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VOLUME 121

The International Man of Puppets

UAA arrives in Hyde Park

ISSUE 12

» Page 7

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CHICAGOMAROON.COM

Sawa’s stories return to campus

Volleyball hosts UAA Championship.

NOVEMBER 6, 2009

CHICAGO

AROON

The student newspaper of the University of Chicago since 1892

HEALTH CARE

Cook County may cut care at local hospital Review board seeks to shift inpatients from Provident Hospital

By Brittany Birberick News Staff Th e C o o k C o u n t y H o s p i t a l Board is developing plans to end inpatient care at Provident Hospital, which provides medical services to South Siders in need. If the plan moves forward, Provident would send its inpatients to local hospitals, like the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC), months after UCMC administrators proposed sending patients to Provident.

Located on the northwest c o r n e r o f Wa s h i n g t o n P a r k , Provident would focus on outpatient and preventative care services if the plan, which faces strong opposition from the community, is approved.

The Board plans for local hospitals, including the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC), to take in Provident’s patients.

If those hospitals aren’t able to accommodate the influx, Provident will retain its inpatient care.

Opponents of the plan believe the decision to transfer inpatients to the UCMC is unrealistic, given that the University had plans of its own to send patients to the nearby public hospital this summer. UCMC considered partially staffing and investing $20 million in Provident in June, the largest planned investment in the Urban Health Initiative. The Initiative hopes to find permanent “medical homes” for South Side residents at community hospitals and clinics, freeing UCMC doctors to focus on more complicated cases.

“Many of the great medical centers around the country have

The weaving’s on the wall

F

ourth-year Aaron Trent observes panels from the AIDS Memorial Quilt, now on display at Rockefeller Chapel. The full quilt covers more than 29 acres.

CAMILLE VAN HORNE/MAROON

PROVIDENT continued on page 3

CAMPUS LIFE

ADMINISTRATION

salary South Campus convenience store struggles Zimmer’s shy of $1 million

By Burke Frank Associate News Editor

Ajeenah Johnson, an employee at the new South Campus C-Store, bags a customer’s purchase.

JEREMY MARTIN/MAROON

The South Campus Café and Convenience (C-Store) is facing unexpectedly slow business this quarter, an administrator said, despite its location on the most densely populated block on campus. Few are visiting the store, due to poor visibility and competition from the all-you-can-eat South Campus Dining Hall yards away.

Richard Mason, director of operations and communications for housing and dining services, said it was still too early to accurately gauge the performance of the shop, but some employees doubted it could sustain such slow business.

“Not too many people even know that this store exists,” said a cashier at C-Store. The employee, who requested anonymity because she feared management would discipline her for speaking with the press, said weekends are slowest, and estimates that only 15 customers come through the café on a typical Sunday afternoon.

Mason confirmed the café was only generating 60 to 70 percent of the number of transactions that campus dining services had originally expected.

“If it becomes self-sustaining, that’ll be a success,” he said.

Mason said there is “more significant marketing to be done,” but there are no plans to alter hours, much less close the shop, he said.

Roger Parker, a supervisor at the C-Store, confirmed that business is slowest during the day. But he emphasized that peak hours come later in the evening, between 5 p.m. and midnight, and increased traffic means word is spreading.

C-STORE continued on page 2

in 2007–8 fiscal year

By Michael Lipkin News Editor President Robert Zimmer is almost a million dollar man.

According to tax records g a t h e r e d b y Th e C h r o n i c l e o f Higher Education, Zimmer made $927,814 over the 2007–8 fiscal year, the most recent year for which data was available. The Chronicle published salaries and benefit packages from 419 colleges and universities as part of their annual report on academic salaries.

Zimmer was the 27th highest-paid president on the list, which included 2 2 executives making over a million dollars.

The highest paid president was

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Shirley Ann Jackson, who made $1,598,247.

While the average university president’s pay increased 6.5 percent since last year, Zimmer’s fell slightly. His salary got a slight bump of $2,000, but his benefits package fell from about $440,000 to $424,000.

University spokesman Jeremy Manier s aid that the package includes deferred compensation, or a part of Zimmer’s salary that he can only draw from sometime in the future.

“Many organizations offer such packages as a way to retain presidents, who have financial incentives to stay with the organization and

ZIMMER continued on page 3

DISCOURSE

Panel of diplomats revisits 1989 revolutions

By Sonia Hinson News Staff Consuls from Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Austria met at the I-House Wednesday to discuss their experiences of the end of Communist rule in the Soviet Bloc. The event, “With Immediate Effect: the Events of 1989 Revisted,” was part of the Center for International Studies’ special series on the revolutions of 1989.

“Twenty-five years ago, few would imagine that we would be here in Chicago with representatives

from Germany, Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland speaking freely about uniting Europe,” Hungary’s Istavan Mezei said.

The panel’s moderator, sociology professor Andreas Glaeser, said that while it is evident today that socialism did not work in Europe, for citizens of the Soviet Bloc, socialism “was forever until it was no more.”

The panelists agreed that, at the time, it seemed like the Soviet Union would never collapse and that the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia was a miracle.

REVOLUTIONS continued on page 2

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CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | November 6, 2009

Employees say C-Store’s location bad for business, but Mason says security comes first C-STORE continued from front page “Every week we see a difference, and it’s usually almost full at midnight,” he said.

Parker said that C-Store averages 90 to 100 customers a day. But having worked at Bartlett’s Maroon Market, where he estimated as having over 300 transactions a day, Parker said there’s a long way to go.

C-Store only recently put signs outside advertising its presence, and its location has made it hard for students to find and access, according to employees. Though it is adjacent to the South Campus Residence Hall (SCRH), it’s located below ground level and the entrance that is closest to the dormitory is labeled an emergency exit. The main entrance is on the far side of the building, and there is no way to access the café from the attached dormitory.

“Even people that live in the dorm don’t know about us,” Parker said. “The Maroon Market was much busier. And it’s always full on Bar Night [hosted Wednesday nights by the fraternity Alpha Delta Phi].”

To address the issue of access between the SCRH and the C-Store, Parker pointed out a series of doors that had been propped open to allow access into the dormitory without needing to go outside. He said the University was working on a more permanent solution, in which students could use their ID cards to access the dormitory from the café.

Mason denied such a plan, citing security issues.

“It seriously compromises security to keep those doors open,” Mason said. “Security is something that overrules convenience.”

Although Mason and Parker attributed a lack of business to convenience issues, secondyear Erin Britton, who lives in the SCRH, said that convenience is not an issue with the café.

“People are really enjoying having something that’s convenient,” she said.

The main reason Britton doesn’t go to the convenience store more often, she said, is because the all-you-can-eat dining hall is so accessible. She said she’s been to the

convenience store about once a week since the school year began. Because of the new, unlimited dining plans, many SCRH residents only go to the convenience store on a whim, Britton said.

“A lot more people are using the dining hall now, especially for breakfast,” she said. “Most of the time [I go to the café] I’m jonesing for some Ben and Jerry’s or something like that.”

Mason said that a larger number of customers than expected are going to the dining hall for lunch. “Some of the people that we thought might just grab a sandwich or a salad to go from the South Campus Café have instead gone to the dining hall,” he said.

Mason has proposed giving out coupons, coffee mugs, and other incentives for new customers. He said they would have more ideas after meeting with the campus dining advisory board, a group composed of Inter-House Council and Student Government representatives, next week.

Parker hypothesized that students might not know the shop had more than just standard café offerings. “When you walk by [and] you see ‘Ambassador,’ you see a coffee shop, you might not know we had a store down here,” he said.

Employees said the name featured at the shop, Ambassador Organics, is misleading. The name refers to a featured brand of coffee and tea, and not all products at the shop are organic.

Some of the slow business can be attributed to more mundane problems. “There was no heating for a while,” Parker said. “People just stopped coming back.”

But he’s optimistic that the shop will succeed in the long run. He said the C-Store does have student appeal, with comfortable seating and wireless internet that convenience stores like the Maroon Market lack. And there are no other viable alternatives south of the Midway—the nearest is a convenience store at 63rd Street.

“There’s no other store around here,” Parker said. “If you know about the store, it’s do or die.”

STUDENT LIFE

Third-year Ayers to stay in SCRH after Housing reversal

By Burke Frank Associate News Editor Third-year Clayton Ayers won his appeal to stay in the South Campus Residents Hall (SCRH) Monday, reversing a Housing decision to move him to a single in Maclean. Ayers will still be on probation for allowing five students to walk through his first-floor Janotta House window in the SCRH last month.

The reversal comes in the wake of widespread student frustration at what supporters claimed was an overly harsh punishment for the infraction.

“I appreciated the opportunity to have a trial,” Ayers said.

Housing administrators declined to comment on the case.

Th e C o l l e g e s t u d e n t s w h o c l i m b e d

through the window on October 10 were all put on probation.

Ayers was initially banned from both the SCRH and the South Campus Dining hall, a decision which he immediately appealed.

Students in Ayers’ house signed petitions protesting the decision and organized students campus-wide through Facebook to call attention to the situation. Second-year Student Government representative Sohrab Kohli took up the issue as well, saying he had never seen an issue garner so much student support.

Others saw Ayers’ supporters as attempting to justify a decision that went against housing rules concerning window usage, sign-in policies, and common sense.

Zimmer says he will not take post-recession salary cut, unlike many at peer institutions ZIMMER continued from front page ensure its success,” Manier said in an e-mail.

Zimmer’s benefits do not include housing expenses from living in the President’s House on 59th Street and University Avenue.

The University pays Zimmer about as much as its peers do, below Northwestern and above MIT. Last year, Zimmer was the 15th best-paid president, below Yale’s president and above the University of Southern California’s.

The Chronicle’s report, which took its fig-

ures from tax forms filed by each university, cautioned that this year’s numbers were from before the recession hit, and many presidents took pay cuts, froze their salaries, or donated a portion of their pay to charities after the financial meltdown last fall.

Zimmer said last May that his pay would remain the same. “We won’t be cutting [presidential] personal pay,” he said. “Just like we’re not freezing salaries. But in all these cases, the amount available for salary increases won’t be what it has been.”

CORRECTION The November 3 news article “University Market to close” omitted Hans Morbach’s (M.B.A. ‘61) graduation date.

The MAROON is committed to correcting mistakes for the record. If you suspect the MAROON has made an error, please alert the newspaper by e-mailing

chicagomaroon@gmail.com.

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CHICAGO MAROON | NEWS | November 6, 2009

High demand for inpatient treatment complicates Provident–U of C deal

LIBRARY

Library slow to digitize books for Google project

PROVIDENT continued from front page

By Al Gaspari News Staff Scanning and digitizing one book costs $60.

Scanning and digitizing the University’s 7.7 million printed works would cost $462 million.

A price as steep as that makes it easy to understand why the University of Chicago is not leading a digitizing initiative on its own.

The Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), a group made of the U of C and all 11 members of the Big Ten Conference, made a deal with Google in 2007 to digitize the university’s libraries, but the project hasn’t been moving forward at the same lightning-quick speed as Google’s search engine.

Of the 12 member-schools, only two have sent in books. Indiana University has been sending in books since August 2008, while Penn State University has started this year.

“The aim of the CIC-Google collaboration on the Google Books project is to make library resources readily and widely accessible far more rapidly than individual librar-

ies could do [it] on their own,” said Judith Nadler, director of the University of Chicago Library, in an e-mail, but did not comment on when the University would start sending its books to Google.

CIC Director Barbara Allen said the plans call for the University of Chicago to submit its South Asia collection for digitization.

“Library staff decides who moves the books, and which books. Google sends a large truck that fits 60,000 books. It sends them to Google,” Allen said. Each book spends approximately four weeks out of circulation.

Under the Google Books agreement, Google assumes all costs of scanning and shipping to their facilities; the universities just pay the cost of labor. If anything happens to the books in transit or at the facility, the agreement has provisions to compensate for the loss.

As universities drag their feet, Google faces another obstacle: copyright issues.

In October 2008, Google reached a $125-million settlement that will create a new copyright collective. Part of the agreement allows Google

the exclusive rights to reprint orphaned books— books under copyright whose authors cannot be contacted—and articles until their authors reclaim them. University libraries tend to hold a significant number of orphaned books, according to an April 4, 2009 article in the New York Times.

Under the settlement, Google would hold the revenues from the ads on orphaned books. Universities participating in the digitization will be given access to the Google archives for some years, after which access will be sold to them.

Nothing in the agreement prohibits the CIC or individual universities from starting other digitization projects.

Despite the legal troubles for Google, the scanning continues, and the CIC is sticking with its agreement.

As technology improves in the near future, the CIC is preparing itself for a digital world. “I love the book. I depend on it as an object,” Allen said, but noted that, “to search and discover information, the digital world is much better.”

affiliations with public hospitals, and we don’t,’’ Eric Whitaker, UCMC vice president for strategic affiliations, told Crain’s Chicago Business in June. “We see Provident as a key piece in making [the Urban Health Initiative] system a reality.’’

Cook County spokesman Chris Geovanis (AB ‘80, MD ‘84) said the South Side needs inpatient services. “The South Side has an increasing patient load that has nowhere else to go,” she said.

UCMC and Provident have two of the busiest emergency rooms in the South Side, and an attempt to relocate inpatients from Provident to the U of C could be disastrous, Geovanis said.

“The emergency room of Provident is the place where people who can’t get into the U of C, because they’re perpetually on bypass, go to get care,” she said.

Geovanis added that the Hospital Board sought further budget cuts by laying off front-line workers such as nurses and janitorial staff.

The Hospital Board was unavailable for comment, but Geovanis said public backlash has prompted the Board to reconsider its plan to end Provident Hospital’s inpatient care. The final plan will be sent to the Cook County Council for approval.

Provident is part of the Cook County Health and Hospital System (CC H H S), which provides medical services to more than five million residents of Cook County.

CCHHS serves all Cook County residents regardless of insurance, economic status, or ability to pay. Its mission is to provide personalized care for all patients, espe cially those who are unable to receive care elsewhere.

University of Chicago spokesman John Easton said, “I know people are following the discussion closely, but I believe they aren’t going to be making a decision for awhile.”

Easton predicted that no real decisions or changes would be made until at least February of 2010.

Though Berlin Wall has fallen, “the walls in the mind of the people have not,” consul says REVOLUTIONS continued from front page “The greatest lesson [from the revolution] was the disqualification of Communism as an acceptable form of society,” Marek Skolil of the Czech Republic said. “We are all better off. That’s why these events are needed to be discussed today.”

The Velvet Revolution, which took place in the winter of 1989, was the third largely bloodless revolution in the Soviet Bloc, following the election of the Solidarity Party in Poland and the reinvention of Hungary’s Communist party. The Soviet Union fell two years later, in 1991.

However, Robert Zischg of Austria said there is still inequality between the previously communist countries and Western Europe.

“The walls in the mind of the people have not come down yet. The acceptance of former Communist countries is not as high as it should be,” he said. “For many people of Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary...who grew up with the challenge, it is in our minds, the division. This is what Communism has done to Europe.”

The idea that socialism was the only way to run a nation made Central and Eastern Europeans feel that Soviet rule would never end. That socialist ideology made a smooth return to capitalism impossible, Zischg said.

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CHICAGO MAROON | VIEWPOINTS | November 6, 2009

VIEWPOINTS

EDITORIAL & OP-ED NOVEMBER 6, 2009

EDITORIAL

Changing business as usual CHICAGO MAROON

The student newspaper of the University of Chicago since 1892

SUPRIYA SINHABABU, Editor-in-Chief TOM TIAN, Managing Editor ELLA CHRISTOPH, News Editor ASHER KLEIN, News Editor MICHAEL LIPKIN, News Editor CLAIRE McNEAR, Viewpoints Editor HAYLEY LAMBERSON, Voices Editor BEN SIGRIST, Voices Editor

The Booth School should require students to take business ethics classes In the wake of the financial crisis, the Booth School of Business has instituted a welcome and well-timed change: a new set of courses that focus on business ethics and the practices that precipitated the recession. But Booth should go one step further by requiring that all M.B.A. recipients take at least one course on business ethics.

In most professional programs, required ethics classes are a matter of course. The Law School mandates that all students take a class that meets a “professional responsibility/ ethics requirement,” and the Pritzker

School of Medicine requires a threequarter sequence that focuses on doctor–patient relationships and medicine in the context of society.

Moreover, other top M.B.A. programs such as Wharton, Harvard, and Kellogg list business and legal ethics as requisite courses. Booth’s curriculum, however, notably lacks an ethics requirement.

Needless to say, Business Ethics 101 would not have prevented Bernie Madoff from setting up a Ponzi scheme. But for the vast majority of businesspeople who are committed

to behaving ethically, these courses can help them recognize when complex practices become morally questionable. In addition, a class that invites the future leaders of the business world to think about ethical dilemmas confronting managers and corporations can help create more reflective, independent-minded graduates. By offering business ethics courses as electives, Booth’s administrators have already shown they recognize these benefits.

As one of the top M.B.A. programs in the country, the Booth School

JORDAN HOLLIDAY, Sports Editor

attracts students from all over the world, and its curriculum serves as a model for other schools. For this reason, making a business ethics course mandatory at Booth would have effects beyond our Chicago campus, in addition to preparing our graduates for the complexities of the business world.

— The MAROON Editorial Board consists of the Editor-in-Chief, Viewpoints Editors, and two additional Editorial Board members.

MATT BARNUM, Editorial Board Member BEN ROSSI, Editorial Board Member

OP-ED

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Where reading comes to die

Breastival raises funds, awareness

DANI BRECHER, Head Copy Editor SHAHZAD AHSAN, Photo Editor JEREMY MARTIN, Photo Editor HEATHER LEWIS, Head Designer ABRAHAM NEBEN, Web Editor BURKE FRANK, Associate News Editor CHRIS BOOTS, Associate Viewpoints Editor RYAN TRYZBIAK, Associate Sports Editor

Class expectations make reading for pleasure impossible

workweek. The cut hours only affected workers in the Residential Halls & Commons management division, suggesting that the Administration is testing the strength of organized labor on campus. Meanwhile, workers have become dispirited as a result of this decision, which was made entirely without their input. John Fejes, a campus engineer who attended the event, stated that “We came up with some proposals [to avoid the cut]…but we were pushed to the side. We still take care of the students, but our morale is down.” Another worker pointed out that decreased hours meant residential services were understaffed, observing, “Student expenses go up, and the quality of their services go down….

It’s just bad all the way around.”

Student activists, in coordination with the Teamsters Union, have petitioned the administration

There have been a few misconceptions about the UChicago Colleges Against Cancer (CAC)’s breast cancer awareness campaign—dubbed Breastival—held October 18–23. Many of these were created or perpetuated by Emily Kaiser’s editorial “Right Intentions, Wrong Methods” (10/23/09), in which she asserts that Breastival contributed “no real initiatives or ideas beyond donating proceeds.”

The fact is this: Breastival kicked off on Sunday, October 18, with volunteering at the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk/Run. Tuesday saw Game Day on the quads, where for two hours participants could play breast cancer–related games, including educational trivia. There was no “mock beer pong set-up.”

Wednesday evening featured “Dinner of Hope” where survivors, caregivers, and any Hyde Parker affected by the disease were invited to share personal stories about breast cancer and make cards for patients in the oncology unit at Rush Hospital.

On Friday, CAC members encouraged students to “DialPink!” and call women they knew to advocate preventive measures, such as mammograms and clinical breast examinations. Important information on breast cancer was handed out every day.

After just five days selling cupcakes and T-shirts, CAC members raised $1,000 for Making Strides. UChicago CAC did all of this not by ignoring or “trivializing” the severities of breast cancer, but by confronting them head on. CAC focused on solutions—raising awareness and offering support— rather than dwelling on the problem.

Nine-year cancer survivor and proud U of C parent Christina Manuelli commented on Kaiser’s article online about the true spirit of Breastival: “Cancer makes people uncomfortable. It also makes people flee…So, what is the best way to draw young healthy college students in? You have to make it funny. You have to make them laugh. Because that’s the first step to helping people get past the feeling of discomfort and allowing them to open up to the message of hope.”

WORKWEEK continued on page 5

LETTERS continued on page 5

ERIC GUO, Associate Photo Editor CAMILLE VAN HORNE, Assoc. Photo Editor JUDY MARCINIAK, Business Manager

Matt Barnum Columnist

JACK DiMASSIMO, Designer IVY PEREZ, Designer JESSICA SHEFT-ASON, Designer NAKUL SINGH, Designer CLAIRE ZHOU, Designer MATT TYNDALE, Designer ANDREW GREEN, Designer ANNA AKERS-PECHT, Copy Editor JORDAN FRANKLIN, Copy Editor DANIELLE GLAZER, Copy Editor MONIKA LAGAARD, Copy Editor HOLLY LAWSON, Copy Editor MIRANDA LI, Copy Editor LAUREN MAKHOLM, Copy Editor ROBERT TINKLE, Copy Editor LILY YE, Copy Editor WENJIA DOREEN ZHAO, Copy Editor

The CHICAGO MAROON is published twice weekly during autumn, winter, and spring quarters.

Circulation: 6,500 The opinions expressed in the Viewpoints section are not necessarily those of the MAROON.

©2009 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

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CONTACT News: news@chicagomaroon.com Viewpoints: viewpoints@chicagomaroon.com Voices: voices@chicagomaroon.com Sports: sports@chicagomaroon.com Photography: photo@chicagomaroon.com Design: design@chicagomaroon.com Copy Editing: copy@chicagomaroon.com Advertising: jmarcini@uchicago.edu

Stop by my room and you’ll quickly see what a thoughtful, educated guy I am. An array of political and policy books line my bookshelves, none of them for class. Hard-covered and thick, they have boring covers and titles like After Prohibition, The Case Against Campaign Finance Reform, and A People’s History of the Supreme Court.

I’m fair and balanced, too: Bad Samaritans, a South Korean economist’s indictment of free trade, sits

happily next to Realizing Freedom, a libertarian tome that calls for less government at every turn.

Then, of course, there’s my fiction collection—sets of short stories or serious novels by critically acclaimed authors you probably haven’t heard of.

(Meanwhile, my well-worn paperback of John Grisham’s The Rainmaker lurks in the corner, hidden from view.)

Visitors often remark on my prolific collection (“You brought all these books from home?”), and I smile coyly. The problem, which I don’t reveal to my impressed guests, is that I haven’t read many, if not most, of my books. Believe me, I want to read them. That, to answer my imaginary visitor’s question, is why I lug mas-

sive boxes to and from campus every year—it’s a ridiculous optimism that one day, someday, I’ll finally finish Charles Murray’s Real Education.

Of course, it never works out that way. Mainly because of school: I can’t do all the reading that I’m assigned to do, so how can I possibly justify doing reading that I don’t have to do—for pleasure? The idea of non-class reading is like some sort of mythical creature at the U of C: If, on the stunningly rare occasion, I do manage to delve into my not-forclass books, inevitably someone asks me, “What class is that for?”

Even worse than the oppressive reading loads here is the oppressive

READING continued on page 6

OP-ED

Rethinking the right to work University employees shouldn’t demand 40-hour workweek

Greg Gabrellas Columnist

No idea has marred the labor movement’s progressive potential more than the old biblical slogan, “He who does not work, neither shall he eat” (II Thessalonians 3:10). This slogan, frequently—and confusedly— held up by socialists, labor activists, and puritans alike, is at its bottom conservative. In an advanced industrial society, where manual toil has been made practically obsolete, workers should be demanding less work. Yet more work is often an immediate demand made by workers in the face of an economic crisis.

Take the present moment, for example. Commentators on economic affairs are beginning to cheer up: We

are experiencing a jobless recovery, but a recovery nonetheless. The combination of rising rates of profit and low employment has generated an increased clamor for more jobs, hours, and work. Popular calls are made to “Put America Back to Work.”

Employees at the University of Chicago are no exception—especially the members of Teamsters Local 743, whose weekly hours were drastically cut from 40 to 35 by the University administration this summer.

On Wednesday, November 4, Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation (SOUL) brought together student activists and representatives of campus labor organizations, including Teamsters Local 743 and Graduate Students United, to educate the public on this issue and workers’ reactions.

Joe Sexauer, who spoke on behalf of campus workers, vehemently called for the restoration of the 40-hour

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CHICAGO MAROON | VIEWPOINTS | November 6, 2009

OP-ED

An unnecessary Olympic loss Michael Reese demolition removes a valuable contribution to architecture

By Samantha Lee Viewpoints Staff I was one of the many disappointed when our city’s 2016 Olympic bid failed so pitifully last month. As a Chicago native, my parents were saddened at not being able to make money renting out my room to visitors from afar, although I think they were secretly relieved that I-94 will not be reduced to extreme congestion come 2016. While many of us are still in a state of anguish over the results, we often lose sight of the sacrifices that the city has made in its assumption that the 2016 games were ours to lose.

The city is now in the process of demolishing 27 buildings on the Michael Reese Hospital campus, which was originally set to be the home of the Olympic Village. Unfortunately for us, all Olympic aspirations evaporated as soon as Chicago was knocked out of the first round in the bidding process. Now the city has decided

that it has to recover the $91 million it invested to purchase the property. However, this demolition should be one of the final straws in a series of unplanned, irrational decisions by the city government to make lavish Olympic preparations at immense cost to Chicago.

German-born Walter Gropius is regarded as one of the pioneers of modern 20th-century architecture. His biography on the Gropius in Chicago Coalition’s Web site states that the only place in Illinois where you can find his Bauhaus-style buildings is on the Michael Reese campus, the very one that the city of Chicago is demolishing.

The Bauhaus style was developed in Germany in the 1920s by Gropius and is identified by its unique adherence to functionality and asymmetry, as well as a tendency to view architecture through spatial dimensions. In addition to its architectural value, the hospital campus symbolizes a breakthrough in progressive city planning. Gropius not only designed the hospital campus, but also incorporated a plan to revitalize the neighborhood for

the residents of the area. Moreover, Gropius utilized open and green spaces to combat the density that characterizes American cities.

Demolishing the buildings on the Michael Reese campus amounts to destruction of an important cultural contribution by one of the most prominent architects of the early 20th century. Chicago’s city government was completely inept at creating backup plans in the (likely) event that it wouldn’t receive the Olympic bid. And to add insult to this explicitly shameless destruction of an important part of Chicago’s architectural history, the city has decided to spare two of the Gropius-designed structures on campus. This is the equivalent of someone openly eating another’s cookie and leaving the crumbs behind.

The director of the Gropius in Chicago Coalition, Graham Balkany, states that the Michael Reese Hospital Campus is a “Christmas stocking, sitting there hoping that [it’s] going to get Santa to fill it up with presidential museums

and other goodies.” He’s absolutely right; the political opportunities are endless. Fourth Ward Alderman Toni Preckwinkle, for example, entertained the idea of replacing these historic buildings with “an expansion of McCormick Place, a hotel or entertainment district, or a high school.”

What a great chance for city politicians to return the favor to their donors by giving them a vacant lot to develop! And they could attach their names to the projects, which they could later tout during election season as evidence of their commitment to the betterment of Chicago!

The demolition of 27 buildings on the Michael Reese Hospital Campus is a small part of a bigger pattern of irresponsibility by the city government in eagerly making plans at the expense of the city for an unattainable dream. It makes us wonder whether we were right to be so excited in the first place.

support a better public education system? Who would deny that competition fosters innovation and improvement? Obama’s (and for that matter, Duncan’s) Chicago experiences likely confirm a belief in the universality of the goal.

Importantly, though, the people for whom Obama worked hard to secure essential rights and public services as a community organizer already agreed that they needed them. Having been on the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder for so long, urban communities have come to realize the power of the ballot, the college diploma, and the health insurance card.

Consequently, Obama posits that all Americans recognize the urgent need for a good public education system. Not so. Nevertheless, Obama has formulated his plans based on this assumption.

His Race to the Top education reform proposes great measures, but, unless supported by state governments, has no teeth. Structural changes and performance standards are entirely optional.

Trusting state governments to act rationally, Obama assumed that they would compete to meet as many of Arne Duncan’s guidelines as possible to gain federal funding.

— Samantha Lee is a first-year in the College.

OP-ED

Race to the Top, if you want President Obama’s education program lacks muscle

By Liat Spiro Viewpoints Staff In a recent New York Times column, David Brooks praised the Obama administration’s plan for education reform as a “Quiet Revolution.”

Unfortunately, it is too quiet to be revolutionary.

Having spent considerable time at the U of C and in Chicago, both Barack Obama and Brooks are bringing a distinctly Chicago-style perspective to this issue. And that may blindside them to one major flaw in Education Secretary (and former chief of Chicago Public Schools) Arne Duncan’s

Race to the Top plan: It’s voluntary.

In Race to the Top, states choose to compete in hopes of securing a share of the $4.3 billion allocated to improving public education. The competition entails both adhering to fixed eligibility requirements and adopting recommended measures, including linking student performance data to teachers, creating more paths into the teaching profession, encouraging the growth of charter schools, and accepting multi-state testing standards.

Writing from a desk in Burton-Judson, this criticism appears a little ridiculous. Who wouldn’t

Letters to the editor, continued LETTERS continued from page 4 While the tone of Breastival was intentionally sexual in order to capture attention, it also addressed the toll breast cancer takes on a woman’s sexuality. Supporting this hardship and others is the American Cancer Society’s mission, too—not just raising money.

To all the students who were able to smile at a joke or enjoy a treat during the week of Breastival, CAC thanks you for taking the first step toward fighting breast cancer, and we look forward to your support in future events.

—Kelly Regan President, Colleges Against Cancer

Health care socialization does not require government control The unfortunate aspect of posing the problem of health care reform in terms of governmental vs. libertarian responses, as Ari Allyn-Feuer does in his October 30 column “Reform in a Regulated Market,” is that it neglects the specifically social aspect. Issues of provision and regulation come up, but in rather specious ways. Does “socialized” health care—making it a social priority—necessarily mean governmental control? I would say not. For instance, is the American Medical Association, the professional organization of doctors, a governmental agency? No, it is a voluntary association

EDUCATION continued on page 6

Union workers should ask for fairer wages, not guaranteed hours of civil society. Medical licensing may be legally required, but it is not administered by the government. Our society is already largely self-regulated, and not simply through market mechanisms, but through a host of other non-governmental ways.

Thus, it is already entirely conceivable that under present social and legal conditions, health care could (at least theoretically) be socialized without being administered by the government. Various religious institutions provide examples of this kind of social activity, not driven by market incentives.

The only question is whether such institutions are sufficient to address the magnitude of the problem of providing health care. What does it take to provide quality, “affordable” health care to all (including those who cannot afford to pay anything)? The current debates around government policy dodge the issue in spurious ways, for instance posing health care as either a “right” or a “good” (commodity/service) and then questioning the appropriateness of a governmental role (in either case). But we can pose the question more simply and ask what kind of social issue health care actually is, and whether and how it can be properly addressed both in a public manner and as a matter of politics and social change, which is not reducible to the role of government. Politics is not reducible to (government) “policy.” We need to inquire into such possibilities.

— Chris Cutrone Ph.D. candidate, Committee On History of Culture

WORKWEEK continued from page 4 on their behalf, echoing the employees’ calls to restore their 40-hour workweek. SOUL brought to light the workers’ grievances concerning their reduced hours (which effectively constituted an 8 percent pay decrease) and precipitating economic insecurity. The administration responded to activists earlier this week, claiming that its decision was made in order to avoid laying off more workers.

The prevailing attitude of campus workers, as expressed at this last meeting, is that they would prefer the administration to restore the status quo ante rather than retain staff. However, those who hold this attitude—including students—risk conceding too much to the employers. Consider the long-range strategy of the labor movement as a whole. Union membership has been declining nationwide, and few unions are in a position, either organizationally or politically, to do much more than retain gains over their employers that they won in the past. Consequently, it seems as though unions should not sacrifice their membership so easily, especially when the laid off workers would have the odds of getting another union job stacked against them. Therefore it is a demand that is only in the sectional interest of the campus workers, not of working people generally.

Moreover, the demand to increase workers’ hours back to 40 hours per week is regressive; it reinforces the notion that wages should be tied directly to hours of work and not the right

of the worker to a portion of social wealth adequate to his or her ever-expanding needs. A more adequate demand would be for a pay raise of 8 percent to offset the cuts, and an auxiliary demand to increase the size of the workforce to maintain the total hours of work at the previous level. In other words, we should change the slogan from “Restore the 40-hour workweek!” to “We’ll keep the shorter hours, but don’t cut our pay!”

The political conditions under which labor activism takes place are very poor. Even demands for restitution are treated as progressive goals when no alternatives appear realizable. As one member of GSU put it, “What’s important is that they’re [Teamsters Local 747] fighting at all!” But the matter is not as simple as having a fighting spirit or not; labor unions do have politics, and it is necessary to investigate the character of these politics, as they seem to have been foisted on workers by the prevailing economic crisis. As the socialist politician Paul Lafargue pointed out long ago, advocates for a better world must replace the Right to Work with the Right to be Lazy. Otherwise, activists risk ideologically buttressing the very world they seek to change.

— Greg Gabrellas is pursuing a degree with the Master of Arts program in Social Sciences. He graduated from the College in 2009 with a degree in anthropology.

6

CHICAGO MAROON | VIEWPOINTS | November 6, 2009

Obama wrong to think states appreciate federal intervention

Trucking books to and from campus each year leaves little more than an impressive—but dusty—shelf

EDUCATION continued from page 5

READING continued from page 4

But many state governments reflect the “Don’t Tread on Me” or anti-intellectual opinions of their constituents (in opposition to offering higher level math classes, my middle school principal told a group of parents, “Duh, like any of them are going to be rocket scientists.”). They would rather reject the funding in the name of less regulation and federal government intervention.

Additionally, many of the citizens of these states are only recently falling out of the middle class and into poverty. They haven’t had decades to experience the need for good education.

Don’t get me wrong: Arne Duncan has a lot of good ideas. For example, his plan encourages states to adhere to multi-state testing standards instead of the state-by-state standards set forth

by No Child Left Behind. The state-by-state basis allowed huge discrepancies in test difficulty, enabling many states like Arizona to dishonestly scrape by. Yet implementing multi-state testing standards is optional. For years, Arizona legislators have opposed regional and national environmental, gun control (Brady Bill), and health plans (Medicaid). Why should Obama expect Arizona legislators to embrace better education standards? He shouldn’t. And he should still anticipate getting shortchanged in another way.

Shockingly enough, Arizona has agreed to compete in Duncan’s Race to the Top plan. I predict that Arizona will continue to do what it and numerous other traditionally red states have done since education reform became a priority: Complete all of the meaningless measures while balking at true change. This way, they could get a little money while avoiding any reform whatsoever. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s 2007 Leaders and Laggards report, states such as Arizona, Alabama, and Georgia share good grades in “data quality” and abysmal grades in “truth in advertising about student proficiency,” “academic achievement,” and “postsecondary and work force readiness.” Good data collection mechanisms don’t amount to very much if the data are never analyzed and applied to improving schools. As was the case with civil rights before it, education reform in many red states is only a matter of avoiding flagrant transgressions and enacting menial improvements because, at the root of it, the constituents don’t value education nearly as much as they hate taxing, spending, and Washington.

To its credit, the plan contains two enforcement methods. First, by virtue of its being a competition, the states that do not demonstrate a high degree of activity will probably not receive funding. Second, the Race to the Top dictates that winning states submit annual progress reports with the condition that inadequate improvement could lead to revocation of funding. Yet, these conditions only ensure against wasting taxpayer dollars. Unwilling to adopt comprehensive reform, the states that never entered the competition, lose during the competition, or are expelled from the winners’ circle will not benefit from the administration’s focus on bringing positive change to public education and the budget allotted for it.

Obama didn’t fully realize this. Worse yet, he is willing to compromise as he learns more. Favoring charter schools, for example, means ceding all quality control while still providing funding. A community organizer works inch by inch, incrementally improving his or community. A community organizer learns to compromise early and often. But Obama is a community organizer no more.

Obama would do well to learn from the legislative victories and failures of Democratic presidents who have hailed from the South and West: LBJ, Carter, and Clinton. The lessons of those presidents’ terms: Go big and get tough, or else. Compromise accomplishes little. Instead of relying on governors and state legislatures, the federal government itself should pursue the goals outlined in the Race to the Top. Sometimes you just have to do the right thing and take the more ignorant or prejudiced parts of this country, kicking and screaming, along for the ride.

nature of the readings themselves. My political science class, for example, makes me parse sentences like this: “The communication structures of the public sphere are linked with the private life spheres in a way that gives the civil-social periphery, in contrast to the political center, the advantage of greater sensitivity in detecting and identifying new problem situations.” When this is the type of reading you’re used to, it’s easy to forget when reading was fun—the good old days of Goosebumps and Animorphs and Stephen King.

It’s not just during the school year, though: Summer, as I recently discovered, is no different. This summer I lugged two huge bags of books—I mean it: I never learn my lesson— with me as I drove to Washington, D.C. My

— Liat Spiro is a second-year in the College.

roommate rolled his eyes, but I swore up and down that this time, really, was when I was going to catch up on my reading. Well, no one tells you just how exhausting a 9-to-5 job is, even when your “work” consists of surfing the Internet and occasionally switching feverishly to a blank Excel document when your boss passes by. And no one tells you how when you get home after those harrowing days of playing Text Twist, all you want to do is “cook” your frozen pizza dinner and watch Jeopardy and Baseball Tonight. No one tells you that the very last thing you want to do is read Real Education. I ended up shipping two boxes of books home, not one of them fully read.

So what is there to be done? Am I simply my own worst enemy, choosing books that make me

feel smart but that I don’t want to read? Maybe.

But then there are books that I really do want to get through—the novel a friend recommended and lent me, which now sits on my bookshelf, missing its owner, dog-eared on page 12.

Sometimes I think about what an education has cost me. In fits of self-pity I blame the U of C. All my reading for class has taken over reading for myself. But I know the truth: I made my own decisions, and it was me who spent countless nights playing ping-pong or talking with friends about nothing or doing nothing on the Internet.

It’s my fault. And that’s the worst part of all.

— Matt Barnum is a fourth-year in the College majoring in psychology. He is a member of the MAROON Editorial Board.

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7

CHICAGO MAROON | VOICES | November 6, 2009

VOICES

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT NOVEMBER 6, 2009

THEATER

Japanese puppeteer returns to campus

By Salom Teshale Voices Lonely Goatherd Nori Sawa is part of a rare breed of performance artists who still practice the art of puppetry.

Born in Japan, Sawa moved to the Czech Republic to refine his skill.

This led to a distinctive combination of techniques from Czech and Japanese puppet theater that Sawa utilizes in his adaptations of Eastern and Western folk tales and plays, including Macbeth and The Cherry Orchard. This Friday at the Third Floor Theater, the renowned puppeteer will perform Forest and Other Tales, based on a traditional Japanese story of a battered soldier enticed into heaven by an angel.

Sawa’s earlier performances of Forest even scored him the Franz Kafka Medal in 1999. Before his return to campus (he performed at the university last year), the Chicago Maroon spoke to him about the Czech Republic, the beginnings of his passion for puppetry, and what inspired him to adapt Macbeth and The Cherry Orchard.

CHICAGO MAROON: When did you start to get interested in puppetry?

Nori Sawa: When I was really small in Japan, it was TV. More than 40 years ago, they had really good programs for children. But I had little interest in live actors.

When I saw them, usually I’d start to imagine the actors’ back-

ART

Comic catharsis

Model shows that ideas and idealism shape Chicago

grounds, like what the actors do after the show—would they go home and have a beer, smoke— and I couldn’t concentrate on the performance. But puppets have a really limited life. On the stage they’re just one character, they’re really alive on the stage, but after that, without the puppeteer, they’re just in storage or in a box.

That fascinated me.

By Ruben Montiel Voices Flying Buttress Maybe no other force has been as important for shaping the modern American city in the past century and a half than urban planning, and maybe no other city in the country has been so affected as Chicago.

So the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s decision to name their latest exhibit Chicago Model City is appropriate, since Chicago is perhaps the model city to study if one wants to know the tremendous change, both positive and destructive, that urban planning can cause.

FOREST AND OTHER TALES Third Floor Theater November 6

I mostly watched serials, like cartoons but [with] puppets. One was about a floating island, [and the] drifters on this island who lost their identities. They had to collaborate and cooperate to survive.

Kind of like Lost, but with puppets, and [funnier]!

CHICAGO MODEL CITY Chicago Architecture Foundation Through November 2010

M : O k a y. Th i s o n e i s f r o m Northwestern University: A Christmas Carol is a timeless story.

The centerpiece of the exhibit is a 320 square-foot model of downtown that takes up almost the entire atrium of the Daniel Burnham-drafted Santa Fe Building on Michigan Avenue. The buildings are computer-drawn and machined from biodegradable plastic resin, but the true pleasure isn’t in the skillful depiction of each building and its slight characteristics. Instead, it’s in the aesthetic of the city’s complete density that comes from the viewer’s bird’s-eye perspective, something not afforded to those walking down the Loop’s characteristicly cavernous streets. And for a bunch of plastic models, it’s surprisingly realistic.

While the model itself deserves commendation and appraisal, the historical material is what is truly eye-opening. The exhibit is organized according to what early Chicago city planners, including Burnham, wanted their city to be: global, connected, green, beautiful, and new. Each category heads a short history detailing that particular aspect of development.

“Green City,” for example, covers 19th-century sanitation concerns all the way up to modern day efforts to retrofit buildings and reduce carbon emissions.

“Connected City,” which covers the development of transportation, is particularly fascinating. Old pictures of the El show the familiar elevated tracks but, as for the trains, instead of today’s sheet-metal get-ups, there’s a steam engine, regal and massive, pulling the other cars. Highways, though probably not as important to the CTA-dependent U of C crowd, have been replicated with careful attention to detail. Instead of merely explaining how eminent domain forced people out of their homes, the curators of the exhibit have found photos of the area that is now the Congress Parkway, before and after its construction. Before the 1965 construction, there was a dense cluster of low-rise housing. After 1965: a broad expanse of bare land and razed buildings crossed by a new highway.

ZEMECKIS continued on page 8

MODEL continued on page 9

CM: What is it about puppetry that you enjoy?

NS: I like artificial things. I don’t know why. Usually I’m drawing, painting, or making puppets— something artificial. I think it’s my nature. I like something that has shadows behind it. Like, you know, puppets aren’t so pretty; sometimes they’re scary, they have a dark or ugly side. They’re not live, but they look like they’re

S

elf-described "queer feminist Jewish narcissist" comedian Jessica Halem performs in the McCormick Tribune Lounge as part of ORCSA's "Take A Break," a series of stress-relieving events.

DANIEL SELLON

/ MAROON

SAWA continued on page 8

FILM

Forrest Gump director concocts 3-D Carol characters

By Michelle Welch Voices Tiny Tim It’s likely that at some point in your life, you have fallen in love with a film directed by Robert Zemeckis. With such pop culture staples as Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Forrest Gump under his belt, Zemeckis has become something of an icon in the film industry. A week ago, the Chicago Maroon took part in a conference call with the director, who was kind enough to explain his fascination with the 3-D format and how it contributes to the storytelling in his newest film, A Christmas Carol, along with how Dickens’ original novella struck him as the greatest time-traveling tale. Due to the number of reporters taking part in the conference call, Disney asked us to submit our questions for Zemeckis beforehand, which were read to him during the call by a moderator.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL Directed by Robert Zemeckis Wide Release

Put on your 3-D glasses and watch Scrooge (Jim Carey) attempt to poke your eye out.

If that doesn't work, there's always a Red Rider BB Gun. COURTESY OF WALT DISNEY PICTURES

Moderator: First question—and this came in from a lot of different schools—what inspired you to follow up Beowulf with A Christmas Carol?

Robert Zemeckis: Well, when I was doing Beowulf, I realized that this is a great form to reintroduce classic stories in a new way, to a new generation of moviegoers. Because what you can do is, you can create a

version of the story which is visually modern, and many of these classic stories have great spectacle in them, which makes them, in a strange way, difficult to do for the big screen, so they’re sort of relegated to Masterpiece Theater. And that sort of thing. So you get a chance to really, in the case with Christmas Carol, to realize the story in the very spectacular and surreal way that Dickens

wrote it. So anyway, it’s obviously a very familiar title and it’s a great story to be told in cinema. And all those things sort of added up and the idea came, and I thought, “Well, why not give this a try?”

8

CHICAGO MAROON | VOICES | November 6, 2009

Zemeckis confesses to time travel obsession ZEMECKIS continued from page 7 How do you balance the dual problem of adhering to a very traditional story, but also creating a piece that is fresh, new, and exciting?

RZ: Well, of course that was the challenge.

And that was the reason that we did it. We just attacked that problem head-on and said, “Okay, we’re going to be extremely true to the underlying material, and we’re not going to tinker with it too much.� Although we do a little bit. We provide some action at the end to get Scrooge from place to place. But we were gonna distill this down to making sure all the elements which, as the person who asked the question said very astutely, the fact that it’s a timeless story is rooted in Scrooge’s character; in his character changes, in his character development, and his story of redemption. So we gotta be true to that. The other thing that I did, which made everybody very nervous at the studio, but I don’t think it could work in any other possible way, is that I had everybody speaking in the language of the time, the way Dickens wrote it. Which I think is beautiful.

So we kept all that. And we basically kept the tone that Dickens wrote in the original piece.

M: Do you want to explain how Jim Carrey uses different dialects for his different characters?

RZ: Yes. Well, first, there’s also dialects as well.

But when I said the language I meant the way, you know, the Old English kind of Victorian, Edwardian English that the novel was written in.

But yes, Jim also, for each of the ghosts that he portrays, he came up with a different dialect. You know, the Ghost of Christmas Past is Irish. The Ghost of Christmas Present is sort of Scottish.

Scrooge is the Queen’s English.

M: Is there anything in the Dickens story that you think has been overlooked by past filmmakers that you highlight in your version of the story?

RZ: For some reason, past versions of the story have not delved into the idea that Dickens had great tension and great suspense in the story, the way he wrote it. And that seems to have been watered down through all these other versions.

And that kind of feeling of foreboding, that feeling of dread that you have in the first half of that story, I think has been missing a lot. So I thought that that was really important. Because you have to understand that Scrooge basically has this wild nightmare. That’s what happens to him. You know, I really feel very strongly that you have to have the dark before you can have the light. And that’s something I wanted to really present in the way I think Dickens wrote it. And the other thing that is amazing about Dickens that I hadn’t realized before, until I started adapting this, is how cinematically he wrote. He wrote very filmically, a hundred years before the invention of movies. It’s really amazing when you read his work. He writes in scenes.

M: This is from the University of Arizona: How do you view Scrooge? Is he a good man who needs to discover his past humanity, or is he a fundamentally bad-natured man who needs to learn to be decent?

RZ: Well, that’s a great question. And also has a lot to do with the question you just asked me. Of course he’s a man who was abused.

And he’s filled with fear. And the way he protects himself from having to feel that fear is, misguidedly, feeling that he needs to collect material things to guard against—there’s a line in the novel, we have it in the movie,

BVS <Sea /`]c\R G]c

Puppetry embodies Czech cultural history, Sawa says where Belle says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;You fear the world too much, Ebenezer.â&#x20AC;? And that, I think, is key to his character when he goes back in time. So what he needs to basically do is he needs to have this sort ofâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m going to use this term very looselyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;spiritual awakening. Which is to understand that those childhood fears, which have been basically pounded into him, he can deal with, and he can go on, and he can alter the course of his life. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a universal story. So no, to answer your question specifically, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not a bad man. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just a man who doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know what to do with hisâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;how should I say this?â&#x20AC;&#x201D;his scarred past. And I think thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s such a timeless story and why itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s such a great story, and why we all can relate to that character so well.

M: Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a question from Northwestern University: How do you see the 3-D aspect as aiding in the telling of the story?

RZ: Well, it aids in the telling of the story in that we have createdâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;aiding in the telling of the story in the intellectual sense, obviously the images donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do that, and even an old black-and-white movie isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t going to do

You'll notice that in the three Back to the Futures, there is a lot of influence of A Christmas Carol... that. But aiding in telling the story from an emotional standpoint, the 3-D is a storytelling element, just like the music is. So, you know, you have the underlying intellectual material that is what Mr. Dickens wrote. And then you embellish it with performance and you embellish it with music and you embellish it with color and you embellish it now with an immersive 3-D image. So what that does for the audience is it just gives them another emotional handle on the story and presents it in an emotional way. So what weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been able to do is really immerse the audience in Dickensian London.

M: Question from College Times in Phoenix: How involved were you in the casting process?

Was Jim Carrey always someone who was high on the list?

RZ: Obviously I cast every single actor in the movie. And when I write I try not to think very hard of an actor, because I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to start writing in the voice of a specific actor.

So I just think of characters as shadows as Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m writing. But when I finished, Jim was my first and only choice, because I knew that you needed someone who had a magnificent sense of humor and a great ability to do drama, to make Scrooge as mean as Dickens actually wrote him, and as we adapted him in the screenplay. And then I felt that I got a great actor who can do any kind of character. So it was a logical extension then, in my mind. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s say Scrooge is having this nightmare: These ghosts would be an extension of his alter ego. They would be his alter ego. So there can be some of Scrooge in the ghosts. So I said to Jim, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Hey, why donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you do all the ghosts?â&#x20AC;? And he said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Oh man, I love that idea.â&#x20AC;? And the challenge there, of course, was that he had to do scenes with himself. But heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s such a great actor it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t a problem. So that was the casting process.

M: This is from Diablo Valley College: What was the process like when Jim or someone else in the movie had to play a scene against themselves?

RZ: What you do is you put in a stand-in actor. Cary Elwes, who is a great actor in his own right, was gracious enough to volunteer to be on the receiving end of Jim when we did all the scenes. So when Jim was Scrooge, Cary was a ghost. When Jim was a ghost, Cary would do Scrooge. And having a really great actor who was able to watch Jim and basically memorize the way he was doing one or the other side of a character, and bringing it back in the timing that we needed, was really crucial. And it was great because Jim, when he was playing Scrooge, would say, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Now listen, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m thinking Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m going to do this, this, this, this, and this.â&#x20AC;? And Cary would do his version of it and Jim would react as Scrooge.

Then Jim would go back and do the ghost and Cary would do that reaction as Scrooge and it turned out to be, in my opinion, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a tour-deforce performance.

M: Next question comes from Oklahoma State: As a director, how do you get your actors comfortable working with the technology necessary to make a film like Christmas Carol?

RZ: First of all, you walk them through it very thoroughly and you walk them through it very extensively. Slowly and thoroughly.

And you explain as much as you can. And itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s really interesting, no matter how much I try to explain it to them, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s impossible until they do it. The thing that weirds them out the most is having to put the leotard on. But then what happens, and this has happened and you can look at the list of actors that I have worked with in this process: Tom Hanks, Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, Gary Oldman, Jim Carreyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;great actors. What happens, and why they all immediately fall in love with it after the first hour of working in this process, is they very quickly understand itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all about performance. And so they just get this wonderful revelation and theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re like, â&#x20AC;&#x153;This is just about my performance here. My performance is everything here. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to fumble with a costume. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to hide behind a costume. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t hide behind a beard. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have makeup. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all pure.â&#x20AC;? Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like doing blackbox theater: minimal props, no sets, no lighting, no costume, and you create scenes. And thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what we do. And the other thing they love about it is they get to act all day long. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not chopped up.

M: This question is from the University of Chicago: You have mentioned that A Christmas Carol is perhaps one of the greatest time travel stories ever. My generation probably considers Back to the Future to be one of the greatest time travel stories ever. What is it about time travel that appeals to you in the stories that you tell?

RZ: Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll notice that in the three Back to the Futures, there is a lot of influence of A Christmas Carol when you look at them. I think I actually have scenesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;I think theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in the second one, and a little of the thirdâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;where characters actually confront their gravestones and things like that, and they see whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going to happen to them. I think Back to the Future 2 has the most Christmas Carol in it, which I think is one of my most interesting movies. So yes, I know that A Christmas Carol was the first time travel story I ever read, when I was seven or eight, I think.

So A Christmas Carol very heavily influenced the Back to the Future movies. As did The Time Machine. Back to the Future uses the H. G. Wells version of time travel, which is you travel through time and not space. So A Christmas Carol and also Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a Wonderful Life were all a big influence on the Back to the Future movies.

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SAWA continued from page 7 living. I like something like that, that is sort of strange. All the Czech Republic, but especially Prague, has a lot of shadows; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like a labyrinth. The buildings are really old, from the medieval age. All different types of architecture are frozen in Prague, they say.

So when you walk around, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re kind of lost, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fascinating to be lost. Especially at twilight, you feel lost on the inside.

CM: How did you come to live in the Czech Republic?

NS: I was a teacher in Japan, at [a] high school teaching art, theater, painting, and sculpture. In 1991 I was invited to France [for] a post-graduate workshop. The lead teacher there was Czech; his name was Josef Krofta. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the artistic director of a famous puppet theater in the Czech Republic, and he gave me a letter to come to Prague in 1992. I went to study at a state-performing arts academy. After one year, I started working professionally doing solo performances, sometimes directing, designing.

Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s puppetry in Japan, too, but not as much, not like the Czech Republic. In Japan, manga and comicsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;animationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re really developed, but in the Czech Republic, small theaters and puppet theaters are really supported. But they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a comics industry! In the Czech Republic, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kind of a special situationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Poland, tooâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; they have municipal puppet theaters in each big city. When they were invaded by various empires in the 18 th , 19th centuries, they were forbidden to use the Czech language, only German. But the puppet theaters and local, small theaters, they were ignored, so they used puppetry to maintain [their] nationality.

I feel that the people in The Cherry Orchard are like the people in the [puppet] theater worldâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;outdated.

CM: How do you decide what plays to adapt?

Your production of Macbeth, for instance.

NS: When I went to Prague, one professorâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still one of my best friends, Peterâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;he said â&#x20AC;&#x153;Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s do something.â&#x20AC;? We thought [of choosing] some international thing, not like a deep Japanese legend, because then Peter wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understand. We chose Macbeth, because once Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d done a performance in Japan. And of course Peter knows about Shakespeare. But I had used 30 actors on the stage with puppets in Japan. I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t imagine doing Macbeth alone. But he said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;If you could do it, you could sell it, and if anyone asks why you did Macbeth alone, you could answer, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Because it was possibleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; He also suggested something for inspiration: Macbeth controls his wife and family through his own power, but heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s usually [still] manipulated by his wife. And when I become Macbeth and manipulate the Lady Macbeth puppet on stage, I can also be manipulated by the puppet. So if one can express this sort of cynical relationship between man and woman, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d be interesting for the audience. I thought that was good inspiration. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like a... parallel, the relationship between a puppeteer and puppet, or a lord and slave, or any sort of relationship.

[He also said] â&#x20AC;&#x153;Nori, please show your nationality in your performance, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not interested in your imitation of European culture,â&#x20AC;? so I thought it over and...my mother passed on when I left Japan. She was a designer of kimonos, and left [a lot of ] material for me. So I used Japanese fabric and textiles for puppets and costumes.

CM: And why The Cherry Orchard?

SAWA continued on page 9

9

CHICAGO MAROON | VOICES | November 6, 2009

Voices STD (Stuff to Do) Friday | November 6 U of C alumnus and WWII veteran Edward W. Wood Jr. (Ph.B. ’47) is one of five former soldiers featured in The Good Soldier .

The film features the veterans of the past four American wars—WWII, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and Iraq—to explore what it means to be a good soldier and how that meaning changes in actual combat. (164 North State Street, 8:15 p.m., $7)

Saturday | November 7 Catch Howard Zinn, renowned historian and author of A People’s History of the United States, at the International House. Zinn will be speaking on the power of common people in changing the course of history and will answer questions at the end of the talk. (International House, 7 p.m., suggested donation) UT presents its 6th week show, Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things, directed by fourth-year Toby Tieger. Individuality and morality wrestle for dominance in this tale of four college students whose relationships are twisted and crumpled by one man’s attempt at self-improvement. The development of the

protagonist, Adam, and his fascination with wild-child Evelyn challenge the boundaries b e t w e e n a u t o n o m y a n d c o n f o r m i t y.

(Reynolds Club 1st Floor Theater, 8 p.m., $6)

Sunday | November 8 According to author Jonathan Lethem, his latest book Chronic City is about “a circle of friends that includes a faded child-star actor, a cultural critic, a hack ghostwriter of autobiographies, and a city official.” The chronicler of Generation X’s collective angst will be interviewed by radio host Victoria Lautmann as part of the 20th-annual Chicago Humanities Festival. (111 South Michican Avenue, 12 p.m., free)

Monday | November 9 The Renaissance Society presents Joe McPhee’s Survival Unit in a performance a t B o n d C h a p e l . Th e i n n o v a t i v e f r e e jazz saxophonist is appearing with Fred L o n b e r g - H o l m o n c e l l o a n d M i ch a e l Zerang on percussion. (Bond Chapel, 8 p.m., free)

Chekhov's Cherry Orchard not lost in translation for Sawa

How planners failed to resurrect the South Side

SAWA continued from page 8

MODEL continued from page 7

NS: Chekhov’s scenarios are really funny, but in Japan they usually do really deep, sad adaptations. The original Cherry Orchard is really funny—it’s not tragedy, it’s comedy. And I feel that the people in The Cherry Orchard are like people in the [puppet] theater world—outdated. They still believe in their own culture, but people aren’t coming to the theater. They’re playing computer games in their room or [are] on the Internet. I imagined making the Cherry Orchard the world of the puppet theater, where the theater will be sold, but they’re still believing that they’re relevant. I wanted to perform with an ensemble of half-broken, ruined puppets on the stage—but then I had to do it solo, so I decided to make it shadow puppets. It was also like Japan at the time, two or three years ago. The Japanese economy was collapsing, but still politicians didn’t believe it, they were just hiding the truth. Nobody knew where the country was going, and it also seemed like the Cherry Orchard—people knew but they didn’t believe it. But I wanted to show that in a funny way.

The exhibit’s focus on the idea of urban planning, rather than, say, architecture, is readily apparent. While architectural style and space are important concepts that the exhibit considers, it is much more preoccupied with how the sensibilities of planners can have a powerful effect on a city.

Sometimes, the exhibit suggests, the changes and its consequences, intentional or otherwise, are necessary. The transformation of Cabrini-Green, for example, from massive monolithic hellholes for the poor to low-density public housing is rightly praised, despite the funding hurdles that have popped up due to the financial crisis. Yet the exhibit also shows that the consequences of urban planning can be drastically harmful. “New City” addresses the failed attempts at revitalizing the South Side, with its misguided maxim of “Order out of Chaos.” (One almost imagines this coming directly out of an Ayn Rand novel.) Unfortunately, according to the urban planners of yore, including the influential architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the new order was an issue best left to the experts, not those who actually lived there.

The urban planning-centrism of the exhibit demonstrates the development of the profession from then to now, from the intellectual elitism of Mies to the planners of today—idealistic people who believe ideas can mold a city, urbanists with a Boy Scout complex. So it’s no surprise that when the Olympics come up in the “Global City” section, the outlook is one seen through rose-colored glasses. The positives of an Olympic bid—the revitalization of neighborhoods, mainly— are displayed in big, bold print, while the opposing arguments—displacement and debt—are displayed below the former in thin letters and smaller font.

Whether you agree with this position or not, it’s not that important nowadays. What is important is that it is these attitudes that shaped our urban environment and will continue to do so as long as people live in cities.

CM: Your show at Chicago is about a soldier who dreams of a spirit.

NS: Yes, the lady, or white spirit—there are legends in Japan and China about dreams—having a whole life in dreams, or [being] in a dream world. Like if you’re losing consciousness, you have a dream of another life where you meet somebody. [Forest] is based on some legends.

Actually, exactly one year ago, I think it was November 6, I performed [at UChicago], just after Obama, and the whole city was kind of like a festival. But this year, not as much. So I have to make everything exciting myself!

This year I programmed five or six pieces.

After Forest, there are three or four smaller pieces. They’re deeper than last year, but I hope it works. Last year I did many funny pieces, but this year I put in some sad stories.

Nori Sawa will also be conducting two free puppet workshops: One on Sunday, November 8 at the Hyde Park Art Center and the other on Monday, November 9 at Midway Studios. The event is hosted by the Center for East Asian Studies.

With Christine Yang

Tuesday | November 10 Join experimental musicians Haptic and video artist Lisa Slodki at an informal gallery talk hosted by the Museum of Contemporary Art. The artists’ collaboration is currently featured in the museum’s 12x12 exhibit, where Haptic and Slodki perform every Tuesday night with live music and a video installation.

(220 East Chicago Avenue, 6 p.m., free) Doc Films is showing a special advance screening of Werner Herzog’s newest film Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans . Co-starring Eva Mendes and Val Kilmer, Bad Lieutenant is set in postKatrina New Orleans and follows Nicolas Cage as a good-cop-gone-bad who, through his relationship with a drug drealer, finds himself involved in the murder of Senegalese immigrants. The film’s producers, Gabe and Alan Polsky, will be at the screening and at a question-and-answer session afterward. (Max Palevsky Cinema, 9 p.m., free)

The lecture will focus on the fishing boat’s dramatic discovery and excavation as well as its historical significance for Christianity and Judaism. (Oriental Institute, 7 p.m., free)

Thursday | November 12 Watch the winning submissions for the Chicago IN: 60 Seconds video competition at a special screening and reception at the Smart Museum. This year, the contest’s theme was “the heart of Chicago,” which challenges aspiring filmmakers to connect the University with America's heartland and the Midwest.

(Smart Museum, 5:30 p.m., free) New-wave band Devo shows that they can still whip it as the band embarks on its umpteenth national tour to promote its first album since 1990. Twenty years later, the band still performs in yellow jumpsuits and red energy-dome hats. Devo co-founder Mark Mothersbaugh wrote the opening theme for Rugrats. (3145 North Sheffield, 8 p.m., $40)

Wednesday | November 11 Learn about the 2,000-year-old Sea of Galilee Boat discovered in Israel in 1986 at the Oriental Institute’s Members Lecture.

Have an event you’d like to see in STD? E-mail christineyang@ uchicago.edu.

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Chicago Syntagma Musicum, directed by James Kallembach Pullman Morris and Sword James Fackenthal UNIVERSITY

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11

CHICAGO MAROON | SPORTS | November 6, 2009

First road trip back to Carnegie was a jolt for Sain

Trio of Wash U forwards will try womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s back line

W. BASKETBALL continued from back page

SOCCER continued from back page

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I coached at least a couple players I had played with as well,â&#x20AC;? Sain said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a hard thing to adjust to. My dad was my high school coach so I grew up knowing that relationship.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the same kind of carryover, when we were on the floor; I was able to be their coach. Off the floor, there were some new boundaries.

You just kind of put up your limits, but I had an idea of how to do that based on the way that I grew up. It was difficult, but I think it was probably more difficult for them than it was for me.â&#x20AC;?

Gerri Seidl, the head coach at Carnegie throughout Sainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time there, was actually the person who suggested she think about the Chicago job. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the one that pointed me in the direction of this job, and I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t thank her enough for that, because I absolutely love it here,â&#x20AC;? Sain said.

After four years playing and three years coaching at Carnegie, Sain said she was ready for a new job in a different setting. â&#x20AC;&#x153;On paper maybe it seems like the same job: I was an assistant coach there, and I am a full-time assistant coach here, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just a very different kind of job. My responsibilities changed a lot. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m more involved in recruiting. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m more involved in the coaching side of things,â&#x20AC;? Sain said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I knew everything I needed to know about Carnegie Mellon and how they operated. I just needed a new experience, and I was just fortunate enough to be able to stay in the league. Every time you work with new people, you learn how they do things, and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a new perspective.â&#x20AC;?

Sain is optimistic about her second season at Chicago, which began with a 84â&#x20AC;&#x201C;67 loss in an exhibition game at D-I UIC. The Maroons, who are coming off a 17â&#x20AC;&#x201C;8 season during which they went 8â&#x20AC;&#x201C;6 in UAA play, begin their D-III schedule a week from Sunday, at Olivet Nazarene. â&#x20AC;&#x153;If we can be in a position to win the league title and get ourselves to the tournament, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re going to be successful once we get there,â&#x20AC;? Sain said.

senior year, I realized that I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to ever have basketball not be part of my life or what I was doing,â&#x20AC;? Sain said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;And Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m pretty happy with how it worked out.â&#x20AC;?

Pleased as she is to be in Chicago, adjusting to life as a Maroon has been jarring at times, and never more so than during Sainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first trip to Pittsburgh as a visiting opponent. That was last January, for a game the Maroons won convincingly, 66â&#x20AC;&#x201C;38. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It was the weirdest experience I have ever gone through,â&#x20AC;? Sain said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It was exciting to go home; it was nerve-racking to play them.

I remember waking up on Saturday and just being totally exhaustedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;not for any other reason other than I was emotionally drained from everything. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m looking forward to it being not so weird this year.â&#x20AC;?

Sainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s memories of Chicago from her playing days arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t exactly warm and fuzzy, but she said she recognizes something of her alma mater in her new school and its students. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I hated coming here to play because it was always so cold and I hated Henry Crown,â&#x20AC;?

Sain said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The first three years I played, I would say that we were pretty comparable to U of C. We were both playing kind of in the middle of the league. When we would play here I would just pick up a school newspaper and read it and it seemed like the student body was very comparable to what we had at Carnegie Mellon in a lot of different ways. I thought it was the school most like Carnegie Mellon, more so than some of the other schools in the UAA.â&#x20AC;?

During her fourth and final year, Sain actually played against the Maroonsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; other assistant coach, Korry Schwanz (A.B. â&#x20AC;&#x2122;07), who was one of the top guards in Chicago history. But, Sain says, any rivalry there has dissipated since the two have been working the same bench.

After graduating, Sain stayed on at Carnegie as an assistant, coaching players that had, until recently, been her teammates.

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to keep playing,â&#x20AC;? second-year goalkeeper Emma Gormley said.

In order to beat the Bears, Chicago has to cope with their three outstanding forwards: Caryn Rosoff, Emma Brown, and Lee Ann Felder. Brown leads the Bears with 14 goals, Rosoff has contributed 11, and Felder has chipped in five, plus a teamleading eight assists. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Wash U plays with three up top, which is different than a lot of the teams weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve seen so far this season. As far as defending against a three front goes, we just need to make sure weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re communicating and picking up runners as they come through,â&#x20AC;?

Gormley said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t lose focus for one second in the back, or disastrous things can happen.â&#x20AC;?

As for the men, Chicago (11â&#x20AC;&#x201C;3â&#x20AC;&#x201C;3, 4â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1) is still mathematically alive in the race for the UAA title, but the Maroons would need both Case (7â&#x20AC;&#x201C;8â&#x20AC;&#x201C;3, 0â&#x20AC;&#x201C;5â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1) to tie or upset Rochester (12â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2, 5â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1), and Emory (11â&#x20AC;&#x201C;4â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1, 2â&#x20AC;&#x201C;3â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1) to upset Carnegie (14â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2, 5â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1), either of which is unlikely to occur. A more realistic goal is netting an at-large bid, and the men are on more solid ground than the women in that

respect.

Chicago remains third in the central region in this weekâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s regional rankings. Even if the Maroons were to lose, they would still have a solid shot at an at-large bid, because the teams ranked above them regionallyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Wheaton and Dominicanâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;are favored to win their conference tournaments, and thus earn automatic bids. A win over Wash U, though, would make qualification all but a foregone conclusion.

For his part, head coach Scott Wiercinski is not distracted by all the tournament scenarios and has his eyes squarely on the Bears (9â&#x20AC;&#x201C;6â&#x20AC;&#x201C;3, 3â&#x20AC;&#x201C;3). â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just a game against a good opponent that fortunately we get to play at home. If something else happens, like the tournament or something else, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all gravy,â&#x20AC;? he said.

Third-year forward Alex Clifford had similar thoughts, and said itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still imperative that Chicago produce its best effort. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We need to stay focused and keep in mind that a loss is not the end of the world. But if we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t put all our effort out there and leave everything on the field, then that is the end of the world, because weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve let each other down,â&#x20AC;? he said.

Defending national-champ Emory blocks path to championship game VOLLEYBALL continued from back page in a round robin opposite that of Chicago and Emory; theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be the favorite to win that round robin and vie for the championship with whichever team emerges victorious from Chicagoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s half.

If Chicago doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t make the championship, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll still play tomorrow afternoon in the third, fifth, or seventh place match, depending upon how they fare in their opening round robin. But missing the championship game will knock the Maroons out of contention for the UAAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s automatic bid to the NCAAs. Instead, they would have to wait and hope for one of the 19 at-large bids given out by the selection committee.

Should the Maroons not qualify for the NCAAs, this will be their last competition of the year.

One of the most intriguing parts of the UAA tournament is that it allows all eight teams in the conference a shot at an NCAA bid. At this point, regular season records are out the window, and at least in concept, a team that went

0â&#x20AC;&#x201C;7 in conference play has the same chance at the postseason as a team that went 7â&#x20AC;&#x201C;0. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Anyone can come out on top and make it to the postseasonâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and I expect us to be a team that comes out on top,â&#x20AC;? Kossnar said.

In some other UAA sports with automatic NCAA bids, like soccer and basketball, regular season records are the deciding factor, and most teams are totally out of contention well before the final weekend of play.

In practice, volleyball isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t much more evenhanded: In 22 years, Wash U has won the conference 19 times. But at least thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hope, and that hope, coupled with the high level of play in the UAA, should make for an interesting weekend on the hardwood. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It will be a tough tournament and spectators will get to see some great rallies, defense, and big swings,â&#x20AC;?

Walby said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;If theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never watched volleyball before, it will be a great chance to open their eyes.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;It should be a good break from midterms studying and paper writing,â&#x20AC;? she added.

(Untitled)

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IN QUOTES â&#x20AC;&#x153;They were totally just playing ball.â&#x20AC;?

SPORTS

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Georgia coach Mark Richt, after a Georgia player was accused of ripping the helmet off Florida linebacker Brandon Spikes and gouging Spikesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eye.

Spikes himself was accused of gouging a Georgia player in the eyes later in the game.

VOLLEYBALL

At UAAs, Chicago looks to continue landmark year

By Audrey Henkels Sports Staff

Second-year Isis Smalls spikes through Clarksonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s blockers during an October 9 game. The Maroons are seeded third in this weekendâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s UAA Championship and will have their best finish since 1996 if they play to seed.

ERIC GUO/MAROON

Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got their 25 wins. The winning record is in the bag. At this point, the only question left for volleyball is: How much further can they go?

The answer is coming soon. Volleyball (25â&#x20AC;&#x201C;12, 4â&#x20AC;&#x201C;3 UAA) hosts the 2009 UAA Championships today and tomorrow, and all eight conference squads will be on hand to fight it out for the coveted automatic NCAA berth that is the reward for a UAA tournament win.

As second-year outside hitter Isis Smalls puts it, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The best way to describe our feelings towards the UAA Championships this weekend is that we are pumped.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Everything boils down to this weekend for us,â&#x20AC;? Smalls continued.

The tournament consists of two fourteam round robins, each of which whittles out a winner to play in Saturdayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s championship match. The teams are seeded and distributed into the round robins based on their performance in regular season UAA play; this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Maroons enter as the three seed. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Our goal is to hold our number three seeding, if not go higher,â&#x20AC;? head coach Vanessa Walby said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;[If we did that] it would be the first time since 1996 that

WOMENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S BASKETBALL

SOCCER

After years at Carnegie, Sain traded tartan for maroon

Wins against Wash U could clinch NCAA bids

Assistant coach Carissa Sain (left), who played and coached at Carnegie, speaks to assistant coach Korry Schwanz (right) during practice.

ERIC GUO/MAROON

By Alex Sisto Sports Staff It wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t long ago that Carissa Sain, who is beginning her second season as an assistant womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s basketball coach, was sporting a Carnegie jersey, and dreading the thought of traveling to frigid Chicago to play in the gloomy gymnasium at Crown.

Now, four years after graduating from Carnegie, where she was a three time All-UAA selection and

finished sixth in the Tartansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; careerscoring ranks, Sain spends most of her working day down the block from Crown, in the Maroonsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; spiffy Ratner digs.

As it turns out, working and coaching for her former UAA rival isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t far from what the former Tartan hoped for. Even when she was playing, Sain knew that she wanted to be involved in basketball once her time in the starting five was over. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Probably around my junior or

W. BASKETBALL continued on page 11

By Ryan Tryzbiak Associate Sports Editor Chicagoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s soccer teams have played a combined 34 games over the past two months, but now both teamsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; seasons rest on one day of play against an old rival.

When the Maroons take the field tomorrow against Wash U, much more will be on the line than the pride and bragging rights that come with a conference win. Playoff berths and a UAA title will be at stake as well.

On the womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s side, Wash U (14â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1, 5â&#x20AC;&#x201C;0â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1 UAA), currently ranked seventh nationally, has been dominant ever since dropping each of their first two games. The Bears suffered consecutive losses to 14th-ranked Illinois Wesleyan and 13th-ranked Johns Hopkins to start the season, but are undefeated in the 15 games since.

Only Emory (6â&#x20AC;&#x201C;5â&#x20AC;&#x201C;5, 1â&#x20AC;&#x201C;3â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2) managed to take even a draw off them.

Wash Uâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stellar run has put them in position to secure a fourth consecutive UAA title with a win over Chicago (13â&#x20AC;&#x201C;3â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1, 3â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1). However, if Chicago can tie or beat the Bears, that would open the door for Rochester (12â&#x20AC;&#x201C;3â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2,

5â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1) to win the conference by topping Case (9â&#x20AC;&#x201C;6â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2, 3â&#x20AC;&#x201C;3), the Yellowjacketsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; opponent this weekend.

Besides playing spoiler, the Maroons have business of their own to handle.

Chicagoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s women are on the postseason bubble. Despite suffering a disappointing 2â&#x20AC;&#x201C;0 loss at Brandeis (8â&#x20AC;&#x201C;6â&#x20AC;&#x201C;3, 2â&#x20AC;&#x201C;3â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1) last Sunday, the Maroons improved from fourth to third in Wednesdayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s NCAA regional rankings thanks to shakeups elsewhere in the Central. This bodes well for Chicagoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s postseason hopes, but Chicago still needs a result against Wash U. A win would almost certainly seal a spot in the tournament, but a draw or a loss would leave the Maroonsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; future up in the air. In that case, Chicago would become dependent upon what happens in other matches and, ultimately, the whims of the selection committee. That means tomorrowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Senior Day match is a must-win if the Maroons want to control their own fate. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t a game that we ever want to lose, but, for the seniors especially, this game is a must win. This is their last guaranteed game, and a win against Wash U will most likely mean we get

SOCCER continued on page 11

the team would have a top three finish in the UAAs.â&#x20AC;?

The Maroons (25â&#x20AC;&#x201C;13) begin play at noon today against Carnegie (16â&#x20AC;&#x201C;11, 3â&#x20AC;&#x201C;4), a team that beat them in a five-set nail-biter earlier this season. Then at 4 p.m., Chicago meets Brandeis (17â&#x20AC;&#x201C;13, 1â&#x20AC;&#x201C;6), who they beat in four sets when the teams played three weekends ago. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Personally, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m looking forward to playing Carnegie Mellon the most,â&#x20AC;? third-year outside hitter Kossnar said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The last time we played them this year was a heartbreaker. Now itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time for revenge.â&#x20AC;?

After playing twice today, Chicago will close out the round robin portion of the tournament tomorrow with a game against Emory (30â&#x20AC;&#x201C;5, 6â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1). The Eagles are only seeded second in the conference, despite being the defending national champions and sitting fourth in the national rankings. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I predict it will be a real battle against Emory,â&#x20AC;? Walby said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;But weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re taking each game as a challengeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;so our first challenge is against Carnegie. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re trying to take one game at a time.â&#x20AC;?

Wash U (25â&#x20AC;&#x201C;3, 7â&#x20AC;&#x201C;0), which is ranked third nationally, beat Emory during the regular season and has the top seed as a result. The Bears begin the tournament

VOLLEYBALL continued on page 11

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C A LEN DA R Friday

11/6

â&#x20AC;˘ Volleyball hosts UAA Championship vs. Carnegie, 12 p.m. vs. Brandeis, 4 p.m. â&#x20AC;˘ M/W Swimming & Diving host Maroon Invitational, 6 p.m.

â&#x20AC;˘ Menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Basketball @ DePaul, 7:30 p.m.

Saturday

11/7

â&#x20AC;˘ M/W Swimming & Diving host Maroon Invitational 10 a.m. & 5 p.m. â&#x20AC;˘ Volleyball hosts UAA Championship

vs. Emory, 12 p.m. vs. TBD 2 p.m. â&#x20AC;˘ Menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Soccer vs. Wash U, 11 a.m. â&#x20AC;˘ Football @ Wash U, 12 p.m. â&#x20AC;˘ Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Soccer vs. Wash U, 1:30 p.m.