043013 Chicago Maroon

TUESDAY • APRIL 30, 2013

CHICAGOMAROON.COM

THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SINCE 1892

ISSUE 41 • VOLUME 124

SG candidate disqualified, slate issued penalties First-year Christina Dong, the only official candidate vying for the position of Community and Government Liaison, has been disqualified from competing in this election, the Elections and Rules Committee (E&R) announced early this morning.

Dong has been penalized with the “unethical creation and distribution of a recording without consent,” according to an e-mail from third-year E&R member Angela Wang.

According to E&R’s April 29 meeting minutes, Dong made a recording that she claimed to want for personal use. The minutes do not specify the content or nature of the recording.

The person that she recorded asked to remain anonymous multiple times throughout the recording, according to E & R deliberations, but Dong later shared the recording directly with one other person, the minutes said.

There are now no official candidates for Community and Government Liaison. According to E & R chair and fourth-year Lester Ang, the position will now go to the write-

in candidate who receives the most votes.

The meeting minutes also revealed that additional penalties have been imposed on uchicaGOLD as a result of last night’s deliberations, according to Wang. They now face, in total, three major and two minor infractions. uchicaGOLD was also in consideration for disqualification, but the motion failed, as only two out of five E & R members voted in favor of the penalty.

Both Ignite and uchicaGOLD have received notice of complaints filed against them in regards to formally affiliating with liaison candidates, which is strictly against the campaign by-laws, within the past week.

SG elections begin today at 9 a.m. and run through this Thursday at 5 p.m. Winners will be announced later on Thursday evening. Voters can log onto their CNetID at sg.uchicago.edu and cast their ballots.

—Maroon Staff

Unruly fire hits South Side More than 130 firefighters were called to battle a fire in an abandoned factory building at 6800 South Cottage Grove Avenue early yesterday afternoon. The one-story, 200-by-200-foot building caught fire at around noon, prompting a 3-11 alarm, which indicates that a higher-than-normal amount of resources and crewmembers was needed to contain the fire. The fire was declared under control at 1:15 p.m., according to Chicago Fire Department Chief Kevin MacGregor. In response to the fire, the #4 Cottage Grove bus was temporarily rerouted. No injuries were reported.

COURTESY OF CHICAGO FIRE DEPARTMENT

RSO considers future with CPS closings Uncommon interview:

John Scalzi (A.B. ’91)

Hamid Bendaas News Staff As CPS contemplates its proposal to close 54 elementary and middle schools at the end of this year, students from one RSO are paying particularly close attention to which schools get cut.

Overall, the closings have had a limited effect on University-run school programs, like the Neighborhood Schools Program and Women and Youth Supporting Each Other, as many Hyde Park schools that partner with the programs have not been selected to close.

However, for the South Side Free Music Program, which provides music lessons to children ages five to 14, the proposed CPS continued on page 2

John Scalzi (A.B. ’91) is the author of seven novels, various nonfiction works, and an award-winning blog. A former editor-in-chief of the Maroon, he currently serves as the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

After speaking at an event sponsored by UChicago Careers in Arts and the Committee on Creative Writing on Friday,

Students from Ray Elementary School play pick-up basketball after school. Due to Chicago Public School closings in the upcoming months, Ray will gain students from Canter Middle School.

SYDNEY COMBS | THE CHICAGO MAROON

East meets west in quad expansion Alex Hays Associate News Editor Last month, University officials announced plans to expand the quads, making the trek across campus more streamlined. Here’s what to expect

from the changes: East: Construction to convert the former home of the Seminary Co-Op into the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics began last quarter. By the time the work is completed in 2015, the block

of East 58th Street between South University Avenue and South Woodlawn Avenue will be closed to traffic and replaced by a pedestrian walkway.

To compensate for the loss of vehicular accessibility, a busQUAD continued on page 2

Scalzi sat down with the Maroon to talk about his time at the University, his career, and what it means to be a newspaper nerd.

Chicago Maroon: I understand you live in Ohio. What brings you to the Chicago area?

John Scalzi: I am here for C2E2, which is the Chicago Comic and Entertainment SCALZI continued on page 2

U of C follows higher ed. trend, increases debt load Anastasia Kaiser News Staff To accommodate financial needs for several ongoing projects, over the next few months the University plans to issue up to $400 million in new debt, primarily in the form of revenue bonds.

The projects include construction for the Eckhardt Research Center for Molecular Engineering and the Becker Friedman Institute, as well as a renovation and expansion of the Laboratory Schools, which will increase its enrollment capacity from 1,750 to 2,050 students.

The University of Chicago has steadily increased its debt load in the past decade, following the trend of many major universities. According to Moody’s Investors Service, a major credit rating provider, UChicago ranks fifth among colleges and universities with the largest debt increase from 2002 to 2011.

In 2011, the University had $3 billion in debt outstanding, up from $900 million in 2002. These figures include the $700 million for the Center for Care and Discovery, which opened earlier this year.

Despite the debt increase, the UniDEBT continued on page 2

IN VIEWPOINTS

IN ARTS

IN SPORTS

Slate evaluations and liaison endorsements » Pages 4 & 5

Renaissance society gets a rise out of Pope.L’s new exhibit » Page 7

Maroons take third, grab nine golds at UAAs » Back Page

Awkward? Awkward... » Page 5

With his latest collection, Sedaris finds his readers in fine feather » Page 8

We’re gonna need a bigger boat: Crew team swells in popularity » Back Page

THE CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | April 30, 2013

2

U of C’s increasing debt remains highly-rated by Moody’s, S&P Programming for the South Side Executive Vice President overseeing the University’s debt Free Music Program might slow DEBT continued from front assists businesses and non-profit versity is considered financially healthy, according to the nation’s top rating agencies. Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s have rated past debt issued by the University at the highest grade possible.

The new debt has yet to be rated.

The amount of debt sold and the pricing of the new bonds will be determined at the time of the sale, according to a financing summary compiled by the Illinois Finance Authority, a self-funded state agency that

corporations secure financing.

Top financial firms Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley are serving as senior managers on different portions of the debt issuance.

According to the University’s official policy on debt management, two critical factors govern the University’s debt levels: its ability to pay interest on the debt without crowding out funding for other activities, and its capacity to maintain top credit ratings for each of the bonds it issues.

for Administration and Chief Financial Officer Nim Chinniah addressed the issue of the University’s growing debt at a Leadership Conference presentation to students on April 3. He explained that part of the past decade’s debt increase is attributable to the University’s strategic decision to “go full steam ahead” during the financial crisis of 2007–2008 instead of pulling back on financial commitments.

Chinniah is responsible for

portfolio and presents an annual report to the Financial Planning Committee of the Board of Trustees.

The University last issued bonds on a similar scale in 2012 in order to finance early costs on many of its current projects as well as some completed projects, like the Reva and David Logan Arts Center, Joe and Rika Mansueto Library, and the Stevanovich Center for Financial Mathematics.

Scalzi: “It’s the little things, and it begins to add up” SCALZI continued from front

Exposition…. Basically everything nerd-related is there, and since I write science fiction, you know, that’s the nerd’s genre, so I am going there to participate in that.

CM: Do you identify yourself as a nerd?

JS: I went to the University of Chicago, come on! The famous thing we used to say is that each new class is better dressed and better looking, but the simple fact of the matter, I mean, I was running around campus today: Y’all are still nerds. And that’s great. I wasn’t always the same kind of nerd, though. I wasn’t a science fiction nerd; I was a newspaper nerd. “I majored in the Maroon” is what I like saying. I have a degree in philosophy, but I spent all my time there. I also wrote for the [Chicago] Sun-Times and the Newcity magazine as a freelancer.

CM: How was your undergraduate experience here at the University?

JS: Kind of unusual for a University of Chicago student. I was not hugely grade-intensive.

I didn’t stress out: I had a 2.8 GPA…. I did well in the classes that I liked, and I did very poorly in the classes that I did not care about. The reason I did not stress too much about it is because I knew I had no plans of going on to graduate school. But part of it is that I knew the reason I was coming here was to work on the newspaper and to learn how to be a writer. I was more interested in the quality of my life experience than whether or not I was going to get that A in my Conrad class.

CM: When would you say you got to the point where you looked at yourself as a popular writer?

JS: In 2007, I was doing a

panel at the LA Times Festival of Books. Another panelist and I are good friends, and we were walking and talking together.

After every panel at the festival, they take the writers over to autograph books…. He has a good line, 20 to 30 people. We couldn’t even see the end of my line. He looked at me and said, “When did that happen?” I said, “I have no idea.” Also getting on the New York Times best seller list was like, “Wow, that doesn’t suck.” Having my book optioned for a movie was another step. It’s the little things, and it begins to add up.

CM: Your article “Being Poor” was published in the Chicago Tribune and was read by millions.

What inspired you to write that piece?

JS: It was right around the time of Hurricane Katrina, and a lot of people were stranded in New

Orleans, and most of those people were poor. A lot of people asked, “Why didn’t they just leave?” The answer to that is complicated and rooted in poverty. They didn’t have cars because they couldn’t afford cars. They didn’t want to leave their possessions because that’s all they had in the world. I was poor growing up. I was a scholarship case at my boarding school.

Tuition was more than my mom made in a year. We lived in a trailer park, while my friends would be going on ski vacations during Christmas. So I knew something about poverty…. I knew why they couldn’t leave. I had to be able to explain it to people. It was one of the most wrenching things I ever wrote. I was crying the entire time I was writing. I got it out, and it exploded all over the place.

—Sindhu Gnanasambandan

DESIGN.

DRAW.

CPS continued from front

closing of three elementary schools near KLEO Community Family Life Center raised concerns about a potential decrease in program attendance. If these schools—Anthony Overton, Crispus Attucks, and Francis Parkman Elementaries—close, fourth-year Noah Huh, who oversees the program’s operations at KLEO’s Washington Park location, worries that students will no longer be able to travel there for music lessons.

“Chances are parents are not going to take their kids [to KLEO] or would relocate to a different center.

If the latter, it’d be ok, but we’re scared of the former,” Huh said.

Huh said the closings will be the second major threat to program attendance the group has faced in the last year, recalling the concern the program had when CPS decided to lengthen the school day for the 2011–2012 school year. Because students were let out of school later, more of them chose to go directly home afterwards.

“Attendance at KLEO dropped dramatically, and that discouraged our teachers from showing up,” Huh said.

Though the program has had internal discussions to plan for the effects of the proposed closings, Huh and the KLEO administrators also worry for the welfare of the students.

“Instead of going to the center, [they might choose] a lifestyle that’s not so favorable, especially a gang lifestyle,” he said. He expressed additional concerns that students would have to walk through gang lines to come to the center after being relocated to another, further school.

The program also operates in Sexton Elementary School in West Woodlawn, which is slated to close as well. According to fourthyear Spencer Washburn, who works in Sexton, program members would have to build relationships with a new set of teachers and administrators if they hope to continue their work in the area. However, they may be able to continue working with the same students.

“The principal [at Sexton] has indicated that she would like to advocate for the new administration to continue to work with us as an organization, but nothing has been finalized,” he said.

WRITE.

COPY EDIT.

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

THE CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | April 30, 2013

Polonsky meets with SG, talks UCMC Madhu Srikantha News Editor

First-floor lobby of the Admin Building will be replaced for a passage to the quads QUAD continued from front

loading zone on University Avenue will enable school and tour buses to unload their passengers next to the Oriental Institute, University spokesperson Steve Kloehn said.

West: On the other side of campus, this summer will see the first-floor lobby of the Administration Building knocked out to create an open-air passageway. Though the Registrar’s Office moved to the University of Chicago Press building on East 60th Street last weekend, Kloehn said this move was to increase the office’s space and not related to the creation of the passageway. The Registrar’s former offices will be renovated and used for other, currently undecided purposes.

The University also plans to open up a pathway to Crerar Quadrangle by demolishing Ingleside Hall, the site of the current campus post office between the University Bookstore and Cummings Life Science build-

Renovations to the Chicago Theological Seminary continue to the east of the quad in preparation for the opening of the new Milton Friedman Institute.

JAIME MANLEY | THE CHICAGO MAROON

ing. This construction will include a renovation of the area in front of the bookstore, continuing down East 58th Street to the exit of the Bernard A.

Mitchell Hospital emergency room on South Drexel Avenue.

This project is expected to be completed by the start of next summer.

According to Kloehn, the idea for the construction projects “wasn’t to provide a pathway for one [important part of the campus] but to join them all.”

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Executive Vice President of Medical Affairs Kenneth Polonsky held a closed-door meeting with SG members to talk about health-care disparities on the South Side and the issue of the trauma center yesterday afternoon.

The meeting came about in response to a resolution drawn up by members of Students for Health Equity (SHE) and passed

by SG last quarter. Among several other demands, the resolution called for SG to facilitate a meeting between Polonsky and other medical center executives with activist groups like SHE and Fearless Leading by the Youth. This meeting was not open to those groups.

According to fourth-year SG Vice President of Administration Douglas Everson, Assistant Vice President for Student Life and Associate Dean of the College Eleanor Daugherty proposed a meeting with Polonsky a few weeks ago in response to the resolution passed by SG. During the meeting , Polonsky said that he did not see a trauma center coming to the University in the foreseeable future, according to Graduate Council Chair Michelle Mbekeani. He also explained the financial considerations that led to that conclusion.

Third-year SHE member Patrick Dexter attempted to enter the meeting , but was escorted out of the room. With him was a timeline of SHE’s attempts to communicate with hospital administration since the January 27 trauma center protest. According to Dexter, UCMC executives have been unresponsive to SHE’s calls for a meeting. In response, SHE members drafted an e-mail asking SG representatives for details on how they plan to fulfill the resolution’s promise for a meeting between hospital executives and concerned student and community organizations.

SHE is planning on having students fill out appointment cards to meet with Polonsky.

Dexter said that SHE plans on giving those to Provost Thomas Rosenbaum next week as a follow-up to Rosenbaum’s e-mail sent out after the UCMC incidents, which said such a dialogue would happen.

During last night’s Graduate Council meeting , Everson said he hoped this meeting was the beginning of a wider conversation, which, in its next iteration, would include groups invested in health-care issues, like SHE. Everson said he plans to release a summary of the information Polonsky shared during the meeting sometime in the next two weeks.

3

VIEWPOINTS

Editorial & Op-Ed APRIL 30, 2013

SG SLATE EVALUATIONS The student newspaper of the University of Chicago since 1892 REBECCA GUTERMAN Editor-in-Chief SAM LEVINE Editor-in-Chief

Editor’s note: Over the course of the election cycle, the Maroon has been cited by the Election and Rules Committee in a complaint against one of the four candidates for Executive Slate. The Maroon believes that this citation compromises the Editorial Board’s ability to make an objective judgment in the eyes of its readers, and so the Editorial Board will not endorse an Executive Slate in this election. The Editorial Board consists of the Editors-in-Chief and the Viewpoints Editors.

EMILY WANG Managing Editor DOUGLAS EVERSON, JR Senior Editor JAMIE MANLEY Senior Editor MATTHEW SCHAEFER Senior Editor CELIA BEVER News Editor MARINA FANG News Editor MADHU SRIKANTHA News Editor JENNIFER STANDISH News Editor AJAY BATRA Viewpoints Editor EMMA THURBER STONE Viewpoints Editor EMMA BRODER Arts Editor ALICE BUCKNELL Arts Editor DANIEL RIVERA Arts Editor VICENTE FERNANDEZ Sports Editor SARAH LANGS Sports Editor JAKE WALERIUS Sports Editor HYEONG-SUN CHO Head Designer SONIA DHAWAN Head Designer KEVIN WANG Online Editor ALICE BLACKWOOD Head Copy Editor ALAN HASSLER Head Copy Editor JEN XIA Head Copy Editor BEN ZIGTERMAN Head Copy Editor SYDNEY COMBS Photo Editor TIFFANY TAN Photo Editor COLIN BRADLEY Grey City Editor JOY CRANE Grey City Editor THOMAS CHOI Assoc. News Editor ALEX HAYS Assoc. News Editor ANKIT JAIN Assoc. News Editor HARINI JAGANATHAN Assoc. News Editor STEPHANIE XIAO Assoc. News Editor KRISTIN LIN Assoc. Viewpoints Editor WILL DART Assoc. Arts Editor LAUREN GURLEY Assoc. Arts Editor TATIANA FIELDS Assoc. Sports Editor SAM ZACHER Assoc. Sports Editor JULIA REINITZ Assoc. Photo Editor FRANK YAN Assoc. Photo Editor TYRONALD JORDAN Business Manager TAMER BARSBAY Undergraduate Business Executive QUERIDA Y. QIU External Director of Marketing

Ignite Ignite has put forth a platform that aims to take advantage of the three candidates’ significant SG experience.

The slate is composed of second-year presidential candidate Yusef Al-Jarani, second-year Vice President for Administration candidate Ezgi Cubukcu, and third-year chemistry Ph.D. student and Vice President for Student Affairs candidate Anthony Martinez. Al-Jarani currently serves as the vice president for student affairs, while Cubukcu has two years of experience as a College Council representative, and has served on the Student Government Finance Committee (SGFC) and as a liaison to the Campus Dining Advisory Board. Martinez is a member of both Graduate Council and SGFC. A notable aspect of Ignite’s platform is a desire to engage with student groups, particularly RSOs, in order to better understand student needs and communicate those needs to administrators. The observation underlying this strategy—that RSOs are an excellent resource for mining diverse and wellorganized student input—is a solid one.

The representative power of SG is well

suited to aid the initiatives of RSOs, and such a partnership would represent a welcome shift on the part of SG from simply polling students to engaging with them. Al-Jarani also suggested that SG could assist students with avoiding administrative backlog and confusion by connecting students to the administrator most relevant to their complaints or interests. An additional praiseworthy aspect of Ignite’s platform is the slate’s interest in improving Student Health Services and sexual assault policies.

With regard to graduate student issues, Martinez eloquently displayed a broad understanding of common concerns, among them affordable child care and the distinct challenges faced by international students.

All three candidates, and Al-Jarani in particular, clearly have a well-developed knowledge of how SG works. While this has the potential to be a great advantage, it is necessary also to caution that experience can breed complacency. Ignite Slate promises to stay attuned to the student body, but experience on SG may be liable to interfere with the ability to approach it with a fresh perspective.

Impact The three candidates for Impact have all been involved in activist RSOs on campus and interacted with the administration in that capacity. They have never held SG positions. Their presidential candidate, third-year Michael McCown, helped found Students for Health Equity; VP for Student Affairs candidate and first-year Jane Huber is in Seeds of Justice; and VP for Administration candidate and secondyear Sofia Flores is one of the leaders of Southside Solidarity Network.

Impact’s platform is refreshing, attempting to tackle long-term reforms that run the gamut from socially responsible investment to emergency care on the South Side. The candidates certainly have the qualifications and experience to address these issues, and seem to have accurately identified a number of issues for which student groups have long been advocating. If elected, the members of the slate would gain

access to administrators in ways that would be vital to enacting reforms. While voters should keep in mind that a vote for Impact will be a vote that supports explicit stances on specific issues, McCown has pledged to view changing student opinion as fundamental to the role of an SG executive.

While these broader goals are a nice change from the smallerscale, school spirit–type initiatives we are used to from SG, they also risk overshadowing the day-to-day operations of SG that may be more integral than we realize. For example, though Flores has dealt with Annual Allocations as an RSO member, her experience does not equate to the knowledge required of someone overseeing the process from the SG perspective. There is the possibility that they will get bogged down by under-the-radar duties and be forced to neglect their ambitious and admittedly desirable platform.

IVY ZHANG Internal Director of Marketing VINCENT MCGILL Delivery Coordinator ANDREW GREEN Designer SNEHA KASUGANTI Designer JONAH RABB Designer NICHOLAS ROUSE Designer KEN ARMSTRONG Copy Editor KRYSTEN BRAY Copy Editor CONNOR CUNNINGHAM Copy Editor LISA FAN Copy Editor NISHANTH IYENGAR Copy Editor CECILIA JIANG Copy Editor MICHELLE LEE Copy Editor CHELSEA LEU Copy Editor KATIE LEU Copy Editor CARISSA LIM Copy Editor KATARINA MENTZELOPOULOS Copy Editor JONAH RABB Copy Editor HEIDI SIEGRIST Copy Editor LINDSEY SIMON Copy Editor RUNNAN YANG Copy Editor 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. © 2013 The Chicago Maroon, Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 East 59th Street Chicago, IL 60637 Editor-in-Chief Phone: 773.834.1611 Newsroom Phone: 773.702.1403 Business Phone: 773.702.9555 Fax: 773.702.3032 CONTACT News: News@ChicagoMaroon.com Viewpoints: Viewpoints@ChicagoMaroon.com Arts: Arts@ChicagoMaroon.com Sports: Sports@ChicagoMaroon.com Photography: Photo@ChicagoMaroon.com Design: Design@ChicagoMaroon.com Copy: CopyEditors@ChicagoMaroon.com Advertising: Ads@ChicagoMaroon.com

UChicaGOLD All of the members of UChicaGOLD offer previous SG experience.

Presidential candidate Steph Mui is a third-year College Council (CC) representative; Vice President for Student Affairs candidate and second-year Raymond Dong serves as the current SG chief of staff and was on CC last year; first-year M.B.A. student Josh Johnston (A.B. ’04), the slate’s candidate for vice president for administration, sits on Graduate Council.

The slate is pledging to increase SG’s presence on campus and to make the body more transparent. They have already begun meeting with administrators to discuss expanding SG representation to different houses and RSOs, and will work to create an online forum where students can submit complaints to SG. They will also use a data-driven approach to bring student concerns to administrators, a strategy that Dong has already seen succeed during his work on the Roosevelt shuttle survey over the past year. Johnston is also the only candidate on any slate who is an alumnus

of the College, which will give him a unique perspective on how to best address both undergraduate and graduate concerns.

Although the Maroon is encouraged by UChicaGOLD’s efforts to expand SG’s presence on campus, there are also limits to a data-driven approach to increasing student engagement. While surveys and polling are useful instruments for gathering student input and presenting a case to administrators, these tools do not provide an incentive for students to engage with a project beyond giving feedback. The Maroon is also skeptical of the slate’s proposal to allow RSOs to receive retroactive funding for an event from the Student Government Finance Committee (SGFC).

Even though UChicaGOLD pledges to make clear what kind of expenses would be eligible for retroactive funding, RSO funding guidelines are already complex enough. SGFC’s deadlines ensure that RSOs can better plan for an event knowing exactly how much support they will receive from SGFC funds.

Moose Party Editor’s note: Moose Party chose not to appear before the Editorial Board.

In its 20th successive year of candidacy, Delta Upsilon’s slate is hoping to win its first ever election and start making UChicago a “more bro place.” The slate consists of second-year Daniel Matam and first-years Jacob Silverman and Sabahudin Redzepovic, who are running on a partially recycled satirical platform.

One of their allegedly humor-

ous proposals—to institute a “South Side survival test,” in place of the College’s recently eliminated swim test, as a way to deter potential applicants—is insensitive in light of the over 500 homicides that took place throughout Chicago in 2012.

Voters should keep this in mind before deciding whether lending their support to Moose Party is really the best way to voice their dissatisfaction with the SG status quo.

You can cast your votes for slates, liaisons, and College Council representatives on sg.uchicago.edu beginning today at 9 a.m. and ending this Thursday, May 2 at 5 p.m.

THE CHICAGO MAROON | VIEWPOINTS | April 30, 2013

5

ENDORSEMENTS Graduate Liaison to the Board of Trustees Navin Jose Manjooran, a first-year M.B.A. student, is the only official candidate for the position of graduate liaison to the Board of Trustees. Manjooran has not served in UChicago’s SG; however, he was formerly a graduate student representative on Virginia Tech’s Board of Visitors. Though that Board was much smaller than UChicago’s and governed a public institution, Manjooran has valuable experience working in a role similar to the one he will likely be taking on. He

plans to use this experience to build on the accomplishments of Kathryn Hagerman, the current graduate liaison, with whom he shares goals for core graduate student issues, such as pressing the University for more affordable child care.

In regard to expanding the role of liaison and of students in relation to the Board, Manjooran rightly views the obtainment of a student vote on the Board as a long-term goal. Accordingly, he has a vision of how to approach that

goal, though it is rather vague: He plans to increase the liaison’s visibility and accountability to students and thereby strengthen the case for expanded student presence on the Board and, later, limited voting power on certain issues.

However, his short-term means of enacting this goal—building personal relationships with more receptive Board members and gaining student issues a place in their minds and votes—is clear and sensible.

Community and Government Liaison Editor’s note: This candidate was disqualified early this morning and the position will now go to the write-in candidate who receives the most votes.

First-year Christina Dong is the only official candidate for the Community and Government Liaison position. A current class of 2016 representative for College Council, her work, which includes contributions to SG’s restaurant discounts initiative and the Roosevelt Shuttle program, is commendable and succeeds in SG’s ongo-

ing effort to connect students with the greater Chicago. Her platform highlights these achievements as examples of community engagement experience that she can build on as Liaison.

However, her platform lacks both the specificity and appropriate vision required for local engagement, which is the primary concern of the Community and Government Liaison. To promote a culture of community involvement in the student body, Dong proposes a quarterly Days of Service Program, in which

students can sign up to volunteer with a CSRSO one weekend of each quarter.

The Days of Service program is a great way to initiate engagement and awareness, but lacks a means to encourage follow-through, which is at the crux of creating a culture of involvement. Since the Days of Service Program already exists, the Liaison should design other programs that build on students’ initial interest in service and engagement in order to strengthen their long-term relationships with the community.

Undergraduate Liaison to the Board of Trustees For the position of undergraduate liaison to the Board of Trustees, the Maroon endorses incumbent Rohan Manthani, a third-year in the College majoring in biology and economics.

With a year of liaison experience, Manthani possesses thorough knowledge of the way the Board of Trustees operates—that is, with a packed agenda, with the University’s long-term wellbeing in mind, and privately. In light of the Board’s frequent need for discretion, it makes sense that Manthani does not share some of his fellow candidates’ view that achieving a more formally transparent relationship between students and the Board of Trustees is a practicable goal for the liaison. Rather, his platform sensibly centers on getting students increased facetime with individual Board members through continuing trustee luncheons—whose high demand and limited capacity indicate that they should be held more frequently—and working toward more student presence at Board meetings. Citing his own success in cultivating personal relationships with Board members, Manthani also has a concrete aim to lobby for student concerns by changing the minds of individual Board members, who wield

actual power not only as voters but also with respect to determining what issues are discussed. This is a laudable goal that will benefit from continuity in the position.

While the Maroon understands Manthani’s view that a student vote on the Board of Trustees is a very long-term goal, it is worth noting that his platform lacks a strategy, even in the long run, for obtaining a vote. Such a vote would legitimize student input on the Board in a way that a student simply could not do herself in an advisory capacity. Two other candidates, second-year Brendan Leonard and first-year Holly Rapp, would, to their credit, aim to more concretely advocate for a student vote. Leonard does so most convincingly, promising to draw on similar efforts at peer institutions while making the issue of a student vote more visible on campus. However, Leonard’s and Rapp’s plans for finding a more prominent place for students in relation to the Board in the near term were not as well-developed as Manthani’s.

The remaining candidates, third-year Joanna Kadieva and first-year Thomas Remissong, do not support working toward a student vote on the Board of Trustees.

Awkward? Awkward...

Good news: The culture of awkwardness at UChicago is nothing more than a self-perpetuating myth

By Tyler Lutz Viewpoints Columnist Look, you’re really not that awkward, all right?

You, UChicago student, remain a vexing conundrum to me, even though, yes, I count myself as one of your ilk.

Has it never even crossed your mind that—OK, at least in the overwhelming majority of cases—the only thing vaguely awkward about your social interactions is your persistence in drawing attention to the fact of how truly awkward you think you are?

As with anywhere, I can’t dispute that there are indeed people here who are the real deal—authentically awkward beyond any reasonable hope of recovery. But these lucky few hardly need to mention it; merely demonstrating an awareness of their own awkwardness really doesn’t make them any less

awkward. Imagine having a conversation with Stephen Hawking in which he somehow feels the need to remind you every five minutes of how impossibly smart he is; he’d really just be wasting your time in doing so. But don’t get your hopes up anytime soon that you can count yourself among this charmed circle of awkwardness—the fact that you at least left your room to grab the paper isn’t exactly working in your favor right now (God save your soul if you’re reading this online).

And yes, there are a handful of people here who just ooze charisma and social

savoir faire. But don’t worry about it— you’re probably not one of them.

Let’s suppose for a second that you’re right—let’s adopt your sweeping sociological thesis that UChicago is indeed the last great bastion of unadulterated awkwardness in American higher education and that you are one of its standard bearers. If we assume a loose definition of awkwardness as any situation in which there is a gross discrepancy between what ought to be happening (according to social conventions) and what is happening, the ostensibly pervasive culture of awkwardness here would

have become a memory by precisely...the end of O-Week. You would have realized by then that the social conventions here have shifted sufficiently to make what would otherwise be instances of awkwardness thoroughly normal and, therefore, decidedly not awkward any more. Students at this mythically awkward rendition of UChicago would still be awkward to outsiders, of course, but not among themselves—they would be silly to point it out to each other!

Perhaps none of this has convinced you. “Sure,” you might be thinking, AWKWARD continued on page 6

Glass half empty New Google Glass may not bring the revolution some believe it promises, but it will certainly shift the way its users perceive the world

By Eleanor Hyun Viewpoints Columnist On April 16, Google shipped the first units of its Google Glass beta, the Glass Explorer Edition, to both developers and consumers. Glass is a small display, suspended at the upper right corner of the field of vision by a glasses-like frame.

It is controlled both by voice and by a

trackpad on one leg of the frame, and can execute a host of Google functions—such as searches, hangouts, and translations—and can also take pictures, shoot video, and send and receive messages.

In some ways, Google Glass is unsurprising as the next step in technological progress. We’ve already moved our computers into our phones, and then our phones into our watches; that our glasses would be next seems logical, if not inevitable. For some reason, though, the concept of Google Glass provokes particularly strong reactions. Perhaps it has to do with the eyepiece, which evokes our culture’s long-held image of an of-

ten dystopian sci-fi “future.” Perhaps it has to do with Glass’s close proximity to our eyes—organs to which we not only feel intimately connected, but which are also particularly vulnerable and exposed. (Should Google Glass develop some kind of malevolent sentience, it’s easy to imagine it gouging our eyeballs out.) The eye, after all, dominates the sensory information we receive and is our foremost portal to the surrounding world.

With predictions of a late 2013 release, Google Glass is poised to mold the way we perceive and interact with our world. The question is, how?

Perhaps what sets Google Glass apart

from its predecessors is its constant, instant accessibility. Users can receive and send text messages instantly when they link Glass to an Android phone. Mark Zuckerberg, an enthusiastic supporter of the project, has already pledged to develop Facebook apps for the device.

Having forced myself to block my Tumblr dash at the beginning of this year, and being one of the Facebook-free few, the warnings of such technology entrenching us in the digital realm and distancing us from the “real” one, are familiar.

However, Sergey Brin—one of Google’s co-founders, along with Larry Page—paints a very different picture.

According to Brin, “[Glass] makes you

less of a slave to your device.” This philosophy is evident in Glass’s design: It frees up our hands to interact with our environment. Voice-activated technology makes it possible for us to record and share events, not only as they’re happening, but as we participate in them.

Google Glass is truly an “augmented reality” experience, where the use of technology bends to accommodate and, thus, enhance our life experiences.

Brin and Page may be trying to market Google Glass as a technology that serves the agency of its user, but we cannot ignore the fact that the human mind, even in adults, is malleable. Tech GLASS continued on page 6

6

THE CHICAGO MAROON | VIEWPOINTS | April 30, 2013

Letter: C&G Liaison write-in explains candidacy Entry into unopposed race prompted by desire to put community experience to work In case you’ve missed the countless Facebook event invites, the chatter about sidewalk chalk, and the campaign controversies, Student Government (SG) elections are finally upon us. One of the positions on the ballot is the rather new and somewhat unknown Community and Government Liaison.

Established in 2010 as the result of an SG ballot referendum, the position aims to improve SG’s connection with Hyde Park, Woodlawn, and other neighborhoods on the South Side. According to the SG by-laws, the Liaison has three duties: regularly attending community meetings and keeping the student body aware of discussions, issues, and concerns that arise at these meetings; encouraging student involvement with the Hyde Park and Woodlawn communities; and actively seeking out opportunities to include a student voice in community decision making.

I decided to run as a write-in candidate after viewing the platform of Christina Dong, the only candidate named on the ballot. Her platform consists of six major proposals that, while tangible and well intentioned, have little to do with the Liaison’s intended role. Dong’s proposals include holding undergraduate and graduate student socials at the Logan Center, addressing student concerns such as Wi-Fi issues encountered around campus, and working to establish a downtown shuttle. She also wishes to expand the restaurant discount program to include downtown restaurants. While all of these are legitimate and concrete proposals that should be pursued, they do not really fall under the purview of the Liaison, whose job is to communicate with local elected officials and their staff and work to get students involved in the community—not get them downtown, and not help them sit down and eat. If Dong is serious about her proposals, the appropriate route to accomplishing them would be through the College Council—a position she is also running for.

In her Maroon candidate profile, Dong proposed establishing a quarterly, university-wide day of service, even though such a day already exists and is run by the University Community Service Center (UCSC). Since the inception of my campaign, which has drawn attention to this fact, she has modified her platform to call for “more frequent UChicago Days of Service,” even though the UCSC’s existing, biweekly group service days are already underutilized. While she also lists bringing in speakers such as Alderman Will Burns to speak to the student body, it is unclear where these plans would fit in with her other stated priorities, and what the purpose of these meetings would be in relation to them. It’s the job of the Community and Government Liaison to get students more involved in the community, but simply expanding already underutilized opportunities will not do that; it will take work aimed at creating a culture of civic and community engagement.

The position of Community and Government Liaison was established with “someone with work or volunteer experience on the South Side of Chicago” in mind, according to Frank Alarcon, who was the architect of the position as first-year College Council representative in 2010. Although I have not been at the University long, I’ve spent a great deal of my time here working with and learning from community groups, particularly on the South Side. I’ve worked closely with the UCSC, having participated in its Chicago Bound pre-orientation and Seeds of Justice social justice programs. This summer, I’ll be working at the Chicago House and Social Service Agency through the UCSC’s Summer Links program.

I serve on the Office of LGBTQ Student Life Advisory Board, and I am active within several of the queer student groups on campus. I worked as part of a group that was awarded funding by the Uncommon Fund to complete an oral history of the South Side. I also have extensive relationships

The frustration we feel watching our parents use technology highlights the way it’s refined our senses GLASS continued from page 5 writer Nicholas Carr’s widely discussed 2008 article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” explored the ways the Internet shapes our thinking. He argued that although we drive technology to imitate our lives, we begin to imitate that same technology in the process. Steve Mann, a prominent inventor of wearable hardware, said, “We’re not augmenting, we’re not adding—we’re actually taking some things away, too. It’s diminished reality.” Even as Google Glass provides us with a new, informationfilled reality, it simultaneously drowns out the old one. As we are allowed to pick and choose, to add and cut away at what we decide to experience as “reality,” we risk losing a certain essential flexibility—a flexibility that allows us to bend our minds around what’s unknown and uncertain.

A look at Google’s mission brings this reality into sharp relief. They seek to create the “perfect search engine,” which they define as “[something that] understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” Essentially, they are trying to create an artificial intelligence that is fully conversant with humans’ real intelligence. However, when things must be understood “exactly,” there is little space for ambiguity, and I can already see this “philosophy” of the Internet changing the way newer generations interact with material.

Few things are more frustrating to me than watching my mom try to find a single fact, such as someone’s contact information, using her MacBook (and I’m not just saying this because I’m a PC user). Whenever she opens a page, she combs through it thoroughly, examining each incidental ad and link. I can barely prevent myself from reaching over and hitting Ctrl+F, or scrolling straight to the bottom, where the contact information is probably listed. I’m able to zoom in and pick out a piece of information very quickly, but, in order to do so, I put on blinders. This talent is quite common among our generation: We are able to extract exactly what we want, but that’s really all we get.

Google Glass heralds an unprecedented, almost totalizing merger of the real world and the digital, of artificial intelligence and human thought. But what else does it portend? Will we be reduced to shambling robots, gorging ourselves on a constant influx of information, or will our ability to reason emerge triumphant, more purified by the use of technology? Glass itself does not seem to promise anything quite so dramatic. What we will see, though, is a slow, subtle change in the way we think, for better or for worse.

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

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.

with a number of campus offices relevant to the role of the Liaison.

As Liaison, I would work to create a culture of civic engagement on campus by bringing community service RSOs together for quarterly meetings, so that they can collaborate and learn from each other on how to better accomplish their goals and involve more students in the work that they are doing. I would take concrete steps to establish bodies, such as advisory committees, for frequent and substantive dialogue between the administration, students, and community stakeholders regarding controversial campus and community issues aimed at producing some tangible result or set of recommendations. I would push for the establishment of a Hyde Park Herald readership program, modeled after the New York Times readership program that we currently enjoy. I would also hold regular meetings with local elected officials and their staff in order to get student voices and concerns heard by the people who represent them.

I don’t mean for this piece to be an affront to Dong or to in any way diminish the work that she has done this year as a class of 2016 representative. Our College Council members rarely get the thanks they deserve for the work that they do on our behalf. But, given Dong’s stated goals, it seems to me to make more sense for her to continue her work in College Council on these issues, which are of great concern to her constituents.

The Community and Government Liaison has a very specific (and mostly behind-the-scenes) role to fill, which for better or for worse doesn’t focus much on student services. I’m committed to serving this university and the community to the best of my ability, and I hope you’ll consider writing in Tyler Kissinger for Community and Government Liaison.

—Tyler Kissinger, class of 2016

Awkward moments only arise for those who are social to begin with AWKWARD continued from page 5 “there are plenty of normal people here, but if you only knew how many awkward situations I find myself in on practically a daily basis, you wouldn’t be so confident in counting me among them!” If so, consider this nifty little paradox—the more socially outgoing you are, the more likely you are in general to run into life’s delightful little awkward moments. The classic lost-in-translation awkward moments only happen to people who go out of their way to meet people who are different from them. You’re not going to awkwardly send a text to the wrong person if you’re not texting people to begin with. That late-night moment when you think it would be a good idea to offer to walk a girl home, but you don’t want to sound chivalrous or sound like you’re enforcing gender stereotypes? Yeah, it only happens if you’re meeting new people late at night.

In case you’re still not convinced, let me try to address your case individually.

To the person who hasn’t showered in a week: We were planning on inviting you to a pity party to lament your hopelessly irreparable awkwardness, but then we realized how bad you smell. Get over yourself, and take a shower while you’re at it.

To the Reg-dweller that no one ever sees: The word you’re looking for is “asocial,” not awkward.

Some people have legitimate reasons to eschew social contact.

To the social iconoclast: High five, dude! So many aspects of what we hold to be perfectly normal “social conventions” are glaringly vapid, racist, or sexist. Kudos for defying them whenever possible.

Tyler Lutz is a fourth-year in the College majoring in physics and English.

ARTS

Heartlandia APRIL 30, 2013

Renaissance Society gets a rise out of Pope.L’s new exhibit Alice Bucknell Arts Editor Forlesen, the William Pope.L show at the Renaissance Society that opened last Sunday, capitalizes on our obsessive need to categorize and to make sense of the world around us, and it does this by consistently not making sense. Architecturally, the show is sort of an impossibly

FORLESEN Renaissance Society Through June 23

convoluted maze, and sort of a very basic grid, and therefore neither. We enter in, we see that peeling ketchup-smeared wall and then smell it (or is it the other way around?), and we think, immediately, something along the lines of, “What the fuck?” The mental sirens go off, the push-pull dynamic of simultaneous repulsion and curiosity kicks in, and we watch ourselves moving toward that spongy, fleshy surface, all the while wishing we weren’t.

Then there’s the art, which—unsurprisingly—occupies an even more ambiguous space in the room. Some of it, like “Ellipsis,” floats right above your head. Some of it covers real windows in the room; some covers constructed windows on constructed walls. Some of it is paired with the parallel strips of constructed walls perpendicular to the entrance—the skin-like “Curtain” and plastic-coated “Lense”—and the traditional heavyweight presentation of art-on-wall is probably at first a relief to some in its relative familiarity. However, the drawings themselves, collectively titled “skin set drawings: The space between the letters,” are not so conceptually concise. What’s depicted is mostly obvious: letters, zoomed in, placed near enough to the edges of each piece of paper to prevent the letter from being fully seen or distinguishable.

We know it’s a letter, but a lowercase “k” might well be an uppercase “R” from the waist down. Who’s to say, and does it even matter?

What’s drawn or painted becomes difficult to separate from the materials used to

H U N G E R

render it. Is a coffee spill just a coffee spill, or is it a painting of a coffee spill using spilled coffee as a medium?

Self-referentiality is a driving concept in Pope.L’s work— particularly, as he revealed at his artist’s talk on Sunday, in terms of the space that is created when an object pulls back from the outside world and turns inward instead. When context is abandoned, connotations become abstract and disintegrate away from the thing in front of you, so that suddenly the thing becomes hyper-organic. Its significance moves into the realm of time, and into how the object engages with and lives through whatever interacts with it. It becomes soft and sticky, clinging to whatever reaches out to it. It bites down and fills in the space it can. “What’s filling this hole?” Pope.L asked the assembled audience, which was full of artists, students, and academics. Whatever gets close enough to fall in, it would seem.

Here, the relationship between wall and art isn’t as clear-cut as traditionally maintained. Forlesen is working in an alternate way.

If you’ve ever wanted to sneak into the Renaissance Society, now’s your chance.

This window, covered by red felt, will remain open for the duration of the exhibit.

COURTESY OF THE RENAISSANCE SOCIETY

The wall becomes its own art object, an engaging force that extends beyond itself by relating only to itself. It is simultaneously an autonomous body and an anonymous one: Materially, it is totally opaque.

It stinks, and the smell is undeniably known, yet impossible to pin down. It looks like skin, and the peeling bits and pieces on the floor are both

familiar and unfamiliar and kind of—pitiable?

Skirt around the right side of this structure and you’ll be confronted crotch-first by an upturned wooden sculpture of a body waist-down, legs akimbo, with audio spilling out of its groin and red paint smeared on its behind. Take a few minutes to adjust to the “DuBois Machine” and

continue around the back of “Quarter Shape (penis),” the bunker-like structure, to enter through a teal curtain. The smell is pungent. At the head of the structure’s interior space is “Unfallen,” a 17-minute video piece made from pornos bought from a shop in Maine.

In the warm, dark, enclosed space, the audio in its distorPOPE.L continued on page 8

S T R I K E

One of these wings (is not like the others) Iliya Gutin Senior Arts Staff This one goes out to all the lovely angel investors and venture capitalists in the audience tonight, itching to spread your seed funding all over some hot and heavy young start-up.

RICKSHAW REPUBLIC 2312 North Lincoln Avenue Average dish: $10

Indonesian fried rice, one of Rickshaw Republic’s most popular dishes, comes with tomato, cucumber, egg, and those crazy prawn chips!

COURTESY OF RICKSHAW REPUBLIC

I bet your IPO is growing already, no little blue pill necessary. And now that I have your attention and wallet (at least, I hope that’s your wallet), let’s get down to some real business…Indonesian-themed restaurant, baby! C’mon, hear me out. I call it Water Buffalo Wild Wings, and it may or may not be loosely based off a recent meal I had at Rickshaw Republic in Lincoln Park.

Though Rickshaw lurks in the shadow of the colossal parking complex across the street, step inside and find yourself immersed in a festive oasis of equal parts Indonesian pride and kitsch. Overcompensation, but it works. At WBWW, we will brazenly steal this motif. Nay, we will elevate it. There will be no TVs, and “the game” will never be on. No one will soil their jerseys while attempting to eat 12 atomic chicken appendages. Instead, there will only be a disembodied wall of exotic masks facing an equally disembodied assortment of rice hats, just as at Rickshaw.

But WBWW won’t stop there: Every order of wings will be presented in a simple red basket, riding atop General Kurtz’s shiny pate as he slowly emerges from the individual tableside cesspools. In his mouth is a moist towelette for your convenience. It’s gonna be awesome.

What’s so special about these wings anyway? I mean, who really needs over 20 different sauces, glazes, and levels of colonscorching heat? Four monstrous limbs to an order, I doubt I would survive a back-alley encounter with whatever chickens these wings came from. They emerge from the deep fryer cragg y and glistening, terrifying even, with a crust the likes of which I have never seen, nor thought possible.

It tastes like a Chopped mystery basket where fortune cookies were turned into breading, or a Peking duck–style preparation where the skin was somehow separated, crisped and then fried just because it seemed like a good idea. It is a complete meal wrapped around a bone: appetizer, entrée, and dessert all at once. In fact, I already see the money pouring in, like the sticky ginger sauce that coats these wings and, giv’SHAW continued on page 8

THE CHICAGO MAROON | ARTS | April 30, 2013

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With his latest collection, Sedaris finds his readers in fine feather Sarah Tarabey Arts Contributor In his latest work, David Sedaris takes readers on a snapshot journey through his life, from memories of his cluttered past to the present day.

It is along this unconventional route—one which comes to span many continents, ranging from Raleigh, North Carolina’s south side to a taxidermist’s shop in England— that he offers reflections upon changing realities, both societal and personal, and ultimately provides insight into the very nature of what works to divide us while still holding us firmly together. In similar dualistic fashion, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls is teeming with a range of humor; Sedaris’s sharp wit is suffused with not a few jabs at himself.

In all, this collection of essays forms an amusing commentary with substance.

Sedaris, it seems, has been a few places; the odd jobs he has accrued over the years, and more recently his writing career, have taken him around the world. Thus, his cultural awareness—his ability to intuitively understand the nuances of peoples’ actions within and removed from a certain context—shines as one of the strengths of the work, a telling reminder that not everyone sees us as we see ourselves. His reflections on often absurd European-American relations are witty, quietly troubling, and laced with mild indignation. “I could have written on frosting and still they’d have asked me about Guantanamo, and my country’s refusal to sign the Kyoto Accords,” he writes. His humor always

balances out. Particularly entertaining is his explanation of the French reaction to Obama’s election in 2008: They were overjoyed that the Americans finally picked a candidate of whom they approved. His discussion of uniquely European idiosyncrasies is likely to resonate with an American audience, even if it does not necessarily agree with his liberal stance in general.

However, as the book continues, it is most notable for its sensitive, affected tone, which is still sarcastic and bitter. Here, Sedaris becomes less the comedian and more the world traveler with a message, and one worthy of attention.

Most memorable in this sense is his discussion of a trip to China, and his experience of its standard of living. The result is a collection of striking thoughts wrapped up in ironic attire. “My trip reminded me that we are all just animals, that stuff comes out of every hole we have, no matter where we live or how much money we’ve got,” he remarks. “On some level we all know this and manage, quite pleasantly, to shove it toward the back of our minds.” He sometimes verges on the too real; an especially explicit rendering of a rooster being hacked to pieces before his very eyes is unappetizing. But worth it, nonetheless. For Sedaris, ever the animal lover, offsets these blunt forays with soft ventures into nature: His charming encounters with an Australian kookaburra (the “gym teacher” of the bird kingdom, according to Sedaris) and a sea turtle both showcase a perfectly lighthearted and quirky tone.

DoVA professor’s first solo Chicago exhibit engrosses POPE.L continued from page 7 tion and maximized volume shakes the structure with a buzzing violence that almost hurts. You have no idea what’s going on, and these voices don’t sound human, but somehow they are. While you’re floundering in uncomfortable uncertainty, meaning is congealing among all the bodies in the room.

Pope.L’s work is smart in its delicate overlaying of its own conceptual subtlety with a constructed counterpart that loudly assaults the viewer. The cloak is magnificent; it has no stitches. While we’re busying ourselves with getting over that initial impact of rancid smell, of groin speakerphone, and of boorish porno moans, the art lets go of its spiky armor and sweetly, almost hilariously, unravels itself at our feet. It’s gross and oddly becoming at the same time. We don’t know what to think, so we engage with our senses instead. We humanize these weird objects and they absorb our own human presence—in all our perfumed, nail-biting, teeter-tottering glory—to become anti-monuments in their own right. Pretty soon you can’t tell one pack of bodies from the other. And that’s the point.

Yet he seems most at home discussing himself, especially his childhood. Indeed, his continual comparison between rearing practices from 50 years ago and today begets food for thought. However, this “me generation” argument is a little tired, and has been explored long enough for it to have lost some of its original salience.

Having iterated it several times over, he seems to return to it more for comedic effect than anything else.

More thought-provoking, though, are the difficulties inherent in his family dynamics: an unsympathetic, demanding father; an accommodating, perhaps overly complacent, mother; and five rambunctious siblings—all under the guise of an ideal ’60s middleclass family. It begs the question: Can we ever really know who we are (or who we believe ourselves to be) when surrounded by others? When within a certain set of customs? Sedaris seems to have accepted his past, yet a certain haunting self-disapproval seems to linger throughout his essays, adding a definitively somber, modest tinge to his stories, and more fundamentally, to his characteristic humor—even, to an extent, defining it. It is within the tales of his childhood foibles and reveries that the story is most touching and nostalgic. The laughs he elicits are of a reminiscent flavor. Because those sweet memories are experienced in our youth, we shall never again return to them in just the same way.

But why explore diabetes with owls? The secret is not divulged the way one would

David Sedaris’s latest book finds the author revisiting themes he has previously explored, like cross-cultural interaction, though they feel no less relevant.

COURTESY OF LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY

expect; there really is no explicit answer, but Sedaris hints at it throughout, in his own peculiar manner. He

does know a thing or two about people, after all, and he seems to be counting on that knowledge for the answers to

emerge. His charming autobiographical ruminations serve as foundations for the reader’s own introspective ventures.

At Rickshaw, “embrace the glorious cacophony...that is the essence of Indonesian cuisine” ’SHAW continued from page 7 en a millennia or two or a thousand, could conceivably preserve them like mosquitoes in amber.

Good luck with the rest of your meal, though, as these wings will endow you with the mystical power of the fat ass touch, with which anything your fingers come into contact with instantly adheres like an advanced chemical compound. You will repeatedly superglue yourself to yourself.

So make sure to change cutlery early and often, or else risk missing out on some of the more traditional Indonesian dishes that Rickshaw (and the soon-to-beopened WBWW, amirite guys?) has to offer. The chicken satay is an example of the beautiful simplicity of skewered street food.

The meat is surprisingly tender, and no one here is skimping on the peanut sauce. It’s incredibly creamy, and predominantly nutty, but I’ll be damned if this isn’t peanut butter—which is my rationale for digging into it with a spoon. Save some of the sauce for the Martabak, a kind of beef, egg, and onion hot pocket that seems to exist in one form or another on every corner of the earth. The

crispy pancake shell is delicate, the filling within hearty.

In case you think Rickshaw is only capable of serving fine foreign finger fare, rest assured that the kitchen is capable of digging deep down into its Indonesian roots and reemerging with a batch of old school classics.

There’s the Babi Kecap, a mix of pork belly and shiitakes stewed into tender oblivion by way of a sweet and salty soy sauce. It’s fantastic, because pork belly is inherently fantastic regardless of preparation, but surprisingly bland when mixed with more than two or three grains of rice. Fortunately the Batagor, fried fish and shrimp “dumplings,” fare better. While they are not so much dumplings as starch bombs attached to blocks of tofu, the whole affair turns decidedly gluttonous with the addition of even more peanut sauce to bind it together. The best bites are equal part fishy and peanut-y, with neither flavor dominating ; the worst are heavy, sauce-laden chunks that seem to establish residence in your digestive tract. It’s not a good idea to let it get too cold, a tragic fate I

endured on account of my even more tragic food greed.

If for some bizarre, inexplicable, unfathomable reason, WBWW fails to receive adequate initial funding (which I doubt, given the flawless business plan I just laid out), there is an equally masterful backup plan in place.

It’s a more low-key, small-scale, fast-casual operation, built exclusively to serve the Nasi Lemak I had at Rickshaw. Pick your protein Chipotle-style, beef rendang or chicken curry, and what appears is a small volcano of coconut rice surrounded by small villages of accoutrements: some fried anchovies with peanuts, some curried squash and zucchini, ribbons of omelet, shrimp crackers, and Sriracha’s spicier cousin, Sambal. It’s a nice play on mix-and-match—a condiment bar is built into the plate. Just throw all the ingredients inside a crunchy shrimp chip, and let the flavors coalesce. Don’t bother hunting for any trace of nuance; embrace the glorious cacophony that captures the confounding mix of spicy, sweet, salty, and intensely savory that is the essence of Indonesian cuisine.

But you gotta act fast. This opportunity will not last long.

As an added bonus, if you wire millions of dollars into my bank account within the next 15 minutes, enjoy a complimentary silk-embroidered hand towel to ensure your wing-eating experience does not come at the expense of your personal style.

Water Buffalo Wild Wings: I’m telling you, man, it’s the next Pets.com, Myspace, and Worldcom combined. Even better, it’s all of those rolled into one, deep-fried, and doused in sweet, sweet sauce. A bit like Rickshaw Republic. Beneath that thick layer of crust, there might not be an overabundance of substance, or a particularly mindblowing flavor experience. But the presentation is unique and unexpected, and how often can you claim to have enjoyed an authentic Indonesian dinner?

That’s a selling point right then and there. If themed restaurants get one thing right, it’s that the “experience” of a meal can trump all other aspects, including the food. Fortunately, Rickshaw manages to successfully stake a claim in both realms.

THE CHICAGO MAROON | ARTS | April 30, 2013

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Art cache proves there’s life in business school, after all Marika Van Laan Arts Contributor For your typical art-loving UChicago student, the Booth School of Business is often nothing more than the building on the way to Doc Films. Some might even describe it as the evil capitalist factory tearing at the soul of the University and occasionally supplementing meager student incomes with its Decision Research Lab studies.

Needless to say, visual arts majors and aspiring investment bankers have starkly different attitudes toward this institution, which is often associated with Milton Friedman and Ronald Coase. Yet both groups can usually agree that Booth is not a place for fine artists.

When looking for art on campus, one usually heads to the Renaissance Society or scours the Logan Center for an interesting installation, not the School of Business. Yet in reality, Booth is home to an impressive stockpile of modern paintings, collages, sculptures, and everything in between. The size and breadth of this collection dwarfs the amount of contemporary works at the Smart Museum, making this assortment the largest concentration of modern art on campus.

Walking into this impressive building, a host of distractions absorb the attention of its occupants.

The high glass ceilings prompt many visitors to crane their necks upward and maybe collide with a

bustling crowd of employees and students hurrying off to a class or a meeting. Those not rushing around are fixated on their MacBooks, quickly finishing up a paper. It seems that most do not realize they are surrounded by a world class art collection.

The works of art expertly blend into the layout of the building, quietly complementing the flow and design while inserting beauty into the space. In short, the collection is an art museum hidden in plain view.

However, the works do not stop on the first floor. You can spend hours wandering the halls, offices, and conference rooms, discovering an endless supply of visual delights.

The works range from small prints of black-and-white photography to the thought-provoking neon lettering of Jeppe Hein’s installation which asks passersby, “Why are you here and not somewhere else?”

Why is it that Booth came to possess so many works? Really, this phenomenon presents the natural relationship that has existed for millennia between great art and great wealth. Each year Booth sets aside a portion of its endowment purely for the purpose of acquiring new works. The school even has a committee of appointed curators that carefully select installations of obscure up-and-coming artists and commissions established artists to fill the space. Some of the committee members are Booth professors.

Originally the collection aimed to reflect the nature of the school

Gabriel Hartley’s Eyes (2011) was purchased with funds set aside specifically for the acquisition of “conceptually challenging” pieces of contemporary art meant to “raise important questions.”

EMMA BRODER | THE CHICAGO MAROON

and thus selected works related somehow to industry and commerce. However, that is a thing of the past, as the curators now seek to acquire whatever strikes their fancy. Such selections could range from the collages of the provocative Cairo-based Anna Boghiguian or Giuseppe Penone’s super modern tree-like sculpture, “Ideas of Stone,” which occupies the build-

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ing’s southern lawn.

Overall, this impressive collection is indeed a gem for the University and sadly goes unnoticed by far too many students. Apparently, one of the major threats to the pieces is the backpacks and coffee cups of negligent students who don’t realize they are working around priceless works of art. This interesting combination of setting and content

should open our eyes. We access these spectacular displays of culture and often take them for granted.

Finally, the stark contrast between this institution’s reputation and the beauty of its art conveys how business and fine art are not mortal enemies. In fact, these two worlds have a healthy symbiotic relationship, which presents itself beautifully under the glass arches of Booth.

10

THE CHICAGO MAROON | SPORTS | April 30, 2013

After split with Vikings, seniors finish strong against Beloit Softball

Second-year Emily Ashbridge pitches against Wheaton College in a game last week.

TIFFANY TAN | THE CHICAGO MAROON

Tatiana Fields Associate Sports Editor After a tough season of many close wins and losses, the South Siders finished off strong in their final stretch.

In a doubleheader at North Park (19–11) this Friday, the Maroons (17–15) bounced back for a decisive win in their second game after suffering a shutout loss in their first. Chicago then swept its final doubleheader against Beloit (7–29) at home, limiting the Buccaneers to one run in both games.

In their penultimate doubleheader of the season, the Maroons took on North Park on the road. The hosts held strong defensively throughout the game, with pitcher Casey Latal spinning a no-hitter. Their offense matched the effort with an RBI single and a steal of home plate in the second inning and an additional run off an error in the sixth, ending the game at 3–0.

North Park’s strong defense held Chicago to a shutout, while Chicago’s pitching contained North Park’s lead to just three runs. Fourth-year starting pitcher Kim Cygan threw six innings, giving up eight hits and recording five strikeouts. At the culmination of her career as a Maroon, Cygan couldn’t praise her team enough.

“It is very bittersweet that I am wrapping up my senior season, but I couldn’t have asked for a better

team to play with or better coaches to play for during my last season, and I know [fellow fourthyears] Vicky [Tomaka] and Jacqueline [Ryan] would agree,” Cygan said. “We are hoping to finish up the season on a high note.”

The team took a step in the right direction in its second game against North Park. Chicago scored four runs in the third with an RBI by fourth-year Jacqueline Ryan, a two-run single by first-year Kristin Lopez, and a single down the right field line by third-year Julia Covello to score the fourth run.

The Vikings countered with two unearned runs in the third inning, shortening the Maroons’ lead to 4–2. After these runs, the Maroons shut down North Park’s offense, while adding to their lead with one run each in the fourth, fifth, and sixth innings. First-year Jordan Poole pitched most of the game for Chicago and threw six innings with five hits and four strikeouts.

“In the second game against North Park, we were able to be aggressive with our base running and our approach at the plate,” head coach Ruth Kmak said. “We hit together as a team with execution and timely hits.”

For their final games of the season, the Maroons had a strong showing on their home field and blew out Beloit 10–0. The first victory featured a rare double-digits win, as well as a shutout of the Buccaneers. Cygan pitched for the South Siders

and ended her career with an impressive no-hitter with 11 strikeouts on Senior Day. Ryan also had a strong performance for her last home game, with three RBIs and three hits.

The second game was more of the same, as the South Siders won 12–1. First-year Jordan Poole took the pitching reins from Cygan, and pitched for six innings with seven strikeouts.

The Buccaneers got the first run of the game, but couldn’t touch the scoreboard for the remainder of the day. The Maroons scored one run each in the second and fourth, and then added two more runs in the fifth. Though the Maroons were already ahead 4–1 going at the end of the fifth, a sixth inning slugfest, highlighted

by Covello’s grand slam, put the result beyond doubt, and ran the score up to 12–1.

Looking back on the season, which has been inconsistent overall, the South Siders have some regrets. But Cygan is confident that she is leaving behind a program in good shape and has high hopes for the future of this team.

“Even though we did not produce as many wins as we may have liked, there have been many great moments throughout the season that are promising for the future of Chicago softball,” she said. “All of our first-years are having great seasons, and I am excited to see them continue to progress in what are sure to be awesome careers.”

O’Connor’s gem highlights weekend splits Baseball Russell Mendelson Sports Contributor After a long weekend of play, the Maroons came out even, splitting two doubleheaders against Wash U. Chicago (18–11) ended last week on a sour note after a walk-off loss to Elmhurst (16–16) that was highlighted by some sloppy fielding and shaky pitching for the Maroons. That was not the case this weekend, however, as the South Siders committed only three errors in their four games.

Maroon pitching was able to stifle Wash U’s (22–14) hitters for the most part this weekend. Chicago kept scoring low on Saturday in a 4–1 win and a 3–0 loss, but hit a minor road bump on Sunday, losing 10–5 before rallying back with a 2–1 victory in the second game.

Fourth-year right-hander Matt O’Connor pitched masterfully in the first game, going the distance. He allowed five hits and an unearned run, while striking out four and walking only one batter.

“I was able to work low in the zone, inside and outside, and to stay ahead of the count, which allowed my off-speed stuff to be effective,” O’Connor said.

“My catcher, [fourth-year] Tony Logli, called a great game behind the plate as usual, which helped to keep hitters off

balance. We had a great day on defense all around. My infield made some tough plays to keep runners off the bases. It always helps to know that your team is going to make plays behind you.”

The scoring opened up in the third for Chicago as three runs came across in the inning, all unearned.

Fourth-year outfielder Ben Bullock reached second on a throwing error to lead off the inning and advanced to third on a sacrifice bunt by fourth-year infielder Steven Schwabe. Bullock scored on a groundout from fourth-year outfielder Jack Cinoman. The final two runs of the inning came on RBI hits by fourthyear infielder J.R. Lopez and third-year outfielder Brett Huff. Cinoman collected the final RBI for Chicago with a triple in the fourth, plating Schwabe.

In Saturday’s second game, Wash U starter Dom Quaranta shut out the Maroons, en route to earning his sixth win of the year. Lopez added another double to his collection in the fifth for Chicago’s only extra-base hit of the game.

“You have to give credit to the opposing pitcher,” O’Connor said. “I thought that he threw a great game as well. We also had a lot of hard hit balls that just didn’t find holes, but that’s just how the game is.”

Sunday’s first game did not fit the weekend’s low scoring trend as Wash U hit

its way to a 10–5 win. Third-year Alex Terry took the loss for Chicago, surrendering six runs in two innings to the Bears.

Chicago capped off the weekend with a hard-earned 2–1 victory.

First-year Lucas Friss impressed while allowing one run on six hits in five innings of work.

“To be a first-year and pitch in a game on such a high stage was very impressive.

It’s a sign of good things to come from him,” said Cinoman.

Chicago scraped together two runs in the game, scoring its first on an RBI single by Cinoman in the first. The second run came in the bottom of the sixth. Lopez reached first on a throwing error and took second on Huff ’s sacrifice bunt. Lopez then took third on a wild pitch and scored on another wild pitch, putting Chicago ahead for good.

Third-year pitcher Will Katzka closed out the game with two scoreless innings of relief.

“Katzka did a great job closing out the final game. He came into a tough situation and got out of the jam giving us a chance to win the ball game,” Cinoman said.

The Maroons hit the road today for their third doubleheader in a row against North Central and travel to Wheaton, IL on Wednesday to face the Thunder. The first game against North Central is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. and the second is slated for 6 p.m.

Darmiento: “The team is focused on getting ready for Nationals” TRACK continued from back Of the nine titles brought back by the Maroons, only three were won by graduating seniors. Only fourthyear Kayla McDonald, who won the 800-meter run in 2:14.94, and fellow fourth-year Dee Brizzolara, who won both the 100 and 200-meter dashes with times of 10.78 and 21.73 respectively, will be gone next year. The women’s 4x800 relay that also took first in 19:17.44 was a mixture of upperclassmen and underclassmen.

The future of the team looks even better. Of the five remaining events, four first-years and one second-year emerged victorious. Darmiento placed first in the 110-meter hurdles with a time of 15.54. First-year Nkemdilim Nwaokolo continued her dominance of throwing events, coming in first in both the shot put (11.80m) and the discus (39.66m).

Nwaokolo’s second place finish in the hammer throw came only to second-year South Sider Kelly Wood, who recorded a personal best of 44.31m—a PR by over 4m. First-year M ichael Bennett won his second UAA championship of the year, shattering the UAA and school records with his height of 4.81m.

“Both teams did amazing over the weekend,” Nwaokolo said. “Next year, I hope to not let my bad attitude get the best of me. I’m kind of a sore loser. As a team, we would love to win conference next year.”

The young success bodes well for the Maroons. However, this season still has just over three more weeks left before the Maroons can start gunning for next year’s conference championship. The Division III National Championship is just under a month away.

“The team is focused on getting ready for nationals. [We are] preparing those who are already in the running and trying to qualify for those who are close,” Darmiento said.

Last year, the Maroons only qualified two South Siders to the national meet.

The Maroons’ vast array of talent has left them pondering not who will qualify to nationals, but how many. They have nine top 25 rankings across all events as of today. This does not include numerous other South Siders who are within striking distance of a qualifying time. For example, the men’s 4x100 trails the top 10 by less than a second.

“The team feels good. There are a bunch of us who are ranked high for this year’s outdoor national championship.

I guess we’re all excited to see how they do,” Nwaokolo said.

The Maroons will have to continue to improve if they want to qualify the maximum number of athletes to nationals. However, the short remainder of the season does not lend itself to vast improvements.

“We just plan on continuing training for the rest of the season, hopefully the weather will just hold up so we can get quality practices in,” Darmiento said.

The next meet for Chicago will be the North Central Dr. Keeler Invitational, which is in two weeks. After that, the Maroons will repeat the trip to North Central for the Last Chance meet.

These are the only two meets standing between the Maroons and the National Championship.

“The team needs to continue to practice like we did the week prior to conference, like there is something always on the line,” Nwaokolo said.

THE CHICAGO MAROON | SPORTS | April 30, 2013

11

South Siders down Bears to take third place at conference Women’s Tennis Alexander Sotiropoulos Senior Sports Staff Redemption sure is sweet.

After losing to Wash U on April 13, the Maroons came back with a vengeance at the UAA Championships in Orlando, FL. On Saturday, Chicago edged the Bears 6–3 in the third-place match after losing to Emory 9–0 in Friday’s semifinal.

“I’m very proud of our thirdplace finish and the team’s effort all year long,” head coach Jay Tee said. “The girls have worked so hard all year.”

No. 7 Chicago had a daunting task heading into the semifinal against top seed No. 3 Emory.

“Realistically, we probably needed to win two of three doubles matches if we were going to have a chance to go against Emory in singles,” Tee said.

Chicago lost all three doubles matches and was swept in singles.

“I think we were all disappointed to lose, but at the same time, we had a great talk about where we want to get and how we’re going to get there,” Tee said. “We were also excited about the chance to play Wash U again and prove that we could compete better than we did last time.”

If Friday’s match against Emory was the toughest loss the Maroons have endured all season, Saturday’s win over Wash U was Chicago’s sweetest victory.

When the Maroons played the Bears in St. Louis, Wash U took two out of three doubles matches.

The exact opposite happened this time around.

Fourth-year Linden Li and second-year Kelsey McGillis won 8–4 at No. 2 doubles, while second-year Maggie Schumann and first-year Sruthi Ramaswami took an 8–3 victory at No. 3. Tee said he was especially impressed with Schumann’s attitude given that she has not played much throughout the season.

“It was tough for her to sit and watch most of the year, but when it was her time, she stepped up and won two huge matches with Sruthi [Ramaswami],” Tee said.

“Her attitude was infectious.”

Surprisingly, the lone Chicago loss in doubles came from the No. 1 tandem of second-year Megan Tang and first-year Helen Sdvizhkov (8–4), ending the pair’s 10-match winning streak.

“Megan and Helen got into a hole, and as hard as they tried to dig out of it, the other team wouldn’t let them,” Tee said. “They’ve been so solid all year that it’s a surprise when they lose, but we all still have absolute confidence in the both of them.”

With a 2–1 lead heading into singles, the Maroons needed three wins to clinch the team victory; two of those wins came easily.

Naturally, Tang cruised past Theresa Petraskova 6–1, 6–2 at No. 1. Li, having lost to Jamie Silverberg 6–2, 6–2 on April 13, defeated her Wash U opponent 6–0, 6–1. The Maroon attributes the turnaround to her confidence.

“Last time I played, I had a lot of doubt about my game,” Li said. “This time around, I

adjusted to the changes in my game and played [my] backhand slice with conviction.”

McGillis lost 6–4, 6–3 at No. 3, and first-year Stephanie Lee did not overcome a tight first set, getting edged out 7–5, 6–1.

With the Maroons up 4–3 and only two first-years left on the courts, Sdvizhkov (No. 3) and Ramaswami (No. 5), Chicago would have needed to pull out one third set win.

“I didn’t let the pressure of the situation get to me,” Ramaswami said. “I took it as an opportunity for me to step up and play my hardest for myself and my team.”

Ramaswami could not have asked for a better start to the crucial third-set, going up 4–1.

“Sruthi is every coach’s dream,” Tee said. “The bigger the point, the harder Sruthi hits.”

“I constructed points around my strengths and worked to take as many balls with my forehand as possible,” Ramaswami said.

“It was my mental attitude and energ y that got me game by game.”

Three games later, Ramaswami clinched the team win with a 6–3, 3–6, 6–2 victory.

Sdvizkhov made an impressive comeback down 2–4 in the third set to win 2–6, 7–5, 6–4.

With the win over Wash U, the Maroons will likely keep their No. 1 ranking in the Central Region and host Regionals of the NCAA tournament in two weeks.

Tee said he is proud of all that his team has accomplished thus far. But the season is not over yet.

“We’ve had long road trips, 6 a.m. practices, injuries, and a number of other distractions, but through it all, we’ve stayed a team

and gotten better every day,” Tee said. “We’re really looking forward to a good two weeks of practice before NCAAs.”

COURTESY OF UCHICAGO ATHLETICS

MATT O’CONNOR, BASEBALL Assistant coach Scott Budeselich: Matt O’Connor has the one quality that coaches take the most comfort in, and that is consistency. No matter what your talent level, being at or close to your best each time you get the ball is a special quality. His 12–4 career record shows the kind of impact he has made on this team over the past four seasons. Matt has developed a lot of confidence in himself as he has matured, and this has allowed him to reach his full potential on the field. Matt is a pretty shy young man, but he has the ability to be a leader on the mound. He maintains a calmness and a positive approach throughout adverse situations.

KRISTIN LOPEZ, SOFTBALL Head coach Ruth Kmak: Kristin is a first-year player on the softball team who has had a tremendous season for us so far. She is leading the team in virtually every offensive category, including batting average, runs, hits, triples, home runs, slugging percentage, on-base percentage (.512), and steals. She is also part of a fantastic double-play combination in our middle infield on defense that is on pace to have the most double plays recorded in the history of the program. Kristin is wellrespected by her teammates and is really beginning to come into her own as a leader on the infield. She started out very quiet, but her voice and confidence have increased in volume as the season has progressed.

COURTESY OF UCHICAGO ATHLETICS

motivation. The physicality of the sport belies the technical demand,” she said. “Yeah, you can really crank on an oar, but first you have to have the patience to learn the technique and develop the neuromuscular wiring to do all these little movements in fractions of seconds. It’s not something you jump into or do casually.”

After a very successful year that’s seen the women’s varsity, in particular, bag some big wins against teams like Northwestern and the University of Illinois, the South Siders have two major regattas left this season, the Dad Vail and the American Collegiate Rowing Association championships.

Brubaker is hoping that the team will sustain its strong form. “We’ve progressed so much faster than I anticipated,” she said.

“Consistency is our next big focus, but overall, this is a team that is maximizing its success.”

The weekend after next, the team will take five boats with them to the Dad Vail, including Glick in UChicago’s first sculling entry at the regatta. “The atmosphere there is borderline Olympic,” Glick said. “We’re excited to make more history for our program.”

COURTESY OF HANS GLICK

ATHLETES OF THE WEEK

Men and women prepare for Philadelphia’s Dad Vail Regatta CREW continued from back yourself seriously as athletes…we are serious about our training. I believe good team environments are trusting and respectful environments.”

She’s careful to respect, though, that this is the University of Chicago. “We always know that the athlete is a student here first and an athlete second. And we’d have it no other way.”

Her student-athletes are quick to cite the team as one of the biggest reasons that they’re willing to put in the time and the work; a quick glance at their Website’s photo gallery (which, frankly, is adorable) reveals an affectionate, tight-knit squad.

“What’s great about UChicago crew is that we’re technically two squads, men’s and women’s, but we function as one big team,” Glick said. “We practice together, travel together, and celebrate together. Our situation makes for an incredibly supportive team culture, which is something I’ve loved about UChicago crew since day one.”

That sort of culture is a huge part of what makes rowing unique, according to Brubaker.

“It’s a sport of paradoxes. It’s the ultimate team sport, and yet it requires so much internal

Second-year Megan Tang (left) and first-year Helen Sdvizhkov team up for a doubles match against Wheaton earlier this month.

SPORTS

IN QUOTES

“Whether it’s a free country or not, you should be free to act as you want to do as long as it’s not violent.”

—Metta World Peace on Jason Collins becoming the first openly gay player in any major American sport.

Maroons take third, grab nine golds at UAAs Track & Field Isaac Stern Sports Staff The Maroons put on a good show in the Big Apple this past weekend as they garnered nine gold medals at the UAA Conference meet.

Despite coming in third for both team championships, the South Siders managed to more than quadruple their UAA titles (two) from last year.

The team titles went to the men of Wash U (191) and women of Emory (209). After them, Carnegie Mellon’s men (177) and Wash U’s women (186) came in second. Chicago put up 122 points and 157 points on the men’s and women’s sides, respectively, to seal the third place finishes.

“The team feels OK right now,” first-year Michael Darmiento said. “I’m sure we all wanted to win, but we are a young team, and we know that we have a lot of work ahead of us.”

And Darmiento has a point.

TRACK continued on page 10

Second-year Kelly Wood competes in the hammer throw during last year’s Chicagoland Outdoor Championships.

COURTESY OF DAVE HILBERT

Chicago rebounds from first We’re gonna need a bigger boat: round tourney loss to finish fifth Crew team swells in popularity Club Sports Spotlight: Crew

Men’s Tennis Sam Zacher Associate Sports Editor The pizazz of sports comes from its unpredictable nature, which was on display at the UAAs this weekend.

The UAA Championships were unpredictably predictable as the No. 29 Maroons (14–5) arrived in Orlando seeded fifth and departed the Sunshine State with the same rank in the conference.

Chicago’s first competitor, the fourth-seeded No. 16 Carnegie Tartans (13–7), defeated the South Siders by a score of 7–2 on Friday.

“Carnegie came out more energetic and fired up. They wanted it more,” secondyear Ankur Bhargava said.

“They stepped on the court more aggressive than us and beat us from the start.

Getting down 3–0 after doubles really hurt us and it was nearly impossible to come back after that.”

The Maroons’ two points came from first-year Gordon Zhang (No. 5 singles) and fourth-year Harrison Abrams (No. 6 singles).

Carnegie went on to finish the tournament in fourth place after losing to second-seeded No. 13 Case (21–6) in the thirdplace match.

The South Siders put their losses behind them on Saturday against Rochester (13–11). The Maroons aggressively swatted the Yellowjackets into defeat, winning 8–1.

Second-year Deepak Sabada, the usual No. 1 singles player, didn’t play on the first court because of an injury, but the South Siders continued to play at a high level. Bhargava took over for Sabada and won 6–0, 6–3. Sabada still competed on the No. 1 doubles court.

“I stepped into his spot and was able to get a victory,” Bhargava said. “The rest of the team also moved up one spot and did very well.”

Feeling confident, Chicago found itself in the fifth place match against NYU (8–6) and won 6–3.

Sabada was back on his No. 1 singles court and was determined to lead his team to victory, winning 6–1, 6–2 in his singles match and 8–0 in his doubles match with third-year Krishna Ravella.

Third-year Alex Golovin, playing No. 2 singles, and third-year Neil Karandikar, playing No. 6 singles, also scored points for the Maroons. In addition, Chicago swept the doubles courts: After Sabada and Ravella came pairs of

Bhargava and Karadikar along with Zhang and firstyear Jake Crawford.

Although the South Siders went 2–1 in the tournament, the season finale did not exactly leave the team satisfied.

“We ended the season on somewhat of a low note in my opinion,” Bhargava said.

“We did end up winning our last two matches to get fifth, but we were essentially the best of the worst. Losing to Carnegie [in the] first round pretty much ended our season, so it was just a consolation prize to get fifth place.”

The only major surprise of the UAAs came in the championship match— third-seeded No. 14 Wash U (17–5) just beat out top seed No. 3 Emory (14–6) by a score of 5–4 on Sunday.

While Chicago wishes it could have shocked the conference in an unpredictable manner, a cliché comes in handy in salvaging the team’s performance: There’s always next season.

“Going into next year, we’re returning nearly all of our starters and have a great recruiting class coming in,” Ravella said. “So we’re optimistic about what could lie ahead.”

Derek Tsang Sports Staff Most days, the University’s crew club is up before the sun. By the time the student body has roused itself for 9 a.m. class, they’ve trekked eight miles north to Bridgeport and back, subjecting themselves to grueling workouts on the Chicago River that they’ll feel for at least the rest of the day.

Not only did the 57 students on the roster sign up for this, but they’re paying handsomely for the privilege.

“A common gripe against crew is that it undermines the ideal college experience with its insanely early practices, weekend regattas, and so on,” said the team’s president, thirdyear Hans Glick. “I’d argue the opposite. I’m a better, more focused student because of crew. In rowing, as in life, rowers know how to push themselves to meet goals and get better, period. And on top of that, I get to row through the heart of Chicago at sunrise on a weekly basis…it’s therapeutic like nobody’s business.”

The past few years have seen the club grow its

tradition, as more and more students find themselves agreeing with Glick’s convictions. The crew team has become one of the most visible clubs on campus, from the ergometers they plant outside Ratner each O-Week to the simple fact that most students know somebody who is or has been on the team.

This season in particular has seen an abundance of new members stay on the team. Not everybody decides to stick with the club through their offwater winter workouts in Henry Crown, but this year, 32 of the club’s members are in their first year of college crew, including 24 first-years.

“This is something that I consider to be one of our biggest successes this year; we’ve kept so many people with the team,” said Trish Brubaker, who joined the team this year as head coach after eight medalfilled years coaching at Lafayette College.

Brubaker has the club, despite its lack of varsity status with the University, as competitive as it’s ever been. Founded in 1976, UChicago crew has recently made a habit of success, medaling at

the Head of the Charles for the first time in 2003 and winning several other medals since. The squad, in 2011, made their first ever trip abroad to compete at the La 25ème Traversée de Paris.

The team organizes and funds almost everything itself. “The amount of preparation that goes into arranging a week of practice or attending a single regatta, much less putting together an entire season, is pretty staggering,” Glick said.

“But at the end of the day, knowing that your work off the water has helped you and your teammates succeed on the water is an awesome feeling.”

Last year, the club reached a new high, winning its first varsity gold medal through its Men’s Lightweight 4+ at the Dad Vail Regatta, a national meet that features over 100 crews.

“We want to win. We want to be competitive at the national level,” said Brubaker, who’s cultivated the team’s culture with those goals in mind.

“Being competitive at that level starts with training at that level and taking CREW continued on page 11