chicago made it to the NCAA tournament for the first time and finished the season with a 30–13 overall record—the most victories in the program’s 40-year history. Chicago will look to continue their success under Walby this Saturday and Sunday in Pittsburgh.
Fourth-years Julia Sizek and Kayla McDonald race agaisnt other DIII schools in the UAA Championship last season. COURTESY OF DAVE HILBERT
Jake Walerius Associate Sports Editor The Maroons have become well acquainted with DI and DII opponents this season, but they turn their attention now to their own division. Chicago heads to Wisconsin
this weekend for the UW-Oshkosh Invitational, in which it will compete against six teams nationally ranked in DIII. “Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing a difference in the way our women race,” head coach Chris Hall said. “The fact that they’re
going up against great teams now from DIII, I’d like to see them a little bit more inspired in the way that they compete.” With the UAA championship now only two weeks away and the NCAA DIII championship only XC continued on page 11