TUESDAY
VOICES
IN SPORTS
FOTA’s open mic night
Maroons keep pace
» Page 7
» Page 12
Hallowed Grounds gets a dose of student talent next Thursday.
Women’s basketball takes two on the road to stay within reach of UAA Championship.
FEBRUARY 16, 2010
CHICAGO
AROON
VOLUME 121 ISSUE 27
CHICAGOMAROON.COM
The student newspaper of the University of Chicago since 1892
STUDENT LIFE
Folksy foursome
Government will oversee U of C student loans Private banks seen as less reliable lenders after credit crisis By Burke Frank Associate News Editor
T
he James King Band, a Bluegrass band from south Virginia, opened the 50th Annual University of Chicago Folk Festival last Friday in Mandel Hall. CAMILLE VAN HORNE/MAROON
FACULTY
E-mails in Scrolls case may implicate prof Prosecutors trying a University of Chicago professor’s son, who allegedly cyber-bullied multiple academics who disagreed with his father, released documents to a New York court last month that could implicate the professor in the crime. Raphael Golb, 49, faces 51 criminal charges of identity theft, criminal impersonation, harassment, and unauthorized use of computers.
He is the son of Oriental Institute Professor Norman Golb. Raphael allegedly targeted and harassed intellectuals who disputed his father’s theory that the Dead Sea Scrolls originate in Jerusalem, rather than in Qumran, where the Scrolls were found. He allegedly harassed scholars by disseminating false accusations about them in public blogs and through e-mails to their friends and colleagues. The prosecution wrote that this allegation is supported by e-mails to other members of the family, including Dr. Golb, in a
DISCOURSE
HYDE PARK
By Ilana Kowarski News Staff
Obama not as different from Bush as he seems, law professor says By Kelly Zhang News Contributor Despite the perception of widespread policy changes between Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, there has been little change in the state of American civil liberties, Professor of Law Aziz Huq said Wednesday at a campus ACLU–sponsored event. Over 30,000 aliens were detained by the Bush Administration after 9/11, Huq said, many the victims of police tips, in which “citizens would call police after seeing two Arab men talk at a gas station.” Th e O b a m a a d m i n i s t r a t i o n continued detaining and deporting non-citizens with little evidence of wrongdoing, Huq said. He is working on the case of an immigrant from Uzbekistan who faces deportation because videos of the Czech
ACLU continued on page 3
January 19 pre-trial motion. The e-mails include exchanges between accounts that purportedly belong to Raphael and family members, leading some—such as alleged victim Dr. Robert Cardiff—to believe that Dr. Golb and his family were engaged in a conspiracy. “The smear campaign was a Golb family affair!” Cardiff wrote in a January 28 blog post. Dr. Golb is not quoted in any of the released e-mails. “There is e-mail correspondence between Raphael
GOLB continued on page 3
Students will soon receive their federally subsidized loans directly from the government rather than through banks and credit unions, according to a University press release Monday. The University will move to the Federal Direct Student Loan Program (FDSLP) for loans this summer, as many private lenders pull out of the Federal Family Education Loan program (FFELP) that the University has used in the past. Interest rates for students receiving federally subsidized Stafford loans will not change and interest rates for PLUS loans will go down, according to the press release. “This will mean a guaranteed stable source of loan funds for the foreseeable future,” said Scott Sudduth, a congressional lobbyist for the University. “One of the problems with the recession is that private lenders are getting out of the business of providing student loans.” Sudduth said that under FDSLP, some of the roles that private lenders now play in advising students would fall to University financial aid offices. “There are extensive personnel and expertise devoted to financial aid to begin with,” Sudduth said. “I don’t think this will be a tremendously different burden on administrators.” Banks, credit unions, and other private lenders have backed out
of the FFELP program in recent years due to the credit crisis, including Bank of America and U.S. Bank in December. Students receiving loans from these banks have had to scramble to find a new source of funding. The University currently participates in FFELP, the largest university loan program in the country, in which the federal government partially subsidizes private lenders to issue loans to students and guarantees repayment to lenders if students default on the loans. Sudduth said University students currently receive $130 million annually in federal financial aid, most of which comes in the form of subsidized loans through private lenders. The F D S LP program issues Stafford and PLUS loans directly to students, without a federally subsidized private intermediary. Students cannot participate in F DS LP if they attend a University that uses FFELP. Once the University makes the transition, students already receiving FFELP loans will have to sign new master promissory notes through their Office of College Aid, but the change will not affect the terms of their loans. Congress is considering legislation that would end federal subsidies to private lenders this summer, effectively making direct federal loans the only option for students and universities. In April, President Obama proposed allowing FFELP to expire, and using the subsidy money to fund more Pell grants and
STUDENT LOANS continued on page 3
Two sites proposed for Lab School addition By Asher Klein News Editor The University unveiled two proposals Thursday for an Early Childhood Center (ECC), to be built by the Lab Schools by 2013. The plans call for an early education– specific building to be constructed on the school’s current campus at 59th Street and Dorchester Avenue or on the site of the Doctors Hospital, at 58th Street and Stony Island Avenue. University officials, architects from firms FGM and VDTA, Fifth Ward Alderman Leslie Hairston, and Lab School Director David McGill spoke to an audience of around 80 in the Lab Schools’ Judd Hall. Lab Schools have an obligation to accept a certain number of Universityaffiliated children, but historically, they are balanced by an equal number of unaffiliated students. McGill said the ECC project is part of a larger Lab expansion aimed at rectifying a growing disparity between those groups,
which ratio he placed at 65-to-35. “It is really squeezing out the neighborhood children, and that has not been the tradition of the Lab School,” McGill said. The expansion would make Lab the fifth-largest independent school in the nation, McGill said, with 650 students in the ECC (from kindergarten to second grade) and 1,400 from grades 3–12. The ECC would be a well lit, large space, McGill said, with easy access outdoors no matter where it is built. “Children learn best when they are extremely engaged in their learning,” he said. McGill outlined the pros and cons of each site. Building the ECC on the Doctors Hospital site would allow for an airier building and more room for parking, but would split Lab into two campuses, on either side of the METRA track. To address this, the school may bus students from one site to the other to prevent families with children in each
A concept rendering of the Early Childhood Center, proposed for 2013. COURTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LABORATORY SCHOOLS
from having to travel across Hyde Park. An ECC on the current Lab Schools site wouldn’t require busing, but either the tennis courts or soccer field would need to be bulldozed to make room, and the architects said the building
would be more constricted. But Economics Professor John Cochrane and Hyde Park blogger Elizabeth Fama, Lab parents, asked at the meeting whether moving or remov-
DOCTORS HOSPITAL continued on page 3