TUESDAY
IN VOICES
IN SPORTS
Endgame a winner
Hurdling into first
» Page 5
» Back page
Steppenwolf successfully stages Beckett's masterpiece
Track and field teams place first and second at Chicagolands
APRIL 13, 2010
CHICAGO
AROON
VOLUME 121 ISSUE 36
CHICAGOMAROON.COM
The student newspaper of the University of Chicago since 1892
STUDENT GOVERNMENT
CAMPUS LIFE
DU brings party to SG debates By Ella Christoph News Editor Ne x t G e n e r a t i o n a n d D e l t a Upsilon’s Moose Party traded promises and pithy remarks at a Student Government (SG) elections debate in the Reynold’s club yesterday. The debate, which attracted few attendees, also featured candidates for undergraduate liaison to the Board of Trustees. Next Generation is running on a platform based in part on accessibilty transparency, posting a plan for its first 30 days in office on the slate’s Web site. “Every single year, transparency and accountability is brought up," said third-year Patrick Ip, Next Generation’s candidate for vice president of Student Affairs, in an interview. “I don’t think any other slate has put up a timeline of what they want to do in previous years, and despite the Moose Party being our only competition, we want to be held to the highest standards.” The slate is running to help RSOs by buying three used vans that can be rented out, and to make SG more accountable by moving office hours to the C-Shop. Ip said his party “got many points across. . .despite that the crowd was mostly supporting DU.” DU’s Moose Party, which advocated a physical fitness test of beer
pong, keg stands, and flip cup, made up 80–95 percent of the audience, according to estimates by candidates from both parties. In an interview, third-year and Moose Party candidate for president Riley Heckel said this “shows the apathy that exists among the campus. ” Heckel said the debate should be an opportunity for SG candidates to share their platforms and also “simultaneously allowing the Moose Party to have a really great time with it.” Third-year and candidate for Undergraduate Liason to the Board of Trustees Rafael Menis said he would focus on unifying the community rather than communicating with the Board—the liaison only meets with a few members of the Board once a quarter. Without student unification and communication, “this is the vote of one student who happens to have this opinion, but we don’t know if its supported or not,” he said. Menis proposed that Facebook and the SG Web site be utilized more fully in order to connect students and gather student feedback. First-year candidate for Undergraduate Liaison Frank Alarcon said in an interview he was “both realistic about the role of the liaison and at the same time. . .optimistic about the ability of the liaison to expand its influence.”
DEBATE continued on page 2
Hutch offering late night breakfast
Executive Chef John Seagro prepares a breakfast skillet for the Late Night Dining Program in Hutchinson Commons Monday evening. CAMILLE VAN HORNE/MAROON
By Adam Janofsky Associate News Editor As a response to student requests for on-campus late-night dining, Campus Dining Services is piloting a made-to-order dinner and breakfast food program in Hutch Commons this week. The pilot late-night food program, which runs until midnight from Monday to Thursday, will be used by Aramark to
gauge the need for after-hours dining on campus. In addition to the standard pizza and grill stations, breakfast skillets, biscuits, and French toast sticks will be offered starting at 9 p.m. Depending on how many people show up, late-night dining may be offered at the end of this year or the beginning of Fall quarter. The Campus Dining Advisory Board developed the program based
on responses to student surveys. The board, which consists of six Student Government and Inter-House Council appointed students and is chaired by Director of Campus Dining Richard Mason, saw the opportunity to meet a student need. “There has been a consistent message from surveys and our committee that [late-night dining] was a big student desire,” Mason said.
DINING continued on page 2
HYDE PARK
STUDENT LIFE
For one month, the Op Shop fills vacant storefronts with art
Some grads struggle to make ends meet
By Stacey Kirkpatrick News Staff Located on the corner of 53rd Street and Lake Park, the Opportunity Shop turns an empty storefront into temporary art space, garden shop, thrift store, and anything else its creators want to be. Better known as the Op Shop, it “is an idea to activate otherwise vacant spaces through art to improve the quality of life for the community now,” said Laura Shaeffer, the Op Shop’s head operator. Inside, one spacious room houses a variety of items for sale and exchange. Art installations fill the back half of the building and, after a bit of rearranging, the open space is also used for live music performances. The University, which owns the space, is permitting the Op Shop to occupy the building that was formerly a Blockbuster for a month; the shop closes May 1. This Op Shop is the second in Hyde Park, and another will likely pop up in a different vacant store in the future, according to Shaeffer, who is looking around. The last
Op Shop was on 55th Street and Cornell at a space owned by Mac Apartments for December. “We adapt ourselves to the space, the context, and the lessons we have learned with previous Op Shop experiences, as well as ideas that have developed from past incarnations,” Shaeffer said. This version of the Op Shop is more interested in “ad hoc-ism, and we call this ongoing project space ‘Adhocity,’” Shaeffer said. “This one is a raw unfolding project space, reflecting what we believe to be the concerns and needs of the community at this present moment in time.” Shaeffer describes herself as “a humanistic artist” who creates art “that results in meaningful change and exchange.” “This project is my response to the environment here in Hyde Park,” she said, The Op Shop features Saturday market days, during which sellers, led by Hyde Park resident and Union Church member Jane Comiskey, put up personal collections for sale. The Church not only sponsors the market days but helped get the Op Shop insured.
Victoria Bills, a high school student in the L ab School, is working with other students from the Lab Schools and Kenwood High School on a mural called, “An Exquisite Corpse.” Inspired by Oulipo poetry, Bills decided each student would take a section of the wall to paint a section of the corpse. Similarly, the mural will be a compilation of different students’ sections of the corpse. At the Shop’s entrance stands a large calendar board covered in post-it notes promoting upcoming events. Opposite sits a large chalkboard that reads, “General Economy Exquisite Exchange,” the motto of the Gardener’s Exchange, which was created by an artist collective comprised mostly of School of the Art Institute graduates. Patrick Thornton, one of the artists in charge of the Gardener’s Exchange, described it as not only a place for sales and trade—on Saturday, Thornton traded a bucket of compost material for a basket of biscotti—but also as “an installation art piece.”
OP SHOP continued on page 2
Part 2 of a 2 part series on
Graduate Student Tuition By Ilana Kowarski News Staff “If I had more money, I could save up and some day start a family. I wouldn’t have to feel bad about going to the theater once in a while,” seventh-year anthropology doctoral student Joe Feinberg told the maroon in an e-mail. “I might be able to work fewer hours so that I could devote time to my research and other writing and organizing. But also I wouldn’t feel like a second- or third-class person in the University,” Feinberg is one of many graduate students campaigning for the University to recognize Graduate Student United (GSU) as a union. Graduate students must pay Advanced Residency (AR) tuition after their fourth year at the school. GSU has been campaigning for higher wages and lower tuition for years and declared its intent to unionize this March.
The University does not plan to increase wages, decrease tuition, or recognize GSU as a union, Deputy Provost Cathy Cohen said. Feinberg said he and his wife--a graduate student at Northwestern— live on a tight budget and can’t start a family, though they would like to. “We’re living below the poverty line. We can try to economize, but if you have children there’s no way you can support them on this amount of money,” Feinberg said in an interview, where he wore a GSU button. “Positive reforms will not happen without a union,” Feinberg said in the e-mail. “A union says that we can no longer be ignored.” Cohen and Provost Thomas Rosenbaum announced in February that the University could not afford to eliminate AR tuition in the current economic climate, and wrote that, though they appreciated “the need to ensure that a University of Chicago education is affordable to all,” they believed doctoral students had a responsibility to contribute to their education. While rates vary by division, typically about 80 percent of the tuition is paid by the division and the rest is either waived if the graduate
UNION continued on page 2