FRIDAY
IN VOICES
IN SPORTS
Romero redux
Maroons lose title
» Page 6
» Page 12
The Crazies gets tangled up in horror clichés.
Women’s basketball loses to Wash U, misses out on share of UAA title.
MARCH 2, 2010
CHICAGO
AROON
VOLUME 121 ISSUE 31
CHICAGOMAROON.COM
The student newspaper of the University of Chicago since 1892
ACADEMICS
Putting on Ayers
China Center gets director as U of C plans for India By Asher Klein News Editor
B
ill Ayers promotes his book, Race Course Against White Supremacy, after delivering a speech at University Church Sunday.
LLOYD LEE/MAROON
CRIME
Admins to discuss A-level arrest today By Michael Lipkin News Editor Days after a student was arrested on the A-level with what witnesses say was unnecessary force, administrators will hear student concerns tonight at a campus forum. The meeting in the McCormick Tr i b u n e L o u n g e w i l l i n c l u d e UCPD Chief Marlon Lynch and Library Director Judith Nadler. Fourth-year Mauriece Dawson was arrested and charged with
criminal trespass and resisting arrest after a Regenstein clerk called the UC P D to report a group of students causing a disturbance. Witnesses s aid that Dawson, who was laughing loudly with friends on the A-Level, was later asked by a UCPD officer to leave. After Dawson repeatedly asked why he had to leave, the officer placed him in a choke hold, pinned him to the floor, and placed him under arrest. UCPD officials later said Dawson was arrested because he
Obama honors history prof McNeill for University experience
Some take walk less traveled, graduate early, and pocket savings
Exhaustion from years of exams, problem sets and the prospect of significant savings, is causing some U of C students to graduate early or take parts of their fourth years off. Third-year Savithry Namboodiripad did not plan to graduate in three years, but decided it was the best financial option when she realized she could. “During my first year ,my mom died all of a sudden and they never changed our financial aid, so it became more expensive for me to go here,” said Namboodiripad, who is also graduating with a masters. “It will be a lot cheaper for me to not take another year.” Some fourth-years only made
ARREST continued on page 3
FACULTY
STUDENT LIFE
By Nathalie Gorman Senior News Staff
did not present his ID card when asked, but no witnesses heard the officer ask for identification. Vice President for Campus Life Kim Goff-Crews said the meeting will address students’ questions about library protocol and police procedures. “The whole community can have a conversation around not just what happened, but...about the kind of relationship we want to have between students and the police, library personnel, etc., to make sure this
Director of East Asian Studies Dali Yang will serve as faculty director for the University of Chicago’s Beijing Center, planned to open in September. The Beijing Center will serve as a jumping-off point for deeper interaction between institutions in China at a time when few universities have the resources to expand internationally, President Robert Zimmer said in an interview. A committee is looking into creating a similar center in India. “The center will have office space for faculty and seminar rooms in the Haidian district of Beijing, home to 20 leading Chinese universities, to encourage dialogue between the institutions,” Yang said in an interview last fall. Yang, a professor of political science, chaired the 2008 faculty committee that recommended the center be created. “It is a great experience for me to work with faculty from multiple disciplines and the university administration to create a center that will spearhead the University of Chicago’s international engagement and place the U of C at the forefront of U.S.China educational exchanges,” Yang said in an e-mail interview. Zimmer said the East Asian civilization program will relocate to the center, which will gradually develop “a capacity for ongoing interaction” between American and Chinese faculty after it opens September 14. “I’m very optimistic that this is really going to be a full, Universitywide engagement,” Zimmer said. He
noted that further plans are already underway for the center, including a global health conference scheduled to occur soon after the center’s opening. In addition to language and civilization courses, Yang said the center would help students find work in the country. “We expect to steadily grow the number of course offerings for undergraduates in Beijing,” Yang said. “We anticipate that the center staff will help U of C students find internship opportunities.” Zimmer said the University is hoping to benefit from interaction with Chinese scholars, and is forming partnerships with schools in China to that end. “[We expect] to have a lot of flow and interaction with Chinese students and faculty,” he said. The center in India, which may be built in New Delhi, will build off of the successes observed in China, Zimmer said. “One of the proposals for the India center is being much more purposeful about bringing Indian scholars into the center in a way that we would support, and then bring them to Chicago for a time,” he said. Beijing’s will be the second major center in a foreign city; one was created in Paris in 2004. Professor Robert Morrissey, who was on the committee that recommended the foundation of the Paris Center, sat on the recent committee that recommended the new center, Yang said. “We have benefited much from his knowledge of the Paris Center’s operations,” Yang said.
By Berkman Frank Associate News Editor
the decision to stop taking classes early this year. “I’m done with all my requirements and my mom said, ‘That’s $13,000,’” said fourth-year Kate Dreis who, like all fourth-years interviewed, will take spring quarter off and walk in June. “If there was a last class I was dying to take, she’d let me ,[but] this seems like the most unselfish thing to do.” Fourth-year Liz Scoggin will be using money that would have been spent on spring quarter. “All the money I saved goes to law school, which I’m paying for,” she said. Other students cited a desire to work as their motivation for g r a d u a t i n g e a r l y. “ I w o r k f o r [Governor Pat Quinn’s campaign] and they asked me to start full-
SENIORS continued on page 2
President Barack Obama presented William H. McNeill, an emeritus history professor at the University, with a 2009 National Humanities Medal in a ceremony at the White House Thursday. McNeill has written numerous books on global history, served as president of the American Historical Association, and helped design the Western Civilization Core sequence, a press release said. At the presentation, Obama cited McNeill’s “pedagogy at the University of Chicago and as an author of more than 20 books, including The Rise of the West, which traces civilizations through 5,000 years of recorded history.” McNeill won the National Book Award for The Rise of the West in 1964. McNeill explained his love for education in an interview with Humanities magazine, the release said. “Teaching
President Obama presents the National Humanities Medal to William McNeill (left), the Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in History, February 25 at the White House. COURTESY OF THE WHITE HOUSE
is the most wonderful way to learn things,” he said. “You have to get up before a class at 10 o’clock the next morning and have something to say.” Seventeen University affiliates have
received the medal, according to the University website, including historian Studs Terkel (Ph.D. ’32, J.D. ’34) in 1997 and classicist Allan Bloom (A.B. ’49, A.M. ’53, Ph.D. ’55) in 1992.